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+{"query": "Buying a multi-family home to rent part and live in the rest", "corpus": ["\"The biggest question is do you want to be a landlord? There are a lot of ups and down to managing property from bad tenants to having to fix a water heater or replace a fridge.   If you aren't interested in being a landlord, it is definitely a bad idea.   If you do want to be a landlord, then the question is how close do you want to be to your tenants?   What if they are up late making noise, etc.?   What if they watch TV all night and you hear it through the walls?   What is your plan?   You ask if people have trouble \"\"sharing\"\" a house.   If you are the landlord and the other party the tenant, then you aren't \"\"Sharing\"\", you are leasing.   It's a different relationship with different strains.\""], "neg": ["\"Defining risk tolerance is often aided with a series of questions. Such as - You are 30 and have saved 3 years salary in your 401(k). The market drops 33% and since you are 100% S&P, you are down the same. How do you respond?  (a) move to cash - I don't want to lose more money. (b) ride it out. Keep my deposits to the maximum each year. Sleep like a baby.  A pro will have a series of this type of question. In the end, the question resolves to \"\"what keeps you up at night?\"\" I recall a conversation with a coworker who was so risk averse, that CDs were the only right investment for her. I had to explain in painstaking detail, that our company short term bond fund (sub 1 year government paper) was a safe place to invest while getting our deposits matched dollar for dollar. In our conversations, I realized that long term expectations (of 8% or more) came with too high a risk for her, at any level of her allocation. Zero it was.\"", "I do this very thing, but with asset allocation and risk parity in mind. I disagree with the cash or bust answers above, but many of the aforementioned facts are valuable and I don't mean to undermine them in anyway. That said, let's look at two examples: Option 1: All-in For the sake of argument let's say you had $100k invested in the SPY (S&P 500 ETF) in early 2007, and you kept it there until today. Your lowest balance would have been about $51k, and at this point the possibility of you losing your job was probably at a peak. Today you would be left with $170k assuming no withdrawal. Option 2: Risk Parity BUT if you balanced your investments with a risk parity approach, using negatively correlated asset classes you avoid this dilemma. If you had invested 50% in XLP (Consumer Staples Sector ETF) and 50% in TLT ( Long Term Treasury ETF) your investments low point would have been $88k, and your lowest annual return would be +0.69%. Today you would be left with $214k assuming no withdrawals.  I chose option #2 and it hasn't failed me yet, even in 2016 so far the results are steady and reliably given the reward. My general opinion is simple: when you have money always grow it. Just be sure to cover your ass and prepare for rain. Backtesting for this was done at portfoliovisualizer.com, the one caveat to this approach is that inflation and a lack of international exposure are a risk here.", "Shop around for a bank that offers lower/no fees for this operation and move your account there...  or, yes, change where the direct deposit is routed... or move these accounts into a single bank so it's an internal transfer rather than ACH. Or ask the bank whether there is another way to arrange this which doesn't cost you money. (It costs me nothing to move money within my credit union, whether manually or on a scheduled basis. It costs me nothing to have them send funds to another entity from my checking account. Specific example: Pay comes into my savings account. On the 27th, an automatic transfer moves the cost of a mortgage payment from savings to checking. On the 30th, an automatic payment sends that to my mortgage in another bank. No fees on any of this, 100% reliable.)", "> What kinda skill set is it that they can't find in a population of 300 million plus?  The skill set where they work for half the market salary and are scared of complaining about working conditions so they don't get thrown out of the country.", "Jez, i didn't know their export market was so bad.Down 85% in some areas.   I used to have a lot of Japanese electronics. Now I only have a Sony Blue Ray player that hooks to my  KoreanTV. It isn't near as good as the similar Apple TV and Sony has no way (unlike Apple) to get money from movie purchases, songs etc. It looks like they have even worse crony capitalism than the US. Older people ripping off the younger folks who don't have a future - all to keep a huge bubble from bursting.  Anyone know much about the story of Japanese organized crime threatening to kill the British exec who found accounting fraud? What a mess.", "I once saw Kelly on a Yahoo show and I had no idea who she was. After visiting this website, I now know that she is great personal stylist who is also a talented host. I was also impressed by this particular site on her website: http://www.kellylundberg.co/kelly-lundberg-show-reel/", "You mean at what point would my mom and I agree to stop paying before I made myself and my own family destitute?  Not to mention, you're completely ignoring the selfishness of my desire to keep my mom through the suffering her disease inflicts on her."]}
+{"query": "Should I pay cash or prefer a 0% interest loan for home furnishings?", "corpus": ["There are several issues with paying for furniture and appliances with 0% credit instead of paying with cash. When you pay with 0% credit, you might be tempted to spend more on something than you would have if you paid with cash, because it feels like free money, and you've justified in your mind that the extra you earn will help pay for the more expensive item. Businesses don't offer 0% credit for free, and they don't lose money on the deal.  When you shop at a store that offers 0% credit, you are generally overpaying for the item.  By shopping at a store that does not offer 0% credit, you might be able to get a better price. Your savings account is likely earning very little interest.  You might invest the money you intend for your purchases in a place that gets better returns, but in most of these places the returns are not guaranteed, and you might not do as well as you think. 0% loans typically come with lots of conditions that have very heavy penalties and interest rate hikes for late payments.  You can mitigate this risk by setting up automatic payments, but things can still go wrong.  Your bank might change your account number, making the automated payment fail.  As you mentioned, you might also forget to put the proper amount of money in the account.  A single mistake can negate all of the tiny gains you are trying to achieve. Ultimately, the decision is yours, of course, but in my opinion, there is very, very little to gain with buying something on 0% credit when you could be paying cash."], "neg": ["While there are plenty of arguments for and against subsidizing public broadcasting groups, with varying degrees of credibility, I think the issue is too small to stress about given the state of other elements of the economy and government. That is, the subsidies given to these groups are so small that the debate seems overblown.", "\"Do not give them any money until you have a signed contract that releases your liability completely. It's imperative that this contract be drafted correctly. The contract needs proper consideration (money in exchange for release of liability), among other things. In other words, talk to a lawyer if you want to go this route. If you just cut them a check, there's nothing stopping them from taking your money and making an insurance claim anyway, or taking your money and then suing for \"\"whiplash\"\" or some other fake injury.  The best way is just to go through insurance. It might cost a bit more, but you're covered in case they sue.\"", "> One problem with the Social Security number, he said, is that a victim of identity theft cannot get it changed after it has been stolen.  Not quite true. [You *can* get your Social Security number changed](https://faq.ssa.gov/link/portal/34011/34019/article/3789/can-i-change-my-social-security-number), but it's a process to do so, and is only available for specific reasons. One of those reasons is due to ongoing issues with identify theft:  > We can assign a different number only if:  > * ... A victim of identity theft continues to be disadvantaged by using the original number;  So it's doable, but the process of doing so isn't easy, and requires a trip to Washington, DC, which most folks won't be able to do (which are only compounded if dealing with financial stresses caused by identity theft).", "I live in MA. Median price value here is $410K. Depending on location a $410K house here can be a ranch from 1950 needing a complete overhaul, a 1970's split level, a 4 bedroom Colonial in Central MA or a condo somewhere close to Boston. These homes are decidedly nothing special, and certainly not where the 1% live. There are plenty of houses that list in the $750s in my town that go on and off the market really quickly, generally purchased by a two-earner family making decent (but not 1%er) money. Think engineers, doctors, sales and marketing execs, managers.   Source : https://www.bostonglobe.com/business/2017/07/25/median-home-price-massachusetts-tops-for-first-time/rVsP7BwWZCtKwP9BqZQOKJ/story.html", "I'm not saying I don't like the idea of on-the-job training too, but you can't expect the company to do that. Training workers is not their job - they're building software. Perhaps educational systems in the U.S. (or their students) should worry a little about getting marketable skills in exchange for their massive investment in education, rather than getting out with thousands in student debt and then complaining that they aren't qualified to do anything.", "Standard Repayment can be quite burdensome. Fortunately, it looks like FedLoan Servicing offers a variety of payment plan options, and even provides a calculator that you can use to compare them given your adjusted gross income and current loan balances. This won't reduce that $420 to $0 but it may bring it down significantly.  I agree with @littleadv that you need legal advice to answer your other questions. That being said, I can tell you that it is possible to go into deferment and/or forbearance at any time (not only before you start making regular payments) as long as you meet the criteria.  Otherwise, it may be worth looking through other questions and answers on here about lowering expenses and increasing income. There is a lot of good advice for people in similar situations to yours. If you are truly in hardship, even with a full-time job, you may qualify for supplemental nutrition insurance, a.k.a. food stamps.  Best of luck.", "There are a lot of moving parts, individual premiums and annual increases have little to do with employer premiums and annual increases and vice versa.  Most people think of XYZ insurer as a single company with a single pool of insured folks.  This common knowledge isn't accurate.  Insurers pool their business segments separately.  This means that Individual, small business, mid-size business, and large business are all different operating segments from the viewpoint of the insurer.    It's possible to argue that because so many people are covered by employer plans that individual plans have a hard time accumulating the required critical mass of subscribers to keep increases reasonable.   Age banded rating: Individual coverage and small group coverage is age rated, meaning every year you get older.  In addition to your age increase, the premium table for your plan also receives an increase.  Employers with 100+ eligible employees are composite rated (in general), meaning every employee costs the same amount.  The 18 year old employee costs $500 per month, the 64 year old costs $500 per month.  Generally, the contributions an employee pays to participate in the plan are also common among all ages.  This means that on a micro level increases can be more incremental because the employer is abstracting the gross premium.  Composite rating generally benefits older folks while age rating generally benefits younger folks. Employer Morale Incentive: Generally the cost to an employee covered by an employer plan isn't directly correlated to the gross premium, and increases to the contribution(s) aren't necessarily correlated to the increases the employer receives.  Employers are incentivised by employee morale.  It's pretty common for employers to shoulder a disproportionate amount of an increase to keep everyone happy.  Employers may offset the increase by shopping some ancillary benefit like group life insurance, or bundling the dental program with the medical carrier.  Remember, employees don't pay premiums they pay contributions and some employers are more generous than others.  Employers are also better at budgeting for planned increases than individuals are. Regulators: In many of the states that are making the news because of their healthcare premium increases there simply isn't a regulator scrutinizing increases.  California requires all individual and small group premiums to be filed with the state and increases must be justified with some sort of math and approved by a regulator.  Without this kind of oversight insurers have only the risk of subscriber flight to adjust plan provisions and press harder during provider contract negotiations. Expiring Transitional Reinsurance Fee and Funds: One of the fees introduced by healthcare reform paid by insurers and self-insured employers established a pot of money that individual plans could tap to cope with the new costs of the previously uninsurable folks.  This fee and corresponding pot of money is set to expire and can no longer be taken in to account by underwriters. Increased Treatment Availability: It's important that as new facilities go online, insurer costs will increase.  If a little town gets a new cancer clinic, that pool will see more cancer treatment costs simply as a result of increased treatment availability.  Consider that medical care inflation is running at about 4.9% annually as of the most recent CPI table, the rest of the increases will result from the performance of that specific risk pool.  If that risk pool had a lot of cancer diagnoses, you're looking at a big increase.  If that risk pool was under priced the prior year you will see an above average increase, etc."]}
+{"query": "Approximation of equity value for company in default", "corpus": ["\"Generally \"\"default\"\" means that the company cannot pay off their debts, and since debt holders get paid before equity holders, their equity would be effectively worthless. That said, companies can emerge from Chapter 11 bankruptcy (reorganization) and retain equity value, but it is rare. Most times, stocks are de-listed or frozen on stock exchanges, and company's reorganization plan will cancel all existing equity shares, instead focusing all of their attention on paying back as much debt as possible. If the company issues new equity after reorganizing, it might provide a way for holders of the original equity to exchange their shares for the new equity, but it is rare, and the value is usually significantly less that the value of the original equity.\""], "neg": ["\"The size terminology for lumber is based on the rough cut dimensions from the mill, not the actual size of the board at Home Depot. There's post finishing done to 2x4's, etc from the big box stores.  It's been that way for 50 years.  If a couple of hipsters got their feelings hurt because they didn't know what they were doing, tell them to watch a youtube video about lumber before screwing up a home improvement project.  They wouldn't have the slightest idea what to do with an actual rough cut 1x6 anyway.  They'd get home with it, and if by some miracle they managed to plane it, they'd realize they're left with a 3/4\"\"x5 3/4\"\" board,  just like you get from Home Depot.  Grow up, pansies.\"", "I suppose it depends on how liquid you need, and if you're willing to put forth any risk whatsoever.  The stock market can be dangerous, but there are strategies out there that will allow you to insure yourself against significant loss, while likely earning you a decent return.  You can buy and sell options along with stocks so that if the stock drops, your loss is limited, and if it goes up or even stays where it's at, you make money (a lot more than 1% annually). Of course there's risk of loss, but if you plan ahead, you can cap that risk wherever you want, maybe 5%, maybe 10%, whatever suits your needs.  And as far as liquidity goes, it should be no more than a week or so to close your positions and get your money if you really need it. But even so, I would only recommend this after putting aside at least a few thousand in a cash account for emergencies.", "What's the future of oil and its economic impact.  1. On one side, it's nice that some countries have decided to ban gas powered cars in 20 or so years along with the likes of Tesla and home solar power having some success.   2. But, we still need plastics and possibly a host of other chemicals produced from petroleum - so there will be demand, but of a smaller (?) or different kind.  3. There would be a huge upheaval (I imagine) in the industries in the current oil supply chains and also countries (Saudi Arabia for e.g.) and the global/ middle eastern politics too (?).", "\"Not to mention. Since I posted my comment, I've suffered from self shutdowns of my PC (started with instant shutdowns). Only restoring multiple times from multiple restore points as seemed to have solved the problem for now. I'm telling you, we are under foreign attack, and India is part of it.  Also, when I'm not using my PC I shut it down and turn off the power strip access to it. Used to unplug it too.  Also in the past year, my refrigerator, dryer, main TV in living room, and most recently my washer (mechanical recurring) and PC have suffered electrical failures.  BEWARE those who claim to be advancing/helping you.  Anyway I believe someone is sending me a message about evil in our midst.  Pop culture should obviously indicate to you, if you know history as a matter of fact, not conjecture, that things are deteriorating quickly, and various nefarious factions are jockeying for position.  And they are not, never have been, from the side of \"\"good\"\", though they ALL claimed to be.  They punish/torment/destroy whom they deem (their whims) to be \"\"evil\"\". Though they are NEVER the arbiter of such things.  Horrible things are coming to the US. Past sins. Don't complain. Find redemption, salvation as you can. Survival (personal) is not paramount. GOOD (as  you see it) is. Just make sure you're not actually evil.  I'm clobbered here. Though I try to reveal truth. I try to debate, initiate discourse. I am shut down, for various nebulous reasons that my accusers use commonly.\"", "\"No, investing in gold is a bad idea. Gold at these prices is completely useless. There are many other precious metals that are far more useful.   It seems highly unlikely you will make a large return and the downside is huge. If the world economy is stabilised gold will halve very quickly, perhaps more.   A great piece of advice I have had while investing is \"\"if the shoe shine boy tells you to buy; sell\"\", i.e. when the general public think it is a good idea to invest in a certain product you have already missed the boat.  You have missed the gold boat.  Unfortunately most safe heavens are exhausted: chf, jpy, gold, etc. At the moment there aren't any safe places.  NOK is probably your best bet but beware of intervention (see EURCHF around sep last year).\"", "I've used ING and have no complaints with them, but right now if you can work with their restrictions, SmartyPig.com has a better rate than ING and better than any listed on SavingsAccount.com.", "No. Bonds don't work like that.  When you buy a bond, you buy pieces of notional at a price. 1K denotes the amount you would get back at maturity (+ coupons), So the smallest piece size would be 1k.  I've even seen 50K plus but thats for more illiquid products...."]}
+{"query": "taxes, ordinary income, and adjusted cost basis for RSUs", "corpus": ["What happened is that they do not track (and report) your original cost basis for 1099-B purposes. That is because it is an RSU. Instead, they just reported gross proceeds ($5200) and $0 for everything else. On your Schedule D you adjust the basis to the correct one, and as a comment you add that it was reported on W2 of the previous year. You then report the correct $1200 gain. You keep the documentation you have to back this up in case of questions (which shouldn't happen, since it will match what was indeed reported on your W2)."], "neg": ["\"I have a similar situation -- five different accounts between me and my wife. Just as you and @Alex B describe, I maintain my asset allocation across the combination of all accounts. I also maintain a spreadsheet to track the targets, deviations from the targets, amounts required to get back in balance, and overall performance. I (mostly) don't use mutual funds. I have selected, for each category, 1 or 2 ETFs. Choosing index ETFs with low expense ratios and a brokerage with cheap or free trades keeps expenses low. (My broker offers free ETF trades if you buy off their list as long as you aren't short-term trading; this is great for rebalancing for free 2 or 3 times a year.) Using ETFs also solves the minimum balance problem -- but watch out for commissions. If you pay $10 to buy $500 worth of an ETF, that's an immediate 2% loss; trade a couple of times a year and that ETF has to gain 5% just to break even. One issue that comes up is managing cash and avoiding transaction fees. Say your IRA has all the growth stock funds and your Roth has the bonds. Stocks do well and bonds do poorly, so you sell off some stocks, which creates a bunch of cash in your IRA. Now you want to buy some bonds but you don't have enough cash in your Roth, so you buy the bonds in your IRA. Not a problem at first but if you don't manage it you can end up with small amounts of various funds spread across all of your accounts. If you're not careful you can end up paying two commissions (in two different accounts) to sell off / purchase enough of a category to get back to your targets. Another problem I had is that only one account (401k) is receiving deposits on a regular basis, and that's all going into an S&P 500 index fund. This makes it so that my allocation is off by a fair amount every quarter or so -- too much in large cap equities, not enough of everything else. My solution to this going forward is to \"\"over-rebalance\"\" a couple of times a year: sell enough SPY from my other accounts so that I'm under-allocated in large caps by the amount I expect to add to my 401k over the next 3 months. (So that in six months at my next rebalancing I'm only 3 months over-allocated to large caps -- plus or minus whatever gains/losses there are.)\"", "No kidding, I'm shocked. /s  The flipper boom after the 2008 downturn basically means that anything affordable gets snapped up by an investor in a cash sale, they do some half-assed renovations, and then turn and sell it for double the original price. They out-compete low-end buyers during purchase, even if those buyers have outstanding credit, and then they move the house out of reach of those very buyers.  $300k - $600k houses are everywhere around here. What isn't available are reasonably priced houses under $300k that might need some minor updating. Anything under that you can actually purchase is probably something barely above occupancy standards.  There is *no* incentive to build or renovate affordable low end houses. None.", "\"The first question I have to ask is, why would your \"\"friend\"\" even be considering something so ridiculous?  There are so many variations of the banking scam running around, and yet people can't seem to see them for what they are -- scams.   The old saying \"\"there's no such thing as a free lunch\"\" really comes into play here.  Why would anyone send you/your friend $3,000.00 just because they \"\"like you\"\"?  If you can't come up with a rational answer to that question then you know what you (or your friend) should do -- walk away from any further contact with this person and never look back! Why?  Well, the simple answer is, let's assume they DO send you $3,000.00 by some means.  If you think there aren't strings attached then all hope is lost.  This is a confidence scam, where the scammer wins your trust by doing something nobody would ever do if they were trying to defraud you.  As a result, you feel like you can trust them, and that's when the games really begin.   Ask yourself this -- How long do you think it will be (even assuming the money is sent) before they'll talk you into revealing little clues about yourself that allow them to develop a good picture of you?  Could they be setting you up for some kind of identity theft scheme, or some other financial scam?  Whatever it is, you'd better believe the returns for them far outweigh the $3,000.00 they're allegedly going to send, so in a sense, it's an investment for them in whatever they have planned for you down the road. PLEASE don't take the warnings you get about this lightly!!!  Scams like this work because they always find a sucker.  The fact that you're asking the question in the first place means you/your \"\"friend\"\" are giving serious thought to what was proposed, and that's nothing short of disaster if you do it.   Leave it be, take the lesson for what it's worth before it costs you one red cent, and move on. I hope this helps. Good luck!\"", "\"Sounds like he might be a good resource. Even if school doesn't start soon, start learning. It's a competitive field because the people in it are driven, so you should be too. There's a ton of books out there, and the more you know the easier it will be to figure out the path you want to go down; or if it's even something you want to pursue. A few books on kindle are a hell of a lot cheaper than college is, and in my opinion college is a lot easier when you have a set goal instead of a \"\"maybe this could be for me\"\" attitude.\"", "\"Considering the fact that you are so unaware of how to find such data, I find it very very hard to believe that you actually need it. \"\"All trade and finance data for as much tickers and markets as possible.\"\" Wtf does that even mean. You could be referencing thousands of different types of data for any given \"\"ticker\"\" with a statement so vague. What are you looking for?\"", "Everything here is yours and can be rolled into your new plan or IRA. You can generally move your 403(b) assets into your traditional IRA or into your new employer's plans, assuming your new employer's plan allowing incoming roll overs.  You can probably roll your pension out as well. Actually, the right person to ask about this is the company with whom you have your IRA.  The easiest and best way to get assets from one tax-sheltered account to another is by contacting the company you want to roll INTO and having them take care of everything for you.", "The main reason, as far as I can see, is that the dividends are payments with which the shareholders may do what they want. Capital that the company has no use for does not make a significant positive return on investment, as you pointed out, yes the company could accrue interest, but that is not going to make the company large sums of cash. While the company may be great at making shoes - maybe even the best in the world - doesn't mean they are good investors. Sure they could dabble at using their capital to invest in other equities, but they don't, because they just want to focus on making shoes. If the dividend goes to the investors, they can do what they wish, be it reinvest in the company, or invest elsewhere. Other companies that may make good use of the capital, and create significant returns on it are one such example. That is the rational answer, beyond that, one of the main reasons is that people like the feeling of receiving dividends - it might not be the answer you are looking for, but many people prefer companies that pay dividends for no rational reason over companies which grow their asset value."]}
+{"query": "How does a limit order work for a credit spread?", "corpus": ["As you probably know, a credit spread involves buying a call (or put) at one strike and selling another call (or put) at another with the same maturity, so you're dealing with two orders. Your broker will likely have to fill this order themselves, meaning that they'll have to look at the existing bid/asks for the different strikes and wait until the difference matches (or exceeds) your limit order.  Obviously they can't place limit orders on the legs individually since they can't guarantee that they will both be executed.  They also don't care what the individual prices are; they just care what the difference is.  It's possible that they have computer systems that examine existing bids and asks that would fill your order, but it's still done by the broker, not the exchange.  The exchange never sees your actual limit order; they will just see the market orders placed by your broker."], "neg": ["Check out research: equities, credit, fixed income, quant, ECM. Typically research analysts need the 7/63/86/87, strong financial modeling skills (VBA, other kinds of coding help here), and the necessary financial background to perform valuations. Like the other commenter suggested, starting on your Level One CFA is a good start.", "Centre For Laptops offer very reliable laptop services for all types of brands of laptops and computers by the trained personnel. Centre For Laptops provides best DELL Laptop Repair And Services In Delhi. Centre For Laptops use the latest methods of diagnosing to find the hardware and software issues. For more details, Visit: http://centreforlaptops.com/", "Facebook is the commonly used social media platform account and it is difficult to hack Facebook by common people like us. You need help form Facebook hacker who can hack any Facebook account for you. There are online site which offer you with hacking services and that also for free.", "Can you make use of an HSA (health savings account) or a medical FSA (flexible spending account)? Depending on your medical coverage, one of these may be available to you.  Buying a house usually does the trick, between property tax and interest, it's not tough to have quite a bit in deductions. Of course, you need to want a house in the first place.", "\"> First, you give this gray topic of Medicare Part-D where Trump promised to act upon, but has yet do anything. Am I right?  If you think the topic is \"\"gray\"\" and the issue is Trump \"\"has yet do anything\"\" then you haven't put in the time to understand why I think this is an issue.  > Global Warming? It's Trump fault?  It appears you didn't put in the time to understand my issue with President Trump and global warming either.  > Because the Paris Accords, like the TPP, and like NAFTA, and the Iran Deal, etc, etc, etc, are scams to hurt the USA and make the USA pay more. Nothing else.  Oh wow, you have drunk deeply from the Republican cool-aid.  For what it is worth, you are being lied to and manipulated.  There is a lot more (or less in a few cases) to these deals than you have been told.  FYI, when you think the only reason people would be championing a policy you disagree with is that those people are evil, you might want to dig a little deeper.  > Since you are an expert with Global Warming...  All right.  > Who has bigger air pollution, coal power plants, cutting trees, environmental disasters, etc? The USA or China?  Currently?  China, China, USA, USA  Historically?  USA, USA, USA, USA  > ...is it true that deserts are now becoming green?  No, [deserts are growing](http://www.dw.com/en/holding-back-the-growing-desert/a-18620447).  A few spots where plants are now growing in the desert does not change the global trend.  > Most trees in the world, which are in Russia and not the Amazon, are green longer?  It is thought that the warmer temperatures will delay them losing their leaves in fall.  [The warmer temperatures will also kill many of them](http://www.rollingstone.com/politics/news/the-fate-of-trees-how-climate-change-may-alter-forests-worldwide-20150312).  > Global warming happened before, many times in earth history before the industrial revolution?  Yes, due to [Milankovitch cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles) and the Earth releasing methane and CO2.  > Also ice ages?  Yes, again caused by [Milankovitch cycles](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Milankovitch_cycles).  We don't expect another ice age for about 40,000 years.  > Oceans did not rise?  Oceans and continents have risen and fallen a lot in the history of the world.  Usually these kinds of changes come with huge extinction events.  > I am not worried about Global Warming. It has negative things, and positive things.  That is too bad because it will will come with about a hundred negative things for every positive.  > Do you have any idea what will happen in the world, 20-30 years from now, when we stop raising cows, pigs, goats and sheep?  That would be great but that won't be enough to stop global warming.  It is also may never come to pass so it is a bad idea to do nothing today expecting technology to fix our problem tomorrow.  > You should be more worried about China and what this country and all its people do the earth.  Maybe so, but then President Trump should be implementing a plan and taking steps to minimize the damage in the future.  Instead he is ignoring the problem and rolling back what few preparations Obama made.\"", "To sum up: My question came from misunderstanding what cost basis applies to. Now I get it that it applies to stocks as physical entities. Consider a chain of buys of 40 stock A with prices $1-$4-$10-$15 (qty 10 each time) then IRS wants to know exactly which stock I am selling. And when I transfer stocks to different account, that cost basis transfers with them. Cost basis is included in transfers, so that removes ambiguity which stock is being sold on the original account. In the example above, cost basis of 20 stocks moved to a new account would probably be $1 x 10 and $4 x 10, i.e. FIFO also applies to transfers.", "Someone remind WalMart this is not 2007 when they were the baddest, biggest company in the country.   Don't try to dictate your terms on others. It still blows my mind that if you do business with Walmart you need an office in Bentonville."]}
+{"query": "When does a low PE ratio not indicate a good stock?", "corpus": ["\"Yes, there are situations where a stock is a bad buy in spite of a low PE. PE ratio tells you the current share price divided by the prior 4 quarters earnings per share. It does not consider: Imagine someone walked up to you and said, \"\"Do you want to buy a piece of my business? I'll sell you 1% of it for $1000. Last year the business earned $25000.\"\" A quick calculation shows a PE of 4 [$1000/($25000 *.01)]. Even though this PE is comparatively low, you wouldn't buy in without a lot more info. What kinds of things might you ask? PE is one tiny component of an informed investment decision.\""], "neg": ["> You're a damn idiot. Didn't you just read? The text said EXCEPT for contractors.   There are non-contractor non-exempt IT employees, dumbass.   > And I have a better idea. Since you're no coward. Why don't you guys just meet up and try to rearrange each other's faces, Internet tough guy.  Oh hey, make sure you put words in my mouth so you can pretend to be better than us, dumbass.", "Yes, the choice of some of the base stats to use is pretty interesting. I'm not an expert in using FRED, but I think there are better numbers for a lot of those. Mostly it's about things like the origin of the graph though - look how many of the graphs on that page start in the mid fifties, not zero, thus magnifying things drastically. Also graphing numbers that aren't calculated the same way on the same graph - FRED does not fix your poor assumptions.", "\"Call me rude, but I would be less concerned with taxes and more concerned with increasing your income. Double your income and say \"\"fuck you\"\" to the taxes!  Also, I'm no expert on taxes, but a corporation would not prevent you from having income so you would likely be passing the profits through and still paying the same income tax rate.\"", "I would not want to be Sprint or T-Mobile right now. You can't merge, you can't get funding to buy spectrum. It is a whole host of pain.   Look at the [spectrum deficit](http://i.kinja-img.com/gawker-media/image/upload/s--6IjuqZjH--/c_fit,fl_progressive,q_80,w_636/18ky96u2tk3edjpg.jpg) between these guys.  Lower level spectrum 700-900mhz is around 3-4 times more useful than the higher frequency for coverage (making the signal go far and through walls). This is a big deal for 2 reasons:  1. The less towers you have to build, the cheaper it is (less capex and opex for sites + decreased operational complexity) AND the quicker you can roll out the network (first mover adv). [EDIT: This only applies to coverage situations i.e. along highways, and in rural regions. Coverage is important because even those who don't travel that much consider it highly as a key purchasing factor]  2. The less accurate you have to be with the network planning. Imagine you have a big circle that you can place on a town, vs having to use 3 equivalent circles. The planners can get the number of towers wrong and/or the location of the towers.  In the long term; Sprint and T-Mobile are going to be pushed into being high-city only Telcos, less profitable in general (IMO).", "\"I just wanted to point out that the most \"\"leverage\"\" for pre-paying occurs at the very beginning of the mortgage, and declines rapidly after that. So, your very best scenario is to get the 30-year, and make one extra payment entirely to principal the first month of every year. This causes the amortization to drop by 96 payments, to about 22 years. I don't know of any other way that you can get nearly 4 times value for your money (22 payments extra to save 96 payments later). After that, reducing from 22 to 15 years takes more of your money for the same result, but do it if you want. I actually did this, and it put me way ahead when I sold the house about 12 years later.\"", "The fact has been demystified that learning music facilitates learners enhance their skills and excel in other phases of their life. “A music-rich experience for children of singing, listening and moving really bring very good benefits to children as they progress into more formal learning”. Music learning supports all learning.", "There are lots of reasons for the differences in price. Can you go to (a) bank, (b) forex bureau and (c) central bank and post back both bid and offer prices at a given time so we can consider the spread? What you've said above for (a) and (b) are presumably USDGHS offer prices, because they are higher than the (c) central bank price. If a bank or bureau bid price was higher than the central bank offer price then you could buy GHS from the central bank and then sell them to a bureau for a higher price, an almost no risk arbitrage, other than the armoured car to deliver the funds from central bank to bureau. What you've posted is: (a) a bank will sell you 1 USD for 3.4 GHS (b) a bureau will sell you 1 USD for 3.7 GHS (c) we can see the bid/offer for central bank is 3.1949/3.1975 which means the central bank, if you have an account, will sell you 1 USD for 3.1975 GHS. You clearly want to buy USD from the central bank, then the bank, then the bureau. Anyway, the reason for these differences is all to do with liquidity conditions in the local areas, the customer types, and the frequency of orders versus inventory... Think about it. The central bank has the most frequency of orders and the biggest customers so it offers the lower price, then the bank, and then the bureau. I think the bureau is the worst price there... You have to explain further :)"]}
+{"query": "How to fund sabbatical to prepare house for sale?", "corpus": ["I'll write this up as a more formal answer, here. I'd suggest looking into a Home Equity Line of Credit, or HELOC. You didn't mention in your question how much equity you have in the home, but assuming at least 20%, you might be able to open a HELOC with a line of $40,000. My experience is that you can do 50% of your equity, but depends on the bank. Here are a few notes that are generally in play with HELOC's (YMMV, so be sure to know the specifics before signing on the line) Doing this, at least when we did 8 years ago, did not subject us to PMI. There are certainly plenty of things to research, but it sounds like you're pretty astute based on how you're evaluating the financial side of this endeavor. There are no guarantees in real estate. Houses could be selling like crazy now, but in 6 months they might not. It certainly sounds like that's a lower risk in your area, but you never know what might happen. If you're taking on this extra line of credit, make sure that it's something you could afford should the worst case scenario happen.  Equity loans are also available. This is a more traditional fixed-rate loan rather than line of credit, so you'd be looking at set monthly payments rather than the flexibility of paying interest only when you need to. There's a brief write-up on the differences here. I have also heard of a construction loan, which falls into the same category as the aforementioned options, but I can't speak to today's market on those."], "neg": ["Simple Schwaab does not have actually your securities they have leased them out and have to borrow them back. all assets are linked with derivatives now. They show on the balance sheet but have to be untangled. Thats why the market drops disproportionally fast to the actual number of shares sold.", "related searches: Turkey Hydraulic cylinders Regular Buyers, Turkey Hydraulic cylinders Importers,  Hydraulic cylinders Distributors, Hydraulic cylinders Wholesalers, Hydraulic cylinders , Hydraulic Actuator Buyers & Hydraulic Actuator Importers Directory,  Find Quality Buying Requests & Buying Leads for Hydraulic Actuator in Machinery, Agriculture hydraulics, Hydraulic cylinder manufacture, Hydraulic gear pump,  Hydraulic system design, Hydraulic equipment importers,Turkey HS tariff codes Hydraulic cylinder,  import duty & taxes for Hydraulic cylinder, hydraulic actuator - TurkeyHS code & import tariff for", "Trying to make money on something going down is inherently more complicated, risky and speculative than making money on it going up.  Selling short allows for unlimited losses.  Put options expire and have to be rebought if you want to keep playing that game.  If you are that confident that the European market will completely crash (I'm not, but then again, I tend to be fairly contrarian) I'd recommend just sitting it out in cash (possibly something other than the Euro) and waiting until it gets so ridiculously cheap due to panic selling that it defies all common sense.  For example, when companies that aren't completely falling apart are selling for less than book value and/or less than five times prior peak earnings that's a good sign.  Another indicator is when you hear absolutely nothing other than doom-and-gloom and people swearing they'll never buy another stock as long as they live.  Then buy at these depressed prices and when all the panic sellers realize that the world didn't end, it will go back up.", "\"The major bureaus use the Fair Isaac scoring model, for the most part.  Here's an excerpt from a web site (Versions of the FICO scoring model) to explain: One of the first things a newcomer to this board learns is the difference between FICO and FAKO scores. FAKO refers to the non-FICO scores offered by various companies. FAKO scores have little value since few of them are used by lenders and they do not match closely to FICO scores.    But even when you stick with FICO scores, confusion can ensue because FICO scores have many different editions, versions, and variations. On a single day, a consumer could theoretically have dozens of different FICO scores, depending on which version and credit agency is used to produce the score.   This post provides a summary of the various FICO versions. Please offer any corrections or updates, and they will be edited in.   The FICO scoring model with its familiar range of 300 to 850 was first introduced in 1989. Since then, FICO has released five major revisions:   1995, 1998, 2004, 2008, and 2014.  Each \"\"edition\"\" uses a different formula and produces a different score.   When a new FICO edition is released, many lenders continue using an older version for years before \"\"upgrading.\"\" The 1995 revision is no longer in common use, but later editions are still used by lenders.   Most FICO editions are commonly known by the year of introduction:  FICO 98, FICO 04, and FICO 08 (although FICO now calls it FICO Score 8, without the zero).   The most recent edition is FICO Score 9 introduced in 2014.   As of 2014, FICO Score 8 is the most commonly used. However, most mortgage lenders use FICO 04 for Equifax and Transunion, and FICO 98 for Experian.   In addition to the \"\"classic\"\" version, FICO offers \"\"Industry Option\"\" versions customized for auto loans, credit cards, installment loans, personal finance loans, and insurance. These have a score range of 250 to 900, so the scores are not fully comparable with \"\"classic\"\" versions. As of 2015, Auto and Bankcard scores are available from myFICO as described here.  Citibank provides the Equifax FICO 8 Bankcard score free each month to credit cards holders.   Each credit agency (Transunion, Equifax, and Experian) uses a customized version of each FICO edition. As a result, a consumer's FICO scores from each agency may differ even when all credit information is identical among the agencies.   Because there are many FICO versions, when a score is received, it's helpful to know which version it is. If a lender provides a credit score, ask for details such as which credit agency was used, which FICO edition was used, and whether the score is an Industry Option version. The lender may not always be willing or able to provide the answers, but it doesn't hurt to ask.  Transunion   Official name:   FICO Risk Score Classic 98    Common name:  TU-98   Available directly to consumers:   No    Real-world score range:  336 to 843     (as shown on page 16 of this Transunion document)   Equifax   Official name:   Equifax FICO Score 4  (also known as Equifax Beacon 96)   Common name:   EQ-98   This version appears to be seldom used, but a poster reported it used on a mortgage application in 2014.   Available directly to consumers:   No   Experian   Official name:   Experian FICO Score 2  (also known as Experian FICO Risk Model v2)   Common name:   EX-98   Available directly to consumers:   from myFICO when buying a product that includes all 19 available scores (as described here).  Some credit unions such as PSECU provide it free each month to members.   Real-world score range:   320 to 844     (as shown on this Experian document) Most mortgage lenders use FICO 04 for Equifax and Transunion, and FICO 98 for Experian.   All three scores will normally be pulled and the middle score (not the average) will be used by the lender. Transunion   Official name:   Transunion FICO Score 4  (also known as Transunion FICO Risk Score Classic 04)   Common name:  TU-04   Available directly to consumers:   from myFICO as described here.   Real-world score range:   309 to 839     (as shown on page 16 of this Transunion document)   Equifax   Official name:   Equifax FICO Score 5  (also known as Equifax Beacon 5.0)   Common name:   EQ-04   Available directly to consumers:   from myFICO as described here.  Also available from Equifax when buying FICO score (as a one-time purchase with the \"\"Score Power\"\" product available here, or as part of credit monitoring available here).  Some credit unions such as DCU provide it free each month to members.    Real-world score range:   334 to 818   Experian   Official name:   Experian FICO Score 3 (also known as Experian FICO Risk Model v3)   Common name:   EX-04   Available directly to consumers:   from myFICO when buying a product that includes all 19 available scores (as described here).   Real-world score range:   325 to 850     (as shown on this Experian document) Transunion   Official name:   Transunion FICO Score 8  (also known as Transunion FICO 8 Risk Score or FICO Risk Score Classic 08)   Common name:   TU-08   Available directly to consumers:   from myFICO as described here. Some credit card issuers such as Discover, Barclays, and Walmart provides it free each month.   Real-world score range:   341 to 850     (as shown on page 15 of this Transunion document)   Equifax   Official name:   Equifax FICO Score 8  (also known as Equifax Beacon 09)   Common name:   EQ-08   Available directly to consumers:   from myFICO as described here.    Real-world score range:   300  to 850   Experian   Official name:   Experian FICO Score 8  (also known as Experian FICO Risk Model v8)   Common name:   EX-08   Available directly to consumers:   from myFICO as described here.   Real-world score range:   316  to 850     (as shown on this Experian document) How FICO Score 8 differs from previous versions is explained here.    In May 2014, a poster named android01 received 850 scores from all three credit agencies, as described in this post.    In June 2014, a poster named fused received 850 scores from all three credit agencies, as described in this post.   This 2011 press release describes a study of FICO Score 8 scores.   From a sample of 250,000 credit reports, it found 0.02% had a score of 850, or about 1 out of every 5000 persons. In 2014, FICO announced a new version called FICO Score 9.  More info here. As of February 2016, the score is now available directly to consumers, as described here. This New York Times article  says FICO 9 includes two important changes:    unpaid debts that result in collection actions will no longer have a negative effect on a score if the debt has been paid.    unpaid medical debts will have less negative effect on scores. In 2001, FICO released a new scoring model called NextGen.   It is claimed to be an improvement over \"\"classic\"\" FICO models because it tracks more factors.  But it has failed to catch on with lenders because its score range of 150 to 950 is incompatible with the familiar 300 to 850 range, requiring lenders to recalculate cutoff scores and revise many rules and policies.  Only a small percentage of lenders reportedly use NextGen. Transunion   Official name:   Precision   Available directly to consumers:    No   Equifax   Official name:   Pinnacle   Available directly to consumers:   In 2014, Pentagon Federal Credit Union (PenFed) began to provide this score free to its credit card holders, as discussed in this post.   Experian   Official name:   FICO Advanced Risk Score   Available directly to consumers:    No I included all of this to make the point that there are many variations of the scoring models, and all of them are customized to one degree or another by each of the major bureaus as a means of giving their models more credibility, as far as they're concerned. To your question about coming up with a \"\"fair\"\" scoring model, can you propose what makes current scoring models unfair?  I think it's a safe assumption to make that the financial community has already had a substantial amount of input into how the current scoring models work.  To think otherwise implies that the credit bureaus are just kinda \"\"winging it\"\" with whatever they think is best.  Their models are designed to give their client creditors the best scoring model possible based on what those creditors have stated is important to them. There isn't a unified single scoring model out there, and the bureaus definitely won't share the details of their modifications.  You can always come up with your own custom model, but how it compares to what's widely used, that's anyone's guess. I hope this helps. Good luck!\"", "Hah! I used to work at Ratzie's Pizza off of Route 1 and Knox. Is it still there do you know? I was only at U of M for 3 semesters. I lived in Easton Hall. I spent too much time going to raves in DC...hence, only staying at U of M for 3 semesters.", "Có những người kinh doanh, đầu tư, giao dịch chỉ có thua lỗ … họ không biết tại sao ? => Thuyết Ngũ Hành có thể lý giải nguyên nhân cho chúng ta biết…  Làm việc gì cũng phải thuận theo tự nhiên thì mới Thành Công !", "Where did you see both of these scores?  How far apart did you see both of these scores?  What has changed between this time?   How old are you? (an estimate is fine) ___  Go to Credit Karma and find out if something new is happening"]}
+{"query": "Could someone place an independent film on the stock market?", "corpus": ["\"When we say \"\"stock market,\"\" we are usually thinking of the publicly traded stocks, such as the New York Stock Exchange or the NASDAQ. Shares of individual products do not go on these exchanges, only large corporations.  You won't see a stock ticker symbol for The Force Awakens or for the iPhone 6s Plus.  The reason for this is that when investors buy a stock, they are looking for something that will grow in value theoretically forever. Individual products usually have a limited lifespan. Your movie will (hopefully) generate revenue when it comes out, but after a while sales will slow down after people have seen it. If someone bought a share of stock in a movie on the stock market, they have to realize that eventually the movie will stop making money, and their share of stock won't be worth anything anymore. Instead, people invest in companies that have the potential to make new products, such as Disney or Apple.  So if you were envisioning seeing the ticker symbol of your movie going across the screen on CNBC, sorry, that's not going to happen.  However, you could theoretically sell shares to individual investors for a percentage of the profit. You figure out how much money you need to create the movie, and estimate how much profit you think the movie will earn. Then you find an investor (or group of investors) that is willing to give you the money you need in exchange for a percentage of the profit. Unlike a stock market investor, these investors won't be looking for the long-term growth potential of the resale value of the stock, but simply a share of the profit.\""], "neg": ["According to *you* we find it. What if, like me, you don't believe it exists? Do you recognize and respect the right of others to have a difference of opinions, and your inability to force them to act how you choose?   If you agreed with me, *boom*. You just shot centralization in the head, because centralization depends on disrespecting a difference of opinion and forcing others to act how you choose.", "The ante is at least 100k per job = 5bn, to start. Also needs uninterruptible power, gigantic airport, and political atmosphere acceptable to Jeff Bezos. The footprint of 50k job campus is city sized, so likely not within a city.", "\"The Amazon recommendation engine is based on an artificial intelligence framework called Deep Scalable Sparse Tensor Network Engine (DSSTNE), nicknamed \"\"destiny\"\". So it is clear that Amazon wishes to control your destiny. Even the books you find yourself reading will be determined by their AI.\"", "Don't confuse fiscal conservatism with social conservatism. I like conservative monetary and business policy, but fully support letting individuals decide whether they want to get high, have a gay marriage, etc.  Now that I type this out, I guess I fit more into the libertarian category.", "\"If it could, it seems yet to be proven.  Long Term Capital Management was founded by a bunch of math whizzes and they seem to have missed something.  I'd never suggest that something has no value, but similar to the concept that \"\"if time travel were possible, why hasn't anyone come back from the future to tell us\"\" I'd suggest that if there were a real advantage to what you suggest, someone would be making money from it already.  In my opinion, the math is simple, little more than a four function calculator is needed.\"", "\"Well, I know for a fact, some of my flat-earth ultra religious science denying 9-11 truther friends and extended family claim it's a step closer to Armageddon.  The company who offered to implant RFIDs into their employees was a \"\"mark of the beast, the time's a coming\"\".\"", "Savings accounts have limitations in case a bank goes belly up and you have a higher amount in the account (more than the insured amount). Mostly big corporations or pension funds cannot rely on a bank to secure their cash but a government bond is secured (with some fine print) and hence they are willing to take negative interest rates."]}
+{"query": "About dividend percentage", "corpus": ["Dividend prices are per share, so the amount that you get for a dividend is determined by the number of shares that you own and the amount of the dividend per share. That's all. People like to look at dividend yield because it lets them compare different investments; that's done by dividing the dividend by the value of the stock, however determined. That's the percentage that the question mentions. A dividend of $1 per share when the share price is $10 gives a 10% dividend yield. A dividend of $2 per share when the share price is $40 gives a 5% dividend yield. If you're choosing an investment, the dividend yield gives you more information than the amount of the dividend."], "neg": ["My first thought was that it must be due to inflation, which causes such differences in many cases since a creditor needs to make back more than the rate of inflation in order not to effectively lose money. But it seems that Paraguay currently has only a very modest rate of inflation, about 3%. Other possible reasons for different credit rates: The latter is most likely. It means that if debtors are generally poor and are often completely unable to pay back the loan, or if there is no effective way to force uncooperative debtors to pay (e.g. when there are weak laws or overworked courts), then creditors will lose a lot of money to defaults and have to raise rates to compensate for this.", "\"You cannot actually buy an index in the true sense of the word.  An index is created and maintained by a company like Standard and Poor's who licenses the use of the index to firms like Vanguard.  The S&P 500 is an example of an index.  The S&P 500 \"\"index includes 500 leading companies\"\", many finical companies sell products which track to this index.  The two most popular products which track to indexes are Mutual Funds (as called Index Funds and Index Mutual Funds) and Exchange Traded Funds (as called ETFs).  Each Index Mutual Fund or ETF has an index which it tracks against, meaning they hold securities which make up a sample of the index (some indexes like bond indexes are very hard to hold everything that makes them up). Looking at the Vanguard S&P 500 Index Mutual Fund (ticker VFINX) we see that it tracks against the S&P 500 index.  Looking at its holdings we see the 500-ish stocks that it holds along with a small amount of bonds and cash to handle cash flow for people buying and sell shares.  If we look at the Vanguard S&P 500 ETF (ticker VOO) we see that it also tracks against the S&P 500 index.  Looking at its holdings we see they are very similar to the similar Index Mutual Fund. Other companies like T. Rowe Price have similar offering.  Look at the T. Rowe Price Equity Index 500 Fund (ticker PREIX) its holdings in stocks are the same as the similar Vanguard fund and like the Vanguard fund it also holds a small amount of bonds and cash to handle cash flow. The only real difference between different products which track against the same index is in the expense ratio (fees for managing the fund) and in the small differences in the execution of the funds.  For the most part execution of the funds do not really matter to most people (it has a very small effect), what matters is the expense (the fees paid to own the fund).  If we just compare the expense ratio of the Vanguard and T. Rowe Price funds we see (as of 27 Feb 2016) Vanguard has an expense ratio of 0.17% for it Index Mutual Fund and 0.05% for its ETF, while T. Rowe Price has an expense ratio of 0.27%.  These are just the fees for the funds themselves, there are also account maintenance fees (which normally go down as the amount of money you have invested at a firm go up) and in the case of ETFs execution cost (cost to trade the shares along with the difference between the bid and ask on the shares). If you are just starting out I would say going with the Index Mutual Fund would easier and most likely would cost less over-all if you are buying a small amount of shares every month.  When choosing a company look at the expense ratio on the funds and the account maintenance fees (along with the account minimals).  Vanguard is well known for having low fees and they in fact were the first to offer Index Mutual Funds. For more info on the S&P 500 index see also this Investopedia entry on the S&P 500 index. Do not worry if this is all a bit confusing it is to most people (myself included) at first.\"", "China is in the middle of a residential housing bubble, and now is probably a horrible time to invest in real estate in China.  Even if China wasn't near the peak of its bubble it would probably still be a bad idea because owning real estate in a foreign country is expensive and risky. There are real currency risks, think what would happen if the yuan declined significantly against the dollar. There is also the risk of the government seizing foreign held investments (not extremely likely but plausible). Another consideration is that it would be next to impossible for you to get a loan to purchase a property US banks wouldn't touch it with a 10 ft pole and I doubt Chinese banks would be very interested in lending to foreigners.", "It won't be worth $1050 at maturity. You are not accounting for tym.   So to see the 'worth: of a bond you will need it's yield (5%) and the current market rate of a similar bond.    Then just use the bond valuation formula to solve (on mobilw so can't explain further/better) sorry", "\"What exactly is \"\"Call Protection\"\"? Is \"\"NO\"\" normal for a CD?   A \"\"callable\"\" cd (or one without protection can be revoked before maturity by the issuer. For example, if interest rates drop they might recall the CD since they can borrow money at a lower rate. A callable CD should offer a better return in exchange for this. Is \"\"first coupon date\"\" the first time it actually pays interest?   Yes. Given that the first coupon date is in 6 months, and it's semiannual, is it fair to assume that this pays every six months?   Yes Given that the maturity date is 9/29/2025, this is really a 15-year CD, right?   It depends. CDs can be resold on the market. So it is AT LEAST a 15 year CD. It could also be a 20 year CD originally issued in 2005. What does \"\"Price (Ask)\"\" mean? It says 100 - does that mean you buy in chunks of $100?   Yes. More accurately, they are $100 per CD.  What is \"\"Yield to Worst (Ask)\"\"? Is this the worst yield that this CD will return?   The lowest potential yield that can be received on a bond without the issuer actually defaulting. 3.25% is the best yield I've seen from something as stable as a CD. Would it be silly, though, to lock money up in an investment like this for 15 years?     There is no way to really say without a crystal ball. If you aren't willing to accept more risk and think that interest rates will remain at these historic lows for a long while, then it is probably a good deal. If you think interest rates are due to go up substantially, then it is probably smarter to ladder your investments in shorter term CDs. In investment circles this is known as \"\"Interest Rate Risk\"\"\"", "> whatever is happening in the tax code that makes these inversions possible needs to be fixed.  The best way to prevent this from happening is to lower the federal corporate tax rate to zero.  Having the business, a few more jobs, inflows of cash etc. are worth more than the <10% that corporate tax provides to the government budget.", "> A job that doesn't allow someone to live with dignity and have their basic needs covered shouldn't exist.  But don't you think this position has the unintended consequence of removing jobs for those who don't need the job to make a living, but rather to gain experience, or just supplemental income?"]}
+{"query": "Income and taxes with subcontracting?", "corpus": ["Since you say 1099, I'll assume it's in the US. :) Think of your consulting operation as a small business. Businesses are only taxed on their profits, not their revenues. So you should only be paying tax on the $700 in the example you gave. Note, though, that you need to be sure the IRS thinks you're a small business. Having a separate bank account for the business, filing for a business license with your local city/state, etc are all things that help make the case that you're running a business. Of course, the costs of doing all those things are business expenses, and thus things you can deduct from that $1000 in revenue at tax time."], "neg": ["Disappointing this is just an advertisement. I was hoping for a discussion on paying rent online. The online portal the property manager I rent from uses is horrible. They charge at 5% fee for processing payments online (which increases my rent by $45/mo).", "\"1. Internet is not a regular product or service, it's a utility.  2. An unregulated utility market simply leads to regional monopolies, because the companies privately own the infrastructure.  That's exactly what we have.  The cable companies cut up the country and generally stay out of eachother's turf, because it's more profitable than competition.  This is the opposite of a capitalist market, by the way.  They are now all billionaires from providing bear minimum service and avoiding any real competition.  Instead of competing, they slowly build enough money until they can simply buy out their competitors.  Comcast has gotten so rich it bought NBC and is now looking to buy TWC.  3. Fair competition for utilities requires rules that prevent the reigning company from blocking out competitors. This is called \"\"[Open-Access](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Open_access_%28infrastructure%29)\"\", this is what they have throughout most of Europe. This doesn't happen here because the reigning monopolies use their billions to buy political influence in Washington DC via lobbyists, campaign fund raising, donations, etc...  It is so effective, that the former chair of the FCC, Michael Powell, made a PSA bashing Open-Access competition rules and praising our monopoly system, saying it has resulted in the best internet in the world, which is of course a bold-faced, demonstrable lie.  [Video used to be on youtube, can't find it anymore]  4. The root cause is an apathetic voter base who view Washington as too corrupt to even reform, which keeps the people who care about this issue the most away from the poles.  This simply strengthens the power of the corporate lobbyists to control politics even more.  5. To take on these giants, you need to be a giant yourself, with tons of money to burn and a big reason to do it even though you'll probably lose money, since it's more like charity than a great business opportunity.  The only ones who fit the bill are Google, and only because they have a vested interest in keeping the internet free, open, fast, robust and affordable.  It also helps that they spent the past decade buying up fiber optic infrastructure.\"", "An Indian citizen who is not a resident of India (an NRI) or a Person of Indian Origin (a PIO) is not permitted to sell or gift immovable property in India (real property for US readers) to another NRI or PIO; the property must be sold or gifted to a resident of India.  So, assuming that the property in question is in India, you cannot sell it to your NRI friend.", "\"Well sounds like Disney is gonna have less people watching their movies, lol  How many people who have Netflix are going to go \"\"Oh yeah definitely I'm going to pay for yet *another* streaming service!\"\" vs how many people are they going to pick up who don't already subscribe to netflix (hint not many).    So Disney is not going to gain *new* viewers, they are just going to attempt to take them from netflix, but with *only* a few hundred movies, good luck keeping them subscribed.\"", "I would say generally, the answer is No.   There might be some short term relief to people in certain situations, but generally speaking you sign a contract to borrow money and you are responsible to pay.  This is why home loans offer better terms then auto loans, and auto loans better than credit cards or things like furniture.  The better terms offer less risk to the lender because there are assets that can be repossessed.  Homes retain values better than autos, autos better than furniture, and credit cards are not secured at all. People are not as helpless as your question suggests.  Sure a person might lose their high paying job, but could they still make a mortgage payment if they worked really hard at it?  This might mean taking several part time jobs.  Now if a person buys a home that has a very large mortgage payment this might not be possible.  However, wise people don't buy every bit of house they can afford.   People should also be wise about the kinds of mortgages they use to buy a home.  Many people lost their homes due to missing a payment on their interest only loan.  Penalty rates and fees jacked up their payment, that was way beyond their means.  If they had a fixed rate loan the chance to catch up would have not been impossible. Perhaps an injury might prevent a person from working.  This is why long term disability insurance is a must for most people.  You can buy quite a bit of coverage for not very much money. Typical US households have quite a bit of debt.  Car payments, phone payments, and either a mortgage or rent, and of course credit cards.  If income is drastically reduced making all of those payments becomes next to impossible.  Which one gets paid first.  Just this last week, I attempted to help a client in just this situation.  They foolishly chose to pay the credit card first, and were going to pay the house payment last (if there was anything left over).  There wasn't, and they are risking eviction (renters).     People finding themselves in crisis, generally do a poor job of paying the most important things first.  Basic food first, housing and utilities second, etc...  Let the credit card slip if need be no matter how often one is threatened by creditors.  They do this to maintain their credit score, how foolish. I feel like you have a sense of bondage associated with debt.  It is there and real despite many people noticing it.  There is also the fact that compounding interest is working against you and with your labor you are enriching the bank.  This is a great reason to have the goal of living a debt free life.  I can tell you it is quite liberating.", "All the manufacturers exporting things from China.  When they mention a supposed lack of consumer demand in the USA they fail to account for the heavy balance of payments deficit, [$124 billion in the last quarter of 2011](http://www.bea.gov/newsreleases/glance.htm).  If there's no demand, as the Keynesians claim, how come the US is buying so much stuff from other countries? There seems to be plenty of demand, the US is just unable to manufacture the products its citizens want.   The real problem is lack of production capability. The industrial base of the US has too many obsolete plants. And the companies cannot modernize with the current tax regulations, they are unable to depreciate those obsolete plants fast enough to build new ones that could compete with the foreign corporations.", "\"If you're making big money at 18, you should be saving every penny you can in tax-advantaged retirement accounts. (If your employer offers it, see if you can do a Roth 401(k), as odds are good you'll be in a higher tax bracket at retirement than you are now and you will benefit from the Roth structure. Otherwise, use a regular 401(k). IRAs are also an option, but you can put more money into a 401(k) than you can into an IRA.) If you do this for a decade or two while you're young, you'll be very well set on the road to retirement. Moreover, since you think \"\"I've got the money, why not?\"\" this will actually keep the money from you so you can do a better job of avoiding that question. Your next concern will be post-tax money. You're going to be splitting this between three basic sorts of places: just plain spending it, saving/investing it in bank accounts and stock markets, or purchasing some other form of capital which will save you money or provide you with some useful capability that's worth money (e.g. owning a condo/house will help you save on rent - and you don't have to pay income taxes on that savings!) 18 is generally a little young to be setting down and buying a house, though, so you should probably look at saving money for a while instead. Open an account at Vanguard or a similar institution and buy some simple index funds. (The index funds have lower turnover, which is probably better for your unsheltered accounts, and you don't need to spend a bunch of money on mutual fund expense ratios, or spend a lot of time making a second career out of stock-picking). If you save a lot of your money for retirement now, you won't have to save as much later, and will have more income to spend on a house, so it'll all work out. Whatever you do, you shouldn't blow a bunch of money on a really fancy new car. You might consider a pretty-nice slightly-used car, but the first year of car ownership is distressingly close to just throwing your money away, and fancy cars only make it that much worse. You should also try to have some fun and interesting experiences while you're still young. It's okay to spend some money on them. Don't waste money flying first-class or spend tooo much money dining out, but fun/interesting/different experiences will serve you well throughout your life. (By contrast, routine luxury may not be worth it.)\""]}
+{"query": "When is Cash Value Life Insurance a good or bad idea?", "corpus": ["The standard answer I have heard is that if you were to purchase term life insurance and invest the difference between the cost of the policies, your investments would grow larger than the cash value of the insurance. Also when you take cash out of CVLI the insurance value drops by a like amount. So you can't have your cake and leave it to your heirs too. Either you get the cash value OR they get the insurance value. Hopefully, there could be some of both. Although I believe the philosophy of that answer I have two issues with it. First, you must be dedicated enough to invest the difference every month. I can imagine that might be tough to do consistently and if you take breaks from the investing will you still accumulate more than you would have with the insurance? Second, for the past couple of years all of my investments in mutual funds have lost value. My life insurance has continued to grow cash value over the same time period. Hmm, maybe there isn't a one size fits all solution. If you need a large amount of insurance, term life will certainly be more affordable. However, considering this as an investment I would not expect that to be a deciding factor. Good luck with your decision. It is great that at such a young age you are concerned about investments."], "neg": ["Listen Bernie Bro, if you think any centralized government will ever be fully accountable to we the people, you need to put down the hash pipe. Bernie wasn't even accountable to his own donors, that's why they're suing him ;)   The only solution is for the government to stop inserting itself between people and Healthcare. Only then with direct pricing, lower barriers to entry, private charity and consumer choice can we lower costs. Cartels only exist because of state mandated regulation, patent law and government mandated Healthcare.", "\"Gotcha, so for that job, I would try and get a basic understanding of how pulling queries and tables works.  (ie What does that even mean?  And if you have multiple tables how would you get the information you want?  That's really going to be the important part.   But a lot of times it really depends on the quality of the data, something possibly only IT knows.)  Do you know any basic programming?  A lot of it is just understanding what kind of questions you need to be asking, googling it, then understanding how to incorporate the google answer into your software.  On a side note, the Hyperion, Oracle Essbase, and Access will all be a little different coding wise.  Hyperion you may not really even need to do any \"\"coding.\"\"  I'd also probably look up what Hyperion Financial Planning is and get familiar with the interface.  It's not hard, just weird if you've only ever used excel (and much more stringent).\"", "**Economy of the Bahamas**  The Bahamas is a stable, developing nation with an economy heavily dependent on tourism and offshore banking. Steady growth in tourism receipts and a boom in construction of new hotels, resorts, and residences had led to solid GDP growth for many years, but the slowdown in the US economy and the attacks of September 11, 2001 held back growth in these sectors in 2001-03. Financial services constitute the second-most important sector of the Bahamian economy, accounting for about 15% of GDP. However, since December 2000, when the government enacted new regulations on the financial sector, many international businesses have left The Bahamas. Manufacturing and agriculture together contribute approximately a tenth of GDP and show little growth, despite government incentives aimed at those sectors. Overall growth prospects in the short run rest heavily on the fortunes of the tourism sector, which depends on growth in the US, the source of more than 80% of the visitors.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&message=Excludeme&subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.21", "I'm looking for ways to geared to save for retirement, not general investment. Many mutual fund companies offer a range of target retirement funds for different retirement dates (usually in increments of 5 years). These are funds of funds, that is, a Target 2040 Fund, say, will be invested in five or six different stock and bond mutual funds offered by the same company. Over the years and as the target date approaches closer, the investment mix will change from extra weight given to stock mutual funds towards extra weight being given to bond mutual funds. The disadvantage to these funds is that the Target Fund charges its own expense ratio over and above the expense ratios charged by the mutual funds it invests in: you could do the same investments yourself (or pick your own mix and weighting of various funds) and save the extra expense ratio. However, over the years, as the Target Fund changes its mix, withdrawing money from the stock mutual funds and investing the proceeds into bond mutual funds, you do not have to pay taxes on the profits generated by these transactions except insofar as some part of the profits become distributions from the Target Fund itself. If you were doing the same transactions outside the Target Fund, you would be liable for taxes on the profits when you withdrew money from a stock fund and  invested the proceeds into the bond fund.", "Are there other examples of this happening and records of stock prices and behaviors after these types of buyouts?   Could it be possible that KKR is getting the shit end of the stick? Or is this a smart move for KKR to consolidate these entities?", "\"This functionality is widely available, not only on brokerage sites, but also financial management and even financial information sites.  For instance, two of the latter are Google Finance and Yahoo Finance.  If you are logged in, they let you create \"\"portfolios\"\" listing your stocks and, optionally, the size of your holdings in that stock (which you don't need if you are just \"\"watching\"\" a stock).  Then you can visit the site at any time and see the current valuations.\"", "The Fed basically took a short term view on the economy, and create inter-generational warfare by inflating asset prices.  The old folks got rich, and only the most successful millennials can afford a house.  Just wait until prices crash.  The end of the story hasn't been written yet."]}
+{"query": "Appropriate model for deferred costs as a line-of-credit", "corpus": ["There's no standard formula. You can compare the going rates on the market for unsecured LOCs and take that as the starting anchor. Unsecured lines of credit run in the US at about 8-18%. Your risk should be reflected in the rate, and I see no reason why the rate would change throughout the loan. As to the amount of principal changing? Just chose one of the standard compounding options - daily (most precise, but most tedious to calculate), monthly average balance, etc."], "neg": ["Thousands of public servants ride 24+ hours in C130 cargo holds and get off and perform top notch combat and/or humanitarian work for days or weeks on end.  I have no pity for the overpaid bureaucrat flying coach for 2 hours. They're unqualified for the job if a flight in coach stresses them out and causes them to under or not perform.", "\"> No one cried when car replaced Horse carriage  Your broad point definitely stands, but this statement is not correct.  A TON of people cried when the horse/carriage started dying - leatherworkers, cow (leather) farmers, sanitation workers. ranchers that raised & bred horses.... those industries were *gigantic* at the time and all took a huge hit.  And it definitely sucked for them - they didn't do anything wrong, but their means of livelihood were eroded and practically destroyed - and not for depleting a resource of some kind (like maybe a mine running dry).  But the relevant question is - what happened to the value of their product and is anyone at fault?  The answer is that it's pretty simply no one, and you just have to chalk it up to \"\"times change\"\".\"", "Home care services help our elders to live on their own home and get all type of daily help they need. They provide services like bathing, grooming, dressing, and meal preparation, housekeeping etc. Home care services are a great option not only for seniors but also for their families who always want the best for them.", "Generally speaking: when a company buys another company it's a complex agreement that spells out many things, including how the acquiring company is paying for the target company.  These are the most common form of payment:  1. Cash. Shareholders of the target company get cash. 2. Shares. Shareholders of the target company get shares of the acquiring company. 3. A combination of 1 and 2 above.", "\"Unemployment insurance provides a temporary safety net to workers who lose their jobs by replacing a portion of their salary for certain periods. Each state administers its own unemployment insurance program so some rules may vary from state to state. To receive unemployment insurance payments, you must have lost your job through no fault of your own. If you quit your job or lost it because of poor performance or another justifiable reason, you are not eligible for unemployment insurance benefits. State unemployment insurance programs require claimants to have worked sufficiently before they can claim benefits. As soon as you apply for unemployment insurance, an agency with the state in which you live will verify that you were a victim of a layoff by contacting your previous employer and making sure you lost your job due to lack of work and not an action within your control. After the state verifies you were indeed the victim of a layoff, your weekly payment is calculated. Your payment will be a percentage of what you made in your previous job, generally between 20 percent and 50 percent, depending on your state. Unemployment insurance replaces only a portion of your previous pay because it is intended to pay only for the essentials of living such as food and utilities until you find new employment. Before you begin receiving benefits, you must complete a waiting period of typically one or two weeks. If you find a new job during this period, you will not be eligible for unemployment benefits, even if the job does not pay you as much as your previous job. After the waiting period, you will begin to receive your weekly payments. Employers pay for unemployment insurance through payroll taxes. So, while employees' work and earnings history are important to funding their unemployment benefits, the money does not come from their pay. Employer unemployment insurance contributions depend on several factors, including how many former employees have received benefits. Employers pay taxes on an employee's base wages, which vary by state. California, for example taxes employers on the first $7,000 of an employee's annual earnings, while neighboring Oregon taxes up to $32,000 of wages. Employers must set aside funds each payroll period and then report taxes and pay their states quarterly. States have several categories of tax rates they charge employers. New businesses and those first adding employees pay the \"\"new rate,\"\" which is typically lower and geared toward small businesses. Established businesses who haven't paid their taxes recently or properly are usually assessed the \"\"standard rate\"\" --- the highest possible tax rate, which in 2010 ranged from 5.4 percent in several states including Georgia, Hawaii and Alaska to 13.56 percent in Pennsylvania. Businesses in good standing may receive discounts under the \"\"experienced rate.\"\" Depending on the number of employees a business has and how many former employees have claimed unemployment, states can give sizable rate reductions. The fewer claims, the lower the rate a business pays in unemployment insurance taxes. As a result of the economic crisis legislation has been passed to extend Unemployment benefits.  Regular unemployment benefits are paid for a maximum of 26 weeks in most states. However, additional weeks of extended unemployment benefits are available during times of high unemployment. The unemployment extension legislation passed by Congress in February 2012 changed the way the tiers of Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) are structured. A tier of unemployment is an extension of a certain amount of weeks of unemployment benefits. There are currently four tiers of unemployment benefits. Each tier provides extra weeks of unemployment in addition to basic state unemployment benefits. Emergency Unemployment Compensation (EUC) Tiers June - August 2012: Source and further information can be found here - Unemployment Tiers - About.com Sources: Unemployment Insurance(UI) - US Dept. of Labor How Does Unemployment Insurance Work? - eHow Percentage of Pay That Goes to Unemployment Insurance - eHow Additional Info: You can file for UI over the internet here are some useful resources. OWS Links State Unemployment Offices - About.com How to Apply for Unemployment Over the Internet - eHow\"", "> It's a huge joke. People are putting their stock in it, but there was a front page story just yesterday about another crypto currency that went from $300 to $0.10 with a single transaction.  Hi, long time crypto nerd here... Just wanted to say that transaction was on one exchange and the price pretty much went back to normal in a few seconds. Due to the lack of experience in trading some people just dump like that on a whim, its not the norm, but it does happen.    In any case, that was some +1,000 units worth which again is super rare. They likely bought a long time ago and forgot them... again, fairly uncommon.", "\"No, they are outselling select models than competitors who have a much broader product range. Each of those sells many times more cars than Tesla and here's a newsflash, they don't make their bread and butter selling the high end cars. Get back to me with total numbers of cars sold and a real market share figure. If the Model 3 outsells the entire range of 3-series cars or A4s, let me know. For the record, BMW sold nearly 150,000 3-series cars last year, and delivered over 2.4 *Million* cars worldwide last year. Tesla, across all models they offer sold less than half of JUST 3-series sales.  I don't know if you need a banana for scale or what but Tesla is hardly even a blip on the radar when it comes to market share, period. And no, you cannot compare their Model S to ONE model that anyone else offers, or \"\"COMBINEDZOMG!\"\", that's cherry picking and utterly useless data.\""]}
+{"query": "What is the future of 401(k) in terms of stability and reliability?", "corpus": ["\"My guess is that the point is that yields on bonds and cash equivalents is so low that inflation will cause the inflation-adjusted returns to be negative. There is something to be said for how much inflation can eat out of investment returns. At the same time, I would note the occupation of the person making that post along with what biases this person likely has. \"\"Entrepreneur, Started & sold several cos, Author 11 books (latest \"\"Choose Yourself!\"\") , Angel Inv., JamesAltucher.com\"\" would to me read as someone that isn't who I'd turn for investment advice when it comes to employer-sponsored plans. Be careful of what you blindly follow as sometimes that is how wolves lead the sheep to slaughter.\""], "neg": ["Millennials are sure as hell not 'less materialistic' then other generations.   You're talking about post-millennials 'Gen Z'. Millennials are the children of the Boomers and as a result, share a lot of the similar characteristics. The problem with the Millennials is that they learned a lot of Boomer traits of their parents but have not been afforded the same economic opportunities as their parents where.  Gen Y and the Boomers are surprisingly some of the most liberal of  generations. However, both are incredibly materialistic whilst being socially progressive.  Gen Z, the post-millennials, grew up post 2001, post GFC. As a result of this chaotic and traumatic world which they grew up in, they tend to prize stability more then the Boomers and Gen Y do. Gen Z are more interested in work being a means to a (hopefully) stable end whereas Gen Y, Boomers see work as being an essential part of their identity as an individual. Gen Z will take many things for granted having grew up with a black President and in a country with a growing awareness of social rights (e.g legalization of same sex marriage) and as a result, will not be as socially progressive as their preceding generations.", "Just guessing here… How about Daily Median price?  StockCharts provides a similar value they call VWAP. Which stands for Volume-Weighted Average Price. I believe it is a better 'average' for the day (click on link).", "Document everything. Never let it be your word against her. When you have enough contact HR. As the investigation gets started make the point that your work environment has become intolerable and that you intend to work elsewhere. In the most polite of ways ask for a positive recommendation. Assuming your boss isn't fired. If she you could stay.", "You might consider looking in the mirror. You are continuing to launch your verbal tirades. I've provided a significant amount of support - I could continue if you like.   You, however, have no provided any support at all. You are just some guy on the internet shouting from lonely mountain about how undergrad students should go straight to business school. It's foundationally wrong.   You don't like being challenged and I'm challenging your views. Additionally, you do know in business that you need to provide support, so saying that you don't need to back anything up flies in the face of any business sense. Simply making a comment first doesn't entitle you to a free pass, you should defend your position if you feel so strongly about it.   I do have an MBA and I'm a CFA charterholder. I'd be more than happy to connect with you outside of reddit to validate my credentials.", "Kate - you should get a EIN. It will give you a layer of anonymity. If you are getting the occasional check like this, it's a way to have a number that function like an SS number, but would not be used for credit, and far tougher to use for fraud.  By coincidence, I glanced at my twitter feed and a fellow blogger posted How (and Why) to Apply for an EIN Number which goes into a bit more detail.", "\"Have you asked yourself why the worker is paid very little?  The private sector is efficient, that in and of itself is reason to privatize.  I have a feeling this \"\"better way\"\" you keep talking about involves me having a lot more of my property and/or income redistributed.\"", "Go to bankrate dot com. They will have a lot of metrics there that might give you an idea and rate each category. Capitalization and profitability metrics. May not be as granular as what you are looking for though."]}
+{"query": "How to prevent myself from buying things I don't want", "corpus": ["We all buy stuff from time to time that only satisfies us for a short time. I was able to locate a few expenses that fall under that category. I see a lot answers that focus on not getting these things. I'm going to tell you how to at least attempt to have your cake and eat it too. If you can get these things without paying for them, or by paying pennies on the dollar for them, you'll no longer want to buy them at full price. Begin by making a list of the items you can't stop thinking about.  Go to your local library and look for relevant items that are on your list. If they are not yet available, request that the library purchase them, and reserve them for when the items come in.  Yes, libraries are usually tax-supported, but to give back, if you can't afford to contribute to the Library immediately, you can still promote their fund-raising or book/media-drive efforts. If you don't mind buying things that may be second hand, thrift stores and garage or yard sales can have anything. The ones near you may have one or two items on your list of things you were looking for - for pennies on the dollar.  Other items might be things you can share with friends. Borrow or swap things until you get bored of them. If you don't have a network of friends with shared interests, there may be a local freecycle or relevant meetup group you can join.  The key here is to try to contribute more than you take (and you probably have things you don't need that you can start with trading), and don't keep careful score. The upshot is you'll not only save money but make friends while doing it. You can sometimes have your cake and eat it too. These recommendations can get you the short-term happiness you were looking for, without spending the money. And when the happiness is gone, you won't feel like you need to hang on to the item indefinitely - you can pass it on for others to enjoy."], "neg": ["Make sure that when you have the loan you still contribute enough to get the company match. For example:  An inability to maximize the match might need to be figured into the opportunity cost of the loan. Some companies will suspend your contributions for a specific number of months for a hardship withdraw.  Make sure you understand where the money comes from for the loan. Can you count the money that the company matched but you are not vested with, when determining the maximum amount of the loan?  If the money is in what is now a closed fund can you replenish the funds back into that fund if use it to fund the loan? Know what the repayment time period is of the loan.", "Yes, depending on the timing.  You generally can make a tax-free withdrawal of contributions if you do it before the due date for filing your tax return for the year in which you made them. This means that even if you are under age 59½, the 10% additional tax may not apply. These distributions are explained in Pub. 590-A.  I believe any growth is subject to the 10% penalty: The 10% additional tax on distributions made before you    reach age 59½ does not apply to these tax-free withdrawals of your contributions. However, the distribution of interest or other income must be reported on Form 5329 and, unless the distribution qualifies as an exception to the age 59½ rule, it will be subject to this tax.", "This is not an answer to all of your questions but merely an eleaboration on one of your comments: Are there any other areas in the UK that would return rental yields   much above 10% net?   Shares. I could withdraw the money and buy shares for the dividend income, but it is hard to choose shares that yield more than about 6% and they are volatile. I wrote a post about using shares to invest a pension pot. http://www.sspf.co.uk/blog/016/ You may find it of some interest. Of course, the investing would take place within the pension 'wrapper' so you'd only be paying tax on the income taken out each year. The other alternatives you mention suggest paying for the expertise and time of an IFA would be a very economical decision. £1,000 to best use £150,000 seems a bargain to me. Some of the avenues you mention seem very risky from my understanding so someone to determine your tolerances and propose a holistic solution is a good path forward. Best wishes!", "If the child is a dependent the question is moot. It is accepted that the parent will pay for some, most, or all of the tuition. There is no tax issue for a current student. The payment of tuition helps them qualify as a dependent. There is no need to transfer the money to the child's account; it can be sent directly to the school. If the money is to be used in the future there are accounts such as 529s pre-paid accounts, and Coverdell savings accounts that can be used. All have pluses and minuses, all can impact taxes, and all can impact financial aid calculations.", "\"Everything post 2009 (actually late 2007 through 2008 since that's when the financial crisis occurred) has also been a \"\"unique once-in-a-lifetime circumstance\"\". QE on this scale is unprecedented. The only time it's been done before is by the Bank of Japan in the early 2000s and that has been proven to be ineffective. Now you've got the US, the UK, and the EU all doing it.\"", "I find it funny that I was downvoted and you were upvoted. The article about this today says that 230,000 jobs were expected, not 200,000. The unemployment rate went from 6.1% to 6.2%. So tell me again how this is good news?", "I'm thinking of going with Python. Do you think other languages like HTML or Java will be of any help? and you're right. They are not taught in undergrad. So, where should I learn them from? I always feel like you don't learn the best online. But is there any site that's really good and that you'd recommend?"]}
+{"query": "Confused about employee stock options: How do I afford these?", "corpus": ["ISOs (incentive stock options) can be closed out in a cashless transaction. Say the first round vests, 25,000 shares. The stock is worth $7 but your option is to buy at $5 as you say. The broker executes and sells, you get $50,000, with no up front money.  Edit based on comment below - you know they vest over 4 years, but how long before they expire? It stands to reason the longer you are able to hold them, the better a chance the company succeeds, and the price rises.  The article Understanding employer-granted stock options (PDF) offers a nice discussion of different scenarios supporting my answer."], "neg": ["This is a case where you sit down with an advisor or two. There are legal, and tax issues.  When you deposit the cash, or buy a car with it, the large cash transaction will trigger a notice to the US Government. So they will eventually find out.  Before you get to that point you need to know what obligations and consequences you will be facing. Because you don't know if it was a gift, or found money, or if the owner will be back looking for you to return it; therefore you need expert advice.", "I'm a CPA and former IRS agent and manager. Whether you are a cash or accrual basis taxpayer, you get to deduct the expense when your card is charged. Think of it this way: You are borrowing from the credit card company or bank that issued the credit card. You take that money to make a purchase of a product or service. You now have an expense and a liability to a third party. When you pay off the liability, you do not get to take a deduction. Your deduction is when you pay for the expense. Depending on what you purchased, you may have to capitalize it.", "The correct, legal way to handle this would be to file an amended return for that year (probably best to talk to a CPA).   If you don't have the 1099, the IRS has a process to handle that here.  It sounds like they would just try to contact the employer themselves, but it doesn't say exactly what would happen if the employer is out of business.", "For ATMs you should check if the ATM you're going to use accepts the network you're in. If the ATM has the same logo (it should probably have a whole bunch of logos) that is on your card - it should work. I have not encountered an ATM that wouldn't accept a VISA card in Europe, and I travel a lot.", ">[**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)", "My family business is in Thailand, and I am an Indian citizen, so getting a job in Thailand is not possible. Until I complete Level 1 (if I take the Dec exam), I will have to work in my family business. Then I have will have to shift back to India to find a job while studying for Level 2.   It is highly likely that I will not get a job till I finish Level 2. It is also highly likely I may not complete all 3 Levels in the first attempt.", "\"Yeah, that's pretty much what I read. \"\"Bloomberg said...\"\" oh, okay, it must be the EXACT OPPOSITE of what he said. Pretty much.  I can see a need for visas in a few cases. Namely, positions in which the pool is so small that there are not 600 openings in the entire country, LET ALONE 6,000 at one company. I'm talking positions so exclusive that you can list all the candidates in the world in what would pass for an anemic travel brochure at first glance.  Most of these are just companies saying \"\"We don't want to pay market price for employees, so we'd rather import.\"\" Well, tough shit.\""]}
+{"query": "What is the “substantial difference” that might occur in the google shares? [duplicate]", "corpus": ["Presumably you're talking about the different share class introduced in the recent stock split, which mean that there are now three Google share classes: Due to the voting rights, Class A shares should be worth more than class C, but how much only time will tell. Actually, one could very well argue that a non-voting share of a company that pays no dividends has no value at all. It's unlikely the markets will see it that way, though."], "neg": ["> because a 5-10% adverse move in an exchange rate is highly consequential to the bottom line.  But... didn't you just describe bitcoin? Rather than a 5-10% in the exchange rate of a stable currency, you're seeing orders of magnitude higher volatility.  It's going up now, but it can flash crash in a second since there is no real backing for the currency.", "Most people looking to introduce a water softener to their home and office have opted for salt based water filters. Electronic water softener systems are the best way for water resolution. In this system, water softener unit is periodically recharged with sodium by flushing through with a brine solution. Although these are effective at removing the calcium from your water system they have a number of disadvantages. They are relatively expensive to buy.", "Care to support that. I first came to know Buffet in about 1996. No one in history had done what he did for that length of time. He has basically the same track record today, except it's longer.   He may have benefitted from some luck. But I think it's equally likely he did what he did in spite of bad luck. The only thing I'm certain he's been lucky at is being born with a unique memory and brain power.", "why can't I just use the same trick with my own shares to make money on the way    down? Because if you sell shares out of your own portfolio, by definition, you are not selling short at all. If you sell something you own (and deliver it) - then there is no short involved. A short is defined as a net negative position - i.e. you sell shares you do not have. Selling shares you own is selling shares you own - no short involved. You must borrow the shares for a short because in the stock market, you must DELIVER. You can not deliver shares you do not own. The stock market does not work on promises - the person who bought the shares expects ownership of them with all rights that gives them. So you borrow them to deliver them, then return them when you buy them back.", "Depending on your income, you may owe AMT instead of the taxes from the regular code.  Even if you don't do that, you may hit the place where you have to at least check if you owe AMT. As you probably know, AMT was established early on to catch the wealthiest of tax payers who were able to use various loop holes in the code to pay much less tax than one would expect.  Over time the limits on AMT have not risen with the rising wage gap, and AMT catches an increasing number of tax payers each year.  If the limit is not raised at all for 2010 then it will catch even more people this year.   AMT has worked it's way into the upper-middle class fairly solidly, especially if you exercise stock options whose strike price is significantly different than the current sale price.", "Usually I've seen people treat the dividend like a separate cash flow, which is discounted if the company doesn't have a well-established dividend history. I've never really seen dividends rolled into a total return chart (except in the context of an article), probably because dividend reinvestment is a nightmare of record-keeping in a taxable account, and most folks don't do it. One of my brokers (TD Ameritrade) does allow you to plot dividend yield historically on their charts.", "I got $26,000/month for Group B.  If they spend $26,000 that gives $390 in fees.  It will take on average 1.5 months for them to pay the credit card company.  With a monthly cost of funds of .04 divide that by 12 and multiply by 1.5, to get a .5% cost for every dollar of customer B spending on cost of funds.  This leads to a $130 cost for a total profit of $260.  I'm sorry for the lost job.  Things like that happen to lots of people.  As long as you're still alive, there's always going to be more opportunities.  Most people only notice a tiny percentage of the opportunities that come their way, and even fewer take advantage of them."]}
+{"query": "What is best investment which is full recession proof?", "corpus": ["Can anyone suggest all type of investments in India which are recession proof? There are no such investments. Quite a few think bullions like Gold tend to go up during recession, which is true to an extent; however there are enough articles that show it is not necessarily true. There are no fool proof investments. The only fool proof way is to mitigate risks. Have a diversified portfolio that has Debt [Fixed Deposits, Bonds] and equity [Stocks], Bullion [Gold], etc. And stay invested for long as the effects tend to cancel out in the long run."], "neg": ["Even if Tesla ends up breaking even or taking a small loss on their cars, they will still end up in the black selling batteries. Tesla wants people to believe they're a car company, and people have fallen for it. They are not though; they're a battery company. They will be making loads selling their batteries, not only to auto makers, but though Solar city as well.", "\"Even under the executive exemption, see Exemption for Executive Employees Under the Fair Labor Standards Act (FLSA) Section 13(a)(1) as defined by Regulations, 29 CFR Part 541, it seems that a minimum compensation is required. To qualify for the executive employee exemption, all of the following tests must be met: The employee must be compensated on a salary basis (as defined in the regulations) at a rate not less than $455 per week... etc. There is one other possibility under FLSA Section 13(a)(1), as a \"\"bona fide exempt executive\"\". Exemption of Business Owners   Under a special rule for business owners, an employee who owns at least a bona fide 20-percent equity   interest in the enterprise in which employed, regardless of the type   of business organization (e.g., corporation, partnership, or other),   and who is actively engaged in its management, is considered a bona   fide exempt executive.\"", "DFP Building Services are providing best decorating and painting services in surrey, UK. Our painters and decorators are fully qualified and time served professionals. We use top quality material to decorate or paint your home and offices. Our refurbishment service includes complete refurbishment, remodeling, plastering, flooring, carpentry whichever is required.", "\"This is simple tech, but I used Amazon Fresh Pickup a few times. The second time I went I wanted to tell the attendant my order number or my name. He just said, oh we know already, it's coming up. And I just need to tell him whether I want the bags in the back or the trunk.   They collected my license plate info via a reader at the stall and already tied it to my account. There's actually a 4 stage \"\"loading bar\"\" indicator that tells you the status right in front of where you park and wait at the stall. I was pretty amazed.  One bar is they read your car plate or got your order number. Two is someone is getting your stuff. Three is the bags are on the way out. Four is time to drive away.\"", "\"It's a hard decision to make. Especially without knowing the complete contract details. I would in general stay away from financial \"\"advisors\"\" like tecis or other pyramid selling companies (\"\"Strukturvertriebe\"\" in german). They usually only offer a very limited range of products. In most cases they sell only 1 or 2 products and tell everyone that these offers are the best and fit exactly to the client. I would prefer an insurance broker (requires an education) which could in theory offer any product. Coming to your situation: If you already have a Riester product which is maxed out, I see no point in another private insurance without any aid. The insurance construction allows you to save some taxes but it does cost you a premium. I would buy the funds (preferable ETFs) on my own. This comes down to the question: Does the insurance construction payoff for you for the costs it generates?\"", "?  The guy claimed that BTC had intrinsic value so I asked him what instrinsic value BTC had.  BTC has literally 0 intrinsic value, it doesn't even exist physically.  I'm not saying the technology is worthless or that it doesn't have value, but it certainly doesn't have intrinsic value.  Gold--you can create things with gold, silver--silver is important in medical applications, can be made into things.  These things have value, even in circumstances where the market disappears or the demand ceases.  A company has intrinsic value in that its assets can be sold off and liquidated for cash--even if they don't generate a single penny.  Gold has intrinsic value in that even if there is no one demanding gold, it can still be useful for something.    If no one wants BTC, you literally can't do anything with it except look at the numbers.  It's the equivalent of hoarding a pile of dust that the market valued for some reason and then the market crashes--what are you going to do with a pile of dust?  Literally nothing except watch it fly in the wind.  It was only worth something because other people valued it.    Block chain is revolutionary tech, but there is no IV with BTC.  BTC and block-chain aren't really even interchangeable--it's like the relationship between a square and a rectangle; a square is a rectangle but a rectangle is not necessarily a square.  BTC is block chain but block chain isn't BTC.  Even if BTC fails and dies, there will be something else that takes its place but there is no IV with BTC.  Trying to assign BTC some sort of IV is a misleading.  There are many reasons BTC is revolutionary but it's not because there is some sort of huge IV attached to it.    And where did I ever call BTC a ponzi scheme?  You sound like you got a chip on your shoulder.", "Safety shoes were once used by mine workers in South Africa and very few staff across the world. These Shoes were bulky, ugly and were used by men only if they really required strong protection. They come with waterproofing, steel toes, solid leather material to avoid any injuries to the feet. But today, ask any leather safety shoes supplier in Qatar, safety shoes are making fashion statements."]}
+{"query": "Are dividends the only thing linking stocks to corporate performance?", "corpus": ["There is certainly an obligation in some cases of a company to distribute profit, either as dividend or a stock buy back. Activist investors frequently push for one or the other when a company is doing well - sometimes to the detriment of future growth, in some eyes - and can even file shareholder lawsuits (saying the company is not doing its duty to its shareholders by simply holding onto cash).  Apple famously held out from doing either for years under Steve Jobs, and only in the last few years started doing both - a large dividend and a share buy-back which increases the value of remaining shares (as EPS then goes up with fewer shares out there).  Carl Icahn for example is one of those investors in Apple's case [and in many cases!] who put significant pressure, particularly when they were sitting on hundreds of billions of dollars. Ultimately, a (for-profit) corporation's board is tasked with maximizing its shareholder's wealth; as such, it can buy back shares, pay dividends, sell the company, liquidate the company, or expand the company, at its discretion, so long as it can justify to its shareholders that it is still attempting to maximize the value of their holdings.  Companies in their growth phase often don't return any money and simply reinvest - but the long-term hope is to either return money in the form of dividends on profits, or the sale of the company."], "neg": ["CAPITAL MARKETS Cochrane Shaw Capital Management Pty Ltd. SnapshotPeople COMPANY OVERVIEW  Cochrane Shaw Capital Management Pty Ltd. provides investment and securities advisory services to individuals, corporations, accounting firms, and legal practices in Australia. The company offers advice on shares, debentures, superannuation, life insurance, unit trusts, and master fund products, as well as ongoing review on their investment portfolio. Its services include financial planning and investment strategies, superannuation planning, retirement and pension planning, risk insurance management, estate planning, and taxation planning. Cochrane Shaw Capital Management Pty Ltd. was incorporated in 1969 and is based in Melbourne, Australia. As of December 24, 2010, Cochrane Shaw Capital Ma... Detailed Description Suite 2 41 Railway Road Blackburn Melbourne, VIC 3130 Australia Founded in 1969 Phone: 61 3 9894 3788 Fax: 61 3 9894 1015 www.cochraneshaw.com.au KEY EXECUTIVES  Cochrane Shaw Capital Management Pty Ltd. does not have any Key Executives recorded.  SIMILAR PRIVATE COMPANIES BY INDUSTRY  Company Name Region Bluefin Pty. Ltd. Asia 333 Capital Pty Ltd. Asia Grove Research and Advisory Asia Vibraye Holdings Pty. Ltd. Asia Teachers Credit Union Limited Asia RECENT PRIVATE COMPANIES TRANSACTIONS  Type Date Target No transactions available in the past 12 months.", "Isn't the premise a bit off?  A *single* minimum wage worker can't afford a *two bedroom* apartment?  What about two earners sharing a one bedroom apartment?  That would make much more sense both for the workers and for housing costs in general.  My wife and I both make much more than minimum wage and we simply choose to live in a one bedroom apartment.  We get to save a lot more and plan for our future.  A two bedroom apartment is a luxury for a single person, not a necessity.  That's like saying he can't afford a brand new Ford F150 either.  No shit.  Live below your means and you life will be much better in the long run.", "\"What you're looking for are either FX Forwards or FX Futures.   These products are traded differently but they are basically the same thing -- agreements to deliver currency at a defined exchange rate at a future time.   Almost every large venue or bank will transact forwards, when the counterparty (you or your broker) has sufficient trust and credit for the settlement risk, but the typical duration is less than a year though some will do a single-digit multi-year forward on a custom basis.  Then again, all forwards are considered custom contracts.  You'll also need to know that forwards are done on currency pairs, so you'll need to pick the currency to pair your NOK against.  Most likely you'll want EUR/NOK simply for the larger liquidity of that pair over other possible pairs. A quote on a forward will usually just be known by the standard currency pair ticker with a settlement date different from spot.  E.g. \"\"EUR/NOK 12M\"\" for the 12 month settlement. Futures, on the other hand, are exchange traded and more standardized.  The vast majority through the CME (Chicago Mercantile Exchange).  Your broker will need access to one of these exchanges and you simply need to \"\"qualify\"\" for futures trading (process depends on your broker).  Futures generally have highest liquidity for the next \"\"IMM\"\" expiration (quarterly expiration on well known standard dates), but I believe they're defined for more years out than forwards.   At one FX desk I've knowledge of, they had 6 years worth of quarterly expirations in their system at any one time.  Futures are generally known by a ticker composed of a \"\"globex\"\" or \"\"cme\"\" code for the currency concatenated with another code representing the expiration.  For example, \"\"NOKH6\"\" is 'NOK' for Norwegian Krone, 'H' for March, and '6' for the nearest future date's year that ends in '6' (i.e. 2016).   Note that you'll be legally liable to deliver the contracted size of Krone if you hold through expiration!  So the common trade is to hold the future, and net out just before expiration when the price more accurately reflects the current spot market.\"", "Will buying a flat which generates $250 rent per month be a good decision? Whether investing in real estate is a good decision or not depends on many things, including the current and future supply/demand for rental units in your particular area. There are many questions on this site about this topic, and another answer to this question which already addresses many risks associated with owning property (though there are also benefits to consider). I just want to focus on this point you raised: I personally think yes, because rent adjusts with inflation and the rise in the price of the property is another benefit. Could this help me become financially independent in the long run since inflation is getting adjusted in it? In my opinion, the fact that rental income general adjusts with 'inflation' is a hedge against some types of economic risk, not an absolute increase in value. First, consider buying a house to live in, instead of to rent:  If you pay off your mortgage before your retire, then you have reduced your cost of accommodations to only utilities, property taxes, and repairs. This gives you a (relatively) known, fixed requirement of cash outflows. If the value of property goes up by the time you retire - it doesn't cost you anything extra, because you already own your house. If the value of property goes down by the time you retire, then you don't save anything, because you already own your house. If you instead rent your whole life, and save money each month (instead of paying off a mortgage), then when you retire, you will have a larger amount of savings which you can use to pay your monthly rental costs each month. By the time you retire, your cost of accommodations will be the market price for rent at that time. If the value of property goes up by the time you retire - you will have to pay more on rent. If the value of property goes down by the time you retire, you will save money on rent. You will have larger savings, but your cash outflow will be a little bit less certain, because you don't know what the market price for rent will be. You can see that, because you need to put a roof over your own head, just by existing you bear risk of the cost of property rising. So, buying your own home can be a hedge against that risk. This is called a 'natural hedge', where two competing risks can mitigate each-other just by existing. This doesn't mean buying a house is always the right thing to do, it is just one piece of the puzzle to comparing the two alternatives [see many other threads on buying vs renting on this site, or on google]. Now, consider buying a house to rent out to other people:  In the extreme scenario, assume that you do everything you can to buy as much property as possible. Maybe by the time you retire, you own a small apartment building with 11 units, where you live in one of them (as an example), and you have no other savings. Before, owning your own home was, among other pros and cons, a natural hedge against the risk of your own personal cost of accommodations going up. But now, the risk of your many rental units is far greater than the risk of your own personal accommodations. That is, if rent goes up by $100 after you retire, your rental income goes up by $1,000, and your personal cost of accommodations only goes up by $100. If rent goes down by $50 after you retire, your rental income goes down by $500, and your personal cost of accommodations only goes down by $50. You can see that only investing in rental properties puts you at great risk of fluctuations in the rental market. This risk is larger than if you simply bought your own home, because at least in that case, you are guaranteeing your cost of accommodations, which you know you will need to pay one way or another. This is why most investment advice suggests that you diversify your investment portfolio. That means buying some stocks, some bonds, etc.. If you invest to heavily in a single thing, then you bear huge risks for that particular market. In the case of property, each investment is so large that you are often 'undiversified' if you invest heavily in it (you can't just buy a house $100 at a time, like you could a stock or bond). Of course, my above examples are very simplified. I am only trying to suggest the underlying principle, not the full complexities of the real estate market. Note also that there are many types of investments which typically adjust with inflation / cost of living; real estate is only one of them.", ">observe their contractual obligations.    If not having to pay you is part of the deal, then it's not a good deal. Clearly companies have no reason to not just keep that money, and they keep it every chance they get. Why wouldn't they?", "I think it's wise to account for those inevitable but unpredictable expenses like car/house repairs and abnormal medical bills when deciding on your emergency fund amount.  So if you average $100/month for car repairs, and you have a 6-month emergency fund, then part of that fund is $600 for car repairs. If your total annual out of pocket for health insurance is $5,000/year, then emergency fund gets $2,500 and so on. This way, you add cushion to your emergency fund to handle those unpredictable but inevitable expenses without setting up a bunch of separate accounts. It doesn't have to be inflexible either, I know my furnace and air conditioner are way past their expected life, so I'm keeping a larger than normal emergency fund. Ultimately it's personal preference, to me, cash is all the same no matter what account it's in, but other people do best by keeping some logical/physical separation of funds intended for different purposes.", "You can follow the intra-day NAV of an ETF, for instance SPY, by viewing its .IV (intra-day value) ticker which tracks it's value.   http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=spy http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^SPY-IV Otherwise, each ETF provider will update their NAV after business each day on their own website. https://www.spdrs.com/product/fund.seam?ticker=spy"]}
+{"query": "Are 'no interest if paid in in x months' credit cards worth it?", "corpus": ["You can't buy it outright. You can't take the time to save up. if the remaining choice is between a card that charges from day one, and a card with this kind of grace period, the grace card is the better choice. Plan wisely, pay it in full before that rate starts to be charged. One additional note - There are two groups of people, the pay-in-fullers and the balance carriers. I believe that one should pay in full, and never pay interest.  A zero rate offer can be used by the balance carrier to feel great for 12 months, but have even more debt after the rate kicks in.  As a pay-in-full user, I've used the zero rate to throw $20K at the 5.25% mortgage, and planned a refinance to 3.5% just as it ended. a $750 savings (after the tax effect) well worth the bit of effort.  The fees should be in the fine print. My zero rate had a transfer fee, $50 max, which was nothing in comparison to the savings."], "neg": ["\">The culture does, indeed, glorify all the best parts of startup-dom and creates a toughness challenge that renders \"\"no, this may not be a good idea\"\" unfalsifiable because failure are personal while successes are cultural.   At this point, the same can be said for American capitalism as a whole.\"", "Gout medicine (brought to the U.S. by Ben Franklin from France) Colchesin used to be $4 per bottle.. I went to refill my prescription and it was $980.00 for a bottle... They were now $4.00 per PILL. The FDA let one company have the monopoly.", "\"The issues of trading with unsettled funds are usually restricted to cash accounts.  With margin, I've never personally heard of a rule that will catch you in this scenario.  You won't be able to withdraw funds that are tied up in unsettled positions until the positions settle.  You should be able to trade those funds.  I've never heard of a broker charging margin interest on unsettled funds, but that doesn't mean there isn't a broker somewhere that does. Brokers are allowed to impose their own restrictions, however, since margin is basically offering you a line of credit.  You should check to see if your broker has more restrictive rules. I'd guess that you may have heard about restrictions that apply to cash accounts and think they may also apply to margin accounts.  If that's the case and you want to learn more about the rules generally, try searching for these terms: You should be able to find a lot of clear resources on those terms.  Here's one that's current and provides examples: https://www.fidelity.com/learning-center/trading-investing/trading/avoiding-cash-trading-violations On a margin account you avoid these issue because the margin (essentially a loan from your broker) provides a cushion / additional funds that avoid the issues.  It is possible that if you over-extend yourself that you'll get a \"\"margin call,\"\" but that seems to be different than what you're asking and maybe worth a new question if you want to know about that.\"", "\"AFAIK, there are two kinds of taxes your web freelancing income may be subject to in Quebec: On the income taxes:  The net income you realize from your web freelancing activities would be considered taxable income.  Assuming you are not operating as an incorporated business, you would need to declare the freelancing income on both your federal and provincial tax returns.  You should be able to deduct certain costs related to your business – for instance, if you paid for software, hosting, domain name registration, etc.  That is, only the profit from your business would be subject to income tax.  With income and expenses arising from self-employment, you may want to use a professional to file your taxes. On the sales taxes: You may also need to charge federal GST and provincial QST (Quebec Sales Tax) on your services:  You must enroll and charge GST and QST once you exceed the \"\"small supplier\"\" revenue threshold of $30,000 measured over four consecutive quarters.  (You can still choose to enroll for GST/QST before you reach that amount, but over that amount enrollment becomes mandatory.  Some businesses enroll before the threshold is reached so they can claim input tax credits for tax paid on expenses, but then there's more paperwork – one reason to perhaps avoid enrolling until necessary.) In Quebec, the Ministère du Revenu du Québec administers both GST (on behalf of the federal government) as well as provincial QST.  Be sure to also check out their informative booklet, Should I Register with Revenu Quebec? (PDF).  See also General Information Concerning the QST and the GST/HST (PDF).\"", "\"I am admittedly not giving a scientific or mathematical analysis here, just giving my anecdotal take on what I've lived through. I don't know if my assessment of 'tripled' is even accurate, just that there's a palpable sense of things being a lot more expensive & it just seems to me that the cost of living has gone up quite a bit for average people from what it once was, especially considering most of us now have cable bills, internet costs and in my case several different cell phone bills for different members of the family. I realize these are not necessities but they are important things that most people are now expected to have. I didn't mean to imply that we've had \"\"insane\"\" inflation & I understand that these things are mathematically measured as both Core inflation and CPI and by these measures things have held pretty steady. It just seems to me that these sorts of indexes have not yet taken a lot of things into account regarding the realities of modern day living and their resultant expenses.\"", "My parents owned 5 bowling centers throughout my childhood. Summer is the toughest time for a bowling alley. Open play is down because people want to be outside. Leagues run August-May and the majority of league bowlers want to take the summer off. Leagues are guaranteed revenue week to week. Summer months were usually break-even.   Does this center have a bar? That's a significant portion of revenue, especially in the summer.", "If your employer matches a percentage of your contributions, then you should try to max out your plan. Once you have completed maxing out your 401k, you may want to open up an IRA for several reasons: will your 401k be enough to sustain your lifestyle in retirement? Your IRA allows you to save even more for retirement. you can invest in all sorts of stuff through your IRA that might not be available in your plan. you can withdraw the principal from your IRA, usually after five years. This serves as another form of savings. IRAs have some asset protection in the event of bankruptcy. A normal savings or investment account usually does not offer such protection."]}
+{"query": "To rebalance or not to rebalance", "corpus": ["\"An asset allocation formula is useful because it provides a way to manage risk. Rebalancing preserves your asset allocation. The investment risk of a well-diversified portfolio (with a few ETFs or mutual funds in there to get a wide range of stocks, bonds, and international exposure) is mostly proportional to the asset class distribution. If you started out with half-stocks and half-bonds, and stocks surged 100% over the past few years while bonds have stayed flat, then you may be left with (say) 66% stocks and 33% bonds. Your portfolio is now more vulnerable to future stock market drops (the risk associated with stocks). (Most asset allocation recommendations are a little more specific than a stock/bond split, but I'm sure you can get the idea.) Rebalancing can be profitable because it's a formulaic way to enforce you to \"\"buy low, sell high\"\". Massive recessions notwithstanding, usually not everything in your portfolio will rise and fall at the same time, and some are actually negatively correlated (that's one idea behind diversification, anyway). If your stocks have surged, chances are that bonds are cheaper. This doesn't always work (repeatedly transferring money from bonds into stocks while the market was falling in 2008-2009 could have lost you even more money). Also, if you rebalance frequently, you might incur expenses from the trading (depending on what sort of financial instrument you're holding). It may be more effective to simply channel new money into the sector that you're light on, and limit the major rebalancing of the portfolio so that it's just an occasional thing. Talk to your financial adviser. :)\""], "neg": ["Sorry, it appears not, according to http://www.nysscpa.org/cpajournal/2008/508/perspectives/p12.htm: ...and the election to make Roth 401(k) contributions (these are after-tax contributions) is irrevocable.  Fairmark says the same thing. PS, don't complain too loudly, given the reason for the problem. :)", "They need to go 'software and services' - I had a Nokia in the day with a BB client, not sure if they still integrate with 3rd parties. They could cut their losses and revamp as the secure business solutions for iOS, Android and Windows phone.", "In short - if you can't get the job without incorporating, then incorporate! Some clients will require you to be incorporated (which is why I did it 10 years ago).  Essentially, for them, it's a way of distancing themselves from you to ensure they are not responsible for any monies if you don't pay your taxes.  For you, there is also this idea of distancing company assets from your personal assets.  If they are not requiring you to incorporate, you can simply act as a sole proprietorship.  A good place to start reading up could be the sites below (for Canada/Ontario): Canada Business http://sbinfocanada.about.com/ http://sbinfocanada.about.com/od/incorporation/Incorporating_A_Business_In_Canada.htm http://sbinfocanada.about.com/cs/startup/a/incorporatadv.htm When I registered, I simply bought a book at Grand&Toy, with all the required forms for Ontario.  These forms would also be available at a local Government service centre. You walk in, give the government money, and shortly thereafter you are incorporated. There are a number of others things that are required (having a minutes book, writing resolutions, creating shares, setting up a bank account, etc) - all discussed in the guide For Ontario you can start here: http://www.ontario.ca/en/services_for_business/index.htm At a high level, there are some costs for being incorporated, and some tax savings.  At a minimum, costs would include: You may need the help of an account to help set things up, but it's quite easy to maintain all the records, etc that are required.   Some other minor things I enjoy are writing myself expense cheques so that I get money back immediately (and effectively only pay 60% of the cost after writing it off in the company). I can decide how much to pay myself and push income from year to year.", "I'm on an M&A team for IT and you should temper your expectations. The due diligence teams (those guys that get a first look) usually don't know enough shit to understand the ramifications for their initial decisions and it just gets worse. The incentive is to underfund the M&A nearly every single time. Projects run long, some shit in IT never completes and dies on the vine after ten years. Management on the A side stops giving a shit, their good employees with the actual knowledge leave almost immediately... Documentation? None. Process adoption? None. Worthwhile employees? Already gone. M&As should just be renamed Murphys because they are all just real life examples of Murphy's law. How many M&As have I seen? 18. Across multiple  fortune 100s. How many were completed by the time the investors were told they would be done? 18. How many were actually done at that point? 2-3? It is literally herding cats.   M&As are a necessary evil for markets but they are almost always absolute shit.", ">>Mark Robinson, a lawyer for plaintiff Eva Echeverria, said outside the courtroom that J&J should start warning women immediately about the risks of its talcum powder.  This isn't how a company loses a lawyer or even a law firm, letting  verdicts averaging $75 million turn into $400 million+ because you won't warn users - that's how you lose a CEO.", "If this is OPs outlook on starting something new, I'd say it's failed before it started. You'll never survive the toughness of selling people on new ideas if this is the mindset before the first pilot was tested. You have to lead people through it, you don't just create and walk away with success.   OP - not to be a prick - but you don't have it. You might later at some point or maybe this will motivate you to prove me wrong. But you quit before you even started. This particular idea is DOA", "As another answer started, this information comes straight from an exchange and generally costs a fortune . . . However things change: IEX, a new exchange, recently opened and they are offering real time bid/ask data for free. Here's the API description: https://www.iextrading.com/developer/ This data should be good for active securities, but for securities less actively traded the numbers might be stale."]}
+{"query": "How can I compare the risk of different investing opportunities?", "corpus": ["Let us consider the risks in the investment opportunities: Now, what are the returns in each of the investment: What are the alternatives to these investments, then?"], "neg": ["\"To expand on keshlam's answer: A direct feed does not involve a website of any kind.  Each exchange publishes its order/trade feed(s) onto a packet network where subscribers have machines listening and reacting. Let's call the moment when a trade occurs inside an exchange's matching engine \"\"T0\"\".  An exchange then publishes the specifics of that trade as above, and the moment when that information is first available to subscribers is T1.  In some cases, T1 - T0 is a few microseconds; in other (notorious) cases, it can be as much as 100 milliseconds (100,000x longer). Because it's expensive for a subscriber to run a machine on each exchange's network -- and also because it requires a team of engineers devoted to understanding each exchange's individual publication protocols -- it seems unlikely that Google pays for direct access.  Instead Google most likely pays another company who is a subscriber on each exchange around the world (let's say Reuters) to forward their incoming information to Google.  Reuters then charges Google and other customers according to how fast the customer wants the forwarded information.  Reuters has to parse the info it gets at T1, check it for errors, and translate it into a format that Google (and other customers) can understand.  Let's say they finish all that work and put their new packets on the internet at time T2. Then the slow crawl across the internet begins.  Some 5-100 milliseconds later your website of choice gets its pre-processed data at time T3.  Even though it's preprocessed, your favorite website has to unpack the data, store it in some sort of database, and push it onto their website at time T4. A sophisticated website might then force a refresh of your browser at time T4 to show you the new information.  But this forced refresh involves yet another slow crawl across the internet from where your website is based to your home computer, competing with your neighbor's 24/7 Netflix stream, etc.  Then your browser (with its 83 plugins and banner ads everywhere) has to refresh, and you finally see the update at T5. So, a thousand factors come into play, but even assuming that Google is doing the most expensive and labor-intensive thing it can and that all the networks between you and Google and the exchange are as short as they can be, you're not going to hear about a trade -- even a massive, market-moving trade -- for anywhere from 500 milliseconds to 5 seconds after T0.  And in a more realistic world that time will be 10-30 seconds. This is what Google calls \"\"Realtime\"\" on that disclaimer page, because they feel they're getting that info to you as fast as they possibly can (for free). Meanwhile, the computers that actually subscribe to an exchange heard about the trade way back at time T1 and acted on that information in a few microseconds.  That's almost certainly before T2 and definitely way way before T3.  The market for a particular instrument could change direction 5 times before Google even shows the first trade. So if you want true realtime access, you must subscribe to the exchange feed or, as keshlam suggests, sign up with a broker that provides its own optimized market feeds to you. (Note: This is not an endorsement of trading through brokers.)\"", "I like Applebees and IHOP, but I don't go often anymore because I find I can make the same food much cheaper at home. The pressure to cut costs also stem from lack of increase in pay year after year. Even though the news crows about unemployment decreasing, I don't get the sense that pay is necessarily increasing significantly.", "So now you don't believe that any bottled spring water actually comes from a spring?  They don't just scoop it out of a pool.  They build a processing tap at a point underground but it has to be tapped from a water source which would naturally flow to the surface  http://www.absopure.com/blog/absopure-unfiltered/difference-between-spring-water-and-purified-water/", "If I hire someone in Utah to do sales for me over the phone, and he   works out of his home, am I required to register an LLC or file my   current one as a foreign entity in Utah? Yes, since you've established presence in Utah. You'll register your current LLC in Utah, no point creating another one. If my sales guy, or I, call businesses in, say, Florida, and sell a   few businesses our services for online work like maybe a website   design, etc. Are we required to file our LLC In Florida as either a   new LLC or a foreign one? No, you need to register where you (your company, including your employees or physical offices) are physically present. You don't need to register in any state you ship products or provide services to. If no-one of your company's employees is present in Florida and you don't have an office/rent a storage there - then you have no presence in Florida. If you actually go there to provide the services - then you do.", "If IQ correlates directly with intelligence regardless of race or culture then African Americans are on average a full standard deviation stupider than white people.  They specifically say that is not true, there is no genetic explanation. Therefore there's an issue with the test. How exactly is that hard to understand.  One of those two things has to be true. Blacks(and for that matter every other race) are stupider than whites or IQ doesn't measure intelligence.", "Great idea! So lets make Trader Joes in locations where people need living wages, like the ghetto, because that has been working. /s  You make a store that makes a premium selling to the upper middle class, and can afford to pay their workers more because of these better margins from their abnormally higher prices. It doesn't work in areas where cheap food is a necessity. These kinds of stores can't sell in all economic classes so these stores giving living wages don't solve any issues we have regarding wage. Gentrification doesn't work so I don't see why I keep seeing articles talk about Trader Joes suddenly solving our minimum wage debate. If I see a company that rivals Walmart in price, yet can give a living wage while still being profitable, then we have something. Costco is what comes to mind, and to be honest it's probably the best example we can take from a good business that is able to give a decent wage for unskilled labor while still being profitable. The issue is, not everyone can afford to spend $100 to buy 20 jars of nutella to save 10 cents a jar to rival Walmart's savings.", "\"Do I understand correctly, that we still can file as \"\"Married filing   jointly\"\", just add Schedule C and Schedule SE for her? Yes. Business registration information letter she got once registered   mentions that her due date for filing tax return is January 31, 2016.   Does this prevent us from filing jointly (as far as I understand, I   can't file my income before that date)? IRS sends no such letters. IRS also doesn't require any registration. Be careful, you might be a victim to a phishing attack here. In any case, sole proprietor files a regular individual tax return with the regular April 15th deadline. Do I understand correctly that we do not qualify as \"\"Family   partnership\"\" (I do not participate in her business in any way other   than giving her money for initial tools/materials purchase)? Yes. Do I understand correctly that she did not have to do regular   estimated tax payments as business was not expected to generate income   this year? You're asking or saying? How would we know what she expected? In any case, you can use your withholding (adjust the W4) to compensate.\""]}
+{"query": "Why buy a vertical spread if I could instead buy a naked call?", "corpus": ["\"Figured it out.  Vertical spreads significantly reduce the amount of \"\"buying power\"\" on the account needed vs. buying / selling pure calls / puts.  So even though the transaction fees may more double in some instances, it may be worth it in order to operate with pricier underlying instruments. Spreads are also considered \"\"defined risk\"\" trades where both the profit and loss are capped per how the spreads are setup.  This is compared to single calls / puts where either the upside or the downside can be unlimited.  So for times when the expected move is not as pronounced, a spread may be a better fit depending on environment and other factors.\""], "neg": ["I view it as a “zero sum game” from the perspective of the customer. Don’t tell me that my meal is $25 when EVERYONE KNOWS that it’s actually, $25 + $5 tip = $30. Just make the menu price $30 and pay people properly. It’s the exact same cost for a customer. Then, if a tip is left, it is truly a tip for the worker(s) and not the majority of their earnings.   And before anyone chimes in to tell me that servers like to tax-dodge on their unreported earnings... Yeah, so would we all. In the same way that we’d never pay a Doctor, Accountant, Soldier, or Teacher a fraction of their pay and then hope that the people they serve were in a good mood to give them a little something extra, neither should we do this to tipped workers.", "As the other answers suggest, there are a number of ways of going about it and the correct one will be dependent on your situation (amount of equity in your current house, cashflow primarily, amount of time between purchase and sale). If you have a fair amount of equity (for example, $50K mortgage remaining on a house valued at $300K), I'll propose an option that's similar to bridge financing: Place an offer on your new house. Use some of your equity as part of the down payment (eg, $130K). Use some more of your equity as a cash buffer to allow you pay two mortgages in between the purchase and the sale (eg, $30K). The way this would be executed is that your existing mortgage would be discharged and replaced with larger mortgage. The proceeds of that mortgage would be split between the down payment and cash as you desire. Between the closing of your purchase and the closing of your sale, you'll be paying two mortgages and you'll be responsible for two properties. Not fun, but your cash buffer is there to sustain you through this. When the sale of your new home closes, you'll be breaking the mortgage on that house. When you get the proceeds of the sale, it would be a good time to use any lump sum/prepayment privileges you have on the mortgage of the new house.  You'll be paying legal fees for each transaction and penalties for each mortgage you break. However, the interest rates will be lower than bridge financing. For this reason, this approach will likely be cheaper than bridge financing only if the time between the closing of the two deals is fairly long (eg, at least 6 months), and the penalties for breaking mortgages are reasonable (eg, 3 months interest). You would need the help of a good mortgage broker and a good lawyer, but you would also have to do your own due diligence - remember that brokers receive a commission for each mortgage they sell. If you won't have any problems selling your current house quickly, bridge financing is likely a better deal. If you need to hold on to it for a while because you need to fix things up or it will be harder to sell, you can consider this approach.", "No no it's real good man, I mean there's a chance you'll die from heat stroke or get beaten to death for trying to escape since your employer took your passport, but it's great for the consumer who doesn't give a shit and just wants to watch the world cup.  Hope you end up in a service job with a boss that shits down your throat every time you take a piss break you entitled punk.", "AuDatingSites is the most secure online dating websites in the Australia. We take your privacy and safety extremely seriously. If you want to girls for sex and an extremely enjoyable experience for the both of you. You can register on our website online, We will provide you more contact for girls. A lot of time, the girl will put their own sexual needs to the back to ensure that us men are pleased.", "I've done my taxes using turbotax for years and they were not simple, Schedule C (self-employed), rental properties, ESPP, stock options, you name it. It's a lot of work and occasionally i did find bugs in TurboTax. ESPP were the biggest pain surprisingly. The hardest part is to get all the paperwork together and you'd have to do it when you hire an accountant anyway. That said this year i am using an accountant as i incorporated and it's a whole new area for me that i don't have time to research. Also in case of an audit i'd rather be represented by a pro. I think the chance of getting audited is smaller when a CPA prepares your return.", "The 'same day rule' in the UK is a rule for matching purposes only.  It says that sales on any day are matched firstly with purchases made on the same day for the purposes of ascertaining any gain/loss. Hence the phrase 'bed-and-breakfast' ('b&b') when you wish to crystalise a gain (that is within the exempt amount) and re-establish a purchase price at a higher level.  You do the sale on one day, just before the market closes, which gets matched with your original purchase, and then you buy the shares back the next day, just after the market opens.  This is standard tax-planning.  Whenever you have a paper gain, and you wish to lock that gain out of being taxed, you do a bed-and-breakfast transaction, the idea being to use up your annual exemption each and every year.  Of course, if your dealing costs are high, then they may outweigh any tax saved, and so it would be pointless. For the purpose of an example, let's assume that the UK tax year is the same as the calendar year. Scenario 1. Suppose I bought some shares in 2016, for a total price of Stg.50,000. Suppose by the end of 2016, the holding is worth Stg.54,000, resulting in a paper gain of Stg.4,000. Question.  Should I do a b&b transaction to make use of my Stg.11,100 annual exemption ? Answer.  Well, with transaction costs at 1.5% for a round-trip trade, suppose, and stamp duty on the purchase of 0.5%, your total costs for a b&b will be Stg1,080, and your tax saved (upon some future sale date) assuming you are a 20% tax-payer is 20%x(4,000-1,080) = Stg584 (the transaction costs are deductible, we assume).  This does not make sense. Scenario 2. The same as scenario 1., but the shares are worth Stg60,000 by end-2016. Answer.  The total transaction costs are 2%x60,000 = 1,200 and so the taxable gain of 10,000-1,200 = 8,800 would result in a tax bill of 20%x8,800 = 1,760 and so the transaction costs are lower than the tax to be saved (a strict analysis would take into account only the present value of the tax to be saved), it makes sense to crystalise the gain.  We sell some day before the tax year-end, and re-invest the very next day. Scenario 3. The same as scenario 1., but the shares are worth Stg70,000 by end-2016. Answer.  The gain of 20,000 less costs would result in a tax bill for 1,500 (this is: 20%x(20,000 - 2%x70,000 - 11,100) ).  This tax bill will be on top of the dealing costs of 1,400.  But the gain is in excess of the annual exemption.  The strategy is to sell just enough of the holding to crystallise a taxable gain of just 11,100. The fraction, f%, is given by: f%x(70,000-50,000) - 2%xf%x70,000 = 11,100 ... which simplifies to: f% = 11,100/18,600 = 59.68%. The tax saved is 20%x11,100 = 2,220, versus costs of 2%x59.58%x70,000 = 835.52. This strategy of partial b&b is adopted because it never makes sense to pay tax early ! End.", "Oh man. I love a dumb semantic argument with a troll. So troll, what exactly is the difference in this context between 'powers' and 'rights' and why does it matter so much that you need so very badly to point it out to everyone?"]}
+{"query": "Calculate Future Value with Recurring Deposits", "corpus": ["Using the following values: The formula for the future value of an annuity due is d*(((1 + i)^t - 1)/i)*(1 + i) See Calculating The Present And Future Value Of Annuities In an annuity due, a deposit is made at the beginning of a period and the interest is received at the end of the period.  This is in contrast to an ordinary  annuity, where a payment is made at the end of a period. The formula is derived, by induction , from the summation of the future values of every deposit.  The initial value, with interest accumulated for all periods, can simply be added. So the overall formula is"], "neg": ["\"Currently, the quantity theory of money is widely accepted as an accurate model of inflation in the long run. Consequently, there is now broad agreement among economists that in the long run, the inflation rate is essentially dependent on the growth rate of money supply. However, in the short and medium term inflation may be affected by supply and demand pressures in the economy, and influenced by the relative elasticity of wages, prices and interest rates - Wikipedia: Inflation causes You also asked \"\"can you give any reference that explains that this [encouraging people to work] is one of the reasons government prints money?\"\" See the list of positive effects of inflation in that article.\"", "Hmmmm, 1 or 2, yeah, maybe they were not a good fit for one reason or another. but 5?? Really, you gotta start thinking that maybe, just maybe, there's a chance that's Trump's the problem. #justsayin'  is all.", "Nearly $1.0M sounds like a lot if you're installing furnaces or fixing cars, but how does the salary for the CEO of PBS compare to other broadcasters? [According to Wikipedia, the CEO of CBS made $69.9M in 2011.](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Leslie_Moonves)  I think that a salary of 1.4% of a comparable peer would have made an interesting fact for this article, but nothing of the sort is provided.   The author clearly has a bias - Romney spin-doctoring. Not worth the read.", "What Jaydles said. I think of each strategy in terms of Capital at Risk (CaR). It's a good thing to know when considering any position. And then conveniently, the return is always profit / CaR. With covered calls it's pretty easy. Pay $1000 for stock, receive $80 in premium, net CaR is $920.  If you own the stock and write calls many times (that expire worthless, or you that you buy back), there are two measurements to consider. First, treat every covered call as a buy-write. Even if you already own the stock, disregard the real cost basis, and calculate from the moment you write the call, using the stock price at that time. The second measure is more complicated, but involves using something like the XIRR function in a spreadsheet. This tracks the series as a whole, even accounting for times where there is no written call outstanding. For the written put, even though your broker may only require 30% collateral in a margin account, mentally treat them as cash-secured. Strike less premium is your true CaR. If the stock goes to zero by expiration, that's what you're on the hook for. You could just compute based on the 30% collateral required, but in my view that confuses cash/collateral needs with true risk. Note: a written put is exactly identical to a covered call at the same strike. If you tend to favor puts over CCs, ask yourself why. Just like a loaded gun, leverage isn't inherently bad, but you sure want to know when you're using it.", "Buy an accounting for MBA's book and go through that.  It's the absolute base of finance.  I can't see how you can even wrap your head around most of the articles in FT or in the Economist if you don't know what a balance sheet, income statement, cashflow statement or statement of shareholders equity is.    This is absolutely a requirement for any understanding of the finance sector, or you'll become just another schmoe on CNBC.", "I would say the Japanese economy is a bit different to Greece. It's still quite large. It's been in recession or stagnation for the last 2 decades or so.  One major problem for Japan is its aging population. Japan has the oldest population in the world (average is 42). This is a problem in terms of old age pensions, decreasing workforce, etc. in addition to low birth rates. Many young people have fewer kids, or [just none at all!](http://gaijinchronicles.com/2010/08/31/plight-of-the-grass-eater/)  While that doesn't sound good, the difference with Greece is they're close to bankruptcy, Japan isn't. Also Japan gets to somewhat control their currency, or at least, their economy is the primary thing affecting the currency, unlike Greece which is in a monetary union and so are not able to devalue their currency.", "\"If you need to transfer a larger amount than the $14K/person/person limit, one accepted workaround is to structure it as a loan, then gift the payments over the duration of the loan. There are \"\"intra-family mortgage\"\" companies which specialize in setting up this kind of transaction. Note that this doesn't allow you to give more without penalty, it just lets you transfer the actual cash earlier, in exchange for some bookkeeping overhead and some fees for the legal processing and mortgage registration.\""]}
+{"query": "Wage earners of age ≥ 60 with dependents: What Life Insurance, if any, should they buy?", "corpus": ["\"The problem above is actually a pretty good list of the concerns around life insurance.  While there is no correct answer to the question as posed, this will vary among different WSCs, there is a simpler way to think about insurance in general that may make finding what is right answer for you easier. Buying life insurance, like almost all insurance, is on average a money losing purchase.  This is simply because the companies selling wouldn't offer it if they couldn't expect to make money on it.  Think about buying insurance (a warranty) on a new cell phone, maybe if you are particularly prone to damaging cell phones it can be in your favor, but for most of the people that buy it will lose money on average. People, of course, still buy insurance anyway to protect themselves from unlikely but very bad consequences.  The big reason to make this trade off is if the loss will have big lasting consequences.  To stay with our cell phone example having to replace a cell phone, at least for me, would be annoying but not a catastrophic event.  For myself, the protection is not worth the warranty cost, but that is not true for everyone. Life insurance is a pretty extreme case of this, but I find the best question to ask is \"\"if you (you and your spouse) were to die will your dependents lives become so much worse that you really dislike the idea of not being insured?\"\" For some working seniors, they already have enough saved to bridge their kids/spouse to adulthood/old-age that insurance makes no sense.  For some, their children/husband/wife would be destitute and insurance is an obvious choice and an easy price to pay even if it is very high.  The example you suggest seems on the border and good questions to ask are: Thinking about those questions may help you understand if the protection offers is worth the cost.\""], "neg": ["The US prefers an endless conflict.  It is an excuse to keep large military forces in the heart of Asia, and endless war helps line pockets of well connected folks in DC.    The point of US wars tends to be justifying huge Pentagon budgets and enriching the owners of the Military Industrial complex.  At its heart, the purpose is to extract wealth from US Tax Payers in a way they are unlikely to oppose because of propaganda related to security and patriotism.", "There are a lot of people speculating that Facebook will use the money they got from this to buy companies that could be used to turn their user base into more income.  With the stocks dropping in value, it might even be a good time to invest in them.", "You sell when you think the stock is over valued, or you need the money, or you are going to need the money in the next 5 years. I buy and hold a lot.  I bought IBM in 8th grade 1980.  I still own it.  I bought 3 share it from $190 and its now worth $5,000 do to dividend reinvestment and splits.  That stock did nothing for a thirteen years except pay a dividend but then it went up by 1800% the next 20 and paid dividends.  So I agree with other posters the whole pigs get slaughtered thing is silly and just makes fund managers more money. Think if you bought aapl at $8 and sold at $12.  The thing went to 600 and split 7-1 and is back to $120.   My parents made a ton holding Grainger for years and I have had good success with MMM and MSFT owning those for decades.", "\"Lotteries are like the inverse of insurance policies. Instead of paying money to mitigate the impact of an unlikely event which is extremely negative, you are paying money to obtain a chance of experiencing an unlikely event which is extremely positive. One thing to keep in mind regarding lotteries is the diminishing marginal utility of money. If you know you'll never use more than say $100 million in your entire life, no matter how much money you might acquire, then buying tickets for lotteries where the grand prize is over $100 million stops being increasingly \"\"worth the price of entry\"\". Personally, I'd rather play a lottery where the grand prize is sub-100 million, and where there are no prizes which are sub-1 million, because I do not believe that any other amounts of winnings are going to be life-changing for me in a way that I am likely to fully appreciate.\"", "The advice of Franchise Foundation have benefited a lot of customers as the company is here to offer legal help to the clients about franchising a business San Francisco and tell people about the ways to make this opportunity successful. Keeping in mind the popularity of franchise, knowing how to franchise a business San Francisco proves fruitful and Mr. Franchise from this company offers the best advice to the clients.", "A very logical step for Starbucks and a smart business decision. This is especially true for the crowd that comes to hang out at their stores for the free wifi and can be there for over an hour. Having good food options will keep them there instead of making them leave to spend their money elsewhere.", "http://tdichthuat.com.vn/index.php?lang=en, Dich Thuat, Website: tdichthuat.com.vn, A website for translating specialized English documents with a team of experienced experts Website http://tdichthuat.com.vn Dịch Thuật chuyên ngành Tiếng Anh, với đội ngũ chuyên viên giàu kinh nghiệm hàng đầu VIỆT NAM. Luôn luôn đem lại chất lượng bản dịch có chất lượng chuyên môn cao. Khi bạn có hoặc chưa có nhu cầu DỊCH THUẬT, hãy một lần ghé thăm Website http://tdichthuat.com.vn/index.php?lang=en bạn sẽ thật sự thích thú."]}
+{"query": "What is the meaning of realization in finance?", "corpus": ["Realization is, literally, when something is made real. For example, let's say that you own some stock.  You bought the stock for $1000, and after many years the stock is worth $10,000.  Your investment has gained $9,000.  However, you don't actually have this $10,000; you just own stock that is supposedly worth $10,000 on paper.  Tomorrow, the value of the stock could plummet and only be worth $8,000.  But if you sell your stock today and obtain this $10,000, the gain has now become real.  You have realized a $9,000 gain. In investing, realization of a gain or loss occurs when an asset that you own has been sold for more or less than what you purchased it for.  Before the asset is sold, you only have a theoretical gain or loss based on what you might receive if you sold the asset today.  And tomorrow, that theoretical gain or loss could change."], "neg": ["\"The way to invest money in a company is to buy its shares, or derivatives of its shares. However, it seems you're way in over your head. Don't buy what you don't understand.  There is plenty of material to teach you about stock investing on the internet. However, a book may be the fastest way to learn what you need to know. And yes, there is a \"\"for dummies\"\" book about that: Stock Investing ForDummies. I just found it by Googling, I'm sure you can find even more interesting books out there. (Note, the link is to the \"\"cheat sheet\"\" in the back of the book. The full book is worth reading.)\"", "This could backfire.  I was a field service engineer for Ford Motor Company in the early 1990s, and they offered an extended unlimited mileage warranty to customers (at an additional cost of just under $1000 per vehicle.)  Several fleet customers bought hundreds of vehicles and began driving them 24/7 - we had several trucks that we chose to buy back from customers that had exceeded 500,000 miles in just a couple of years.  People will take advantage if you give them an opening.", "\"Yes they were quite shady and terrible on many fronts. They hired 40-50 yr old business solution guys and 1/3rd of new hires quit within 6 months. Wowza.  Didn't know about hackathons and \"\"startup weekends\"\" having prowling companies, makes sense though... Was never interested in such things. Also I am female so I kind of fear being  physically in places with disproportionate gender ratios/where I stand out... But that's probably stupid in a professional setting?\"", "\"I worked for a major retailer that offered such extended warranties.  Our profit margin on these \"\"product protection plans\"\" was ~80%.  That should tell you something about how much they are \"\"worth\"\" to the consumer.\"", "\"Consider the futures market. Traders buy and sell gold futures, but very few contracts, relatively speaking, result in delivery. The contracts are sold, and \"\"Open interest\"\" dwindles to near zero most months as the final date approaches. The seller buys back his short position, the buyer sells off his longs.  When I own a call, and am 'winning,' say the option that cost me $1 is now worth $2, I'd rather sell that option for even $1.95 than to buy 100 shares of a $148 stock. The punchline is that very few option buyers actually hope to own the stock in the end. Just like the futures, open interest falls as expiration approaches.\"", "Yea read a few books or watch some videos on YouTube on fundamental analysis and try it using excel. It's probably not what you'll be doing if you get a degree in finance, and you might even end up in accounting like I did, but its a good place to start to see if you like it or not.  It also exposes you to accounting, business, the politics of business, taxation, financial statements, EDGAR and all the other interesting and important stuff.  You might want to pick up a study guide for the CPA exam BEC. Lots of very interesting stuff in there about business in general including how the board of directors works, and taxation. It's an awesome read.", "\">\"\"We expect to have a small U.S. income tax liability for 2010,\"\" GE chief spokesman Gary Sheffer told us. How big is small? GE declined to say. The number is unlikely to ever be disclosed unless GE goes public with it, or is forced to do so.  Again, not a billion dollars. Unfortunately I am not skilled enough in accounting to be able to decipher that spreadsheet but I do appreciate your providing so many links, I didn't notice them earlier. Still, I find no evidence that GE is any more likely to have paid a billion dollars in taxes than a nickel.\""]}
+{"query": "Which Roth IRA is the best for a 21 year old who has about $1500?", "corpus": ["Your question seems like you don't understand what a Roth IRA is. A Roth IRA isn't an investment, per se. It is just a type of account that receives special tax treatment.  Just like a checking and savings account are different at a bank, a ROTH IRA account is just flagged as such by a brokerage. It isn't an investment type, and there aren't really different ROTH IRA accounts.  You can invest in just about anything inside that account so that is what you need to evaluate. One Roth IRA account is as good as any other.As to what to invest your money in inside a ROTH, that is a huge question and off-topic per the rules against specific investing advice."], "neg": ["My wife tells me that Etsy used to be all nice hand made stuff and now it is getting over run with cheap crap.  She says they don't have good quality standards to hold the merchants to.  Sounds like an opportunity to me!", "It's not just about price. Uber and other rideshare companies provide several other things better than cabs:  * However they do it, whether monitoring GPS or sensor data from the phone, rideshares incentivize drivers to accelerate and brake gently, as well as go the speed limit. Cab drivers, in my experience, drive like assholes. * By using the star rating system, rideshares incentivize drivers and riders to act like civilized people. Cab drivers, in my experience, don't give a shit. * By charging for time as well as mileage, rideshares incentivize drivers to take their time and get people where they want to be. Cab drivers, in my experience, want people out of the car as quickly as possible so they can get to their next fare. * Rideshares made it an effective part time job as well as a full time job. A driver can pick their own schedule and drive when they're available. One can make a living or just make some extra money.  And my description of their business model is correct. Again, it's not just pricing. The medallion system ensures that a driver starts out in debt. It is a barrier to entry. It also ties a driver's retirement to a supply/demand market of a commodity. It's an artificial barrier that blocks supply/demand of people willing to fill the role in a market. All of this allows cab companies to charge whatever they bloody well please and pay their drivers shit wages, which is probably the reason they drive and act like assholes.", "A CPA or Enrolled Agent can be helpful, especially if you have a complicated situation such as owning your own business. The people at a lot of tax-prep places don't have many qualifications (they are not accountants or enrolled agents or certified financial planners or anything else). They are just trained to enter stuff into the computer. In that case, you can measure their value according to how much you prefer talking to typing. But don't expect them to get it right if your taxes involve any judgment calls or tricky stuff. I think a good strategy is to try TurboTax (or whatever program) and if you get stuck on any of the questions, find a pro to help.", "when you have a problem, the first person you call is usually incompetent. They can't solve your problem, and you can tell they are trying to get off the phone just so you are not their problem any more.    obviously not everyone can be an omniscient senior engineer, but please ensure you have an effective escalation process.", "\"The article misses one thing.  The aftermarket automotive parts makers.  Small scale car makers indeed did fall to the big players, but customization has existed nearly as long as cars themselves.  From sponsored performance specialists like Carroll Shelby to the backyard mechanic making lifters for his Jeep, the \"\"long tail\"\" is exactly the same as that of the Lego.  Companies like Lego encourage it and digital distribution of specs, standards, and physical merchandise make it much more prevalent, but it's nothing new, and certainly not recent.  Making a quality product and insuring that smaller producers down the line *want* to drive sales of your product is just smart.\"", "Housing plus transportation should be about 40%, according to your given rule of thumb, and that's where yours are, so I think you're okay. Guidelines are not rules, and must be related to one's individual circumstances. That said, double-check that your transportation expenses are really zero.", "The most likely answer to your question regarding what the 'market expects' is perhaps that the market expects that currently Linked-In like a lot of other startups has been plunging almost eveything it makes into building the business and brand.  So right now the net profits are pretty low percentage of income (roughly 1.5% of revenue)  Given the size of the other numbers, it doesn't take a lot of movement in the right direction to get a big change in that tiny final number.  The other factor is the gap between their Net and the Income Available..  I think (but I'm making a logical guess here) a large part of that gap was paying off the losses of the prior two years.  If that's the case, and everything else is static, then next year's 'available' number ought to at least triple.  In order to grow the net, all LI needs is to either continue current trends of growth in expenses relative to costs,  keep expenses steady and experience a slight growth in income, or find a way to reduce expenses without having it impact income. Or something in between those three.   If we take the first case as an example, income has been roughly doubling every year, but expenses growing less than that.  if they were to continue that, but manage to get some economy of scale and have expenses grow at a slower rate, then the jump in net income ought to be substantial. most of the trends you could project end up with a big growth in the bottom line.. but yeah I gotta admit, none of that gets you 117X growth in a single year.  So the conclusion I would draw is that the market is trending a few years out and being pretty optimistic given the current PE ratio.  Of course you could also conclude that the market is 'social network happy' and LNKD represents one of the few opportunities for the average investor to get in on that given that facebook and myspace are not trading on the open market"]}
+{"query": "Should the price of fuel in Australia at this point be so high?", "corpus": ["First price isn't artificially maintained at a level. When a refining company signs a contract to buy crude from a supplier, it promises to buy at a certain price with options for increase and decrease due to the fluctuating prices in the market. And it buys crude to build up a certain buffer to supply itself for a certain duration, in case of supply problems. As it had bought oil at a higher price, it would be reluctant to lower the prices even if the current crude it buys is at a lower cost. If it buys oil from the open market, it has no other option than to pass on the hike on to the consumers, so a more intense fluctuation in the prices of oil at the point, where you buy it. Some airlines used hedging to take care of the spurts in the price of oil, to mantian their operating margins.  And moreover refining and distribution is a very low margin business, so the company has an incentive to sell at a higher cost if required."], "neg": ["\"Mortgage agreements usually have a clause in which the mortgagor warrants that all the statements and information which they have provided to the mortgagee are correct. In your case, this probably included your credit score. Since your \"\"statement\"\" concerning your credit score is no longer accurate, they want you to update the agreement with the new information before the final version is prepared. Credit scores change for many random reasons. The agencies re-calibrate formulas constantly. It is unlikely that your mortgage negotiations affected your credit score. The bank will only start reporting the facts of mortgage to a credit agency when you start paying (or not paying) the loan. Credit agencies don't care whether you have a loan or not. They only care whether you have paid your debts, or not paid them.\"", ">I don’t really like when apps show me ads pasted all over their interface, so this option was instantly crossed out.  I did a double-take when the author said the above. It's an article about using empirical evidence to set price and he discards an option based on personal preference.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://mobile.nytimes.com/2017/08/03/style/what-is-cryptocurrency.html?referer=) reduced by 95%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Most readers have probably heard of Bitcoin, the digital coin that dominates the cryptocurrency market.  > As traditional paths to upper-middle-class stability are being blocked by debt, exorbitant housing costs and a shaky job market, these investors view cryptocurrency not only as a hedge against another Dow Jones crash, but also as the most rational - and even utopian - means of investing their money.  > Assuming one's money is protected, there are, of course, the standard risks of investing, amplified by the volatility of cryptocurrency.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6sdv1b/ethereum_in_nytimes/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~186120 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*: **cryptocurrency**^#1 **market**^#2 **money**^#3 **coin**^#4 **invest**^#5\"", "\"It can be a great addition to another degree.  STEM are a good choice.  I paired mine with German, then went back years later for my MBA in Finance.  As for whether it would go with information science, it all depends what you want to do.  Those combine very well for some very specific roles these days.  Though I would think as \"\"big data\"\" evolves, econ and IS could pair very well.  My main concern is... Have a desired outcome.  It may never end up just like that, but you want to know what you're getting has a purpose in your endeavors.  Do not get a STEM kicker just to have a STEM kicker.\"", "You've never saved money?  Have you ever bought anything?  There probably was a small window of time that you had to pool some cash to buy something.    In my experience, if you make it more interesting by 'allocating money for specific purposes' you'll have better results than just arbitrarily saving for a rainy day.    Allocate your money for different things (ie- new car, emergency, travel, or starting a new business) by isolating your money into different places.  Ex- your new car allocation could be in a savings account at your bank.   Your emergency allocation can be in cash under your bed.   Your new business allocation could be in an investment vehicle like a stocks where it could potentially see significant gains by the time you are ready to use it.    The traditional concept of savings is gone.  There is very little money to be earned in a savings account and any gains will be most certainly wiped out by inflation anyway.  Allocate your money, allocate more with new income, and then use it to buy real things and fund new adventures when the time is right.", "My answer would be yes. In addition, I'm not sure that anything requires you to roll your current 401(k) into a new one if you don't like the investment options.  Keeping existing funds in your current 401(k) if you like their investment options might make sense for you (though they obviously wouldn't be adding funds once you're no longer an employee). As for the terms of the potential new 401(k), the matching percentage and vesting schedule match what I've seen at past employers.  My current employer offers the same terms, but there's no vesting schedule.", "I am in the same boat as you right now, I have about a year experience working for a financial advisor but even then it is not relevant enough for being an analyst.  I have put in over 120 apps over the past month and a half to any position that I meet 90% of requirements. The only thing I don't have is years of experience. I know how to code VBA, and how to build financial models but alas, I am looked over.  I have also been trying to network like crazy and just accepted to do a temp job working for a bank as a loan analyst and hopefully that will pan out into something better.  Many jobs want experiences with SAP and SQL, and I don't have either of those either, and there is no where to get experience because no junior analyst positions will take me without enough experience.  I turned down a banking internship because I did not want to take out loans for college, and now I am thinking I made the wrong choice. Hopefully some one will pick us up and catch us up to speed soon!  What area are you living in? I am in the Chicago area and I see new postings every day.  Also are you going to every job board? Career-builder, Monster, Indeed, LinkedIn, Craigslist? I have also hooked up with a few recruiting firms, they are the ones who got me the temp job. If you are in the Chicago area I will recommend a few for you to look into and a couple to stay away from.  Good luck on your search! I know you need it, because I need it too..."]}
+{"query": "Explanation on Warren Buffett's famous quote", "corpus": ["In the short term the market is a popularity contest In the short run which in value investing time can extend even to many years, an equity is subject to the vicissitudes of the whims by every scale of panic and elation. This can be seen by examining the daily chart of any large cap equity in the US.  Even such large holdings can be affected by any set of fear and greed in the market and in the subset of traders trading the equity. Quantitatively, this statement means that equities experience high variance in the short rurn. in the long term [the stock market] is a weighing machine In the long run which in value investing time can extend to even multiple decades, an equity is more or less subject only to the variance of the underlying value. This can be seen by examining the annual chart of even the smallest cap equities over decades.  An equity over such time periods is almost exclusively affected by its changes in value. Quantitatively, this statement means that equities experience low variance in the long run."], "neg": ["If the 6 credits per semester working part time schedule includes no loans, consider this.  Yes, it may take you twice as long to finish, BUT, you'll have a lot of working experience, AND zero student loans when you're done. Compare this to someone who graduates in four years and has 20k in student loans.  If they set up a 20 year repayment for the loans, they'll still have 16-18k left to pay and 4 years of job experience.   You'll have 8 years of half time job experience and zero debt.  The key would be to find a job in your area of interest.  More ideal would be one that pays for classes as a benefit.  Then you might increase your class load and decrease the total time to graduate, AND have relevant job experience when you graduate.", "Your colleague made a simple and incorrect assumption, that as our society's technology improves, we will use that technology to replace labor with capital, keeping output constant.  Clearly this is a contrived example, but it illustrates the point effectively:  Suppose we have a factory that produces some level of output and employs 1000 workers.  Say a technological breakthrough is developed that allows that factory to produce the same level of output using only 500 workers.  Your colleague is assuming those 500 people will lose their jobs.  But who is to say the factory won't just double its output?  In fact, since the 'Industrial Revolution' that is precisely what we've seen.  Since the beginning of the Industrial Revolution workers have shunned more productive capital in fear they will be replaced.  Historically, that has not been the case.  Society instead has used the more productive capital to produce more output.", "The company had been through many rounds of private financing prior to that.  There was a particular round where Mercedes Benz invested a lot of money which Elon credits with saving the company.  Elon says that the company would probably have survived but just taken longer to get to market, or done so at a slower ramp, without the government money.  Of course, he may be saying that for whatever PR reasons, but he's been pretty open about when the company was on the brink of death before, so I tend to believe it.  Keep in mind, they had already made money on the Roadster prior to the government loan (not a lot, but had they not been spending on Model S R&D it would have produced a profit - but the whole intent to begin with was to fund Model S R&D with the Roadster).  Also, the government loan was a loan, and that loan was paid back.  I don't see people criticizing Nissan, for example, for taking government loans, even though theirs was 10x the size of Tesla's and has not yet been paid back (by the way, I also am not criticizing Nissan for that, I'm just saying neither should be criticized).  Tesla, in fact, got the least money of any company out of that particular loan program.  Including Fisker, who got more money despite having a worse business plan.", "If you take less than you think you are worth, you will hate that job with a purple passion in short order. Either make peace with the amount you settle on or move on.", "Previously, advertisement volumes were not allowed to be louder than the peak volume (as opposed to the average volume) of the corresponding show. Obviously, the loudest point of a show isn't immediately before the commercial break, so the difference in sounds was very large.   This new regulation should change things for the better. However, I can see TV content producers putting very quiet parts right before breaks to maintain the difference in volume that advertisers rely on to draw attention.", "I have done this last year. Just open an account with an online brocker and buy a couple of Apple shares (6 I think, for 190$ each or something like that :) ). If this is just to test how stock exchange works, I think this is a good idea. I am also in Europe (France), and you'r right the charge to buy on NasDaq are quite expensive but still reasonnable. Hope this helps.", "It comes down to the practical value of paying dividends. The investor can continually receive a stream of income without selling shares of the stock. If the stock did not pay a dividend and wanted continual income, the investor would have to continually sell shares to gain this stream of income, incurring transaction costs and increased time and effort involved with making these transactions."]}
+{"query": "Can signing up at optoutprescreen.com improve my credit score?", "corpus": ["If I had a business and was able to claim a feature, I would. It's simple marketing. If in fact, opting out helped your score, the site would promote that feature.  Soft pulls for prescreened offers are not counted. No more than my constant peek at my score through Credit Karma. Opt out, if you wish.  The benefit of course is less mail, which saves trees. Less risk of identity theft, someone can take the application and try to forge from there. Less risk of an infected paper cut opening this mail (don't ask.) I am a compulsive mail shredder, so I peek and these and shred. A year ago I received an offer of $30,000 zero interest, max transfer fee $50. I sent the entire sum to my 5% mortgage. Now I refinanced and paying that back. It saved me $1500 over the year. Too much trouble for some, but how long does it take to make $1500? For 40% of this country's families, that's a week's pay. The monthly extra bill didn't bother me. This last paragraph is an anecdote, not so much addressing question. I did that first."], "neg": ["From Schwab With a Roth, withdrawals of contributions are always tax-free because   you've already paid income taxes on that money. So are withdrawals of   earnings of up to $10,000 under the homebuyer exemption, assuming   you've had the Roth for five-plus years. But if you withdraw more than   $10,000 in earnings, that money will be subject to both ordinary   income taxes and the 10 percent penalty.", "I am sure the foot soldiers are hardworking honest people the problem is as you go up the ranks, it gets dirtier.  Check into how Greece got into the position it is in today. Also look into CDOs and the sub prime collapse and who profited from it. Check out how incestuous the relationship is between top staff at Goldman and financial regulation bodies.", "Basically, no. You have retirement plan options and can either go with a Roth option, which won't change your current tax burden, or go with a traditional plan, which is tax deductible  but won't change your business deductions or self-employment taxes. This article has an explanation of options for setting up SEP or Solo 401k plans. Key quote for all the pre-tax retirement plans: Because pre-tax employer and employee contributions are deducted in   the same way, neither one is more tax-efficient than the other. The article goes on to say that if you were an S Corp or LLC that elected to be taxed as an S Corp, a Solo 401(k) plan would allow the business to make an employer contribution to your 401(k) and even then there's no tax advantage to the employer contribution. Conclusion for S-corps: [Employer contributions] would reduce the amount of income from the S-corporation that   would be passed through to you as the owner, thereby reducing your   income tax. But, because this income is not subject to payroll taxes   in the first place, these contributions will not reduce your payroll   taxes.", "What really matters is of course how it compares to future prices. Are we making the assumption that the future prices will be more like the average over the last 100 years (which, by looking at your diagram, we seem to be one standard deviation or so above)?", "I would never use a market order.  Some brokerages have an approval process your short-sale goes through before going to market.  This can take some time.  So the market prices may well be quite different later. Some brokerages use a separate account for short sales, so you must get their approval for the account before you can do the trade.   I like the listing of shares available for shorting the Interactive Brokers has but I have experienced orders simply going into dead-air and sitting there on the screen, not being rejected, not going to market, not doing anything --- even though the shares are on the list.", "\"Has the article changed in the past 9 hours since you posted? The link at the bottom is in the VERY FIRST SENTENCE.  I know stealing goes on, but is there any reason to think that the \"\"author\"\" on medium is not the original author at reddit?\"", "For bonds bought at par (the face value of the bond, like buying a CD for $1000) the payment it makes is the same as yield. You pay $1000 and get say, $40 per year or 4%. If you buy it for more or less than that $1000, say $900, there's some math (not for me, I use a finance calculator) to tell you your return taking the growth to maturity into account, i.e. the extra $100 you get when you get the full $1000 back. Obviously, for bonds, you care about whether the comp[any or municipality will pay you back at all, and then you care about how much you'll make when then do. In that order. For stocks, the picture is abit different as some companies give no dividend but reinvest all profits, think Berkshire Hathaway. On the other hand, many people believe that the dividend is important, and choose to buy stocks that start with a nice yield, a $30 stock with a $1/yr dividend is 3.3% yield. Sounds like not much, but over time you expect the company to grow, increase in value and increase its dividend. 10 years hence you may have a $40 stock and the dividend has risen to $1.33. Now it's 4.4% of the original investment, and you sit on that gain as well."]}
+{"query": "Obtaining Pound Sterling Cheque in US to pay for family history records from England?", "corpus": ["Most US banks don't allow you the ability to draft a foreign currency check from USD. Though, I know Canadian banks are more workable. For instance, TD allows you to do this from CAD to many other currencies for a small fee. I believe even as a US Citizen you can quite easily open a TD Trust account and you'd be good to go. Also, at one time Zions bank was one of the few which lets US customers do this add-hoc. And there is a fee associated. Even as a business, you can't usually do this without jumping thru hoops and proving your business dealings in foreign countries. Most businesses who do this often will opt to using a payment processor service from a 3rd party which cuts checks in foreign currencies at a monthly and per check base. Your other option, which may be more feasible if you're planning on doing this often, would be to open a British bank account. But this can be difficult if not impossible due to the strict money laundering anti-fraud regulations. Many banks simply won't do it. But, you might try a few of the newer British banks like Tesco, Virgin and Metro."], "neg": ["This may be a good or a bad deal, depending on the fair market value (FMV) of the stock at the time of exercise. Let's assume the FMV is $6, which is the break even point. In general this would probably be treated as two transactions. So overall you would be cash neutral, but your regular tax income would be increased by $30,000 and your AMT income by $60,000.", "No, as in just coming up start up. I'm sure that's the case but then again there must be some basic software that can make my life easier right? Like accounting softwares, etc that do not depend on the industry the startup is working in. Any?", "\"Don't ignore it. If this is a non-trivial amount of money you need a lawyer. You've acknowledged that a loan exists and have personally guaranteed it, so a court can and will ultimately order you to pay. In doing so, they can put liens on your assests. Depending on the state, how the property is titled and other factors, that can include your home. If you don't have the money and are pretty much broke, try to negotiate a settlement. If they balk, you'll eventually need to start talking about bankruptcy -- that's the \"\"nuclear option\"\" and a motivator to settle. Otherwise, you need to either seriously explore bankruptcy or be prepared to lose your stuff to a judgement and having your dirty laundry aired in court. If you're not broke, but don't have liquid capital, you need to figure out a way to raise the money somehow. Again, you need to consult an attorney.\"", "The GOP is in power and have an opportunity to build policy around taking care of the poor. Which is demanded by scripture in every corner that you look. So I have no trouble calling a Christian republican a hypocrite if they choose to use their power to build and propose legislative action which will do nothing to help the poor and will very likely make them more vulnerable. They have agency and they're using it to selfish ends contrary to the tenants of the faith. No where does the Bible equate taxation with theft or force, in fact paying taxes is expressly condoned and expected. Matthew 22:15-22", "I wrote one to check against the N3 to N6 bonds: http://capitalmind.in/2011/03/sbi-bond-yield-calculator/ Things to note:", "MICR fields are defined by their distance to the right edge of the check. The routing number is always the same distance from the right edge. Business checks are longer and have more room for auxiliary information on the left if the bank chooses to use it.", "It is only wise to invest in what you understand (ala Warren Buffet style). Depending on how much money you have, you might see fit to consult a good independent financial advisor instead of seeking advice from this website. A famous quote goes: “Those who say, do not know. Those who know, do not say”"]}
+{"query": "Interest payments for leveraged positions", "corpus": ["\"I think to some extent you may be confusing the terms margin and leverage. From Investopedia Two concepts that are important to traders are margin and leverage. Margin is a loan extended by your broker that allows you to leverage the funds and securities in your account to enter larger trades. In order to use margin, you must open and be approved for a margin account. The loan is collateralized by the securities and cash in your margin account. The borrowed money doesn't come free, however; it has to be paid back with interest. If you are a day trader or scalper this may not be a concern; but if you are a swing trader, you can expect to pay between 5 and 10% interest on the borrowed money, or margin. Going hand-in-hand with margin is leverage; you use margin to create leverage. Leverage is the increased buying power that is available to margin account holders.  Essentially, leverage allows you to pay less than full price for a trade, giving you the ability to enter larger positions than would be possible with your account funds alone. Leverage is expressed as a ratio. A 2:1 leverage, for example, means that you would be able to hold a position that is twice the value of your trading account. If you had $25,000 in your trading account with 2:1 leverage, you would be able to purchase $50,000 worth of stock. Margin refers to essentially buying with borrowed money.  This must be paid back, with interest.  You also may have a \"\"margin call\"\" forcing you to liquidate assets if you go beyond your margin limits. Leverage can be achieved in a number of ways when investing, one of which is investing with a margin account.\""], "neg": ["\"The point of the enrollment penalty is basically the same as the ACA penalty.  Any sort of health insurance - or really, any insurance - is funded by creating a risk pool of high and low risk people and pricing it so that the overall payments cover the total risk.   That means, however, that on average the low risk people end up paying more than their share - more than it would have cost them, without the insurance, excepting any provider agreements to charge less (which is significant in the health insurance business).  (Of course some of them do end up using more than they pay - but not on average, assuming the risk was calculated accurately.) While there isn't really a completely low risk pool in Medicare, there is a significant difference in utilization (=cost) between younger (65-70) and older enrollees.  As such, for many health 65 year olds, it would be beneficial to not enroll in Medicare right away - delay a few years, if they're fully healthy, and wait until they are less healthy.  Since Medicare won't turn you away for pre-existing conditions, that's a risk some would take. In order to accommodate for that, Medicare effectively says, \"\"If you didn't help subsidize the costs of the high users when you were younger, you need to pay more to make up for that fact\"\" - hence the enrollment penalty.   The New York Times explains this in part in a 2006 article discussing Part D (which was new that year, and has a similar penalty): The purpose of the late enrollment penalty is to encourage people to   sign up as soon as possible, before they have significant drug costs.\"", "I think it's pretty clear they need a quality smart phone line since that's almost all people are buying anymore.  I don't know why they aren't making Android phones other than the market is already saturated and it's hard to stand out. The Windows Phone is almost certainly their best bet, but can they hang in there until MS's push to the win8 platform. If they can I expect the Windows Phone to do very well. Most Joe Consumers will be like OH well I have windows at home so I know that, and I doubt it will be any less intuitive than the Android interface or any more boring than the iPhone interface.", "\"It can be a great addition to another degree.  STEM are a good choice.  I paired mine with German, then went back years later for my MBA in Finance.  As for whether it would go with information science, it all depends what you want to do.  Those combine very well for some very specific roles these days.  Though I would think as \"\"big data\"\" evolves, econ and IS could pair very well.  My main concern is... Have a desired outcome.  It may never end up just like that, but you want to know what you're getting has a purpose in your endeavors.  Do not get a STEM kicker just to have a STEM kicker.\"", "The rental income is indeed taxable income, but you reduce the taxable portion of it by deducting expenses (including mortgage interest, maintenance, insurance, HOA, real estate tax, and of course depreciation). Due to the depreciation, you may end up breaking even, or having very little taxable income. Note that when you sell the property, your basis is reduced by the depreciation you were allowed to deduct (even if you haven't deducted it for whatever reason), and also the personal residence exclusion might no longer be applicable - i.e.: you'll have to pay capital gains tax. You will not be able to deduct a loss though if you sell now, so it may be better to depreciate it as a rental, rather then sell at a loss that won't affect your taxes. Also, consider the fact that the basis for the depreciation is not the basis you currently have in the property (because you're under water). You have to remember that when calculating the taxes. This is not a tax advice, and you should seek a professional help.", "You can use a used paint brush to scrub the frame and loosen the dust and the same technique can also be implemented on uPVC Windows and windows as well. The dust, dirt, cobwebs, etc., can be further removed using a vacuum cleaner. You should totally avoid abrasive sponges and clothes along with harsh creams and cleaning solutions, as they might cause permanent damage to uPVC windows as well as awning windows Melbourne.", "No, it won't affect your score until your statement is posted. Paying your bill before your statement is posted is actually a good way to keep your credit utilization low. If you're worried about high credit utilization negatively affecting your credit score, consider paying your bill several times a month to ensure that when your final monthly statement is posted, your utilization is still low. When my credit limit was very low while I was in college, I did this almost every month, and I've seen other sites recommend this practice as well. From creditkarma.com: The easiest way [to lower credit utilization] is to make credit card payments more than once a month so that your balance never gets too high. and creditcards.com: Consider making payments to creditors more than once each month. Otherwise, if you put a major expense -- like a new appliance -- on a credit card, even if you plan to pay it off, your FICO score may take a hit. The reason is that credit scores are calculated as a snapshot in time, so if that happens to be right after you charged a new $700 washing machine, your utilization ratio will look worryingly high. Remember, though, that it's best to have some balance on your card when your statement is posted (assuming you pay it off in full each month), because as the chart shows, 0% utilization is about as bad as utilization > 31-40%:  Also, remember that credit utilization affects your credit score in real time, so if you have high utilization one month but a lower utilization the next month, the hit to your score will disappear once a statement with low utilization is posted.", "The 3.7% annual increase is probably a little high. Current averages are about 2.8-3%. This leads to the final numbers being a bit inflated, but it still gets the point across. I know too many people my age that aren't invested, yet have not insignificant savings."]}
+{"query": "What is a better way for an American resident in a foreign country to file tax?", "corpus": ["\"If you live outside the US, then you probably need to deal with foreign tax credits, foreign income exclusions, FBAR forms (you probably have bank account balances enough for the 10K threshold) , various monsters the Congress enacted against you like form 8939 (if you have enough banking and investment accounts), form 3520 (if you have a IRA-like local pension), form 5471 (if you have a stake in a foreign business), form 8833 (if you have treaty claims) etc ect - that's just what I had the pleasure of coming across, there's more. TurboTax/H&R Block At Home/etc/etc are not for you. These programs are developed for a \"\"mainstream\"\" American citizen and resident who has nothing, or practically nothing, abroad. They may support the FBAR/FATCA forms (IIRC H&R Block has a problem with Fatca, didn't check if they fixed it for 2013. Heard reports that TurboTax support is not perfect as well), but nothing more than that. If you know the stuff well enough to fill the forms manually - go for it (I'm not sure they even provide all these forms in the software though). Now, specifically to your questions: Turbo tax doesn't seem to like the fact that my wife is a foreigner   and doesn't have a social security number. It keeps bugging me to   input a valid Ssn for her. I input all zeros for now. Not sure what to   do. No, you cannot do that. You need to think whether you even want to include your wife in the return. Does she have income? Do you want to pay US taxes on her income? If she's not a US citizen/green card holder, why would you want that? Consider it again. If you decide to include here after all - you have to get an ITIN for her (instead of SSN). If you hire a professional to do your taxes, that professional will also guide you through the ITIN process. Turbo tax forces me to fill out a 29something form that establishes   bonafide residency. Is this really necessary? Again in here it bugs me   about wife's Ssn Form 2555 probably. Yes, it is, and yes, you have to have a ITIN for your wife if she's included. My previous state is California, and for my present state I input   Foreign. When I get to the state tax portion turbo doesn't seem to   realize that I have input foreign and it wants me to choose a valid   state. However I think my first question is do i have to file a   California tax now that I am not it's resident anymore? I do not have   any assets in California. No house, no phone bill etc If you're not a resident in California, then why would you file? But you might be a partial resident, if you lived in CA part of the year. If so, you need to file 540NR for the part of the year you were a resident. If you have a better way to file tax based on this situation could you   please share with me? As I said - hire a professional, preferably one that practices in your country of residence and knows the provisions of that country's tax treaty with the US. You can also hire a professional in the US, but get a good one, that specializes on expats.\""], "neg": ["There's no need for joint accounts to transfer money between you. You can always transfer money to him in Israel to his Israeli account. Having joint account will pose a couple of issues. If the account is in Israel - you will be liable for FBAR/FATCA reports. If the account is in the US - your son will be liable for similar reports in Israel. Joint account also means there's an ambiguity about what belongs to whom and is transferred in what direction. You'll have issues with gift tax reporting/liabilities. Your son can open a USD account in Israel and you can wire money there or send him checks (that would take longer). Or, you can wire money directly to his ILS account.", "\"For starters like some other people have said, just talk to someone in IB and get some advice on how to break in, and what it's really like. I've spoken to people in IB and learned that it's really just not going to be for me...In response to your four questions,  1.  Get your degree at DePaul and wait a few years to get your masters. You don't need an MBA for IB and it'll be a lot harder to go to a prestigious grad school without significant work experience and a solid network  1. It definitely wouldn't hurt for you to double major in CS, but if you do, you're going to have to keep your grades up, and still stay sharp in both majors. You don't want to have a 3.0 and have both, it'll kill your chances. You're going to need at LEAST a 3.8, if you're under that it's gonna be a lot harder to get anywhere.   1. If there are other industries you want to turn to then sure! I used to be interested in IB but now I'm leaning more towards private equity, and working with Reg D. clients, 1031 exchanges etc.   1. NETWORK!!!! If you aren't already, seriously get out there and network like hell. But don't just cold call random people, you really need to make meaningful connections with people, and continue to stay in contact with them. You can also learn a lot from WSO and various IB books, guides etc, I have a bunch of that stuff on my google drive from a friend if you want it.   And some general tidbits  **Don't stress about the school you go to**...going to a prestigious school really does help, but if you work hard enough, make the right connections and are good at what you do, you can land a role in IB. I know several people that have gone into IB from my school and I would consider us maybe a Grade C state school. It's possible  I'd also recommend looking more at a boutique and middle-mark companies rather than your Bulge Bracket banks, it'll have less competition and could be easier to break into, and like some other people are said you really need to get that junior year internship if you want to make it into IB. But if you can't get into IB right after school don't fret, go somewhere, get some experience, get your certifications (Series 7, Series 63 etc) and try again.  **Know your technicals** you need to be able to walk through a DCF, an LBO and all of the financial statements in an interview. There are billions of guides on how to do this, but you need to know this.  **Stay on top of current events** Just be well versed in how the market is doing, which industries are hot right now and what's not, and WHY!  **Know your story** Believe it or not, but your story and how that aligns with a companies culture is really important. I have a friend that didn't make it into a certain firm solely because they just didn't think he was a good enough fit for their culture. \"\"I want to make a lot of money\"\" won't work, instead think more along the lines of \"\"I want to challenge myself\"\"  Good luck man\"", "\">Me: \"\"they pay it as regular income rather than LTCG\"\" >You: \"\"There's no LTCG tax on Roth accounts.\"\"  Those two things aren't the same thing.  Among other problems, you were referring to tax-deferred accounts and I was referring to Roths.  >Me: \"\"they pay it as regular income rather than LTCG\"\" >You: \"\"You're only taxed once on the money\"\"  Again, those are not the same thing.  There is no account out there where you would only pay LTCG tax.  So paying the tax as regular income RATHER than LTCG tax is not a concern.   >Me: \"\"they pay it as regular income rather than LTCG\"\" >You: \"\"The main advantage of 401ks is that you don't ever pay capital gains tax.\"\"  Again, the word \"\"rather\"\" means there were two possible scenarios: paying regular income tax and paying LTCG tax.  This simply isn't true.   >I never mentioned Roth or taxable funds   Well, those are the only alternatives to a tax-deferred account, so...  >\"\"Though what I said does also apply to Roth\"\"  No it doesn't.    >\"\"But please, keep digging...\"\"  Nothing to dig for.  This isn't a difficult concept but for whatever reason you clearly don't understand it.\"", "Several things may be the cause.   The person who clicked with you may be side lined in the hierarchy.   You missed something basic in the entire presentation, maybe you should have picked up or said something about this being similar to X industry or what not. (Not saying you didn't, but pointing out that there is a lot of different reasons as to why it could have happened)   The interviewer could have been a tool   There was another better candidate.   The usual admonitions apply, this is the same advice I give close family members when they get dinged -   1) You are doing the right thing in analyzing it  2) If you can't figure out something to improve on soonish, stop chewing on it. Its quite possibly that the answer will pop into your head once you've had time to distance yourself. Or the answer could be pointless to obtain.  3) Getting in is usually a numbers game - keep at it.   The fact that you are focusing is a good thing. You could always try the good old:   - Thank you for taking the time out to interview me. I respect the decision taken and regret not being able to join a firm that I greatly respect and admire. If possible, would I be able to talk/meet with you at your convenience.  I usually frame these things better, but right now, personally not feeling that confident about sending such a mail so its reflecting in the language.  The reason I am suspicious that such a mail won't work is because it sounds you came through the generic recruitment barrage for undergrads - and lee way there is few and far between.  All the same, you said you managed to connect positively witht he first interviewer, so adapt and target this at that conversation, put it into your voice and send it to him/her.   Thank them for their time, appreciate the effort, and ask politely and with confidence if you could have some time to understand their thought process.   You wont get into that firm , but you will make a contact if all goes well. And thats worth a lot.", "You can't change the W2, the employer issues it and sends it to the IRS. You cannot affect it in any way. The employer reported correctly. You did contribute $4137 in 2015. You then withdrew the excess in 2016, and did it timely, so it is not taxable in 2016. However, the excess contribution should be added back to your wages on your tax return. The way to do it is to add it to the taxable wages amount (reported on W2 box 1), and attach a statement explaining that the amount added is the excess contribution. You then put the corrected amount in the right place on your tax return (line 7 on the form 1040). Adding the difference to misc income (line 21) is OK too, it's the same effect. You will then need to check with your payroll that they're aware that the excess was deposited back on the account of the next year and adjust their reports accordingly. Otherwise you'll end up with excess contribution again.", "You could evaluate the risk exposure of your UK bank reading this post and this other old one. They basically say that UK bank exposure to Greece is less than 6 billions pounds (BOE data), so there is no reason to be worried now. The main issue of this crisis is not the Greek exit from the Euro on its own (it seems to be considered almost a fact by CITI, and by MS at 35% probability, Profumo ex CEO of UNICREDIT, says the possibility are more than 50%) – the main issue is that other countries like Italy and Spain might follow the same fate. If they do, the exposure of many foreign banks (including the UK ones) to their debts is not negligible (191,80 billions pounds for UK banks) moreover other EU banks (even the German ones) exposed to Italy and to Spain will suffer too, and this suffering will be translated into more suffering for UK banks exposed also to Germany and to France. That's why you read Euro doom articles like this one from Paul Krugman (who won a Nobel Memorial Prize in Economics.)", "I try really hard to avoid commercials. To me, they are a 100% waste of time and money  I can't remember EVER buying something as a result of a TV commercial  Of course, there are things I buy that are advertised. But I don't buy them because of the ad, I buy them because I need or like them."]}
+{"query": "What are some of the key identifiers/characters of an undervalued stock?", "corpus": ["You can't. If there was a reliable way to identify an undervalued stock, then people would immediately buy it, its price would rise and it wouldn't be undervalued any more."], "neg": ["Voorspellen in de zomer met een koelsysteem, dat is alleszins moeilijk om te werken en is ook erg sterk. Drink beschermd en koel water voor een gezond leven. U kunt de bronnen ook in staande vloermodellen of tegenstations installeren. Je moet de capaciteit hebben om het effectief te kunnen werken en het moet ook voldoende solide zijn.", "If you lived in a gang banger / drug dealer's house, ate his food, watched his TV, wore the clothes he provides, *while* being a legal adult fully able to move out and be independent if one chooses... wouldn't that *imply* acceptance and approval of the person's drug dealing lifestyle?", "Too long for a comment -  It's great that you are saving to the match on the 401(k). Does your company offer a Roth 401(k)? If so, you might consider that, instead. From the numbers you offered, you are likely in the 15% bracket now, but will find you move to 25% in years to come. The 2014 tax rates are out and how the 15% bracket ending at $36,900. (Over $47,000 gross income). I'd rather see you pay tax at 15% now, and use pre-tax accounts as your income rises. If the Roth is available.", "I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:  - [/r/brasilonreddit] [\\[r\\/economy\\] No One Has Ever Made a Corruption Machine Like This One — Brazilian construction giant Odebrecht SA](https://np.reddit.com/r/BrasilOnReddit/comments/6gayar/reconomy_no_one_has_ever_made_a_corruption/)  [](#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)", ">I distinctly remember in dot-com crash it was only Internet stocks that were clearly overvalued.  You remember someone had this opinion. Did you ever check the facts?  The [S&P 500](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=%5EGSPC+Basic+Chart&t=my) is the average of the 500 largest corporations of the USA, and it grew steadily through the 1990s, falling after 2000.  Now look at [Apple](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/bc?s=AAPL+Basic+Chart&t=my) for an example of a tech stock that didn't follow that trend.", "You are planning on signing a contract for, likely, hundreds of thousands of dollars, and plan on paying, likely, tens of thousands of dollars in a deposit. For a house that is not built yet. This isn't particularly unusual, lots of people do this. But, you need a lawyer. Now, before you sign anything. Your agent may be able to recommend a lawyer, but beware; your agent may have a conflict of interest here.", "\"> the single mother will still have substantially more combined income from welfare and earnings by holding a minimum-wage job than by relying only on welfare.  And way less time to take care of her children... and a huge expense to put her kids in child care.  Got it? So, there's a welfare poverty trap and many \"\"professionals\"\" taking advantage of it.\""]}
+{"query": "I have a million dollars of disposable income. What should I do to best benefit the economy?", "corpus": ["\"At first, I thought this might be too broad.  There are of course thousands of things that you can do with your money to \"\"help the economy\"\".  But I think that there is room to discuss some broad strokes without trying to list a thousand details.   Regular investing (as you are now) helps the economy in that companies obtain money by selling their stock.  They can then use that money to fund expansion, etc.  These things can help the economy permanently.  Of course, they can also use the money to pay executive bonuses, which don't help the economy so much.   Similarly, just spending money does not normally help the economy.  Unless we are in a recession, it is mildly harmful to spend wastefully.  Money that could be going to support long term improvements in production instead is used to buy a luxury that doesn't terribly interest you.  I.e. if you don't want a bigger house or a more luxurious car don't buy it to \"\"stimulate\"\" the economy.   Many charitable donations have the same problem.  They help short term consumption somewhere.  And of course the charity starts asking you for more money.  Many charities waste most of a donation trying to get another one from the same person or family.   Sir John Maynard Keynes proposed that the best thing that people could do to help the economy is to invest in things that cause economic activity in turn.  He was mostly talking about things like roads, bridges, and dams that are out of the investing range of most people, so he wanted governments to do it, particularly during a recession.   So we are looking for ways to invest in durable improvements that will support economic activity in the future.  A million dollars is a small amount for many things, but there are some activities that work.  I'm going to list a few examples, but there are certainly others:   Fund microfinance.  Basically loan your million dollars to people who need a small amount of money.  These programs often allow you to determine the initial recipient and then that person determines the next recipient.  A million dollars can finance hundreds if not thousands of these loans.  They may be in the United States or in a developing country.   Set up a scholarship.  My recommendation would be to find an existing scholarship with a few recipients and ask them to add one a year for the million dollars.  A million dollars should typically produce about a scholarship a year in returns after inflation.  Of course, that's just regular inflation.  Education inflation is higher.   Solar prize.  Fund a program that gives out one solar installation every year or five to a family that owns a house, is struggling to pay utilities, and makes a compelling case.  Basically, whenever the investment grows enough to support it, make a new prize.   Buy something that will help other people make money.   This is just six ideas off the top of my head.  The goal here is to create something lasting that will promote economic activity.  So a program that loans money forward.  Or a scholarship or free textbook, particularly in a STEM field.  A small piece of infrastructure that helps people move around to work or spend their money.  Solar is a bit of a stretch here, but it can be justified if you believe that an investment now is an investment in moving towards the future.   The key thing here is to make your money do double duty.  By spending your money during a recession or investing during the rest of the business cycle, you can get some value for your money.  But even better is if that spending has a societal return as well.  Microfinance, scholarships, and infrastructure do that.  There is the immediate spending, plus there is the effect of the spending.  A business is established.  A mind is trained and working at a high income job.  People can move, work, and spend their own money.\""], "neg": [">  low seven hundreds wont even garner a look from any school in the top 20   From my understanding, without a math background already (math major for a double in undergrad) you're expected to have a perfect quant score on the GRE to be competitive in the PhD realm.", "FTA: “Yet this new study notes that subsidies aren’t simply cash being handed to oil companies. Subsidies often come in the form of tax breaks, which is just one of the many ways oil companies receive government handouts.”  Tax breaks are not subsidies.  The taxpayer pay absolutely nothing to the oil companies when a tax break is applied.  The taxpayers are actually net recipients from the drilling activity.  If the existence of a tax break is a requirement for oil drilling profitability, then elimination of the tax break would eliminate drilling.  The taxpayers are choosing between zero additional tax revenue without tax breaks or some tax revenue with tax breaks so drilling can proceed.  The article’s point about export ports being subsidized by the taxpayer is a distraction.  The VAST majority of oil produced in the US is consumed in the US.  All that oil is drilled, transported, refined, transported again, then sold to consumers in an end-to-end supply chain built on a vast sum of private capital.", "\"DO NOT buy this car. First, I want to say I love BMW's.  There's a reason why they call them \"\"ultimate driving machine\"\" and why other car manufacturers compare their new models to BMWs.  I own 330i and I absolutely love it.  Every time you get into the car, it just begs you to push and abuse it.  Everything from steering response to throttle to engine sound.  Awesome car.  However... 1) BMW is not known for their reliability.  I've had to do numerous things to this car and if I didn't do the work myself (i like tinkering with cars), it would be a pretty big money pit (and actually still is).  German parts are more expensive then regular cars.  Labor will run you if you take it for service.  Right now my car is on jack stands while I'm fixing an oil leak, replacing cooling system components which are known to fail and doing work with the cam timing system which uses bad seals. 2) If you buy a used car which is 3 years old, just remember all the wearable items and everything that wants to break, will break 3 years sooner on you.  Someone else already pre-enjoyed your car's maintenance-free days.  At 60k-80k things will start to go.  Ask me how I know.  So you'll start paying for maintenance way before your 5-year loan expires.  Compare this 330i to the Acura Integra I used to have.  Acura (aka Honda) had 194k miles when I sold it and I NEVER ONCE got stranded with the Acura. 3) Fuel economy is not that good and btw you have to use the most expensive gas. 4) If you are really set on buying a BMW because you enjoy driving and won't drive like an old lady (my apologies to those old ladies that drive at least the speed limit, but you are not the majority), then still do not by this one and check out auctions.  I bought my 2003 330i in 2005 for 21k when it cost over 40k new.  You could probably find one with less than 20k miles on it. My final advice is either a) learn to at least do basic maintenance or b) stick to always buying new cars which don't have any issues in first 4-7 years, then move on before you have to schedule your life around your cars. on the bright side I doubt you'll have to ever replace the exhaust and you can buy tail lights on e-bay for roughly $60 :)\"", "Most of the points by MrChrister are valid. I can't say much for Philippines, however there is a reason for one to go with individual insurance from my experience in India.", "The best thing to do right now is track your spending. You know you're saving 1k a month, and you know you're spending 1k a month on rent. That's 24k so far. I presume you'll have some income tax taken out, let's assume it's another 6k to round us neatly up to 30k. Since you earn 80k and you've spent 30k so far, you have another 50k unaccounted for. If you're in the USA I'd recommend using mint.com or a similar service to automatically track your transactions, or even just a spreadsheet if you don't like handing out your bank details (and you shouldn't). After that, I agree with SoulsOpenSource's answer. Write a budget and try to figure out where the fat can be trimmed. When I started tracking I saw I was spending almost a hundred bucks every week on fast food, due to poor planning and laziness. I decided to cook more and plan better and now I'm spending less than half that - in the last year I've saved almost three thousand dollars! If you want to save up for your future (and good on you if you do!) then there'll be some choices to make ahead. If you're spending a few hundred bucks on going out drinking every weekend, or you grab two coffees every day, or you buy fifty blurays a month (do people still buy blurays?), you'll have to ask yourself: Will I be happier spending money here than saving for my future?", "eh on second thought Suppose I earned $1 Billion per year.  then 10,000*365 = 3,650,000 and  3,650,000 / 1,000,000,000 = 0.35% of my yearly income in terms of percentage costs.  If someone makes $20,000 per year and spends $500 a month on rent then   500*12 = 6,000   6,000/20,000 =  30% of ones yearly income in terms percentage costs.... sooooo yeaaaah Is swap that rent percentage any day of the week. At 20,000 a year a rental rate of .35% comes out to a monthly rent of $5.84.  I'll take the Billionaire yacht mansion.  [edit in response to the above edited comment]:  You're right I'm a billionaire i don't got time for maintenance. I'm just gonna buy a new one every year AND Im gonna assume that operating costs are $40,000,000 per year on top of buying a new $40,000,000 each year which comes out to $80,000,000:   80,000,000/1,000,000,000 = 8%   STILL GONNA TAKE THE BILLIONAIRE YAGHT OVER THE NORMAL RENT  To be clear 30% of 1 Billion is 3 Hundred Million: which means as a billionaire I could buy **25** $40 Million yachts.    [Moar Edit]: Ok like Since Ive got a super Yacht for just 8% of a billion this extra $920 Million Is burning a hole in my pocket.  I'm gonna buy 40 $2 million homes (one for each top  city) which leaves me with only $840 Million.  I gonna buuuuy A Hillary Clinton Level politician ($200 Million or so). So got $640 Million left...", "The spring on the garage door will always break at some point of time. The garage doors are frequently used and with constant up and down the string are bound to suffer a metal fatigue and will break. The professional garage door repair service will easily replace the spring and your garage door will be back to work in no time."]}
+{"query": "Why GOOG is “After Hours” while FB is “Pre-market”?", "corpus": ["It looks like GOOG did not have a pre-market trade until 7:14 am ET, so Google Finance was still reporting the last trade it had, which was in the after-hours session yesterday. FB, on the other hand, was trading like crazy after-hours yesterday and pre-market today as it had an earnings report yesterday."], "neg": ["\"Eventually, you'll end up buying a stock at or near a high-water mark.  You might end up waiting a few years before you see your \"\"guaranteed\"\" $100 profit, and you now have $5K to $10K tied up in the wait.  The more frequently you trade, the faster your money gets trapped. There are two ways to avoid this problem: 1) Do it during strong bull markets.    If everything keeps going up you don't need to worry about peaks...but then why would you keep cashing out for $1 gains? 2) Accurately predict the peaks.    If you can see the future, why would you keep cashing out for $1 gains? Either way, this strategy will only make your broker happy, $8 at a time.\"", "While I get your point as a joke, I think we need to allow non-highway vehicles on our non-highway roads.  I'd rather not have Kei truck even attempting to get on the highway, but it'd be damn handy to be able to roll down to the local Home Depot.", "> You see zero ads? Really? Have you watched a YouTube video recently?  It's funny that statement has been met repeatedly now with disbelief where most people would simply ask how I block all of the ads. Which I assure you, I am doing.", "'So the free roaming tiger zoo turned out to have a bit of a cash flow issue once all the visitors kept getting eaten but the 'strippers in every shop of a mall' idea has been working out great. Lots more families coming in.'", "I applied for a job a was literally perfectly qualified for. My educational background was exactly what it described, my work history was spot on, and my internship experience was DOING THAT JOB. I got an email two weeks later saying I wasn't qualified.   So now I just get jobs through connections. My own merits apparently don't mean anything.", "\"Some history: In the US, this is very tightly controlled and regulated. Although stock market securities insider trading is a relatively new crime around the world (20-30 year old), the United States  is exceptional for offering the longest sentences for it, although it is still far more lucrative than and carries lower sentences than something like petty larceny. The perception of illegal insider trading has changed in the US over the years, although it is based on much older fraud statutes the regulators and the courts have only really developed modern case law against insider trading in the past 20-30 years. The US relies on its vast network of registered broker-dealers to detect and report abnormal trading activity and the regulator (SEC) can quickly obtain emergency court orders from rent-a-judges (Administrative Law Judges) to freeze trader's assets to prevent them from withdrawing, or quickly enacting sanctions. So this reality helps deter trading on material inside information. So for someone that needs to get an information advantage on the market, it is [simply] necessary for them to rationalize how this information could be inferred from public sources.  Similarly there is a thin line between non-public information and public information, the \"\"lab experiment\"\" example would be material insider information, but the fact that there will be litigation over a company's key patents may be \"\"public\"\" as soon as the lawyer submits the complaint to the court system. It is also worth noting that there are A LOT of financial products trading in the capital markets, and illegal insider trading laws only applies to trading of shares of a company. So if a major holder in gold is about to liquidate all their holdings, being short gold futures is not subject to civil and criminal sanctions. Hope this helps. The above examples should help you understand what kind of information is material inside information and what kind is not, and how it is relevant to trading decisions.\"", "Correct me if I'm wrong, but it looks like you're posting something that defines labor hours right now (and for a different purpose)...  Not for when said provisions of the Affordable Care Act are implemented.    Go easy on me, I'm having a vodka ditch tonight to cope in general."]}
+{"query": "Quote driven and order driven financial markets", "corpus": ["\"- In a quote driven market, must every investor trade with a market        maker? In other words, two parties that are both not market makers        cannot trade between themselves directly? In a way yes, all trades go through a market maker but those trades can be orders put in place by a \"\"person\"\" IE: you, or me. - Does a quote driven market only display the \"\"best\"\" bid and ask        prices proposed by the market makers? In other words, only the        highest bid price among all the market makers is displayed, and        other lower bid prices by other market makers are not? Similarly,        only the lowest ask price over all market makers is displayed, and        other higher ask prices by other market makers are not? No, you can see other lower bid and higher ask prices. - In a order-driven market, is it meaningful to talk about \"\"the current stock price\"\", which is the price of last transaction? Well that's kind of an opinion. Information is information so it won't be bad to know it. Personally I would say the bid and ask price is more important. However in the real world these prices are changing constantly and quickly so realistically it is easier to keep track of the quote price and most likely the bid/ask spread is small and the quote will fall in between. The less liquid a security is the more important the bid/ask is. -- This goes for all market types. - For a specific asset, will there be several transactions happened at    the same time but with different prices? Today with electronic markets, trades can happen so quickly it's difficult to say. In the US stock market trades happen one at a time but there is no set time limit between each trade. So within 1 second you can have a trade be $50 or $50.04. However it will only go to $50.04 when the lower ask prices have been exhausted.   - Does an order driven market have market makers?  By definition, no. - What are some examples of quote driven and order driven financial markets, in which investors are commonly trading stocks and derivatives, especially in U.S.? Quote driven market: Bond market, Forex. Order driven market: NYSE comes from an order driven market but now would be better classified as a \"\"hybird market\"\" Conclusion: If you are asking in order to better understand today's stock markets then these old definitions of Quote market or Order market may not work. The big markets in the real world are neither. (IE: Nasdaq, NYSE...) The NYSE and Nasdaq are better classified as a \"\"hybird market\"\" as they use more then a single tactic from both market types to insure market liquidity, and transparency. Markets these days are strongly electronic, fast, and fairly liquid in most cases. Here are some resources to better understand these markets: An Introduction To Securities Markets The NYSE And Nasdaq: How They Work Understanding Order Execution\""], "neg": ["This point stands. It's an accurate description.   However, for clarity, they're not skimming money off your order in the traditional sense. They see your order, beat you to the punch, and place their own. They then sell it back to you at a higher price. Think brute force for the stock market.", "Have you looked at what is in that book value? Are the assets easily liquidated to get that value or could there be trouble getting the fair market value as some assets may not be as easy to sell as you may think. The Motley Fool a few weeks ago noted a book value of $10 per share. I could wonder what is behind that which could be mispriced as some things may have fallen in value that aren't in updated financials yet. Another point from that link: After suffering through the last few months of constant cries from   naysayers about the company’s impending bankruptcy, shareholders of   Penn West Petroleum Ltd. (TSX:PWT)(NYSE:PWE) can finally look toward   the future with a little optimism. Thus, I'd be inclined to double check what is on the company books.", "I am not required to hold any company stock. I also have an ESOP plan carrying a similar number of shares in company stock.  So if it were to be sold, what would the recommendation be to replace it? I can move the shares into any option shown, and have quite a few others.  Not dealing with any huge amounts, just a 4.5% contribution over three years (so far).", "\"This article is a libertarian orgasmic delight: If granny can't pull her weight then she can die in the street. \"\"If you’re going to cut that much money out, it’s going to be coming from older people and people with disabilities” says this quote from the article.\"", "\"The Answer is yes according to multiple online sources and my local bank. This approach is a common technique to building your own home. You finance the land, build the simplest possible dwelling (say a garage with 1 bathroom/bedroom), refi into a mortgage and get cash back and then build your \"\"real house\"\" or add on, etc. This eliminates the banks demands that come with a \"\"construction loan\"\" and saves you 10s of thousands in the process (fees, contractors, scheduling, design, etc)\"", "Inflation is basically this:  Over time, prices go up! I will now address the 3 points you have listed. Suppose over a period of 10 years, prices have doubled.  Now suppose 10 years ago I earned $100 and bought a nice pair of shoes.  Now today because prices have doubled I would have to earn $200 in order to afford the same pair of shoes.  Thus if I want to compare my earnings this year to 10 years ago, I will need to adjust for the price of goods going up.  That is, I could say that my $100 earnings 10 years ago is the same as having earned $200 today, or alternatively I could say that my earnings of $200 today is equivalent to having earned $100 10 years ago. This is a difficult question because a car is a depreciating asset, which means the real value of the car will go down in value over time. Let us suppose that inflation doesn't exist and the car you bought for $100 today will depreciate to $90 after 1 year (a 10% depreciation). But because inflation does exist, and all prices will be 0.5% higher in 1 years time, we can calculate the true selling price of the car 1 in year as follows: 0.5% of $90 = 0.005*90 = $0.45 Therefore the car will be $90 + $0.45 = $90.45 in 1 years time. If inflation is low, then the repayments do not get much easier to pay back over time because wages have not risen by as much.  Similarly the value of your underlying asset will not increase in value by as much. However as compensation, the interest rates on loans are usually lower when inflation is lower. Therefore generally it is better to get a loan in times of high inflation rather than low inflation, however it really depends on how the much the interest rates are relative to the inflation rate.", "They had the loans insured.  The only way they could lose is if US gov't didn't bail out AIG.  The customers may have a high risk of default, but there was little risk of the banks losing their money.  Besides, like AnythingApplied says, those are the kinds of people they can charge all sorts of fees to, they're a fucking gold mine."]}
+{"query": "When does it make financial sense to take advantage of employer's tuition reimbursement program?", "corpus": ["\"If you have decided to do the degree, and are simply deciding whether to accept employer funding for it or not, take the funding. I see no difference between \"\"my employer doesn't pay my tuition\"\" and \"\"my employer paid my tuition but I had to pay it back because I moved on\"\". Therefore there is no downside to letting them pay the tuition. If you want to move on before the two years (or whatever) is up, you pay back that interest free loan. You are still ahead over self funding the degree. If you have not decided to do the degree, and are letting the employer-funded tuition figure into your decision process, stop that right now. Doing a degree is hard work. You will either work much longer hours than you do now, or live on a lower salary, or more likely both. You might enjoy it, you might be worth more afterwards, and it might open the door to a raft of careers available only to those with the degree. The actual cost of the tuition is unlikely to be significant in this decision process. Removing it (by assuming the employer pays it) should still not be done. If it's worth doing when you self fund, then do it and relax knowing you won't feel trapped at your employer even if you let them pay it (or lend you the money for it if you end up leaving.)\""], "neg": ["We stopped going because of their fast pass system. When I first came across this at Legoland I was intrigued but horrified by the price. The more I think of the implications the less I like it. Too much fluff and not enough movie.", "Read the Forbes article titled IRA Adventures. While it's not the detailed regulations you certainly need, the article gives some great detail and caution. You may be able to do what you wish, but it must be structured to adhere to specific rules to avoid self dealing. Those rules would be known by the custodians who would help you set up the right structure, it's well buried within IRS regs, I'm sure. Last, in general, using IRA funds to invest in the non-traditional assets adds that other layer of risk, that the investment will be deemed non-allowed and/or self-dealing. So, even if you have the best business idea going, be sure you get proper council on this.", "yeah but most likely, it's a 1x liquidation preference. The startup isn't going to generate cash flows enough to pay off the initial investment to the investor. Technically it isn't exactly specified as only triggered on a liquidation event because OP didn't specify the real legal language but it seems likely that's the case. Point 2 is exactly what a liquidation preference is. No way the owner of the company is participating in anything until the investor gets his initial investment back.", "A bigger down payment is good, because it insulates you from the swings in the real estate market.  If you get FHA loan with 3% down and end up being forced to move during a down market, you'll be in a real bind, as you'll need to scrape up some cash or borrow funds to get out of your mortgage.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://hbr.org/2017/10/the-great-recession-drastically-changed-the-skills-employers-want) reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot) ***** > In recent research we investigate how the demand for skills changed over the Great Recession.  > In summary, we find that businesses more severely affected by the Great Recession were more likely to invest in new technology, and while this technology may have helped replace some forms of routine jobs, it apparently increased the demand for greater worker skills for other routine jobs.  > Public policy has yet to figure out how to reallocate workers on a large scale following a recession, or provide for training in the new skills demanded by employers, but the need to do so is likely only to grow.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/77hsq1/the_great_recession_drastically_changed_the/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~231561 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*: **skill**^#1 **job**^#2 **Recession**^#3 **technology**^#4 **change**^#5\"", "It just states that the price doesn't justify the valuation which is not a factual statement. Also this is based on someones opinion of the companies P/E. The P/E was published and public information and idiots on both the buy and sell side jumped in.   The article does not make a factual claim about Fraud (cooking the books), Francine McKenna speculates that management  and auditors cooked the books.", "Aeroprop, is one of the pinnacle leading propeller manufacturer organisation, who've greater than sixty five years of experience, along with all these items we carry out a huge range of Non-Destructive Testing inclusive of magnetic particle and eddy modern inspections, We test on housing gadgets propellers and different additives to come across microscopic cracks  or flaws that cannot be unseen through the naked eye.The Aeroprop Prop Cylinder Flush focused on first-class one product line, so whether or not it’s a 2-blade metallic propeller or a 6-blade composite device, our understanding of Hartzell plane propellers is remarkable. If you name for the super in your plane, don’t accept whatever a great deal much less. Aeroprop has been the leader in aircraft Hartzellpropeller structures for nearly a century."]}
+{"query": "Is Peter Lynch talking about the Dividend Adjusted PEG Ratio in this quote?", "corpus": ["Essentially, yes, Peter Lynch is talking about the PEG Ratio. The Price/Earnings to Growth (PEG) Ratio is where you take the p/e ratio and then divide that by the growth rate (which should include any dividends).  A lower number indicates that the stock is undervalued, and could be a good buy. Lynch's metric is the inverse of that: Growth rate divided by the p/e ratio.  It is the same idea, but in this case, a higher number indicates a good value for buying. In either case, the idea behind this ratio is that a fairly priced stock will have the p/e ratio equal the growth rate.  When your growth rate is larger than your p/e ratio, you are theoretically looking at an undervalued stock."], "neg": ["http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11584 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11583 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11582 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11581 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11580 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11579 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11578 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11577 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11576 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11575 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11574 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11573 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11572 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11571 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11570 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11569 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11568 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11567 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11566 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11565 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11564 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11563 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11562 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11561 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11560 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11559 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11558 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11557 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11556 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11555 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11554 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11553 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11552 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11551 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11550 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11549 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11548 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11547 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11546 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11545 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11544 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11543 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11542 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11541 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11540 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11539 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11538 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11537 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11536 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11535 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11534 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11533 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11532 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11531 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11530 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11529 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11528 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11527 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11526 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11525 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11524 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11523 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11522 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11521 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11520 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11519 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11518 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11517 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11516 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11515 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?13,11514 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11469 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11468 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11467 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11466 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11465 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11464 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11463 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11462 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11461 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11460 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11459 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11458 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11457 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11456 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11455 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11454 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11453 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11452 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11451 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11450 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11449 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11448 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11447 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11446 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11445 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11444 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11443 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11442 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11441 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11440 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11439 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11438 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11437 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11436 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11435 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11434 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11433 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11432 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11431 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11430 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11429 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11428 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11427 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11426 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11425 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11424 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11423 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11422 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11421 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11420 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11419 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11418 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11417 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11416 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11415 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11414 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11413 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11412 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11411 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11410 http://www.wuug.org/read.php?10,11409", "Why is Facebook a favorite pick among business owners? Easy, with its growing popularity as the most visited social network, Facebook provides a viable platform to start, sustain a seller-buyer and create relationship. Facebook makes it to the top list among business owners whose aim is not only to gain a wide market outreach, but also to create and sustain a closer, intimate relationship with actual and potential customers on the web. So, what makes Facebook marketing for business the best online tool? Because it works in four ways ...", "Your current web-site is fairly quickly growing to be certainly one of my top feature. So, I just stumbled on creative weblog and I just need to state that this amazing is a nice blog post. Bless you pertaining to this kind of knowledge.", "Because most people can barely manage to operate a can opener, let alone do anything worthwhile, so these retards are upset because they think they're something special and they're probably garbage men posing online as special forces MBAs or some shit.  The downvote is probably proof that I'm right more than anything.", "It's got nothing to do with whether or not it's true or painful.  It's about intelligence, or more accurately, the lack thereof.  Your comment was incredibly stupid and showed all the wisdom and maturity of a middle-school student on the short bus.  It was so stupid that my stupid-ometer broke trying to measure it.  How do you even manage to tie your shoes in the morning, you fucking idiot?", "The product descriptions for FFA swaps and options can be found here:  http://www.lchclearnet.com/freight/ffas/products.asp The index (e.g. the BFA) is based on the settlement prices of the P2, P2A, and C4 contracts and the panamax TC routes.  As such it's just a performance index and replicates the returns you'd get from holding a portfolio of the constituents. I think from the clearing descriptions everything should be clear.  The wording in the link on the Baltic Exchange website is a bit nebulous.  I think they mean standardised instead of specified.  Because that's what sets the FFABA apart from OTC agreements or OTC spot markets. Edit: For more information on financial instruments in general see the Handbook of Financial Instuments.  I haven't got the latest edition but I doubt he will mention FFAs, CFSAs, or anything that's specific to maritime markets but after all they're just plain forward agreements over a not-so-common underlying.", "I ignored nothing. Click the Wikipedia link I provided, sort by UN R/P 10%, in descending order. Now look at the top 30. Overlap with the top 30 on the [HDI](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_Human_Development_Index)? Zero.  As for your anecdote... the fact that you try to justify a sweeping statement about *international economics throughout history* - and one that happens to contradict just about every piece of data in existence - by talking about your own, personal experiences gives me the distinct impression that talking economics with you might just be a waste of time."]}
+{"query": "What effect does a company's earnings have on the price of its stock?", "corpus": ["\"No, the stock market is not there for speculation on corporate memorabilia.  At its base, it is there for investing in a business, the point of the investment being, of course, to make money.  A (successful) business earns money, and that makes it valuable to its owners since that money can be distributed to them.  Shares of stock are pieces of business ownership, and so are valuable.   If you knew that the business would have profit of $10,000,000 every year, and would distribute that to the owners of each of its 10,000,000 shares each year, you would know to that each share would receive $1 each year.  How much would such a share be worth to you?  If you could instead put money in a bank and get 5% a year back, to get $1 a year back you would have to put $20 into the bank.  So maybe that share of stock is worth about $20 to you.  If somebody offers to sell you such a share for $18, you might buy it; for $23, maybe you pass up the offer. But business is uncertain, and how much profit the business will make is uncertain and will vary through time.  So how much is a share of a real business worth?  This is a much harder call, and people use many different ways to come up with how much they should pay for a share.  Some people probably just think something like \"\"Apple is a good company making money, I'll buy a share at whatever price it is being offered at right now.\"\"  Others look at every number available, build models of the company and the economy and the risks, all to estimate what a share might be worth, more or less.  There is no indisputable value for a share of a successful business. So, what effect does a company's earnings have on the price of its stock?  You can only say that for some of the people who might buy or sell shares, higher earnings will, all other thing being equal, have them be willing to spend more to buy it or demand more when selling it.  But how much more is not quantifiable but depends on each person's approach to the problem.  Higher earnings would tend to raise the price of the stock.  Yet there are other factors, such as people who had expected even higher earnings, whose actions would tend to lower the price, and people who are OK with the earnings now, but suspect trouble for the business is appearing on the horizon, whose actions would also tend to lower the price. This is why people say that a stock's price is determined by supply and demand.\""], "neg": ["This is a good example of the hellish cycle of dictatorship and corruption.  It happens time and time again: a dictator strangles the country and its institutions for years. He finally dies/gives up power and those in line behind him quickly start attacking the remnants of his family and regime. But are they doing it for the good of the country or for their own benefit, so that they can expunge the previous regime only to get their own iron grip on power?  On the one hand, prosecuting a corrupt regime is necessary. On the other hand, it only brings up lasting positive results if it's because the free, independent institutions are actually acting in the public interest rather than to allow a new regime to establish total power.  At the end of the day this shows one thing: people don't matter, what matters are processes, laws, and institutional independence.  As long as the country's institutions are vulnerable, the people at the top will change but the way the country is run will not.  Time will tell which one it is in Uzbekistan.", "Not all cars but just those < $25k (Skoda, Nissans, VW, Ford, Renault )!! Economic class vehicles, which basically are driven by the middle class.   While elite automobiles (anything above this) and to pleasure of the oligarchs and politicians, will continue to pour in. So in the <$25k segment either Russian built or from non-sanctioned nations (S.Korea-? and China), the prices will obviously inflate dramatically with the decrease in supply.   The poor and middle class are the only ones going to suffer with this. This fucking economics 101, if not common-sense !!! Either they are too stupid to realize this or this is just some machiavelic plan !!  edit: [В Госдуме сообщили о возможном запрете на ввоз авто дешевле 800 тысяч рублей](http://lenta.ru/news/2014/08/19/avto/) -- The State Duma has reported a possible ban on the import of cheaper car 800 thousand rubles", "\"Sure my dude. I'm not disagreeing with them being irrelevant outliers in terms of this data, I'm just disagreeing with you saying \"\"lottery\"\" like they didn't have to put any effort in. Becoming a pro athlete is a shit ton of work\"", "Unfortunately when you deal with options you are going to have to accept some exposure to your greeks. So in your example, you could just buy back month ATM calls. Although delta is going to be pretty static across your portfolio (at least for say the first year, depending on ultima/zomma and other third order greeks) which will keep your lambdas in check, you're still exposed to vega which will ultimately skew lambdas across the board.   Such are the caveats of options - in order to obtain leverage you will need to take a *less* passive outlook, but not by much.", "\"Careful with the \"\"stock stolen from your account\"\" thing.  SIPC protects investors against broker/dealer insolvency.  Don't think they provide protection against theft.\"", "Here's an Irish government publication that should give you some background information to get you started. In a nutshell, you get tax benefits, but cannot withdraw money without penalty until you reach retirement age.", "Take a look at this: http://code.google.com/p/stock-portfolio-manager/ It is an open source project aimed to manage your stock portfolio."]}
+{"query": "How to share income after marriage and kids?", "corpus": ["\"My suggestion would be that you're looking at this the wrong way, though for good reasons.  Once you are a family, you should - and, in most cases I've seen, will - think of things differently than you do now. Right now, your post above is written from a selfish perspective.  Not to be insulting, and not implying selfish is a bad thing - I don't mean it negatively.  But it is how you're defining this problem: from a self-interested, selfish point of view.  \"\"Fair\"\" and \"\"unfair\"\" only have meaning from this point of view; something can only be unfair to you if you come from a self-centered viewpoint. Try to think of this from a family-centric viewpoint, and from your significant other's point of view. You're absolutely right to want both of you to be independent financially as far as is possible; but think about what that means from all three points of view (your family's, yours, and hers)? Exactly what it means will depend on the two of you separately and together, but I would encourage you to start with a few basics that make it likely you'll find a common ground: First of all, ensure your significant other has a retirement account of her own that is funded as well as yours is.  This will both make life easier if you split up, and give her a safety net if something happens to you than if you have all of the retirement savings.  I don't know how your country manages pensions or retirement accounts, but figure out how to get her into something that is as close to equal to yours as possible. Make sure both of you have similar quality credit histories.  You should both have credit cards in your own names (or be true joint owners of the accounts, not just authorized users, where that is possible), and both be on the mortgage/etc. when possible.  This is a common issue for women whose spouse dies young and who have no credit history.  (Thanks @KateGregory for reminding me on this one) Beyond that, work out how much your budget allows for in spending money for the two of you, and split that equally.  This spending money (i.e., \"\"fun money\"\" or money you can do whatever you like with) is what is fundamentally important in terms of financial independence: if you control most of the extra money, then you're the one who ultimately has control over much (vacations, eating out, etc.) and things will be strained.  This money should be equal - whether it is literally apportioned directly (each of you has 200 a month in an account) or simply budgeted for with a common account is up to you, whatever works best for your personal habits; separate accounts works well for many here to keep things honest. When that money is accounted for, whatever it is, split the rest of the bills up so that she pays some of them from her income.  If she wants to be independent, some of that is being in the habit of paying bills on time.  One of you paying all of the bills is not optimal since it means the other will not build good habits.  For example, my wife pays the warehouse club credit card and the cell phone bill, while I pay the gas/electric utilities. Whatever doesn't go to spending money and doesn't go to the bills she's personally responsible for or you're responsible for (from your paycheck) should go to a joint account.  That joint account should pay the larger bills - mortgage/rent, in particular - and common household expenses, and both of you should have visibility on it.  For example, our mortgage, day-care costs, major credit card (which includes most of our groceries and other household expenses) come from that joint account. This kind of system, where you each have equal money to spend and each have some household responsibilities, seems the most reasonable to me: it incurs the least friction over money, assuming everyone sticks to their budgeted amounts, and prevents one party from being able to hold power over another. It's a system that seems likely to be best for the family as a unit.  It's not \"\"fair\"\" from a self-centered point of view, but is quite fair from a family-centered point of view, and that is the right point of view when you are a family, in my opinion. I'll emphasize here also that it is important that no one party hold the power, and this is set up to avoid that, but it's also important that you not use your earning power as a major arguing point in this system.  You're not \"\"funding her lifestyle\"\" or anything like that: you're supporting your family, just as she is.  If she were earning more than you, would you cut your hours and stay at home?  Trick question, as it happens; regardless of your answer to that question, you're still at the same point: both of you are doing the thing you're best suited for (or, the thing you prefer).  You're both supporting the family, just in different ways, and suggesting that your contribution is more valuable than hers is a great way to head down the road to divorce: it's also just plain incorrect.  My wife and I are in almost the identical situation - 2 kids, she works part time in the biological sciences while spending plenty of time with the kids, I'm a programmer outearning her significantly - and I can tell you that I'd more than happily switch roles if she were the bread earner, and would feel just as satisfied if not more doing so. And, I can imagine myself in that position, so I can also imagine how I'd feel in that position as far as how I value my contribution.\""], "neg": ["Never borrow money to get a tax deduction. Even 18 months interest free is a stupid risk to save a few $ in taxes (we're talking $1K or less in tax savings from what I can tell in your questions).", "Shop Navratri Ethnic clothing for women at discounted prices at ethnic-rack.com. Free Shipping on order over $99. Use Coupon FESTIVE13 (for 13% off), FESTIVE17 (for 17% off), and FESTIVE20 (for 20% off). HURRY UP OFFER FOR LIMITED TIME PERIOD. Grab the Opportunity.", "\"When you buy a put option, you're buying the right to sell stock at the \"\"strike\"\" price. To understand why you have to pay separately for that, consider the other side of the transaction. If I agree to trade stock for money at above market rates, I need to make up the difference somewhere or face bankruptcy.  That risk of loss is what the option price is about. You might assume that means the market expects the price of AMD to fall to 8.01 from it's current price of 8.06 by the option expiration date. But that would also mean call options below the market price is worthless. But that's not quite true; people who price options need to factor in volatility, since things change with time. The price MIGHT fall, and traders need to account for that risk. So 1.99 roughly represents the probability of AMD rising to 10. There's probably some technical analysis one can do to the chain, but I don't see any abnormality of AMD here.\"", "\"US-Australian tax treaty limits the tax the US can levy on interest payments to Australian residents at 10%. However, that is the \"\"worst\"\" situation. There are several exempted situations which your specific example may fall into where you wouldn't need to deal with the US taxes at all. I suggest contacting a tax accountant proficient in that treaty and the Australian tax law. You will still be obviously paying taxes in Australia.\"", "Eh, Five Guys just isn't that good.  Of course it is better than places like McDonalds and I haven't stepped foot in a McDonalds in at least 10 years. But why would I go to Five Guys when I can choose from at least 10 other burger joints in my area that make a much better burger for the same price or cheaper.  If anything Five Guys appeals to the people that don't know what they want and have been going to McDonalds their whole lives.", "You will have no problem doing this for one home and living in it for one or two years.  There's a recent court case with around six homes bought and sold by the same person in that time frame.  That's what you've probably heard about.  There's no hard and fast rule about when it becomes a business but here are some highlights from that court case. Among the criteria developed by the case law, the following are of   note: Constantin v. The Queen, 2014 TCC 327 (CanLII)", "Despite a fair number of views, no one besides @mbhunter answered, so I'll gather the findings of my own research here. Hopefully, this will help others in similar situations. If you spot any errors, please let me know!"]}
+{"query": "Limits and taxation of receiving gift money, in India, from a friend in Italy?", "corpus": ["\"He wants to send me money, as a gift. Do you know this friend? It could easily be a scam. What I don't know is that how much money can he send and what are the taxes that would be applicable in this case? There is no limit; you have to pay taxes as per your tax brackets. This will be added as \"\"income from other sources\"\". I'll probably be using that money to invest in stock market. If the idea is you will make profits from stock market and pay this back, you need to follow the Foreign Exchange Management Act. There are restrictions on transfer of funds outside of India.\""], "neg": ["\"Firstly, it isn't so generous.  It is a win-win, but the bank doesn't have to mail me a free box of checks with my new account, or offer free printing to compete for my business.  They already have the infrastructure to send out checks, so the actual cost for my bank to mail a check on my behalf is pretty minimal.  It might even save them some cost and reduce exposure.  All the better if they don't actually mail a check at all. Per my bank Individuals and most companies you pay using Send Money will be mailed   a paper check. Your check is guaranteed to arrive by the delivery date   you choose when you create the payment. ... A select number of companies–very large corporations such as telecoms,   utilities, and cable companies–are part of our electronic biller   network and will be paid electronically. These payments arrive within   two business days... So the answer to your question depend on what kind of bill pay you used.  If it was an electronic payment, there isn't a realistic possibility the money isn't cashed. If your bank did mail a paper check, the same rules would apply as if you did it yourself.  (I suppose it would be up to the bank.  When I checked with my bank's support this was their answer.) Therefore per this answer: Do personal checks expire? [US] It is really up to your bank whether or not they allow the check to be cashed at a later date.  If you feel the check isn't cashed quickly enough, you would have to stop payment and contact whoever you were trying to pay and perhaps start again.  (Or ask them to hustle and cash the check before you stop it.) Finally, I would bet a dime that your bank doesn't \"\"pre-fund\"\" your checks.  They are just putting a hold on the equivalent money in your account so you don't overdraw.  That is the real favor they do for you.  If you stopped the check, your money would be unfrozen and available. EDIT Please read the comment about me losing a dime; seems credible.\"", "One problem with that idea: companies don’t set out to cure a particular disease. They try various ideas to see what does what and sometimes hit on something. That sort of aimless wandering often helps in other areas and isn’t reproduced in the x-prize scenario.", "thank you for your reply. I agree that many of the 'smart drugs' that are out there are dangerous and well overused. But i feel nootropics, like lion's mane, l-theanine, and huperzine A are all pretty safe and able to help with some of the problems we face in modern work life.", "That's 100% correct. There is a long anthropological legacy of Chiefs destroying wealth as a display of power. The famous example for us American folk is potlatch ceremonies where Cheifs burned of buicks (cars). It was used as a rationale for Congress/department of Indian Affairs to renege on signed treaties.  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Potlatch", "\"There are healthy people and there are sick people. Each are that way because of their genetics, behavior, and (somewhat) luck.   To some extent health insurance is insurance, and covers that luck... But mostly the Affordable Care Act and healthCare.gov are about health care... It's a scheme to allocate burdens, not to insure against risk.   Healthy people dont think this is fair. \"\"When I invest time at the gym, invest money and time on healthy food, invest in learning healthy habits... And someone else doesn't... Why should I have to pay for their heart replacement? The freerider chooses to risk heart disease while I foot their bill, I pay twice prevention for myself and a cure for him, while he increases the cost for us all. \"\"  Genetics is a touchy subject, but... if someone has a hugely expensive heridatible disease... Should that person and their spouse bear the burdens of having and raising their kids? If they can't afford to do so, should the rest of society have to take money away from their own families to finance that family's reproduction?\"", "\"According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act: any consumer reporting agency may furnish a consumer report [...] to a person which it has reason to believe [...] intends to use the information in connection with a credit transaction involving the consumer on whom the information is to be furnished and   involving the extension of credit to, or review or collection of an account of, the consumer See p12 (section 604). The usual interpretation of this that I've heard is that a debt collection agency that owns or has been assigned a debt can make hard pulls on your credit report without your consent. This link seems to support that (and references the same part of the act, among others): According to the Fair Credit Reporting Act, [...], any business can access your credit history without your permission provided the business has a valid \"\"permissible purpose.\"\" The FCRA notes that one such permissible purpose is to review your credit information in connection with the collection of a debt. Thus, if you owe money to a debt collector, the debt collector has the legal right to pull and review your credit report. If they haven't been assigned the debt or own it outright, I believe you have a legal right to dispute it. Consult a lawyer if this is actually a situation you face.  Once use for this is if the debt collection agency has trouble locating you; since your credit report normally contains current and past addresses, this is one way to locate you.\"", "1: Gambling losses not in excess of gambling winnings can be deducted on Schedule A, line 28.  See Pub 17 (p 201).  Line 28 catches lots of deductions, and gambling losses are one of them.  See Schedule A instructions. 2: If the Mississippi state tax withheld was an income tax (which I assume it was), then it goes on Schedule A, line 5a.  In the unlikely event it was not a state or local tax on income, but some sort of excise on gambling, then it may be deductible on line 8 as another deductible tax.  It probably is not a personal property tax, which is generally levied against the value of things like cars and other movable property but not on receipts of cash; line 7 probably is not appropriate.  The most likely result, without researching Mississippi SALT, is that it was an income tax.  See Sched A Instructions for more on the differences between the types of taxes paid. Just to be clear, these statements hold if you are not engaging in poker as a profession.  If you are engaging in poker as a business, which can be difficult to establish in the IRS' eyes, then you would use Schedule C and also report business and travel expenses.  But the IRS is aware that people want to reduce their gambling income by the cost of hotels and flights to casinos, so it's a relatively high hurdle to be considered a professional poker player."]}
+{"query": "One Share Stock Reverse Split", "corpus": ["Any time there is a share adjustment from spin-off, merger, stock split, or reverse slit; there is zero chance for the stockholders to hang on to fractional shares. They are turned into cash.   For the employees in the 401K program or investors via a mutual fund or ETF this isn't a problem. Because the fraction of a share left over is compared to the thousands or millions of shares owned by the fund as a collective. For the individual investor in the company this can be a problem that they aren't happy about.  In some cases the fractional share is a byproduct that will result from any of these events. In the case of a corporate merger or spin-off most investors will not have an integer number of shares, so that fraction leftover that gets converted to cash isn't a big deal. When they want to boost the price to a specific range to meet a regulatory requirement, they are getting desperate and don't care that some will be forced out. In other cases it is by design to force many shareholders out. They want to go private. They to 1-for-1000 split. If you had less than 1000 shares pre-split then you will end up with zero shares plus cash. They know exactly what number to use. The result after the split is that the number of investors is small enough they they can now fall under a different set of regulations. They have gone dark, they don't have to file as many reports, and they can keep control of the company.  Once the Board of Directors or the majority stockholders votes on this, the small investors have no choice."], "neg": ["With the formula you are using you assume that the issued bond (bond A) is a perpetual. Given the provided information, you can't really do more than this, it's only an approximation.  The difference could be explained by the repayment of the principal (which is not the case with a perpetual). I guess the author has calculated the bond value with principal repayment.  You can get more insight in the calculation from the excel provided at this website: http://breakingdownfinance.com/finance-topics/bond-valuation/fixed-rate-bond-valuation/", "USPS has a much more complicated business then delivering packages. It also provides many more benefits to employees than something like FedEx. FedEx and UPS would figure out how to deliver a letter, but if you think they are going to your house everyday for the cost of a stamp you are mistaken.", "If you get your income in the currency you have the new loan in, there is no exchange risk for the future. Assuming that you are able to get and serve that loan, it reduces your cost, so go for it. Yes, if the currency exchange rate changes the right way over the next years, you could have made a better deal - but consider it could also go the other way. If you really want to play this game, do it separately, by trading calls/puts on the currency exchange rate. See it as a separate and decoupled investment option.", "I know, I also didn't do it justice. The guy came up with an attitude to start something. Like he was going to show us.   I'm not the one to flip out on service people. I also have worked my entire career over 20 years in the service industry. So I know what it's like to get shit on as a service person. I just have little tolerance for uncalled for hostility.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/aug/07/fossil-fuel-subsidies-are-a-staggering-5-tn-per-year) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot) ***** > According to the authors, these subsidies are important because first, they promote fossil fuel use which damages the environment.  > The authors then quantify what benefits would be achieved if the fossil fuel subsidies were reformed.  > A key motivation for the paper was to increase awareness among policy makers and the public of the large subsidies that arise from pricing fossil fuels below their true social costs-this broader definition of subsidies accounts for the many negative side effects associated with the consumption of these fuels.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6t15pc/fossil_fuel_subsidies_are_a_staggering_5_tn_per/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~188614 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*: **subsidy**^#1 **fuel**^#2 **Fossil**^#3 **authors**^#4 **cost**^#5\"", "Federal income taxes are indeed expenses, they're just not DEDUCTIBLE expenses on your 1120. Federal Income Tax Expense is usually a subcategory under Taxes. This is one of the items that will be a book-to-tax difference on Schedule M-1. I am presuming you are talking about a C corporation, as an S corporation is not likely to be paying federal taxes itself, but would pass the liability through to the members. If you're paying your personal 1040 taxes out of an S-corporation bank account, that's an owner's draw just like paying any of your personal non-business expenses. I would encourage you to get a tax professional to prepare your corporate tax returns. It's not quite as simple as TurboTax Business makes it out to be. ;) Mariette IRS Circular 230 Notice: Please note that any tax advice contained in this communication is not intended to be used, and cannot be used, by anyone to avoid penalties that may be imposed under federal tax law.", "\"I didn't bother looking for actual errors. Couldn't get through the distorted text. That guy could write a story about the \"\"bestest thing in the world\"\" and make it seem like the incarnation of evil.   It's just way too slanted to be taken at face value.\""]}
+{"query": "What does a contract's worth mean?", "corpus": ["The amount stated is the total amount of money the customer will be paying to the company. How much profit that will translate into is dependent on the type of contract.  Some types of contracts: Cost plus fixed fee: they are paid what it costs to complete the contract plus a fee on top of that. That fee represents their profits. The costs will include salary, benefits, overhead, equipment, supplies. Firm fixed price: They perform the service, and they get paid a fixed amount. If their costs are higher than they forecast, then they may lose money. If they can be more efficient than they forecast, then they make more money. Time and materials: They are paid for completing each sub-task based on the number of hours it takes to complete each sub task, plus materials. This is used to hire a company to maintain a fleet of trucks. If the trucks are used a lot they will need more standard maintenance, plus additional repairs based on the type of use. They pay X for labor and Y for materials for an oil change, but A for labor and B for materials for a complete engine rebuild.  There are many variations on these themes. Some put the risk on the customer, some on the company.  How and when the company is paid is based on the terms of the contract. Some pay X% a month, others pay based on meeting milestones. Some pay based on the number of tasks completed in each time period. Some contracts run for a specific period of time, others have an initial period plus option years. The article may or may not specify if the quoted amount is the minimum amount of the contract or the maximum amount. The impact on the stock price is much more complex. Much more needs to be known about the structure of the contract, and who will be providing the service to determine if there will be profits. Some companies will bid to lose money, if it will serve as a bridge to another contract or to fill a gap that will allow them to delay layoffs."], "neg": ["\"Read the terms by your Travel Card issuer. Travel Card cannot be used to transfer USD to an Indian Bank Account. You have to spend outside India and if there is a balance you have to request the card issuers in writing for a refund Salaries should not be credited on \"\"Travel Card\"\"\"", "Deming Electro Plating Corporation specializes in all types of electroplating and surface finishing services in New York. We provide high quality metal finishing work using top grade materials. With over 60 years of experience in electroplating services we provide fastest turnaround time on all types of finishing work. Our wide range of electroplating services includes gold plating, silver plating, nickel and chrome plating, aluminium and zinc plating and much more.", "Depends on how you look at it. If it's a flaw in the specific methodology needed to count Twitter users, and if that flaw caused duplicate counts of some segments (or failure to remove duplicate instances if you prefer that), it could cause consistent overstatement.  With that said, I'm sure they did it on purpose", "Cooking cheaply is time consuming. We cook cheaply, but we take more time to do it. May be hard for a busy family.  If you cook everything from scratch, it's usually a lot cheaper. Also pre-planning meals helps.  If you can coordinate your ingredients, you can save money.  Saving money takes time and practice. I find that when we're rushed, we waste a lot more food than when we properly take the time required.", "\"OK, I found this filing by JCI on the SEC website: U.S. Federal Income Tax Consequences of the Distribution to U.S. Holders For U.S. federal income tax purposes, the distribution will not be eligible for treatment as a tax-free distribution by Johnson Controls with respect to its stock. Accordingly, the distribution will be treated as a taxable distribution by Johnson Controls to each Johnson Controls shareholder in an amount equal to the fair market value of the Adient ordinary shares received by such shareholder (including any fractional shares deemed received and any Adient ordinary shares withheld on account of any Irish withholding taxes), determined as of the distribution date (such amount, the \"\"Distribution Amount\"\"). The Distribution Amount received by a U.S. holder will be treated as a taxable dividend to the extent of such U.S. holder's ratable share of current or accumulated earnings and profits of Johnson Controls for the taxable year of the distribution (as determined under U.S. federal income tax principles). Any portion of the Distribution Amount that is treated as a dividend will not be eligible for the dividends-received deduction allowed to corporations under the Code. My broker's 1099-B form tells me that I received a Qualified Dividend from JCI on 10/31/2016 of $512.44, which would be equivalent to $45.349 valuation of ADNT as of the spinoff date for my 11.3 shares (before the 0.3 shares were sold as cash-in-lieu) .\"", "If it is a business loan, the borrower would be able to claim a deduction for any interest paid on the loan and the lender would include the interest earned as part of their taxable income. You need to be careful on what you do and don't include as income. If the repayments made to you by the borrower in a year is $10,000 but only $8,000 of that is interest and the other $2,000 is part of the principal being returned to the lender, then you would only claim $8,000 as your income and the borrower would only claim $8,000 as a business deduction. Of course if it is interest only, then you and the borrower would use the full $10,000.", "blockchain technology does not seem to be the focal point in their startup, which usually should be when there is an ICO. A lot of the things that they say blockchain could enable them to do, could be done with a centralised database. They have a pretty experienced team in real estate though , it looks like they are using the ICO simply as an easy method of raising capital than having an innovative use of the blockchain token"]}
+{"query": "Should I use a credit repair agency?", "corpus": ["Repairing your credit takes time. Companies that offer to do it for you (for money) generally succeed mostly at getting money from you. Nonprofit agencies will help you with advice and encouragement and will not want money from you.  They may be able to help you apply for a consolidation loan, but to be honest that is rarely the best first step. Over time, you need to The last step may happen months or years after the first two."], "neg": ["what other pieces of info should I consider If you don't have liquid case available for unexpected repairs, then you probably don't want to use this money for either option.  The 7% return on the stocks is absolutely not guaranteed. There is a good amount of risk involved with any stock investment. Paying down the mortgage, by contrast, has a much lower risk. In the case of the mortgage, you know you'll get a 2.1% annual return until it adjusts, and then you can put some constraints on the return you'll get after it adjusts. In the case of stocks, it's reasonable to guess that it will return more than 2.1% annually if you hold it long enough. But there will be huge swings from month to month and from year to year. The sooner you need it, the more guaranteed you will want the return to be. If you have few or no stock (or bond)-like assets, then (nearly) all of your wealth is in your house, and that is independent of the remaining balance on your mortgage. If you are going to sell the house soon, then you will want to diversify your assets to protect you against a drop in home value. If you are going to stay in the house forever, then you will eventually need non-house assets to consume. Ultimately, neither option is inherently better; it really depends on what you need.", "Schedule E is the form you'll use. It lists nearly all deductions you can take for a rental. TurboTax Deluxe will handle it and it includes State Filing.", "Sure they do, but there's no point getting into a bidding war with the machines: it just becomes a question of whether you lose this year or next.   Employers love to use minimum wage disputes as a smokescreen for cutting labor when they automate the jobs they were going to automate anyway.", "Honestly, I’m not sure I understand your point. The figures suggest to me that the business invests (higher capex and amortisation) and grows it’s revenues and cash flow.  D&A can be higher than new capex for a number of reasons including accelerated amortisation for tax purposes.  Why is D&A contribution (actually i prefer to separate the concepts of P&L and cash flow) to operating cash flow a problem or why does it evidence manipulation?", "I'd look at VXX, I believe it closely tracks what you are looking to do. http://www.ipathetn.com/product/VXX/ However, as already noted in other responses, this isn't trading VIX itself (in fact it is impossible to do so).  Instead, this ETF gives exposure to short-term SP500 futures contracts, which in theory should be very correlated to market volatility.", "I'll break it down into steps. Total gain/ loss for the whole thing is 5 CAD. You only have to worry about these calculations if you keep some USD and convert it at your leisure.  Or if you have a US dollar in your wallet from your last vacation. Don't forget to subtract commissions (converted to CAD of course). *Some people just use an average exchange rate for the whole year, which you can also get from the BoC. ^There's $200 of tax free gains allowed for pure currency transactions.  This allows small gains to be ignored.", "\"No, not on schedule C, better. Its an \"\"above the line\"\" deduction (line 29 on your 1040). Here's the turbo tax article on it. The instructions for this line set certain limitations that you must take into the account, and yes - it is limited to the net profit from the business. One of the following statements must be true. You were self-employed and had a net profit for the year. You were a partner with net earnings from self-employment. You used one of the optional methods to figure your net earnings from self-employment on Schedule SE. You received wages in 2011 from an S corporation in which you were a more-than-2% shareholder. Health insurance premiums paid or   reimbursed by the S corporation are shown as wages on Form W-2. The insurance plan must be established under your business. Your   personal services must have been a material income-producing factor in   the business. If you are filing Schedule C, C-EZ, or F, the policy can   be either in your name or in the name of the business.\""]}
+{"query": "When's 0% financing the least costly (best) option?", "corpus": ["A Lease is an entirely different way of getting a car. In two situations it makes sense, in all other scenarios it generally doesn't make sense to lease. In the case of always wanting a new car every 2 or 3 years it can make sense to lease. Of course if you drive more the allowed miles you will pay extra at the end of the lease. If you can take the monthly lease as a business expense leasing makes sense. Otherwise you want to pay cash, or get financing. Does zero percent make sense? Sometimes. The only way to make sense of the numbers is to start with your bank, have them approve of the loan first. Then armed with the maximum loan amount they will give you and the rate and the length of the loan, then visit the dealer. You have to run the numbers for your situation. It depends on your income, your other expenses, your credit score, your bank, what deal the dealership is running, how much you have for a down payment. Here is an example. For a recent loan situation I saw: 36 months, 1.49% rate, 20K loan, total interest paid: ~$466. Armed with that information can the person get a better deal at the dealership? There was only one way to find out. In that case the credit union was better. The rebate was larger than the interest paid."], "neg": ["\"Simplistic yes, but are you seriously saying \"\"plenty of bankers were laid off\"\", even comes close to comparing percentage wise to the percent layoffs of the general workforce?  I would not say that, and that is my simplistic view.\"", "You could rent it out to hunters, or a charge a fee for camping on it. If you log it, you can often get Federal assistance in paying for replanting. You can also get certifications that your timber is being grown and harvested sustainably, making future timber more valuable, while minimizing the environmental impacts of harvesting on the property.  You also may be able to get mitigation credits for restoring and maintaining the land. The credits can be sold to developers in the same watershed to cover the taxes.", "blockchain technology does not seem to be the focal point in their startup, which usually should be when there is an ICO. A lot of the things that they say blockchain could enable them to do, could be done with a centralised database. They have a pretty experienced team in real estate though , it looks like they are using the ICO simply as an easy method of raising capital than having an innovative use of the blockchain token", "Is the growth sustainable at the company you're currently at?  Did you have a hand in driving a success metric at your company (either by bringing in more clients, or bigger clients than the other guy)? If so, point it out and ask for a raise before you leave.  If you leave would you be able to mimic the success you've had direct contribution to at your current position to success at the other one? If so, leverage that and the raise you asked for into higher pay at the next stop.", "Well I found out the hard way one way Best Buy might not be getting enough business:  they don't open until 1000.  Other stores in my area open either 0800 or 0900.  Granted Best Buy may have other problems, but now I don't even think of them when I need an item that morning for a job (electronic installations) because of those hours.", "\"If you were making that large of a payment (via a cashiers check or other   withdrawal means from a cash account)   to a credit card, would the payment   generate a Cash Transaction Report? Probably, yes. If it does require the bank to make a CTR, then is there any harm in   that or anything to be concerned about   (like that transaction appearing   suspicious, personal reporting   implications, etc.)? Are there any   other reasons why one might want to   make sure payments to a credit card   are broken up made* in amounts smaller   than $10K? You should be concerned if you cannot explain the source of the money (legally...). If you withdrew cash from your own account and paid your credit card with it, in case of questions asked you can show the account statement with the matching withdrawal, and you're done. The point in this report is to point at people who move around large amounts of cash. Usually, people pay credit cards with checks or ACH transactions, but if you want cash - it's your right, as long as the cash was obtained legally. But if you're paying your credit cards off with the cash you got as a bribe or by selling cocaine on the streets, then you should be worried. By the way, breaking into smaller payments may not save you from being reported to the money laundering detection agencies. The report is per transaction, not per payment, so if the credit card statement is $11K and you pay $5K and $6K - the transaction is still $11K. Also, the bank can file a report even if it is not required (it was clarified in the other answer to the same question you're referring to), if the clerk thinks the transaction is suspicious. This leaves the decision on filing a report solely on the banks \"\"common sense\"\" and internal policies which you don't know. So even paying $10 in cash may trigger a report if the bank suspects wrongdoing.\"", "\"not all employers went through that. much of that is often inherited. and otherwise, thats a terrible way of reasoning, you should seek to make the path of those who follow you easier than it was when you had the same. the \"\"i got mine\"\" mentality is a plague.\""]}
+{"query": "Is it smarter to buy a small amount of an ETF every 2 or 3 months, instead of monthly?", "corpus": ["I personally invest in 4 different ETFs.  I have $1000 to invest every month.  To save on transaction costs, I invest that sum in only one ETF each month, the one that is most underweight at the time. For example, I invest in XIC (30%), VTI (30%), VEA (30%), and VWO (10%).  One month, I'll buy XIC, next month VTA, next month, VEA, then XIC again.  Eventually I'll buy VWO when it's $1000 underweight.  If one ETF tanks, I may buy it twice in a row to reach my target allocation, or if it shoots up, I may skip buying it for a while.  My actual asset allocation never ends up looking exactly like the target, but it trends towards it.  And I only pay one commission a month. If this is in a tax-sheltered account (main TFSA or RRSP), another option is to invest in no-load index mutual funds that match the ETFs each month (assuming there's no commission to buy them).  Once they reach a certain amount, sell and buy the equivalent ETFs.  This is not a good approach in a non-registered account because you will have to pay tax on any capital gains when selling the mutual funds."], "neg": ["Whenever you put less than 20% down, you are usually required to pay private mortgage insurance (PMI) to protect the lender in case you default on your loan.  You pay this until you reach 20% equity in your home.  Check out an amortization calculator to see how long that would take you.  Most schedules have you paying more interest at the start of your loan and less principal.  PMI gets you nothing - no interest or principal paid - it's throwing money away in a very real sense (more in this answer).  Still, if you want to do it, make sure to add PMI to the cost per month. It is also possible to get two mortgages, one for your 20% down payment and one for the 80%, and avoid PMI.  Lenders are fairly cautious about doing that right now given the housing crash, but you may be able to find one who will let you do the two mortgages.  This will raise your monthly payment in its own way, of course. Also remember to factor in the costs of home ownership into your calculations.  Check the county or city website to figure out the property tax on that home, divide by twelve, and add that number to your payment.  Estimate your homeowners insurance (of course you get to drop renters insurance, so make sure to calculate that on the renting side of the costs) and divide the yearly cost by 12 and add that in.  Most importantly, add 1-2% of the value of the house yearly for maintenance and repair costs to your budget.  All those costs are going to eat away at your 3-400 a little bit.  So you've got to save about $70 a month towards repairs, etc. for the case of every 10-50 years when you need a new roof and so on. Many experts suggest having the maintenance money in savings on top of your emergency fund from day one of ownership in case your water heater suddenly dies or your roof starts leaking.  Make sure you've also estimated closing costs on this house, or that the seller will pay your costs.  Otherwise you loose part of that from your down payment or other savings. Once you add up all those numbers you can figure out if buying is a good proposition.  With the plan to stay put for five years, it sounds like it truly might be.  I'm not arguing against it, just laying out all the factors for you. The NYT Rent Versus Buy calculator lays out most of these items in terms of renting or buying, and might help you make that decision. EDIT: As Tim noted in the comments below, real monthly cost should take into account deductions from mortgage interest and property tax paid.  This calculator can help you figure that out.  This question will be one to watch for answers on how to calculate cost and return on home buying, with the answer by mbhunter being an important qualification", "\"I have a client who is a janitor, makes over 100k. This is a fact. NYC not being \"\"typical\"\" is the whole point. Cost of living is much higher but still get lumped in with everyone else when they make these arbitrary income cutoffs for things.\"", "True. Pat Quinn tried hard and got no where....and Rauner is having the same issue. This isn't going to be fixed by a governor, it needs proper leadership within the ILGA. Or, stating as a Democratic voter myself, there needs to be more Republicans in the ILGA.", "> The simple undeniable truth is that the Jews are at the root cause of all strife and misery and terrorism in the world today.  Never mind terrorism by Jews, it's much worse them using blood from gentile children for their rituals.", "Yes, it's completely normal to buy (and sell) puts and other options without holding the underlying.  However, every (US) brokerage I know of only permits this within a margin account.  I don't know why...probably a legal reason.  You don't actually have to use the margin in a margin account.  If you want to trade options, though, you will need a margin account.", "Productivity *can* increase, but it doesn't have to. Productivity can remain the same but if you've got two people competing for one job they bid wages lower since even a lower wage is better (up to a point in welfare state) to no wage at all. It's why so many jobs went to southeast Asia, they bid a wage lower than their competitors on the international market and the jobs migrated to them. Now that they're bidding their wages up that no longer applies to the same extent it once did (and it's why, for example, [Google built their new manufacturing plant in the US](http://www.nytimes.com/2012/06/28/technology/google-and-others-give-manufacturing-in-the-us-a-try.html?_r=1&pagewanted=all)).", "\"The new Tesla car with exchangeable battery means that the battery is not owned by you. How can the batteries owned (and paid) by you if every time you exchange them with batteries of unknown past, owners and quality?  If you want to insist to own your batteries and charge them at home, then, yes, you will have to pay for your set of batteries, but then why would you exchange YOUR batteries for another set with unknown past and owners?  Let me explain it in a different way: Nobody pays their share of the cost of the expensive Electric infrastructure needed to supply their home with electricity. You just pay as you consume. Yes, part of what you pay is to cover the costs of the infrastructure, but big consumers of electricity (factories and businesses) covered much more of that than the individual home owner.  Yes, electric car batteries are expensive but you don't need to pay for them if the arrangement is \"\"pay as you go\"\".  With conventional car, would you like to pay $1000s of Dollars for huge tank and fill it with gas, so you don't have to \"\"pay as you go\"\"?  Also, if we exchange batteries as we go, we don't need such expensive batteries. They can be cheaper (not cheapest) batteries that have less range.\""]}
+{"query": "Can the Securities Investor Protection Corporation (SIPC) itself go bankrupt?", "corpus": ["\"SIPC is a corporation - a legal entity separate from its owners. In the case of SIPC, it is funded through the fees paid by its members. All the US brokers are required to be members and to contribute to SIPC funds. Can it go bankrupt? Of course. Any legal entity can go bankrupt. A person can go bankrupt. A country can go bankrupt. And so can anything in between. However, looking at the history of things, there are certain assumptions that can be made. These are mere guesses, as there's no law about any of these things (to the best of my knowledge), but seeing how things were - we can try and guess that they will also be like this in the future. I would guess, that in case of a problem for the SIPC to meet its obligation, any of the following would happen (or combinations): Too big to fail - large insurance companies had been bailed out before by the governments since it was considered that their failure would be more destructive to the economy than the bailout. AIG as an example in the US. SIPC is in essence is an insurance company. So is Lloyd's of London. Breach of trust of the individual investors that can lead to a significant market crash. That's what happened in the US to Fannie Mae and Freddie Mac. They're now \"\"officially\"\" backed by the US government. If SIPC is incapable of meeting its obligation, I would definitely expect the US government to step in, even though there's no such obligation. Raising funds through charging other members. If the actuary calculations were incorrect, the insurance companies adjust them and raise premiums. That is what should happen in this case as well. While may not necessarily solve a cashflow issue, in the long term it will allow SIPC to balance, so that bridge loans (from the US government/Feds/public bonds) could be used in between. Not meeting obligations, i.e.: bankruptcy. That is an option, and insurance companies have gone bankrupt before. Not unheard of, but from the past experience - again, I'd expect the US government to step in. In general, I don't see any significant difference between SIPC in the US and a \"\"generic\"\" insurance coverage elsewhere. Except that in the US SIPC is mandatory, well regulated, and the coverage is uniform across brokerages, which is a benefit to the consumer.\""], "neg": ["the spite machine thinks capitalism determines the best price for society or whatever people think society should be.  People seem to be confused, without regulatory authority, if there's an extra dollar to be made, capitalism will go for it.  The same can be said of things such as letting 1000 people die or getting tax breaks. If they're economically equivelent choices, capitalism will just flip a coin.", "Questions regarding loans, refinancing, mortgages, credit cards, investing and anything else that may be related to personal finance should be directed towards the subreddit r/personalfinance. We have provided the link to that subreddit below.   [---->  Over there on the sidebar.](http://www.reddit.com/r/personalfinance/) Jus' say'in.", "\"You make it look like the US is the leader in import taxes on vehicles. According to this [source](http://www.caranddriver.com/features/free-trade-cars-why-a-useurope-free-trade-agreement-is-a-good-idea-feature), \"\"The standard tariff for importing cars to the U.S. is 2.5 percent of their value. For pickup trucks and commercial vans, the tariff is a whopping 25 percent. Individual European countries don’t charge import duties, but the European Union charges a flat rate of 10 percent on imported automobiles.\"\"  When Trump says the US has been screwed over in their trade deals, he's not (always) talking out of his ass.\"", "Yup. I know a lot of people who said they'd vote for Sanders, but then didn't vote Democrat when Clinton won the primary (whether than meant voting third party, voting Trump or not voting at all). It was not some last minute impulse by these people to do this as Clinton seems to be making it out to be, it was a long held belief.", "I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:  - [/r/talkbusiness] [How much of an equity gap should Co-founders starting at same time have? (If any gap at all).](https://np.reddit.com/r/talkbusiness/comments/7897ih/how_much_of_an_equity_gap_should_cofounders/)  [](#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)", "Frederic Mishkin wrote a few text books on financial concepts that are widely used in colleges.  If you're not looking for a textbook - I'd really recommend Khan Academy on YouTube.  He's got some great videos on supply and demand - bonds, exchange rates - monetary policy by the federal reserve. All academically sound. They're very easy to digest and watch over again for reference.", "There is more than a single reason why TVIX loses value over time. Futures curve. VIX is always expected to trend up when under 20(although this could change in the future). This means 1 month away futures contracts are bought at a premium closer to 20. If the .VIX stayed flat at 15, by the end of the month, that contract is only worth about 15. meaning you lost 25%. This affects all VIX ETFs and makes inverse VIX ETFs attractive to hold(if you don't mind your account blowing up periodically). Leverage decay. if VIX goes down 25% two consecutive days, your x2 ETF(TVIX, UVXY) goes down 75%. Even if it doubled back to yesterday's value next day, you'd still be 25% down. ETF funding costs. The fund managers take some money from the pot every day."]}
+{"query": "Forex vs day trading for beginner investor", "corpus": ["Forex vs Day Trading: These can be one and the same, as most people who trade forex do it as day trading. Forex is the instrument you are trading and day trading is the time frame you are doing it in. If your meaning from your question was comparing trading forex vs stocks, then it depends on a number of things. Forex is more liquid so most professional traders prefer it as it can be easier to get in and out without being gapped. However, if you are not trading large amounts of money and you stay away from more volatile stocks, this should not matter too much. It may also depend on what you understand more and prefer to trade. You need to be comfortable with what you are trading. If on the other hand you are referring to day trading vs longer term trading and/or investing, then this can depend largely on the instrument you are trading and the time frame you are more comfortable with. Forex is used more for shorter term trading, from day trading to having a position open for a couple of days. Stocks on the other hand can be day traded to traded over days, weeks, months or years. It is much more common to have positions open for longer periods with stocks. Other instruments like commodities, can also be traded over different time frames. The shorter the time frame you trade the higher risk involved as you have to make quick decisions and be happy with making a lot of smaller gains with the potential to make a large loss if things go wrong. It is best once again to chose a time frame you are comfortable with. I tend to trade Australian stocks as I know them well and am comfortable with them. I usually trade in the medium to long term, however I let the market decide how long I am in a position and when I get out of it. I try to follow the trend and stay in a position as long as the trend continues. I put automatic stop losses on all my positions, so if the market turns against me I am automatically taken out. I can be in a position for as little as a day (can happen if I buy one day and the next day the stock falls by 15% or more) to over a year (as long as the trend continues). By doing this I avoid the daily market noise and let my profits run and keep my losses small. No matter what instrument you end up trading and the time frame you choose to trade in, you should always have a tested trading plan and a risk management strategy in place. These are the areas you should first gain knowledge in to further your pursuits in trading."], "neg": ["\"Articles like this are the reason why nothing will ever change. Accusing Walmart of \"\"refusing\"\" to raise wages and \"\"abusing\"\" its employees is what you say when you're a small time blogger that just wants hits.\"", "Sorry, I don't think a bounty is the issue here. You seem to understand LTV means the bank you are talking to will lend you 60% of the value of the home you wish to purchase. You can't take the dollars calculated and simply buy a smaller house.  To keep the numbers simple, you can get a $600K mortgage on a $1M house. That's it. You can get a $540K mortgage on a $900K house, etc.  Now, 60% LTV is pretty low. It might be what I'd expect for rental property or for someone with bad or very young credit history. The question and path you're on need to change. You should understand that the 'normal' LTV is 80%, and for extra cost, in the form of PMI (Private Mortgage Insurance) you can even go higher. As an agent, I just sold a home to a buyer who paid 3% down.  The way you originally asked the question has a simple answer. You can't do what you're asking.", "I stock is only worth what someone will pay for it.  If you want to sell it you will get market price which is the bid.", "I wouldn't use it to take leverage unless you don't mind loosing your entire investment (this is a possibility as shares are already quite volatile). However, you don't have to take leverage and still trade CFDs. Benefits of doing so: Disadvantages:", "Most UK stock brokers don't require or allow margin trading.  A quick web search for 'UK share dealing comparison' shows entries from money.co.uk and moneysupermarket.com who both provide lists of different brokers, e.g. Barclays, Hargraves Lansdown, IG Share Dealing, The Share Centre, TD Direct, Interactive Investor, YouInvest, etc. Some of the UK banks also provide a share dealing service, from quickly looking at their websites, Barclays, HSBC and Halifax all appear to provide share dealing services.", "It would make their garbage look better as compared to other sovereigns, they will re-bundle the toxic assets it into some crap alphabets and try to make them look as good as Treasuries and sell them. Hence the synchronous downgrades of China, Hongkong, Britain", "Unless this would have resulted in hurting other people (eg toxic spills) y'all should have called in sick. Fuck the company that allowed thus to happen. Care to tell Ys which one is it so those who want can boycott its products if possible?"]}
+{"query": "How do I screen for stocks that are near to their 52 weeks low", "corpus": ["There is a great 3rd party application out there that I use (I am a broker) along with my internal analysts and other 3rd party sources.  VectorVest has a LOT of technical information, but is very easy to use.  It will run any kind of screen you like, including low 52 week numbers.  (No, I don't get anything for recommending them.)"], "neg": ["Well, I can tell you that most of the executive staff at GoDaddy don't even live in Phoenix where HQ is.  They fly in sometime on Monday (some on Sunday, to be fair) and then work until sometime late Thursday and fly home.  Long weekends, every weekend.  The rest of us (when I worked there) enjoyed our quiet Mondays and Fridays.", "\"I signed the checks \"\"JoeTaxpayer, parent\"\" and never had an issue with my bank. Note, I am in the US, and my experience may just be with my particular bank.\"", "How about a serious update, the place hasnt changed much since I was in 2nd grade and I'm 34 now. With global warming and the way our oceans are threatened you could see the highest yoy growth ever. C'mon get with the times, tell us about the sea!", "I have about $1K in savings, and have been told that you should get into investment and saving for retirement early. I make around $200 per week, which about $150 goes into savings. That's $10k per year.  The general rule of thumb is that you should have six months income as an emergency fund.  So your savings should be around $5k.  Build that first.   Some argue that the standard should be six months of living expenses rather than income.  Personally, I think that this example is exactly why it is income rather than living expenses.  Six months of living expenses in this case would only be $1250, which won't pay for much.  And note that living expenses can only be calculated after the fact.  If your estimate of $50 a week is overly optimistic, you might not notice for months (until some large living expense pops up).   Another problem with using living expenses as the measure is that if you hold down your living expenses to maximize your savings, this helps both measures.  Then you hit your savings target, and your living expenses increase.  So you need more savings.  By contrast, if your income increases but your living expenses do not, you still need more savings but you can also save more money.  Doesn't really change the basic analysis though.  Either way you have an emergency savings target that you should hit before starting your retirement savings.   If you save $150 per week, then you should have around $4k in savings at the beginning of next year.  That's still low for an emergency fund by the income standard.  So you probably shouldn't invest next year.  With a living expenses standard, you could have $6250 in savings by April 15th (deadline for an IRA contribution that appears in the previous tax year).  That's $5000 more than the $1250 emergency fund, so you could afford an IRA (probably a Roth) that year.   If you save $7500 next year and start with $4k in savings (under the income standard for emergency savings), that would leave you with $11,500.  Take $5500 of that and invest in an IRA, probably a Roth.  After that, you could make a $100 deposit per week for the next year.  Or just wait until the end.   If you invested in an IRA the previous year because you decided use the living expenses standard, you would only have $6500 at the end of the year.  If you wait until you have $6750, you could max out your IRA contribution.  At that point, your excess income for each year would be larger than the maximum IRA contribution, so you could max it out until your circumstances change.   If you don't actually save $3k this year and $7500 next year, don't sweat it.  A college education is enough of an investment at your age.  Do that first, then emergency savings, then retirement.   That will flip around once you get a better paying, long term job.  Then you should include retirement savings as an expected cost.  So you'd pay the minimum required for your education loans and other required living expenses, then dedicate an amount for retirement savings, then build your emergency savings, then pay off your education loans (above the minimum payment).  This is where it can pay to use the more aggressive living expenses standard, as that allows you to pay off your education loans faster.   I would invest retirement savings in a nice, diversified index fund (or two since maintaining the correct stock/bond mix of 70%-75% stocks is less risky than investing in just bonds much less just stocks).  Investing in individual stocks is something you should do with excess money that you can afford to lose.  Secure your retirement first.  Then stock investments are gravy if they pan out.  If they don't, you're still all right.  But if they do, you can make bigger decisions, e.g. buying a house.   Realize that buying individual stocks is about more than just buying an app.  You have to both check the fundamentals (which the app can help you do) and find other reasons to buy a stock.  If you rely on an app, then you're essentially joining everyone else using that app.  You'll make the same profit as everyone else, which won't be much because you all share the profit opportunities with the app's system.  If you want to use someone else's system, stick with mutual funds.  The app system is actually more dangerous in the long term.   Early in the app's life cycle, its system can produce positive returns because a small number of people are sharing the benefits of that system.  As more people adopt it though, the total possible returns stay the same.  At some point, users saturate the app.  All the possible returns are realized.  Then users are competing with each other for returns.  The per user returns will shrink as usage grows.   If you have your own system, then you are competing with fewer people for the returns from it.  Share the fundamental analysis, but pick your stocks based on other criteria.  Fundamental analysis will tell you if a stock is overvalued.  The other criteria will tell you which undervalued stock to buy.", "Almost every company carries massive debt. From a financial standpoint a company that has less than 70% of it's capital in debt is not utilizing it's growth potential.   There are a few companies that buck this trend but the vast majority of corporations carry absolutely massive debt at all time. Yes even the profitable ones. As long as they pay according to the plan all is well.", "Two weeks ago I used Megabus to get from Central PA to NYC (4 hour trip).  It's cheaper, less stressful, and the WIFI did work most of the trip there and back.  It was slow at times, but good enough to get some work done & surf reddit.", "At your young age, the most of your wealth is your future labor income (unless you are already rich). Your most profitable investment at this time is most likely to be investment in your human capital (your professional skills, career opportunities).  Depending on how you plan to earn your money, invest time and effort to enable you to earn better wages in that activity. So focus on education or professional training. Also, consider that it is probably your total lifetime utility/welfare you should maximize (but you decide!). I suggest you do not focus narrowly on earning as much money as possible. Consider what sort of life you want and what you need to do to enable it. Best of luck!"]}
+{"query": "Can GoogleFinance access total return data?", "corpus": ["\"This is the same answer as for your other question, but you can easily do this yourself: ( initial adjusted close / final adjusted close ) ^ ( 1 / ( # of years sampled) ) Note: \"\"# of years sampled\"\" can be a fraction, so the one week # of years sampled would be 1/52. Crazy to say, but yahoo finance is better at quick, easy, and free data.  Just pick a security, go to historical prices, and use the \"\"adjusted close\"\". money.msn's best at presenting finances quick, easy, and cheap.\""], "neg": ["As long as you paid 90% of the taxes you owed, you are good, and there will be no negative consequences. These calculations are supposed to help you find the right amount, not to bind you to it, so you don't need to worry too much about exactness. The most common problem is that people underpay, and not come up to the 90% limit (and don't have the cash to pay when tax-day comes). If you happen to come in under 90% (which will come out when you file taxes), you will owe interest for the underpayment (as you should have paid it some time ago); typically 0.5% per month; also up to 10% in addition, depending on the situation. This is expensive, so you should avoid it; and playing to hit 90.01% is dangerous - better try to hit about 100% and use the 90% limit as safety margin, as intended.", "So no single bank is willing to underwrite the whole issuance, and the amount each wants is only roughly a sixth of the total each? Or did Greece limit the amount of the issuance that could be underwritten by one bidder? Just trying to understand.", "Yep, I agree, and that has basically been my point in this thread.  Without the Orca shows there just isn't a real point to SeaWorld.  People that say they'd go there more if not for the moral quandary are full of crap - without the Orca shows, no one is going to go out of their way for SeaWorld.  Just like Ringling Brothers without elephants, they're a dead idea.", "We find that there is a lot of confusion about online Bookkeeping in Sugar Land. Darshi Kasotia makes preparing and filing your Tax Preparation Sugar Land very smooth which helps to run your business efficiently. Visit our website and submit your Tax Preparation Sugar Land  inquiry today!  visit our website: https://www.houstontxcpa.com/", "The only time borrowing instead of paying from cash would make sense is if you have (or think you might run into) opportunities to put that cash to work for you earning more than the interest you're paying. For instance, you might run into investment opportunities where having the cash to jump in would let you get into them.   Beyond something like this, it'd be foolish to pay interest just so you can have a bigger bank balance and feel like you're somehow better off! I hope this helps. Good luck!", "\"I strongly doubt your numbers, but lets switch the question around anyway.   Would you borrow 10k on your house to buy stocks on leverage?  That's putting your house at risk to have the chance of a gain in the stock market (and nothing in the market is sure, especially in the short term), and I would really advise against it.  The decision you're considering making resolves down to this one. Note: It is always better to make any additional checks out as \"\"for principal only\"\", unless you will be missing a future payment.\"", "I remember walking into Sears with every intention of buying an expensive TV.  I waited for 15 minutes for an employee to notice me and come help.  Nothin'.  I kept catching their eye and giving the eyebrows-raised, hey-can-you-help-me smile.  Nothin'.  I ended up walking out and going to London Drugs, of all places, where the staff was super helpful."]}
+{"query": "Can I buy put options on an ADR?", "corpus": ["Some ADRs have standardized options that trade on US exchanges.  If your stock/ADR is one of those, then you find the put option through most brokerages that deal with stock options and trade the option like you would on a regular stock.  If your ADR does not have standardized options, then your options will depend on where the ADR trades.  If it's OTC, you might not even be able to short it.  If it trades on a major exchange, the shorting the ADR may be a viable choice."], "neg": ["\"In truth there is no such thing as a risk-free asset.  That is why your textbook feels the need to add the qualifier \"\"for practical purposes,\"\" meaning that the risk of a money market account is so much lower than virtually any other asset class that it can reasonably be approximated as risk free. The main risk of any bond, short-term or long-term, is that its price may change before the maturity date.  This could happen for one of many reasons, such as interest rate changes, creditworthiness, market risk tolerance, and so on.  Thus you may lose money if you need to redeem your investment ahead of the scheduled maturity.\"", "Nope pay the employer back the due does not involve any tax. Just keep a record of the transaction so that its available as reference.", "\"And every one of those thousand person companies started with one guy.  And that one guy delegated to hundreds or thousands of other guys and is now sitting on the yacht that his \"\"cut\"\" made him.  Do you honestly think that businesses just because thousand person operations over night?  So yeah, that's exactly the point.\"", "I can't immediately think of a reason to keep your paycheck and spending account separate, unless it be because you want to keep your savings in a money market or savings account and you deposit your paycheck into a checking account. However, I do have one reason from my experience to keep the bulk of your savings away from accounts that you transfer stuff out of.  I used to keep all my cash savings in an account from which I transferred money into my brokerage account (my paycheck was also deposited there).  A couple of years back a state that I haven't lived in since I was a child took $40,000 out of my account.  The broker mistakenly told the state I lived there and the state made some mistakes about how much tax I would owe.  Without either one telling me, the state helped themselves to my checking account to cover the bill.  When I called, both acknowledged that they were wrong, but it still took a long time (many months) and lots of letters and threats (I was close to paying a lawyer) before they returned my money.  It was worse because this was my savings for a down payment on a home and having it taken and not returned affected my ability to buy the house I wanted. If I hadn't had my money in that account, they would have tried to garnish my wages, and would have immediately stopped their attempt once they found out they were in the wrong. Now I keep cash savings in an account that I never pay taxes out of and do not use to transfer money directly to any broker or anyone who might give my account number to an inept government.", "Technically, yes, you can do this. It's a form of arbitrage: you're taking advantage of a small price difference between two markets. But is it worth the hassle of keeping on top of the overdraft and making sure you don't incur any accidental penalties or fees? Interest rates are super low, and floating £1000 or £2000, you're only going to generate £10-20 per year in a basic savings account.", "\">I, for one, look forward to being able to sue the state.  You don't know what investor state is.   Are you [one of these 75,000 corporations](http://www.citizen.org/TAFTA-investment-map) or are you a country?   If you're not, you don't exist to the FTAs.   They were designed to make swift work of your \"\"rights\"\".\"", "This place in Dallas makes an absolute *killing* - http://www.bowlandbarrel.com/  You have to call ahead to schedule a lane and it's not cheap, it's pretty easy to spend a few hundred bucks on an evening of bowling and drinking with your friends."]}
+{"query": "How much is one “lot” of EUR/USD?", "corpus": ["\"A lot (sometimes called a round lot) always refers to the quantity of physical good that you're getting, like a carton of eggs or a barrel of oil.  The tricky thing in the case of forex is that the physical good also happens to be a currency. A spot currency product trades in the denomination on the right-hand side (RHS) of the product name.  So if you're buying EUR/USD you are paying USD currency to get EUR \"\"units\"\", and if you're selling EUR/USD you are receiving USD by giving away EUR \"\"units\"\".  The EUR is the \"\"physical good\"\" in this case. The way I remember it is to think of all products (not just currencies) as trading pairs.  So AAPL in my mind is AAPL/USD.  When I buy AAPL/USD I am paying USD to get AAPL units.  When I sell AAPL/USD I am receiving USD by giving away AAPL units. The thing on the left is the physical good (even if it happens to be money) that you are exchanging, and the thing on the right is the money that you are exchanging. So, when I buy a lot of AAPL, I am buying 100 shares at their current price in dollars. Similarly, when I buy a lot of EUR/USD, I am buying 100K Euros at their current price in dollars.\""], "neg": ["\"None taken. Good thoughts: it would be making the same mistake to blindly accept my criticism as many will make blindly accepting this journalist's graphs. Let's see if I can address your concerns.  The reason the scale is problematic to me is exactly what you said  > I hope people would be looking at more than just a convex line  And I don't think that they do. The scales were adjusted so that the lines were nearly identical on someone's computer screen, but that implies a false equivalency between the debts of households, corporations, state and local gov, and the fed. I think the author has left leaning sympathies (read the accompanied article that outlines \"\"who you will vote for\"\", link on the last slide). Not necessarily a bad thing, but he frames all of this from the idea that his *statistics cannot be skewed, and he is therefore presenting fact*. Central to the left's argument is that the Federal Government's size is not of the biggest concern, and if you got the average American thinking that 15 trillion is no big deal because households have a huge debt too, or corporations do too, or states do too, I believe that to be dangerous. I think I identified his bias, and that his graphs are slightly manipulated to coerce less discerning individuals to his side. Happens all the time, but all of those facts are dead on in regards to the data. Again, trying to keep my politics out of this, simply criticizing the graphs and the subtle message they are sending under the guise of being neutral.  I would agree with your point *normally*: since contractors are temporary and often, as you pointed out, cost efficient from a benefits standpoint. They also tend to be more efficient, but this is not central to our point. The problem is that the government has the longest war in our history going, but we aren't really fighting anyone for the scale of our spending. Trillions of dollars have gone into this effort, and one of the results has been *the development of a quasi-economy in Iraq, and now Afghanistan*. The numbers are staggering of how many of these people are employed, or make a living, off of this war effort. But this is not like most contractors: where you would add them to the DOD's budget, as you astutely pointed out. And the difference, I would purport, is the permanent status of the \"\"employment\"\". After what length of time would you say a contractor for the DOD working on computer programs in the Pentagon is the equivalent of an employee (and therefore must be counted in statistics such as the one the graph in question purports to depict)? 2 years? 5 Years? Certainly after a decade, right? Remember, the graph is trying to show that the number of government employees *is not a problem, or at least not a significant one*. But calling an apple a banana doesn't make it yellow; I think political slight in hand with statistics as important as these should be criminal.  Sorry I got long winded, but I hope I addressed your concerns. It sounds like you are one of the few people who thinks critically when presented with data such as that which is in these 64 slides. But remember: for every one of you there may be a thousand people who are brainwashed by any \"\"data\"\" you put in front of them.\"", "Isn't it clear to everyone that something that isn't measured by economists yet is going horribly wrong in the US since they started with the debt bing? I know so many people with no savings whatsoever and just hanging on.", "\"The above answers are great. I would only add to the \"\"rainy day\"\" part, that even though the cash provides a good cushion, \"\"a stormy day\"\" could mean even losing those emergency savings to the unignorable randomness that governs the world economy. Though unlikely, what happened to the russian ruble and the latest decision of the swiss cental bank are just two recent reminders that uncertainty must be treated as a constant. I would therefore advise you to invest some of the money in land capable of agriculture. How expensive is land over there in the UK?\"", "\"Assuming this is real, the Q's (QQQ) is an ETF that tracks the Nasdaq-100. It would be the approximate equivalent of saying \"\"Just put your money in SPY\"\" or any other ETF.  I didn't see the thread in question (looks like it was in /r/personalfinance not /r/finance; so, not the \"\"rules\"\" here), but my guess is people down voted you (and you were eventually removed by the mod) for \"\"low effort\"\", which simply stating \"\"Put your money in an ETF\"\" could possibly be construed as.  That said, the top rated comment in that thread *did* suggest putting some portion of the funds in an ETF, it's just rarely an appropriate answer for *all* of someone's investment capital.\"", "While it is a true loss, as you've determined, is not a cash cost, per se. A cash cost would be a decrease in cash holdings.  Inflation does not take your cash balance; it devalues it, so it is an accrued loss. Central banks are extremely lazy in determining inflation, so the highest resolution available at a public level is monthly.  In the United States, there is a small project that tries to calculate daily inflation rates and seems to do a decent job, but unless if you are a customer of a particular financial institution, you will suffer a lag.  The small project refuses to make the data public in real time or even allow outside analysis. In the UK, the Office for National Statistics is responsible for consumer inflation statistics.  The methodology is not readily available, but considering the name, it is most likely an inferior Laspeyres index instead of the optimal Fisher index as it is in the US. To calculate the accrued cost due to inflation, simply multiply the amount of money held by the price index value at the beginning of the time held and divide by the price index value at the end of the time held. For example, to determine the amount of value lost since March 2014, multiply the money held by the price index value for March 2014 and divide by June 2014.", "It looks awesome and I wish that I had one.  There's the risk that they're losing money on the product, hoping to make it up when they sell enough units due to economies of scale. CNC units without touch screens and fancy alignment cameras cost 2k. If they don't sell enough units in time, maybe they'll have to close shop?  I worry that businesses that go to Kickstarter to get money might be doing it because everyone else that looked at their business plan turned them down. That's not always the case, of course.", "It's really not. You have to realize that current rates are an outlier. The average on the 10yr since 1960 is 6.7%. Even on the 1yr it's still 5.7%. The average on the 30Yr from '77-present is 7.6%. You can use your own discretion about the length of time to consider for the average, but you don't just take the current rate as the risk free rate."]}
+{"query": "Should I buy a home or rent in my situation?", "corpus": ["\"If I were you, I would rent.  Wait to buy a home.  Here is why: When you say that renting is equal in cost to a 30-year mortgage, you are failing to consider several aspects.  See this recent answer for a list of things that need to be considered when comparing buying and renting. You have no down payment.  Between the two of you, you have $14,000, but this money is needed for both your emergency fund and your fiancée's schooling. In your words: \"\"we can’t reeaallllly afford a home.\"\"  A home is a big financial commitment.  If you buy a home before you are financially ready, it will be continuous trouble.   If you need a cosigner, you aren't ready to buy a home.  I would absolutely advise whoever you are thinking about cosigning for you not to do so.  It puts them legally on the hook for a house that you can't yet afford. You aren't married yet.  You should never buy something as big as a home with someone you aren't married to; there are just too many things that can go wrong.  (See comments for more explanation.)  Wait until you are married before you buy. Your income is low right now.  And that is okay for now; you've been able to avoid the credit card debt that so many people fall into. However, you do have student loans to pay, and taking on a huge new debt right now would be potentially disastrous for you.  Your family income will eventually increase when your fiancée gets her degree and gets a job, and at that time, you will be in a much better situation to consider buying a house. You need to move \"\"ASAP.\"\" Buying a house when you are in a hurry is a generally a bad idea. When you look for a home, you need to take some time looking so you aren't rushed into a bad deal that you will regret. Even if you decide you want to buy, you should first find a place to rent; then you can take your time finding the right house.  To answer your question about escrow: When you own a house, two of the required expenses that you will have besides the mortgage payment are property taxes and homeowner's insurance.  These are large payments that are only due once a year.  The bank holding the mortgage wants to make sure that they get paid.  So to help you budget for these expenses and to ensure that these expenses are paid, the bank will add these to your monthly mortgage payment, and set them aside in a savings account (called an escrow account).  Then when these bills come due once a year, they are paid for out of the escrow account.\""], "neg": ["Something else is going on here. Rates are high for a specific reason, possible due to the house being non-conforming (ie, trailer/pre fab housing?)  Higher downpayment won't help.  Go to LendingTree.com and have a ton of offers spammed at you. With 20% down + conforming you should be around 4.5%.", "To start with the Express diet, the first thing you have to do is to radically reduce your energy intake. To do this, you must select the foods to be able to surprise the body and cause a loss of weight of between 2 or 3 kilos, without losing muscle mass. On the other hand, you must limit the consumption of carbohydrates to force the body to pull its reserves and take advantage of Plant Based Weight Loss Protein, as they satiate and nourish muscle mass. Recommended foods during the first phase are vegetables, water, fish, seafood, shellfish, soy, beef, beef steak but nothing, skinless poultry, eggs without fat, light ham, dairy 0% vegetables. And best of all is that we can consume them in the quantities we want.", "\"I'm assuming that you're in the US.  In that case, the answer is that it depends on how your company set up its reimbursement plan.  The IRS recognizes \"\"accountable\"\" and \"\"nonaccountable\"\" plans.  Accountable plans have to meet certain requirements.  Anything else is nonaccountable.  If you are reimbursed according to an accountable plan, this is not income and should not be reported to the IRS at all.  If you are reimbursed under a nonaccountable plan, then this is income but you might be able to get a deduction on your tax return if you itemize. Most established companies have accountable plans for normal business expenses. More detail from IRS: http://www.tax.gov/TaxabilityCertainFringeBenefits/pdf/Accountable_v_Nonaccountable_Plans_Methods_of_Reimbursing_Employees_for_Expense.pdf\"", "Just playing devil's avocado here, but if you can't stop smoking weed long enough to find a job then it's really your problem. Almost every job I've applied to has had a drug test, including office jobs. If you can't lay off the devil's lettuce for 2 goddamn weeks and maybe drink some fucking water then what do you expect?              This is coming from a chronic weed smoker.", "If I recall correctly, the pay schedule is such that you initially pay mostly interest.  As James Roth suggests, look at the terms of the loan, specifically the payment schedule.  It should detail how much is being applied to interest and how much to the actual balance.", "\"It doesn't make a lot of sense to buy a house/condo and rent it out now. On the other hand, I think finishing your basement and then renting it out is an excellent idea.  The ROR is excellent as long as you can deal with the \"\"strangers\"\" in the basement, have the extra driveway space and negative association with renting out your basement. HTH\"", "The thing people don't get is that it's not only the poor who are in danger anymore, but former middle class as well, who has shrunk into poverty. The health of society is measured by the size and prosperity of the middle class, and whether it moves up or down.  In this case, I fear them leading the social unrest."]}
+{"query": "Should I consolidate loans and cards, or just cards, leaving multiple loans?", "corpus": ["\"My answer is similar to Ben Miller's, but let me make some slightly different points: There is one excellent reason to get a consolidation loan: You can often get a lower interest rate. If you are presently paying 19% on a credit card and you can roll that into a personal loan at 13.89%, you'll be saving over 5%, which can add up. I would definitely not consolidate a loan at 12.99% into a loan at 13.89%. Then you're just adding 1% to your interest rate. What's the benefit in this? Another good reasons for a consolidation loan is psychological. A consolidation loan with fixed payments forces you to pay that amount every month. You say you have trouble with credit cards. It's very easy to say to yourself, \"\"Oh, just this month I'm going to pay just the minimum so I can use my cash for this other Very Important Thing that I need to buy.\"\" And then next month you find something else that you just absolutely have to buy. And again the next month, and the next, and your determination to seriously pay down your debt keeps getting pushed off. If you have a fixed monthly payment, you can't. You're committed. Also, if you have many credit cards, juggling payments on all of them can get complex and confusing. It's easy to lose track of how much you owe and to budget for payments. At worst, when there are many bills to pay you may forget one. (Personally I now have 3 bank cards, an airline card, and 2 store cards, and managing them is getting out of hand. I have good reasons for having so many cards: the airline card and the store cards give me special discounts. But it's confusing to keep track of.) As to adding $3,000 to the consolidation loan: Very, very bad idea. You are basically saying, \"\"I have to start seriously paying down my debt ... tomorrow. Today I need a some extra cash so I'm going to borrow just a little bit more, but I'm going to get started paying it off next month.\"\" This is a trap, and the sort of trap that leads people into spiraling debt. Start paying off debt NOW, not at some vague time in the future that never seems to come.\""], "neg": ["\"Theoretically, it shouldn't matter which one you use.  Your return should only depend on the stock returns in SGD and the ATS/SGD exchange rate (Austrian Schillings? is this an question from a textbook?).  Whether you do the purchase \"\"through\"\" EUR or USD shouldn't matter as the fluctuations in either currency \"\"cancel\"\" when you do the two part exchange SGD/XXX then XXX/ATS. Now, in practice, the cost of exchanging currencies might be higher in one currency or the other.  Likely a tiny, tiny amount higher in EUR.  There is some risk as well as you will likely have to exchange the money and then wait a day or two to buy the stock, but the risk should be broadly similar between USD and EUR.\"", "Just find a low cost S&P 500 index fund, and spend your time reading The Great Mutual Fund Trap instead of wasting your time and money picking actively managed funds.", "The typical structure of an HFT group is very small and flat. A few dozen people (maybe). The firm's capital is at risk, so the principals are usually very involved in what everyone is doing. I haven't seen any of these guys take up the title CEO.", "Clutch Bags is a world-class handbags provider company in New York city. We are the best manufacturer, wholesaler and exporter of handbags in the world. A Hands free travel bags with wheels can be perfect when you need large luggage capacity, but there is not much space to store it between one trip and the next since many of these bags are reduced to half their normal size when folded.", "\"For a job doing that kind of stuff, what is PREFERRED is 4 year undergrad at ivy league school + 2 year MBA at ivy league school, and then several more years of experience, which you can sort of get by interning while in school this will of course saddle you with debt, which is counterintuitive to your plans basically, the easy way up is percentage based compensation. without knowing the right people, you will get a piss poor salary regardless of what you do, in the beginning. so portfolio managers earn money by percentage based fees, and can manage millions and billions. real estate agents can earn money by percentage based commissions if they close a property and other business venture/owners can do the same thing. the problem with \"\"how to trade\"\" books is that they are outdated by the time they are published. so you should just stick with literature that teaches a fundamental knowledge of the products you want to trade/make money from. ultimately regardless of how you get/earn your initial capital, you will still need to be an individual investor to grow your own capital. this has nothing to do with being a portfolio manager, even highly paid individuals on wall street are in debt to lavish expenditures and have zero capital for their own investments. hope this helps, you really need to be thinking in a certain way to just quickly deduce good ideas from bad ideas\"", "Well, let me take your question for baremetal, and aknowledge you did not asked about the difference between daytrading and investing which is obviously leverage. I would not consider daytrading more risky as long as you keep leverageout of the equation.  Daytrading can be turbolent and confusing, where things unfold in a very short amount of time, (let trade nfp payroll or some breaking event, yay), eventually the risk is more overseeable in long term trading, as soon as you put leverage into the equation things look vary different, indeed.", "\"To Many question and they are all treated differently. I was wondering how the logistics of interest and dividend payments are handled on assets , such as mortgages, bonds, stocks,   What if the owner is some high-frequency algorithm that buys and sells bonds and stocks in fractions of a second? When the company decides to pay dividends, does it literally track   down every single owner of that stock and deposit x cents per share in   that person's bank account? (This sounds absolutely absurd and seems   like it would be a logistical nightmare). In Stocks, the dividends are issued periodically. The dividend date is declared well in advance. As on end of the day on Dividend date, the list of individuals [or entities] who own the stock is available with the Stock-Exchange / Registrar of the companies. To this list the dividends are credited in next few days / weeks via banking channel. Most of this is automated. What if the owner is some high-frequency algorithm that buys and sells bonds and stocks in fractions of a second? On bonds, things work slightly differently. An Bond is initially issued for say 95 [discount of 5%] and payment of 100 after say 5 years. So when the person sells it after an year, he would logically look to get a price of 96. Of course there are other factors that could fetch him a price of 94.50 or 95.50. So every change in ownership factors in the logical rate of interest. The person who submits in on maturity gets 100.  For the homeowner, I'm assuming he / she still makes mortgage payments to the initial bank they got the mortgage from, even if the bank no longer \"\"owns\"\" the mortgage. In this case, does the trader on the secondary market who owns the mortgage also come back to that bank to collect his interest payment? This depends on how the original financial institution sells the mortgage to new institutions. Generally the homeowner would keep paying initial financial institution and they would then take a margin and pay the secondary investor. If this was collateral-ized as Mortgage backed security, it is a very different story.\""]}
+{"query": "How many warrants do I need to exercise to get a stock?", "corpus": ["No, you trade the warrant and the warrant price of $11.50 for one stock. The warrant is a little like an option, but with a longer term. If you buy a IPOA.WS warrant then that warrant gives you the option to buy one share of class A stock at $11.50 at a future date.  If in the future, the stock is worth $20, then you make $20 - $11.50 -  per share.  If you buy one IPOA.U, then you get 1/3 of a warrant and 1 share of stock, the warrants will be useless unless you buy in groups of 3 for the IPOA.U.  I didn't see the timeframe of the warrant, they're usually good for 10+ years, and they're currently trading in the $1.5-1.8 range. To confirm, here's a decent article about how warrants work: http://www.investopedia.com/articles/04/021704.asp"], "neg": ["All else being equal I wouldn't object to zero capital gains tax. Except not all else is equal. The differential between earned income and capital gains is enormous. This is more than enough to drive huge sums of money out of incomes and into capital gains. Private equity funds provides the simplest and most legal means of accomplishing this. There are more legally questionable methods, though not challenged at this time, involving carried interest.  Let's say an employer has $1 they can choose to pay an employee or divert it into capital gains. If the effective tax rate that employee pays is 40% that leaves 60 cents going to that employee and doesn't even count the other cost of that employee through unemployment insurance, etc. If they divert it then at the top rate it becomes 85%. So, even without other cost considerations that becomes a 25% surcharge on treating it as wages. More than enough incentive freezing out wages as much as possible in favor of capital gains. Which is occurring on a large scale.   So let's get back to the issues faced by granny selling her house. You say it's unfair for granny to pay 35% as opposed to 15% on the capital gains. Yet is it any more unfair than granny paying 35% on her earned income all those years she paid for the house? Wouldn't she be much better off if all those years she paid less on her earned income, at the expense of paying more on her capital gains, all with essentially the same overall federal tax receipts? So in essence you are arguing that she should be screwed less on her one time capital gains in favor of screwing her many many times that amount over the years leading up to that sale. Ouch.  So let's look at the difference between capital gains and income at the investor level. You have a wage earner that gets out of bed every morning and works at the beckoning of someone else daily. We'll suppose they are it the 35% tax bracket, under $400k. Is it more fair to charge them 35% than it it the person who invested their money and gets their paycheck while watching I Love Lucy reruns? I know it's almost never that easy but really, if working 40 or 80 or even 100 hours per week doesn't deserve the same break how do you justify it for the person who simply purchased their future income? Labor is after all hired to help produce capital goods. How is their contribution to those capital goods not part and parcel to the capital gains?  Even with these issues I still wouldn't have such a problem if markets, including wage and capital ratios, acted independently of these effective tax rates. But that notion is absurd, even if doing so require some illegal maneuvers. Which in many cases do not.   So yeah, I find your argument to be specious and quiet arbitrary at every level.", "We earn so much money when we produce 5,10,20... dollars ! It does't matter if we loose a few money to produce a penny, we have to let money to satisfy its 3 fonctions. One of them is : to be the more precise possible unit of count !", "Simple rule for UK student loans. Never repay early. (http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/students/student-loans-repay) They are not real debt: only payable over threshold and wiped after 30 years (ish).  They do not appear as debt with Credit Agencies. If you have other debt, it is almost certainly at a higher rate or worse terms and should be paid off first If you don't have debt, then you can put the cash to better use: whether saving, mortgage deposit or avoiding worse debt in the future.", "Not just jobs, entire companies were created. It opened up a whole new market. Then, with the iPhone coming out - competitors came out with their versions (Android, which distribution came out around 2007), which did the same thing except in a different market I'd like to attribute to Apple's iPhone.", "Are the amounts in those boxes taxes that have already been removed? Yes. If they are, how do I report these totals? When I entered the information from the 1099-MISC, it only asked for the total, and didn't ask for (what I thought were) the taxes already taken out. It should appear on your 1040 line 64 (and similar line on your State tax return). If the program doesn't ask for all the 1099 fields (which is stupid), you can add it as additional taxes paid in the Credits section, somewhere in the area where they ask about estimated payments etc.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-08/yellen-bet-on-pulling-workers-back-to-labor-force-is-paying-off) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Even as U.S. unemployment crept lower in recent years, Federal Reserve Chair Janet Yellen stuck with a glacial pace of policy tightening that she justified with a powerful message: there were still millions of potential workers to pull in from the labor market's sidelines.  > If workers hadn't come back, the strategy could have spurred an overly-tight labor market that sent wages and inflation up too quickly.  > The surge of job holders coming from outside the labor force "Speaks to the reduction in slack in the labor force," said Tom Simons, a senior economist at Jefferies LLC in New York.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6m5f49/yellen_bet_on_pulling_workers_back_to_labor_force/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~162709 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*: **labor**^#1 **works**^#2 **rate**^#3 **market**^#4 **force**^#5\"", "Man... I feel like this is a messed up world where your comment is downvoted and the guy who added the 100k in loans is upvoted. I didn't get into the engineering program at the school I wanted to go to so I went to community college for a year got good grades and transferred into the college I wanted to get my degree from. Spent 3 years working part time while getting my degree and graduated with 16k in loans and a job waiting for me. I don't know why this can't be normal. I'm obviously not some genius, I couldn't even get into the school originally... I just worked a little harder than I was working before because that's what it took."]}
+{"query": "Why do some services list an IPO date that is well after historical price data you can find elsewhere?", "corpus": ["\"The Minnesota Mining and Manufacturing Company was established in 1902 as a private company.  It first raised public funds around 1903 but had a limited shareholder base.  By around 1929, it was reported as being tradeable as an OTC (over-the-counter) stock but it's likely that shares were traded well before this.  On 14 Jan 1946, the stock was listed on NYSE.  On 26 Sep 1962 it became a constituent of the the S&P 500 index.  On 9 Aug 1976 it became a constituent of the Dow Jones Industrial Average. In 2002, the company's name changed to 3M Co. It appears that the data on Crunchbase's \"\"IPO Date\"\" is wrong on this one. However, there are several companies that appear to do an \"\"IPO\"\" and have trading prices prior.  This is quite typical of early-stage biotech companies that trade OTC prior to a major exchange listing and \"\"IPO\"\". An example of an IPO happening after a company became publicly tradeable is NASDAQ:IMRN (Immuron). They had an \"\"IPO\"\" on Nasdaq on 9 Jun 2017, yet they had been trading as an OTC/Pink Sheet stock for months prior. They also have been listed in Australia since 30 Apr 1999. http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/activity.aspx?tab=pricings&month=2017-06 Another example is NASDAQ:GNTY (Guaranty Banchshares Inc) which had an \"\"IPO\"\" and NASDAQ listing in May 2017. This was a Nasdaq stock in 1998, went OTC/pink sheet stock in 2005. It has been paying regular dividends since that time. Clearly the word \"\"Initial\"\" is subjective!  http://www.nasdaq.com/markets/ipos/activity.aspx?tab=pricings&month=2017-05\""], "neg": ["Now a days, your stocks can be seen virtually through a brokerage account. Back in the days, a stock certificate was the only way to authenticate stock ownership. You can still request them though from the corporation you have shares in or your brokerage. It will have your name, corporation name and number of shares you have. You have to buy shares of a stock either through a brokerage or the corporation itself. Most stock brokerages are legit and are FDIC or SIPC insured. But your risks are your own loses. The $10 you are referring to is the trade commission fee the brokerage charges. When you place an order to buy or sell a stock the brokerage will charge you $10. So for example if you bought 1 share of a $20 stock. The total transaction cost will be $30. Depending on the state you live in, you can basically starting trading stocks at either 18 or 21. You can donate/gift your shares to virtually anyone. When you sell a stock and experience a profit, you will be charged a capital gains tax. If you buy a stock and sell it for a gain within 1 year, you will taxed up to 35% or your tax bracket but if you hold it for more than a year, you will taxed only 15% or your tax bracket.", "For a cheaper hedge , you can try a call spread. e.g if you shorted a stock at 40 but are worried that it can get bought out for 60. then buy a 50-60 bull call spread with appropriate number of contracts or even 50-55. this is better than just buying a 50 call as it will be expensive. Also the other option is not to short but buy a debit bear put spread 40-30 near the money and then buy an out of money call spread ( 55-60).", "That's another model doomed to failure. Truth is people do care about their privacy. They don't seem to right now because they don't really understand how completely it's being invaded. But give it time, there's going to be a privacy rebellion on the internet, and all these companies who have built their revenue models around stealing people's personal information are going to be f***ed.", "\"Which is the \"\"shouldn't ever expect to do better than their competitors employees\"\". The \"\"sit down and shut up\"\" is towards the bottom  >Second, everyone needs to understand that it’s management’s job to identify and weigh alternatives, and to recommend a course of action.  In the world as it is, management is getting lots of help – from the Board, the Court, and the Creditors. Since the decisions being made are very important, and will impact every employee, their opinions should be given careful consideration. There are many forums – including participation in the court process — in which employee views can and should be taken into account.  Management should listen carefully, but employees need to understand that it’s management’s job to decide and that acting in ways intended to undercut management’s role can only be counter-productive.  >While the decision process is underway, everyone at American should be doing everything possible to improve performance, so that the post-bankruptcy company – whether American as it is or American combined with other entities – will have the broadest possible base of customer support from which to launch the renaissance every employee should be hoping for.  His entire spiel is so heavily sided towards management it's almost farcical. He's doing exactly what the airline pilot was complaining AA management is doing (treating the workers like faceless, interchangeable, and disposable cogs in the assembly line) while saying they shouldn't try to flex any negotiating power that management doesn't see fit to give them. And god forbid they have the gall to question the wisdom of their benevolent leaders (management is the thinkers, workers should just be the mindless doers).  I'm not a \"\"rah rah unions\"\" or \"\"boo business/management\"\" type of person. I just hate blatant bullshit. AA's workers have a legitimate gripe, that AA the company would almost certainly be better off merging with another airline but AA's management is better off going it alone and is asking the rest of the company to sacrifice to make that happen. Until that fundamental disconnect is reconciled, patronizing paeans to the wisdom of the company's leadership and knowing your place aren't helpful.\"", "\"If the service was being used as intended by their customers though, they would be able to swallow losses for the occasional short ride in order to make the over-all service pleasant. I'm guessing that it is pretty uncommon for riders to take a ride for a few blocks say. But it also depends on how long a ride a \"\"short ride\"\" is.\"", "\"You're talking about money in a savings account, and avoiding the risks posed by an ongoing crisis, and avoiding risk. If you are risk-averse, and likely to need your money in the short term, you should not put your money in the stock market, even in \"\"safe\"\" stocks like P&G/Coca-Cola/etc. Even these safe stocks are at risk of wild price swings in the short- to intermediate-term, especially in the event of international crises such as major European debt defaults and the like. These stocks are suitable for long-term growth objectives, but they are not as a replacement for a savings account. Coca-Cola lost a third of its value between 2007 and 2009. (It's recovered, and is currently doing better than ever.) P&G went from $74/share to $46/share. (It's partially recovered and back at $63). On the other hand, these stocks may indeed be suitable as long-term investments to protect you against local currency inflation. And yes, they even pay dividends. If you're after this investment, a good option is probably a sector-specific exchange-traded fund, such as a consumer-staples ETF. It will likely be more diversified and safer than anything you could come up with using a list of individual stocks. You can also investigate recommendations that show up when you search for a \"\"defensive ETF\"\". If you do not wish to buy the ETF directly, you can also look at listings of the ETF's holdings. Read the prospectus for an idea of the risks associated with these funds. You can buy these funds with any brokerage that gives you access to US stock exchanges.\"", "\"Your son is in the right. But he broke the \"\"unwritten\"\" rules, which is why the car dealer is upset. Basically, cars are sold in the United States at a breakeven price. The car company makes ALL its money on the financing. If everyone bought \"\"all cash,\"\" the car companies would not be profitable. No one expected anyone, least of all your son, a \"\"young person,\"\" to pay \"\"all cash.\"\" When he did, they lost all the profit on the deal. On the other hand, they signed a contract, your son met all the FORMAL requirements, and if there was an \"\"understanding\"\" (an assumption, actually), that the car was supposed to be financed, your son was not part of it.  Good for him. And if necessary, you should be prepared to back him up on court.\""]}
+{"query": "Clarification on options jargon regarding spreads", "corpus": ["Yes. It seems to me you got it right.  On my site, Stock Options Cafe, my last post was an illustration of a bullish call spread. In this case, I bought a 50 call, and sold the 60 call. This is a debit order as I was paying money, not collecting a new premium."], "neg": ["Yes, all of that is possible with google sheets...", "Why wouldn't one of the existing crowdsourcing systems meet your needs? Yes, they charge a commission, but they have already addressed the issues you raise and specifically they provide the third-party accounting you want.", "First of all, Dilip's answer explains well how the business deductions generally work. For most (big) expenses you depreciate it. However, in some cases you need to capitalize it, which is another accounting method. When you capitalize your expense, it becomes part of the basis of the product you're creating. Since you're an engineer, this might be relevant for you. Talk to your tax adviser. How exactly you deduct/depreciate/capitalize things, and what expense goes which way depends greatly on the laws and jurisdictions. Even in the US, different states have different laws, and the IRS and State laws don't have to conform (unfortunately). For example, the limitations on Sec. 179 deduction in 2010-2011 were 20 times higher on Federal level than in the State of California. This could have lead to cases where you fully deducted your expense on your Federal tax return, but need to continue and depreciate it on your State return (or vice versa). Good tax adviser is crucial to avoid or manage these cases.", "Assuming the United States. This is a loan and not an investment.  You report this as income and will pay your tax rate on the 18% of the money that the borrower pays you (any money paid above what was originally lent) for the year in which it was received. You owe taxes on the income even if the borrower does not send you a Form 1099-INT showing the interest you received. For example: If you loan $10,000 and receive $1,800 in interest, and your tax bracket is 25%, then you will owe $450 in tax.", "You're not responsible for the mortgages on the property - those are agreements between the lender and the borrower. The risk you have is that the title search missed something.  If the seller (i.e., the bank or banks who foreclosed) did not have full rights to sell the property, and there was another party who had a lien on the property or had an interest in it in some fashion, that party could make a claim that would interfere with your purchase.  You wouldn't be responsible for the loan, but you might not end up with the title to the property if that happened.", "Timothy Sykes specializes in this type of trade, according to his website. He has some recommendations for brokers that allow shorting low-priced stocks:", "Businesses have been using immigrants (illegal and legal) to screw labor in this country. Flooding the market with foreign labor [drives up supply and drives down wages.](http://www.pewresearch.org/fact-tank/2014/10/09/for-most-workers-real-wages-have-barely-budged-for-decades/) Maybe if we let the wages rise over the years, Americans would be willing to pay more because they would be making more.   I think so many people are hostile towards labor and defend corporations so much is that corporations can afford PR and labor cannot."]}
+{"query": "Must ETF companies match an investor's amount invested in an ETF?", "corpus": ["\"First, it's an exaggeration to say \"\"every\"\" dollar. Traditional mutual funds, including money-market funds, keep a small fraction of their assets in cash for day-to-day transactions, maybe 1%. If you invest $1, they put that in the cash bucket and issue you a share. If you and 999 other people invest $100 each,  not offset by people redeeming, they take the aggregated $100,000 and buy a bond or two. Conversely, if you redeem one share it comes out of cash, but if lots of people redeem  they sell some bond(s) to cover those redemptions -- which works as long as the bond(s) can in fact be sold for close enough to their recorded value. And this doesn't mean they \"\"can't fail\"\". Even though they are (almost totally) invested in securities  that are thought to be among the safest and most liquid available,  in sufficiently extreme circumstances those investments can fall in market value,  or they can become illiquid and unavailable to cover \"\"withdrawals\"\" (redemptions). ETFs are also fully invested, but the process is less direct. You don't just send money to the fund company. Instead: Thus as long as the underlyings for your ETF hold their value, which for a money market they are designed to, and the markets are open and the market maker firms are operating, your ETF shares are well backed. See https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Exchange-traded_fund for more.\""], "neg": ["Thanks for the extra info on the property tax. So it sounds like it's going to be $1500 for a $150k house. I'm sure even if it's sold for $150 the state might still value it at $15k and you'll end up with $150 in property taxes which is basically nothing.", ">How do we know that's the reason? There's also more used cars in the wild now, and cars tend to last a lot longer than they used to.  Average age of cars on the road also went from 3-5 years to 8-12 years now.  People don't own cars longer because they last longer, they own cars longer because they are not as easily able to afford another.  THAT is the main issue.    GDP has gone up (although this statement is suspicious when you factor in inflation), but median income has actually gone down adjusted for the 1960s/1970s projected rates.  People with more disposable income buy more cars, when there is more $$$ available to the average person they are not frugal and fix up their old car, they go out and buy a new one.  So what we have seen are not only fewer cars being sold every years since 1969 but also that people are forced to own cars longer to save $$.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://mobile.reuters.com/article/amp/idUSKBN1AD0DU) reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot) ***** > WASHINGTON/LONDON. WASHINGTON/LONDON - U.S. coal exports have jumped more than 60 percent this year due to soaring demand from Europe and Asia, according to a Reuters review of government data, allowing President Donald Trump's administration to claim that efforts to revive the battered industry are working.  > "If Europe wants to lecture Trump on climate then EU member states need transition plans to phase out polluting coal," said Laurence Watson, a data scientist working on coal at independent think tank Carbon Tracker Initiative in London.  > TAKING CREDIT. Both the coal industry and the Trump administration said the rising exports of both steam coal, used to generate electricity, and metallurgical coal, used in heavy industry, were evidence that Trump's agenda was having a positive impact.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6q2vq7/us_coal_exports_soar_in_boost_to_trump_energy/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~177666 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*: **coal**^#1 **U.S.**^#2 **Trump**^#3 **administration**^#4 **Energy**^#5\"", "Some Walmart stores have a surcharge-free ATM in their Money Center. If that doesn't work, look for the logo of the interbank network on the back of your card that your bank uses (e.g. Star, Cirrus, Allpoint, MoneyPass) and Google them. If you're lucky, they'll have a surcharge-free ATM locator (e.g. https://www.star.com/locator/).", "\"> \"\"Taxation is theft\"\" is an empirically true statement. It is not an opinion.  Trying to give you the benefit of the doubt after that one. You do realize that  citizenship *implies* agreeing to abide by the countries laws - one of the biggest of which is taxation? This is true in the same way that receiving a driver's license implies a willingness to abide by road laws and regulations.   Pay them or not pay them. No soon off my back. Obviously I highly disagree with you. However, if you really think it is theft, then what does that make you that you stand by and allow it to happen *every* year...\"", "\">>Did he ACT to make it so [cave in to drug companies]? Maybe, as usual, he's playing business chess...  >That argument cuts both ways. Maybe this is part of his master plan to get  So with all those \"\"maybe\"\"(s), and since Trump did not Act on the subject, for God sake, why is that the FIRST thing you could say against Trump?  >> President Trump is not against any method or measure to reduce pollution or emission.  >Global warming is a serious risk to this country.  Absolutely not!  Boy I wish you lived 10,000 years ago at the end of the Ice Age. You would be screaming \"\"End of the world!!!! The world is warming up to the point of no return!\"\".  The Earth will do extremely well with slightly high temperatures, like it did many times in the past. It's just \"\"nice\"\" to have the same weather patterns every year, but that never ever happened on earth.  Scare tactics work on you, but not on me. Most scare tactics are for pure political reasons.  And here, as an example, you really really really believe that Trump has anything to do with global warming or against addressing it.  **So, please, tell me one substantial reason why you are against Trump?**  Also, let's go the other way: do you really think that if Hillary was in charge it would be better? I'd like to hear your answer to this one.\"", "\"Who are \"\"they\"\" who should be \"\"respectful\"\"?   The liberal professors, or the students?  And if the students are \"\"respectful\"\", does that means that can stand up to their opinions? Are they going to pass the classes if they express or write their true opinions (i.e. being not \"\"respectful\"\")?\""]}
+{"query": "Is investing in housing considered an adequate hedge against inflation?", "corpus": ["Yes, in 2 ways: As you mention, the price of a home generally grows with inflation - along with other factors (supply and demand in local markets, etc.). Through financing. If you finance 80% of your purchase today, in 2014 dollars, you will pay back in future dollars. Those future dollars are worth less, because of inflation."], "neg": ["No. At least not in my case. Without divulging too much information. I don't tell any of my distributors how to sell my company's products our engage their customer base, but due to the nature of my business, I am frequently called on for product selection, marketing, quality, etc. Distributors often utilize their account reps and managers to help them push products on their customer base. The only way this could be seen as truthful, in my opion, is direct retail distribution. Because how are you going to track the product after it has been purchased by a consumer.", "The SWIFT format has multiple place holders. The Beneficiary Bank and Account can be specified using Local Sort Codes [ABA number in this example]. However you would still need to specify the Correspondent Bank and its BIC.", "Showz Store is an online toy store that is located in China. We have the full exhibition reflected, so you can see all toys display on our official site. No short of what one report from the event noted booing from the gathering of spectators toward the completion of the presentation. If you are searching Mastermind Creations for your kids, then you can visit our website. Here you can get a lot of toys in best variety. Our online stores are open 24*7 days. We accept all major credit cards.", "The key question is whether this number includes taxes and insurance. When you get a mortgage in the U.S., the bank wants to be sure that you are paying your property taxes and that you have homeowners insurance. The mortgage is guaranteed by a lien on the house -- if you don't pay, the bank can take your house -- and the bank doesn't want to find out that your house burned down and you didn't bother to get insurance so now they have nothing. So for most mortgages, the bank collects money from the borrower for the taxes and insurance, and then they pay these things. This can also be convenient for the borrower as you are then paying a fixed amount every month rather than being hit with sizeable tax and insurance bills two or three times a year. So to run the numbers: As others point out, mortgage rates in the US today are running 3% to 4%. I just found something that said the average rate today is 3.6%. At that rate, your actual mortgage payment should be about $1,364. Say $1,400 as we're taking approximate numbers. So if the $2,000 per month does NOT include taxes and insurance, it's a bad deal. If it does, then not so bad. You don't say where you live. But in my home town, property taxes on a $300,000 house would be about $4,500 per year. Insurance is probably another $1000 a year. And if you have to get PMI, add another 1/2% to 3/4%, or $1500 to $2250 per year. Add those up and divide by 12 and you get about $600. Note my numbers here are all highly approximate, will vary widely depending on where the house is, so this is just a general ballpark. $1400 + $600 = $2000, just what you were quoted. So if the number is PITI -- principle, interest, taxes, and insurance -- it's about what I'd expect.", "Save enough to build an emergency cushion of 4-6 months total expenses. After that, invest everything you can in areas where you are well researched and have carefully formed your own opinion on the subject. Those who save do not reach financial freedom, those who learn to invest and make their money work for them do. Invest in learning how to invest.", "As someone who works with LBOs and a decent number of M&A deals, I find the biggest issue is that managers don't understand the competitive advantages of their company. They try to pivot into higher margin processes and products because they see other companies who are doing well there. The companies who succeed target niches in the market and make acquisitions that complement their skills. The other issue is that the market is too hot right now and when a good company comes up, you have PE firms and strategics bidding against each other, typically leaving a winner who bid too high.", "If the base rate is USD LIBOR, you can compute this data directly on my website, which uses futures contracts and historical data to create interest rates scenarios for the calculations: http://www.mortgagecalculator3.com/ If your rate index is different, you can still create your own scenarios and check what would happen to your payments."]}
+{"query": "Judge market efficiency from raw price action", "corpus": ["The shortest-hand yet most reliable metric is daily volume / total shares outstanding.  A security with a high turnover rate will be more efficient than a lower one, ceteris paribus. The practical impacts are tighter spread and lower average percentage change between trades.  A security with a spread of 0% and an average change of 0% between trades is perfectly efficient."], "neg": ["It's the physiological impact it has. If you took a loan to buy a home for $500k and you recently had it appraised for $450k you are more inclined to skip out on any home remodeling projects.   Also as ShakeyBobWillis pointed out it can be to your financial benefit to just walk away from an underwater mortgage. This creates even more glut in the marketplace.", "Some have suggested you can put the money in the 401k then take a loan to pay off the student loan debt.  Some things to consider before doing that: Check your 401k plan first.  Some plans allow you to continue paying on a loan if you leave the company, some do not.  If you have to change jobs before you pay back the 401k loan, you may only have 90 days to completely pay the loan or the IRS will treat this as an early withdrawal, which means taxes and penalties.  If you don't have another job lined up, this is going to make things much worse since you will have lost your income and may owe even more to the government (depending on your state, it may be up to 50% of the remaining amount).  There are ways to work with some student debt loans to defer or adjust payments.  There is no such option with a 401k plan. This may change your taxes at the end of the year.  Most people can deduct student loan interest payments.  You cannot deduct interest paid to your 401k loan.  You are paying the interest to yourself though.   It may hurt your long term growth potential.  Currently loans on 401k loans are in the 4% range.  If you are able to make more than 4% inside of your 401k, you will be losing out on that growth since that money will only be earning the interest you pay back. It may limit flexibility for a few years.  When people fall on hard times, their 401k is their last resort.  Some plans have a limit on the number of loans you can have at one time.  You may need a loan or a withdrawal in the future.  Once you take the money out for a loan, you can't access it again.  See the first bullet about working with student loan vendors, they typically have ways to work with you under hard circumstances.  401k loans don't. Amortization schedule.  Many 401k loans can only be amortized for a max of 5 years, if you currently have 10 year loans, can you afford to pay the same debt back in 1/2 the time at a lower rate?  You will have to do the math. When considering debt other than student loans (such as credit cards), if you fall on hard times, you can always negotiate to reduce the amount you owe, or the debt can be discharged (with tax penalties of course).  They can't make you take money out.  Once it is out, it is fair game. Just to clarify, the above isn't saying you shouldn't do it under any circumstances, it is a few things you need to evaluate before making that choice.  The 401k is supposed to be used to help secure your financial future when you can't work.  The numbers may work out in the short term, but do they still work out in the long term?  Most credit cards require minimum payments high enough to pay back in 7-10 years, so does shortening that to 5 (or less) make up for the (probably early) years of compounding interest for your retirement?  I think others have addressed some of this so I won't do the math. I can tell you that I have a 401k loan, and when things got iffy at my job for, it was a very bad feeling to have that over my head because, unlike other debts, there isn't much you can do about it.", "Generally, I would say that you should pay it off if you have the money available. Why pay interest if you have the money? That is, of course, if your money can earn you more than the interest you pay (which can happen if you got a very low APR for your car loan, but then you probably have excellent credit already and shouldn't care about the history of the loan on your report). Re the 7 years vs 2 years - to the best of my knowledge its not true, it will stay 7 years even if its closed during the first year.", "Last time something like this happened we (eventually) created the New Deal, which greatly mitigated the problem..for a while at least, until the elite reclaimed power.   I agree with you, but I don't think we're doomed. Things will have to get a lot worse until people see the problems though, but still then I wouldn't expect a socialist uprising, but just another new deal to buy off the non-elite.", "\"The US government requires corporations to follow certain accounting standards, while exempting itself. For example, companies financial reports must reflect the future costs of things like employee pensions, healthcare and other liabilities. So if you own a company and have an obligation to pay someone $100 in ten years, that obligation must be reflected on your current financial statements. Most US governments operate under a cash accounting scheme that don't necessarily recognize the current costs of big future promises. At the State and Local levels, politicians actively and openly flaunt this -- Governors, mayors, etc routinely do things like give employees enhanced benefits (whose costs kick in the down line) or unlimited sick/vacation time accruals with payouts to employees to avoid impacting the short-term fiscal picture.  As an example, a New York City tabloid ran a big story a few years ago about certain transit authorities -- the standards for disability pensions were so low that 95% of employees were categorized as \"\"disabled\"\" and were receiving pensions that were in many cases greater than the employees salary while working.\"", "There is a system in place called parenthood. However, many of the problems in the USA are because of lack of good parents assuming they are even around.  I went to a juvenile detention center to attend one of their lectures, and one thing they expounded was the disproportionate number of kids in there who either don't have at least one parent in their house or parents who didn't care about them. Unless we go North Korean style brain washing authoritarianism, no nanny state attempt will fix this. The problem, responsibility and solution lies with the people.", "Opening up a new bank account and converting all your Euro's to USD is not a bad idea in the slightest.  It is certainly possible to do, however you most likely won't be able to get the spot rate for USD/EUR (http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=USDEUR=X).  Even though you will get a worse rate, I would be much more comfortable with this than holding Euro's in the coming months."]}
+{"query": "My Brokerage statement shows “Adjusted due to previous wash sale disallowed loss” what does this mean?", "corpus": ["Well it would appear that you had a wash sale that canceled out a loss position.  Without seeing the entire report, I couldn't tell you exactly what was happening or how you triggered § 1091.  But just from the excerpted images, it appears as though your purchase of stock was layered into multiple tranches - perhaps you acquired more of the stock in the 61-day period than you sold (possibly because of a prior holding).   If in the 61-day period around the sale of stock (30 days before and 30 days after), you also acquire the same stock (including by contract or option), then it washes out your loss.  If you held your stock for a while, then in a 61-day period bought more, and sold some, then any loss would be washed out by the acquisition.  Of course it is also a wash sale if your purchase of the stock follows your sale, rather than precedes it.  Your disallowed loss goes into the basis of your stock holding, so will be meaningful when you do have a true economic sale of that stock. From IRS Pub 550: A wash sale occurs when you sell or trade stock or securities at a loss and within 30 days before or after the sale you: Buy substantially identical stock or securities, Acquire substantially identical stock or securities in a fully taxable trade, Acquire a contract or option to buy substantially identical stock or securities, or Acquire substantially identical stock for your individual retirement account (IRA) or Roth IRA. If you sell stock and your spouse or a corporation you control buys substantially identical stock, you also have a wash sale. Looking at your excerpted account images, we can see a number of positions sold at a loss (sale proceeds less than basis) but each one is adjusted to a zero loss.  I suspect the fuller picture of your account history and portfolio will show a more complicated and longer history with this particular stock.  That is likely the source of the wash sale disallowed loss notations. You might be able to confirm that all the added numbers are appearing in your current basis in this stock (or were reflected upon your final exit from the stock)."], "neg": ["This answer comes from my interpretation of Publication 590 (2011), Individual Retirement Arrangements (IRAs) and particularly What Are Qualified Distributions? section. Please consult the sources yourself or with the help of a qualified professional before doing anything. First, note that due to the rollover loophole, you can take out the money and repay it within 60 days. Missing the deadline would mean paying the taxes on the withdrawal in addition to a 10% penalty. As per JoeTaxpayer's notes below, this applies to the earnings on the account only. The contributions themselves can be withdrawn without penalties (thanks, Joe!).  Second, you might qualify to withdraw 10k for a qualified first-home house purchase. Qualified, in this case, would mean first-time home purchase by yourself, your spouse, your child, parent, or grandchild, made within 120 days of withdrawal (see first home in the above document). Finally, nothing is mentioned about the withdrawal affecting your yearly contribution cap. Any new money coming into the account is new money counted towards the contribution cap (except for the 60 day loophole).  To answer your question then: you can make up the money only under the first scenario (60 day loophole). Qualified withdrawals allow you to avoid the penalties, but as far as I can tell, do not affect the contribution cap. There are a few other details that may depend on your age, reservist status, health, etc. Read the document carefully to see if any of those apply to you.", "Just read that citi is planning to return 132% of their expected earnings to shareholders over the next year in the WSJ. How does a bank return more to its shareholders than what it makes? Also banks requesting payouts in these stress tests of 100% of expected future earnings.   Am I missing something? Doesnt make much sense to me.   Hope someone sees this thanks.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-02/libya-s-oil-production-said-to-exceed-1-million-barrels-a-day) reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Libya's oil production has climbed to more than 1 million barrels a day for the first time in four years just as oil prices capped the longest run of gains in six months after U.S. shale explorers paused a record drilling expansion.  > Libya'a oil output has rebounded from only 690,000 barrels a day at the start of the year, with Sharara, the country's largest oil field, resuming production last month.  > State National Oil Corp. Chairman Mustafa Sanalla said in April he wanted to boost national output to 1.1 million barrels a day by August.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6kwqac/libyas_crude_output_hits_a_new_high_just_as_oil/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~157830 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*: **day**^#1 **barrels**^#2 **oil**^#3 **million**^#4 **production**^#5\"", "Agreed. The 6 is so unappreciated, it's a fantastic car. Maybe the most beautiful US sedan available and way better than the new Camery  and Accord. I thought the 2 and 5 were also great and innovative in the US but never sold well. At least they are doing OK with their auto based SUV's.", "Private Banker are Official Staff of the Bank. They are typically assigned to High Net Worth individuals. They are responsible for any and everything that a customer needs more like Personal Banker, so that for all your needs you just need to contact him/her and they would in turn get things done for you from different groups within the Bank.", "All value given to products is subjective and is different from person to person.  It can also vary for the same person from year to year, month to month, day to day, or even hour to hour as a person analyzes different products and prices to determine which imparts the most value to him or her at a given point in time. In regards to losing money in your investment accounts.  This reminds of a book I read on Jesse Livermore.  Jesse was a famous stock broker who made millions (in the 1920's so he would be a billionaire in today's money) in the stock market multiple times.  Jesse felt like  you - he felt like after a while the losses on paper did not seem to concern him as much as he thought it should.  He thought it was due to the investment accounts being simply being numbers on papers and not cold, hard cash. So what did Jesse do to remove the abstract nature of investment accounts?   From here: Livermore always sold out all his positions at the end of every year   and had the cash deposited in his account at the Chase Manhattan Bank.   Then he would arrange with the bank to have the money, in cash, in the   bank’s vault in chests. “There was a desk, a chair, a cot and an easy   chair in the middle of the cash.” On the occasion described in 1923,   there was $50 million in cash.  In the corner was a fridge with food,   enough for a few days. There was lighting installed. Then, like   Scrooge McDuck, Livermore would have himself locked in the vault with   his cash. He would stay a couple of days and “review his year from   every aspect.”  After his stay was over, he would fill his pockets with cash and go on   a shopping spree.   He would also take  a vacation and not re-enter   the market until February. But unlike Scrooge McDuck, this was not the act of a miser, explains   Smitten.  Livermore lived a world of paper transactions all year long.   He believed that “by the end of the year he had lost his perception of   what the paper slips really represented, cash money and ultimately   power.”  He “needed to touch the money and feel the power of cash.” It   made him re-appraise his stock and commodity positions. Imagine the $60,000 from your investment account sitting on your kitchen table.  Imagine seeing $1,000 dumped into the trash can one day.  I know I would appreciate the money much more seeing that happen.", "lol? Yes, it can hurt European corporations but it'll affect the Russian people at least as much. Was this really the best area of business they could think of? It's kind of a big deal.  Edit: I think [this theory](http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/2d5iq2/russia_imposed_a_complete_embargo_on_food_imports/cjmafl7) is good. Frustration can help Putin point out scapegoats, because frustrated or angry people is, as history tells with  too much clarity, very easy to manipulate. Like scarily easy."]}
+{"query": "Taxing GoFundMe Donations", "corpus": ["\"I'm going to post this as an answer because it's from the GoFundMe website, but ultimately even they say to speak with a tax professional about it.  Am I responsible for taxes? (US Only) While this is by no means a guarantee, donations on GoFundMe are   simply considered to be \"\"personal gifts\"\" which are not, for the most   part, taxed as income in the US. However, there may be particular,   case-specific instances where the income is taxable (dependent on   amounts received and use of the monies, etc.).     We're unable to   provide specific tax advice since everyone's situation is different   and tax rules can change on a yearly basis. We advise that you   maintain adequate records of donations received, and consult with your   personal tax adviser.     Additionally, WePay will not report the funds   you collect as earned income. It is up to you (and a tax professional)   to determine whether your proceeds represent taxable income. The   person who's listed on the WePay account and ultimately receives the   funds may be responsible for taxes.     Again, every situation is   different, so please consult with a tax professional in your area. https://support.gofundme.com/hc/en-us/articles/204295498-Am-I-responsible-for-taxes-US-Only- And here's a blurb from LibertyTax.com which adds to the confusion, but enforces the \"\"speak with a professional\"\" idea: Crowdfunding services have to report to the IRS campaigns that total   at least $20,000 and 200 transactions. Money collected from   crowdfunding is considered either income or a gift. This is where things get a little tricky. If money donated is not a   gift or investment, it is considered taxable income. Even a gift could   be subject to the gift tax, but that tax applies only to the gift   giver. Non-Taxable Gifts These are donations made without the expectation of getting something   in return. Think of all those Patriots’ fans who gave money to   GoFundMe to help defray the cost of quarterback Tom Brady’s NFL fine   for Deflategate. Those fans aren’t expecting anything in return –   except maybe some satisfaction -- so their donations are considered   gifts. Under IRS rules, an individual can give another individual a   gift of up to $14,000 without tax implications. So, unless a Brady fan   is particularly generous, his or her GoFundMe gift won’t be taxed. Taxable Income Now consider that same Brady fan donating $300 to a Patriots’ business   venture. If the fan receives stock or equity in the company in return   for the donation, this is considered an investment and is not taxable   . However, if the business owner does not offer stock or equity in the   company, the money donated could be considered business income and the   recipient would need to report it on a tax return. https://www.libertytax.com/tax-lounge/two-tax-rules-to-know-before-you-try-kickstarter-or-gofundme/\""], "neg": ["The thing is simply this, if it were not for Israeli control of America's economy, the Fed the Treasury . . .America would not be arming Israel and spending billions of dollars in Military Aid.   The Palestinians, can't even get water and medical supplies because Israel has been blockading them for the last decade.  As America's economy fails and Military power wanes and its opinion is no longer of any importance and the world comes to openly admit that Israel is the root cause of terrorism and the facilitator, financier and operator of Groups like ISIS, things will change. While you may not be disarmed, it will indeed be fun to watch brave Israeli forces fight an armed Palestinian force with the ability to hit back meaningfully.  I am sure Middle east peace will find you a lot quicker", "Same - fields like accounting and law, where you have to track your hours and be productive in the time you actually bill clients for, are much more intense than people realize. I wish I had an office job where I could just twiddle my thumbs half the time and pretend to work.", "http://www.efficientfrontier.com/ef/104/stupid.htm would have some data though a bit old about open-end funds vs an ETF that would be one point. Secondly, do you know that the Math on your ETF will always work out to whole numbers of shares or do you plan on using brokers that would allow fractional shares easily? This is a factor as $3,000 of an open-end fund will automatically go into fractional shares that isn't necessarily the case of an ETF where you have to specify a number of shares when you purchase as well as consider are you doing a market or limit order? These are a couple of things to keep in mind here. Lastly, what if the broker you use charges account maintenance fees for your account? In buying the mutual fund from the fund company directly, there may be a lower likelihood of having such fees. I don't know of any way to buy shares in the ETF directly without using a broker.", "Yeah, but i know guys who started off in the field doing hardcore manual construction and worked their asses off for years and finally got in the office. There are two of them in their younger thirties with no degree to speak of. They are both project managers who make over 100k a year. I am not saying everyone can do this, but sure is fucking possible to succeed without having to wait until you are fifty.", "Maybe a larger house/apartment", "For self-service type online customers, OptionsXpress gives me far better trading features(like technicals advanced conditions) and tools, ACH money management & scheduling, fullfillment too. $9 stock trades.  I don't know if they yet share Schwab's (their new parent company?) commission-free ETFs getting so trendy nowadays.", "What you are doing is barter trade. Most countries [if not all] would tax this on assumed fair value. There are instances where countries may relax this norm in border areas for a small amount.   Barter is not just for gold – one can virtually do this for any goods, i.e. sell garments in exchange for oil, sell electronic chips in exchange for consumer goods, etc. Quite a few business would flourish doing this and not exchange currency at all, hence the need for government to tax on the [assumed / calculated / arrived/ derived] fair value. A word of caution: at times this may not be fair at all and may actually cost more than had one done a transaction using currency."]}
+{"query": "Should I cash out my Roth IRA to pay my mother's property tax debt, to avoid foreclosure on her home?", "corpus": ["@foreverBroke - Ok, here are the questions - Is mom's house paid for in full? If there's any mortgage, is it current? If not, what are the numbers? Is it underwater, i.e. owe more that it's worth?  Will the tax department talk to you and negotiate? Maybe let you make payments over time? If you have that kind of cash flow, the slower payment may keep you from killing your savings.  We don't know your age. I do know that the early years savings, often around the first 8-12 years, are the funds that turn into half your final retirement savings due to compounding.  Obviously, this a tough time emotionally, what I don't want is for you to make a financial move that is a temporary fix. Not knowing the rest of the story limits my answer. If my mom needed my help I'd want to understand the whole picture.  Not that I'm a fan, but have you considered a reverse mortgage? It may be a way to keep the house but give up the equity, or some of it, on her moving out or passing."], "neg": ["Daycare which provides adequate care for your kids while you are working or otherwise not able to cater and care for them has become a business like any other There are many popular daycare franchise opportunities are available in every state.  Examples of daycare franchise opportunities are TechJOYnT Foundation, The Growing Room and Discovery Express among others. While about STEM franchise, it is everywhere. No matter what career path your child might choose, STEM will be an important part of their day. Click here for more details: http://www.techjoyntfranchise.com/daycare-franchise-opportunities/", "You can defer RRSP deductions like you've suggested. Here's an article from the CBC about it: http://www.cbc.ca/news/business/taxseason/story/2010/03/15/f-taxseason-delay.html", "I always thought that it was really hard to get into a PhD program without at least a masters? Looking at most of my professors resumes, they seem to all have masters from schools other than where they received their PhDs. I would prefer to get a MFE then PhD if money wasn't an option(if I decided to go the academia route), but because money is an option a PhD without paying for a masters would be ideal.", "Is there a point after which they legally unable to charge me? No. If you gave a check, then the bank may bounce it as stale after 6 months, but doesn't have to. With debit/credit transactions, they post as they're processed, and some merchants may not sync their terminals or deposit their manual slips often. As the world becomes more and more connected this becomes extremely rare, but still happens. Technically your promise to pay is a contract which never expires, and they can come after you years later to collect.", "Exactly. that is paying double the money for no better coverage. It makes no sense. The paperwork when you file a claim will ask you if there is coverage from another policy. Making the same claim to two different policies, without telling them,  would be considered insurance fraud. For that kind of money the insurance company would be involved with paying the re-builder money periodically. Obviously only one re-builder is involved, and they would notice if they were getting paid more than was required. While you could decide to take the money and not rebuild, but that wouldn't work if you had a mortgage. The lender would want their money or force you to rebuild.", "I agree that the surface explanation is that expenses used to generate income are deducted, however there clearly is a double standard in how is applied.  For example I cannot deduct my car even though I use it primarily for commuting to work (I would consider that income generation), yet companies are allowed to deduct corporate jets. I can't deduct meals when I ate out with professional acquainted where much of the conversations are related to my profession and so directly relevant to my income, yet businesses can claim sending their executives to a country club because business was discussed or it was a team building excise. Etc etc.", "Write a virus, start spreading it via USB. That's how stuxnet got to Iran's nuclear program.  Someone could make a virus that does nothing on most computers, but if it happens to be on an ATM, it spits out cash if you type in the proper number on the key pad."]}
+{"query": "Is there any reason not to put a 35% down payment on a car?", "corpus": ["\"If you are going to finance a used car, it is frequently best to arrange financing before you even pick out the car.    The easiest way I recommend is to talk to a local credit union or two.   They'll be able to tell you your interest rate and terms without having to talk to the dealer at all.  Most likely, they'll be significantly better than the dealer at getting a good interest rate. As far \"\"what is a good rate?\"\", check out bankrate for average loan rates: http://www.bankrate.com/auto.aspx Today's numbers look like 2.87% is the average for a 48-month used car loan.   That means if the bank comes back with something ridiculous like 9% or 10% you know they are way overcharging you.   I know someone who got a first-time-buyer rate from Ford and ended up with a 19.99% rate.   I could literally buy the car on my credit card and end up in a better spot. Honestly though, if you are 18 and have $5500 to put towards a car, I'd buy a $4500 car and save $1000 for repairs and maintenance.   After you have the car, put $250 every month for a \"\"car payment\"\" into a savings account for your next car.\""], "neg": ["When you pay cash for a car, you don't always necessarily need to pay cash. You just aren't using credit or a loan is all. A few options you have are: Obviously no dealer expects anyone to just have the cash laying around for a car worth a few thousand dollars, nor would you bother going to your bank or credit union for the cash. You can simply get a cashier's check made out for the amount. Note that dealers may not accept personal checks as they may bounce.  After negotiations at the dealer, you would explain you're paying cash, likely pay a deposit (depending on the price of the car, but $500 would probably be enough. Again, the deposit can be a check or bank deposit), and then come back later on with a cashier's check, or deposit into a bank account. You would be able to do this later that day or within a few days, but since you've purchased a new car you would probably want to return ASAP!", "backups. fucking backups. from day one of our software project i was warning about backups. four years later, no vendor support, no tested backup and going live with the system. year after that (off the legacy system) the thing goes kaput. good thing I had left before then.   fucking amateurs.", "Yes, I'm still kind of puzzled as to how they just seemed to have the world's money supply just given to them to dole out as they pleased.  I owe a Rothschild, though. They actually had one, a Lord, on noon TV here. He was in town from England for a Toronto tea convention and gave a 5 minute lesson on the news on how to make the perfect cup of tea.  The key point was to keep the interior of the POT clean. Worked, the tea was, and still is, great, thanks Lord Rothschild!", "If you already have the money, put the 20% down but here is another option: You can put whatever you want down...Let's say 10%. For the other 10%, take out a 2nd mortgage. This enables you to avoid PMI. The rate you will get on the second mortgage will be higher than the first but the combination of 2 mortgages may be less than 1 plus PMI. When you get to 20% equity you can refinance and consolidate to one lower rate mortgage without PMI.", "I agree that it was poorly implemented, but putting a deeper divide between their DVD business and their streaming business with the idea that the DVD business could be sold or killed when appropriate off was good.  It was poorly handled, yes - bad branding and *too much* divide between the products when even as separate businesses they should still be capable of *talking* to each other.", "Index funds are well-known to give the best long-term investment. Are they? Maybe not all the time! If you had invested in an index fund tracking the S&P500 at the start of 2000 you would still be behind in terms of capital appreciation when taking inflation into considerations. Your only returns in 13.5 years would have been any dividends you may have received. See the monthly chart of the S&P500 below.  Diversification can be good for your overall returns, but diversification simply for diversification sake is as you said, a way of reducing your overall returns in order of smoothing out your equity curve. After looking up indexes for various countries the only one that had made decent returns over a 13.5 year period was the Indian BSE 30 index, almost 400% over 13.5 years, although it also has gone nowhere since the end of 2007 (5.5 years). See monthly chart below.  So investing internationally (especially in developing countries when developed nations are stagnating) can improve your returns, but I would learn about the various international markets first before plunging straight in. Regarding investing in an Index fund vs direct investment in a select group of shares, I did a search on the US markets with the following criteria on the 3rd January 2000:  If the resulting top 10 from the search were bought on 3rd January 2000 and held up until the close of the market on the 19th June 2013, the results would be as per the table below:  The result, almost 250% return in 13.5 years compared to almost no return if you had invested into the whole S&P 500 Index. Note, this table lists only the top ten from the search without screening through the charts, and no risk management was applied (if risk management was applied the 4 losses of 40%+ would have been limited to a maximum of 20%, but possibly much smaller losses or even for gains, as they might have gone into positive territory before coming back down - as I have not looked at any of the charts I cannot confirm this). This is one simple example how selecting good shares can result in much better returns than investing into a whole Index, as you are not pulled down by the bad stocks.", "It's funny, I was complaining about this very same phenomenon in a different thread maybe a week ago. It seems like the RA is the only way to go if you have any sort of power over the I-Banks"]}
+{"query": "Can one use Google Finance to backtest (i.e. simulate trades in the past)?", "corpus": ["I've used yahoo to perform the exercise you're asking about. It allows you to download price data, month end if you wish, and by manipulating via a spreadsheet to add a column for purchases, you can easily see how your £100/mo would end after so long a time period."], "neg": ["The company may have put a trading halt due to many reasons, most of the time it is because the company is about to release some news to the market. To stop speculation driving the price up or down, it puts a halt on trading until it can get all the information together and release it to the market. This could be news about an earnings update, a purchase of other businesses, a merger with another business, or a takeover bid, just to name a few.", "\"I look at price charts pretty much all day every day. You can analyze technical patterns and make guesses about the future but it's just not the way it works.  Not being able to point to \"\"chinese money\"\" in a candlestick chart is a ridiculous litmus test. When they eventually pass extremely draconian laws about using bitcoins we'll see.\"", "This shows the impact of the inquiries. It's from Credit Karma, and reflects my inquiries over the past two years. In my case, I refinanced 2 properties and the hit is after this fact, so my score at 766 is lower than when approved. You can go to Credit Karma and see how your score was impacted. If in fact the first inquiry did this, you have cause for action. In court, you get more attention by having sufficient specific data to support your claim, including your exact damages.", "Well it's a well-known fact, sonny-jim, that there's a secret society of the 5 wealthiest people in the world, known as The Pentavirate, who run everything in the world including the newspapers, and meet tri-annually in a secret country mansion in Colorado known as The Meadows. (So who's in this Pentavirate?) The Queen, the Gettys, the Rothschilds, the Vatican...and Colonel Sanders before he went tits up! Ooh I hated the Colonel, with his wee beady eyes and that smug look on his face! Ohh you're gonna buy my chicken! Ooh! (Dad, how can you hate the Colonel?) Because he puts an addictive chemical in his chicken that makes you crave it fortnightly, smart ass!", "My job cut everyone's hours to 30 (it was 40-45) so they could avoid it. Luckily I'm still under 25 so I'm able to get under my dads health plan. I'll be over the age limit next December so I plan on picking up a side gig. Maybe she can consider her parents plan or a side gig?  Sorry to hear about her predicament. It's a funked up situation.", "\"That's because the one guy in Portland who knows Thai food has gone down the rabbit hole and knows what Thai food is on a very deep level. He's friends with biggest Thai foodies on the planet. He knows far more about Thai fold than the average Thai person in Thailand.  I haven't eaten at his restaurants, but I assume they're good...I also assume he has problems still due to ingredients and the palate of his customers.   Everywhere else in America, including the rest of Portland, the people have trouble securing good ingredients or have forgotten what Thai food even tastes like (Thai Town). I took Thai friends to multiple places in Thai town--all the best reviewed ones...by Americans--and they were basically disgusted.   Thai food is one of those types of food that can taste pretty good even when it's the lowest quality, most haphazardly formed dish on the market. In America, families tend to form restaurants where they serve a million different types of dishes, which becomes a logistical nightmare when there aren't good markets that have what you need.   In Thailand, many of the best places specialize in very few dishes on an expert level. In Thailand, for every one place that specializes in something like beef noodles that is utterly amazing, there are ten beef noodles places that taste okay and a tourist is likely to assume whatever beef noodles they have is as good as it gets....unless they're lucky enough to stumble upon the mind blowing beef noodles.   In America, most of the Thai restaurants serve a million different types of dishes. They all remind me of the restaurants you see in the more tourist heavy parts of Bangkok where there are a million pictures on the wall with the advertised prices and a ton of different dishes, none of which are exceptional.  In Thailand, if a place is serving a lot of different dishes, most of those restaurants will be marginal. Or! they'll have a lot of different dishes from a specific region (E-San, for example) or serving a particular style of food which they are experts in (duck restaurants in Thailand often have a lot of other Chinese dishes that accompany the duck). That's hard to do. For every one of those in Thailand, all will taste decent, 1/10 will be mind blowing.   In the US, you don't even have beef noodle places or duck rice places...you have \"\"Thai restaurants\"\" made by people who left Thailand long ago, only to return to eat at the same restaurants tourists walk into.\"", "Unless you think it's likely that you'll move back soon, this is probably not the best way to get experience as a landlord. You might want to talk to a property management company and look at the fees they would charge to do your job as landlord. You should also consider that your mortgage may require you to occupy the house for a certain amount of time. Mortgages for non-owner-occupied properties usually have a higher interest rate and vetting criteria are more strict."]}
+{"query": "S Corp with Straddles Income", "corpus": ["If this activity were to generate let's say 100K of profit, and the   other corporate activities also generate 100K of revenue, are there   any issues tax-wise I need to be concerned about? Yes. Having 25% or more of passive income in 3 consecutive years will invalidate your S-Corp status and you'll revert to C-Corp. Can I deduct normal business expenses from the straddles (which are   taxed as short term capital gains) profit? I don't believe you can. You can deduct investment expenses from the investment income. On your individual tax return it will balance out, but you cannot mix types of income/expense on the corporate return or K-1."], "neg": ["Again, you assume that I am going to go on a killing spree because I could care less that a turkey, which we are going to eat, is not treated nicely.  Are you kidding me?  You have no idea about me as a person, nor my station in life, yet you make assumptions based on the fact that I would rather devote my time to something that actually matters.", "\"It depends on how long you stay and where you earn your income. You can be a US resident for tax purposes even if you are not for immigration purposes. The \"\"substantive presence test\"\" probably applies to you: You will be considered a United States resident for tax purposes if you meet the substantial presence test for the calendar year. To meet this test, you must be physically present in the United States (U.S.) on at least: https://www.irs.gov/Individuals/International-Taxpayers/Substantial-Presence-Test There are some exceptions to this test, and tax treaties may also apply.  See IRS Publication 519 for more information.\"", "It always bumps right before the 1/4 report.  For some reason, after 80 quarters, people buy amazon stock just incase they under promised and over delivered.  That's happened like 1 or 2 times.  They are so consistent, that I assume the make heavy fiscal investments in the week leading up to quarter close just so they don't", "The 20%+ returns you have observed in the mutual funds are not free money.  They are compensation for the risk associated with owning those funds.  Given the extraordinarily high returns you are seeing I would expect extremely high risk.  This means there is a good possibility of extreme losses at some point.  By putting a lot of money in those mutual funds you are taking a gamble that may or may not pay off. Assuming what your friend is paying you for rent is fair, you are not losing money on your house relative to the market.  You are earning less because you are invested in a less risky asset.  If you want a higher return, you should borrow some money (or sell your house) and invest in the market.  You may make more money that way. But if you do that, you will have a larger chance of losing a lot of money at some point.  That's the way risk works.  No one can promise a 20% return on a risky asset, they can only hint that it may do in the future what it did in the past. A reasonable approach to investment is to get invested in lots of different things: stocks, bonds, real estate.  If you are afraid of risk and willing to earn less, keep more money in safe assets.  If you are willing to take big risks in exchange for the possibility of high returns, move more assets into risky stuff.  If you want extreme returns and are willing to take extreme risk, borrow and use the money to invest in risky assets. As you look over investment options, remember that anything that pays high returns most likely has high risk as well.", "I have a similar plan and a similar number of accounts.   I think seeking a target asset allocation mix across all investment accounts is an excellent idea. I use excel to track where I am and then use it to adjust to get closer (but not exactly) to my target percentages. Until you have some larger balances, it may be prudent to use less categories or realize that you can't come exactly to your percentages, but can get close.   I also simplify by primarily investing in various index funds.  That means that in my portfolio, each category has 1 or 2 funds, not 10 or 20.", "This is why it bothers me when State Governors get up there and crow about how they balanced the States Budget.  Really? what are the negative consequences someone else is going to have to bear 10 years down the road?", "The issue is that they aren't leaving, they're using a loophole to avoid paying corporate taxes even though their revenue, operation, manufacturing, and logistics base is still primarily within the United States.  Your argument is not based on any economic or financial principle but primarily out of some outrage at a non-existent statist strawman.  I'm sure you've really showed them and hurt their non-existent feelings."]}
+{"query": "Converting bank statements to another currency?", "corpus": ["If the account is not dollar-denominated, I would say it does not make sense at all to have dollar-denominated statements. Such a statement would not even be accurate for any reasonable amount of time (since FX rates constantly fluctuate). This would be a nightmare for accounting purposes. If you really need to know the statements in USD, I think the best practice would be to perform the conversion yourself using Excel or some similar software."], "neg": ["I believe there are electronic exchanges that run continuously,  but the older ones don't want to change their practices since some people may have strategies which  (claim they) are based on this behavior so there would be a lot of unhappy people if it was altered. The pause doesn't seem to do any harm. There are alternatives if you dislike it. Don't try to fix what isn't broken.", "Quite a lot of reasons but mostly supply and demand.   Some areas of Africa are extremely remote and just don't have things there that some of the population now want.   I would guess it won't be like this for much longer but right now it is and i have met plenty of people taking advantage of that fact.", "College= 12786 grand a quarter = 38358 grand a year. Got loans of 5640.00 and scholarships of 5976.00 so leaves me 26742.00. Family is expected to put in that amount. Family dose not make a lot. Does not live high on the hog. I want to live a dream that I know I can work for but how do I pay. BTW I got the first 2 years covered with scholarships and military benefits. Dad put in his time so I could do this. I need advice. I will apply for things. I work every summer in jobs where I do see the wealthy enjoy the sport and not the grunt work. I go to a school where the wealthy go and they get the scholarships but they honestly can afford to not. If you pay 40 plus grand for a horse you don't need the 25 grand scholarship. They are lucky I know I have to work and I will; just need more advice on how to cover the cost of the dream :):)", "I found additional evidence on TDAmeritrade's website that helps confirm that the 3/17/11 prices Jason found are the ones to use since all three were traded on that day.  Although GM+A had prices and trading as early as 2/28/11, GM+B's price and trading shows up no earlier than 3/14/11, but there was no trading indicated for GM+A on 3/14 so 3/14 can't be used.  The two warrants were not traded every day after they came out. The next date that I found when all three, GM, GM+A and GM+B had trades was 4/11/11.  I found Google and Yahoo Finance unable to produce the historical prices for the warrants that far back.  Unfortunately, you need to be a TDA accountholder in order to access TDA's historical price information for stocks.", ">I might have an answer! I imagine they're capitalizing on people's laziness. I live in the Bay Area where some people probably don't mind paying $35 to not have to walk 100 feet to the office and drop off a check.  Except that at their end they then have to deal with the cheques, have someone to receive them and so on, deal with the inevitable bounced cheques too.. Seems like a shitty plan, but yeah, I suppose if someone can gouge you they may well do so.", "This answer assumes you're asking about how to handle this issue in the USA. I generally downvote questions that ask about a tax/legal issue and don't bother providing the jurisdiction. In my opinion it is extremely rude. Seeing that you applied for an LLC, I think that you somehow consider it as a relevant piece of information. You also attribute some importance to the EIN which has nothing to do with your question. I'm going to filter out that noise. As an individual/sole-proprietor (whether under LLC or not), you cannot use fiscal years, only calendar years. It doesn't matter if you decide to have your LLC taxed as S-Corp as well, still calendar year. Only C-Corp can have a fiscal year, and you probably don't want to become a C-Corp. So the year ends on December 31, and whether accrual or cash - you can only deduct expenses you incurred until then. Also, you must declare the income you got until then, which in your case will be the full amount of funding - again regardless of whether you decided to be cash-based or accrual based. So the main thing you need to do is to talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your state) and learn about the tax law relevant to your business and its implications on your actions. There may be some ways to make it work better, and there are some ways in which you can screw yourself up completely in your scenario, so do get a professional advice.", "Maybe the prices aren't better always but there's a perceived higher quality. When you shop there, it feels like you're getting a better value. Who can forget two buck Chuck? And lots of their goods are repackaged. It's an open secret that some of the goods you buy there is name brand with a new box. TJ cultivates this image of being the place where they stuff expensive food into a new box and sell it half off. Shopping there feels like winning the lottery.  They could only do this by limiting their variety. A shame that the article points it out as if a failing, like they pay employees more despite this. It's just the opposite."]}
+{"query": "How can I save on closing costs when buying a home?", "corpus": ["For example: do I need a realtor, or can I do their job myself? In general in the United States the real estate agent fee is paid by the seller of the property. Their agent will be more than happy keep the entire fee if they don't have to split it with your agent.  If you don't have an agent you will be missing somebody who can help you find the property that meets your needs. They can also help explain what the different parts of the contract mean and give you advice regarding making an offer. Do I need to pay for an inspection, or am I likely to save enough   money from skipping it to cover potential problems that they would   have caught? Inspections are optional. Though the amount you are risking is the entire value of the purchase. If the property has a problem in the foundation, or the septic system, or the plumbing or electrical the cost to fix the issue could render the purchase not worth doing. If you discover the problem a year later and you have to repair the house and have to find temporary housing for a few months, you will regret skipping the inspection. What are some of the ways I can cut expenses on closing costs? Is   there any low-hanging fruit? You need to do your homework. When you are ready to purchase a property take good look at the good faith estimate and look at each item.  Ask them what the expense covers. Push back against those that seem optional or excessive. Keep in mind that moving the closing date from the end of a month to the start of the next month only changes the timing those charges, it doesn't really save you money. Rolling the costs into the loan sound easy but you have to think about. It means that you will be paying interest on those charges for the life of the loan. It is good that you are starting to think about all the costs."], "neg": ["Your question may have another clue. You are bullish regarding the real estate market. Is that for your city, your state, your nation or for the whole world?  Unless you can identify particular properties or neighborhoods that are expected to be better than the average return for your expected bull market in real estate, you will be taking a huge risk. It would be the same as believing that stocks are about to enter a bull market, but then wanting to put 50% of your wealth on one stock. The YTD for the DOW is ~+7%, yet 13 of the 30 have not reached the average increase including 4 that are down more than 7%. Being bullish about the real estate segment still gives you plenty of opportunities to invest. You can invest directly in the REIT or you can invest in the companies that will grow because of the bullish conditions.  If your opinion changes in a few years it is hard to short a single property.", "I would definitely recommend contributing to an IRA. You don't know for sure you'll get hired full-time and be eligible for the 401(k) with match, so you should save for retirement on your own. I would recommend Roth over Traditional IRA in your situation, because let's say you do get hired full-time. Since the company offers a retirement plan, your 2015 Traditional IRA contribution would no longer be deductible at your income level (assuming you're single), and non-deductible Traditional IRAs aren't a very good deal (see here and here). If there's a decent chance you would get hired, this factor would override the pre-tax versus post-tax debate for me. At your income level you could go either way on that anyway. A Solo 401(k) would be worth looking into if you wanted to increase your contribution limit beyond what IRAs offer, but given that it sounds like you're just starting out saving for retirement, and you may be eligible for a 401(k) soon, it's probably overkill at this point.", ">For each challenge, you'll earn up to $2, for a total maximum earning of $20.00.  Why? That amount is so absurdly tiny that anybody who can competently participate will be more dissuaded by the offer than if you hadn't offered any incentive, which you *should* have done.", "You should try to take out other loans sufficient to pay off your 401(k) loan if you can.   Maybe you can take out a home equity loan?  You can also ask your bank about unsecured loans.  You should also check the rules for your new employer's 401(k), if you're rolling over your 401(k).  There's a small possibility that you could take out another loan right now and apply it to the previous loan balance. Or if you need to wait, you could use it to help pay off any temporary loans that were needed to avoid the distribution penalty.", "There would be multiple competing courts looking for people's business based upon who could best interpret laws and contracts. On the contrary, courts exist because people *do* want to be there. They are people who cannot come to an agreement on their own. If a person is a hardened criminal, they aren't going to want the court system at all. Those people are in the vast minority.  The notion of a market monopoly is a myth. The market by and large does not monopolize, and examples of monopoly don't last long.  In terms of the court system and justice, no, states do not work. Police often get away with actions that would be considered criminal for the rest of us, and politicians get the same treatment. The examples of police brutality going unpunished or political action being widely opposed and still being pushed through are too numerous to list.  Again, those who would loot and destroy are in the minority. If a person has the mindset that they want to harm person and property then they don't care about whether or not there is a state. They can only be stopped by force, and force can come from any entity with the legitimacy of using it. In that arena, there is nothing special about the state.  They wouldn't have any right to restrict your freedom except to the extent of stopping you from violating the person and property of others. They don't need a constitution for that.  > Everything would just devolve into constant warfare between groups - until a single group outperformed the others of course and boom you've got a government again.  This is pure fiction. You have no evidence nor reason to actually support this. We're talking about reality, not conjecture. If you want to claim such nonsense then [you have to prove it.](https://mises.org/library/wouldnt-warlords-take-over) You can't just throw out such propaganda and expect it to be taken as fact.", "\">Me: \"\"they pay it as regular income rather than LTCG\"\" >You: \"\"There's no LTCG tax on Roth accounts.\"\"  Those two things aren't the same thing.  Among other problems, you were referring to tax-deferred accounts and I was referring to Roths.  >Me: \"\"they pay it as regular income rather than LTCG\"\" >You: \"\"You're only taxed once on the money\"\"  Again, those are not the same thing.  There is no account out there where you would only pay LTCG tax.  So paying the tax as regular income RATHER than LTCG tax is not a concern.   >Me: \"\"they pay it as regular income rather than LTCG\"\" >You: \"\"The main advantage of 401ks is that you don't ever pay capital gains tax.\"\"  Again, the word \"\"rather\"\" means there were two possible scenarios: paying regular income tax and paying LTCG tax.  This simply isn't true.   >I never mentioned Roth or taxable funds   Well, those are the only alternatives to a tax-deferred account, so...  >\"\"Though what I said does also apply to Roth\"\"  No it doesn't.    >\"\"But please, keep digging...\"\"  Nothing to dig for.  This isn't a difficult concept but for whatever reason you clearly don't understand it.\"", "The day trader in the article was engaging in short selling.  Short selling is a technique used to profit when a stock goes down.  The investor borrows shares of a stock from someone else and sells them.  After the stock price goes down, the investor buys the shares back and returns them, pocketing the difference. As the day trader in the article found out, it is a dangerous practice, because there is no limit to the amount of money you can lose. The stock was trading at $2, and the day trader thought the stock was going to go down to $1.  He borrowed and sold 8,400 shares at $2.  He hoped to buy them back at $1 and earn $8,400 profit.  Instead, the stock went up a lot, and he was forced to buy back the shares at $18.50 per share, or about $155,400.  He had had $37,000 with E-Trade, which they took, and he is now over $100,000 in debt."]}
+{"query": "Are REIT worth it and is it a good option to generate passive income for a while?", "corpus": ["One way is to think of a REIT as a fully managed portfolio of real estate investments. Risks and returns are averaged across the real estate portfolio and managed by experts, possibly industry leading experts.  REITs have a well documented track record you can research - most individuals do not. Many individuals have learned a hard lesson or two while attempting to generate passive income with real estate. Conversely, some people derive a great deal of satisfaction from owning real estate and have a true passion to do so.  Plus, if you are expecting interest rates to raise and/or rate of inflation to increase in the next 30 years, you may benefit from the financing aspects of the investment as well.  There are some regions/ opportunities that seem to do better than the average REIT a majority of the time, but may not be desirable to you or fit into your budget for various reasons. I'm not sure what your level of experience, knowledge or financial situation , but for everyone considering, there are many additional things to know about investment property compared to a primary residence.  A good place to start with REITs is the prospectus of one that interests you.  Research their holdings, create a model, or otherwise make a connection with the REIT before clicking buy."], "neg": ["U.S. corporate tax rates are the [highest in the world](http://www.kpmg.com/global/en/services/tax/tax-tools-and-resources/pages/corporate-tax-rates-table.aspx), not the lowest. Politicians often rebut this fact by claiming that the U.S. has a much lower effective corporate tax rate, but they fail to account for all taxes. The marginal effective corporate tax rate in the U.S. is still [much higher](http://taxfoundation.org/article/us-corporate-effective-tax-rate-myth-and-fact) than other developed countries.", "Thank you hyper333active for voting on DuplicatesBot.    This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. [You can view results here](https://goodbot-badbot.herokuapp.com/).     ***    ^^Even ^^if ^^I ^^don't ^^reply ^^to ^^your ^^comment, ^^I'm ^^still ^^listening ^^for ^^votes. ^^Check ^^the ^^webpage ^^to ^^see ^^if ^^your ^^vote ^^registered!", ">I would be all for that as soon as every job in society pays people enough for a modest life including insurance. Before that happens, this approach is just setting the lower classes up for failure.  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?  >I know this is a fundamental ideal of the right but I do not share it. I think you need a lot of carrots to get people to change.  Not my problem.  If people want to be irresponsible, that's their right.  They DO NOT have the right to have the government steal some of my money because they didn't plan properly.  >Is it moral for a rich man who made all his money while using public infrastructure and services to claim all his profits are exclusively his?  100% absolutely.  That infrastructure is already paid for.  His success creates no additional burden or obligation.  >You do understand that if/when we get a terrific healthcare system that benefits the common man the healthcare stocks would tank?  No, they wouldn't.  In fact, the healthcare market would grow so rapidly it would be the investing opportunity of a lifetime.  Thousands of new companies formed.  A massive wave of innovation in products and services when the FDA is curtailed.  It would be absolutely crazy.", "I  never observed people working hard at Sears or Kmart.    Both stores suck ass in my neck of the woods and all I saw was mediocre employees that did not give a shit about their job.", "\"http://blog.collegetuitioncompare.com/2015/05/sec-estimated-tuition-2015-2016.html  You keep speaking annually. No one gives a fuck about annual costs. You have to earn the entire degree, so the total cost is what I am concerned with, and what I was speaking to.  Also - grow up a little. Stop calling yourself a \"\"major\"\"; maybe \"\"graduate\"\" would be more appropriate.   The fact that you work in consulting speaks volumes. Everyone else in finance laughs at you. If finance professionals are leeches on industry, you are the parasites on the cocks of leeches.   EDIT: Sorry, everyone in **investment** finance laughs at you. I am sure there are some of those aforementioned fund accountants who would love to suck some leech cock.\"", "If speculators were in control of the US economy, the price would be very different. Ye they have no intention of possessing the actual commodity.  I know it's a left wing thought, but it is popular with THIS independent. People that trade in a commodity must be required to take possession of it. That alone will cut down on prices.", "A bank is putting money on the line for you when they loan you money, which is not something they have to do. Not telling them what you intend to do with the money they are giving you, when asked, is fraud, which if you are caught will put you into very deep trouble."]}
+{"query": "Are precious metals/collectibles a viable emergency fund?", "corpus": ["\"If it were me, I would convert it to cash and keep it in a liquid account. The assumption that silver will increase in value is misguided. From 1985 to 2002, it was flat. It's gone up and been far more volatile since then, and there has been significant declines which could eat at the stability of an emergency fund. Precious metals are speculation, not investing. They do not create wealth. Investing is typically considered too volatile for an emergency fund, more so keeping the money in metals. Making it more difficult to get to, like keeping it in a separate account might also fight against frivolous or accidental spending. Also there tends to be high transaction costs when liquidating metals. I found the best way is to use eBay. After some further comments and clarification here I suspect you are dealing with something else. Namely, the \"\"white picket fence\"\". Again, this is supposition, but perhaps she envisions the two of you married and hosting a dinner party using the passed down silver. This could be a strong emotional bond, and as such it could trump the logical arguments. Keeping it as an emergency fund: foolish. You helping her keep it because you are planning a life together: smart.\""], "neg": ["Something I wanted to posit: Do you have a life insurance policy, either taken out yourself or offered through your company? Many of these policies will pay out prior to the death of the covered individual, given statements by medical professionals that the person has a terminal illness or condition. The benefit, once disbursed, can be used for almost anything, including to pay down a mortgage, cover medical bills and other care expenses, etc. If you have such a policy, I urge you to look into it; that is the money that should be used for your end-of-life care and to ease the burden on your family, not your retirement savings. Your savings, if possible, should be left to continue to compound to provide your wife with a nest egg to retire with.", "Saying that tighter gun laws is the same as taking away your guns is the same as saying that tighter drunk driving laws is taking away your right to drive. It's the kind of rhetoric that shows you are unwilling to be reasonable.  I like this speech [from Obama](https://www.pbs.org/newshour/show/obama-to-gun-owners-im-not-looking-to-disarm-you) on the topic.  >First of all, the notion that I or Hillary or Democrats or whoever you want to choose are hell-bent on taking away folks’ guns is just not true.  >And I don’t care how many times the NRA says it. I’m about to leave office. There have been more guns sold since I have been president than just about any time in U.S. history. There are enough guns for every man, woman and child in this country.  >And at no point have I ever, ever proposed confiscating guns from responsible gun owners. So it’s just not true.", "I can't speak to Schweser as I've never heard of it but CFAL1 does exactly what you're looking for.  The study prep I recommended has a guy that does a video overview for each topic and he's quite good", "I love you guys, you’re the most honest and hard working taxi drivers I’ve ever met.  People come to Siem reap two ways, by air and via the boarder from Thailand.  When I was there the busses would drop you off at Poipet and you would have to hire a car to take you the rest of the way.  Now the busses go direct.  People via land don’t plan out much.  I would have said years ago to get a contact in Poipet to hand out flyers.  Now it’s different.  I would work out deals with bus drivers and hotels.  Another idea would be to find maybe four other drivers and start a company.  I would advertise this company on trip advisor, and the other travel sites.  You will have better luck as a conglomerate of people rather than one guy.   The key is to get the client before anyone else snatches them up.  To keep the client you should learn as much about Angkor Wat as you can and double as a tour guide.  My driver just went to sleep after he dropped us off.  Know the best restaurants, don’t take them to places that give you kickbacks, really look out for the client.  You need to be more than just a driver.  You are their tour guide.  Make them feel safe and give them your knowledge.", "I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:  - [/r/talkbusiness] [First, Amazon destroyed retail -- now, it's coming for Starbucks | ZDNet](https://www.reddit.com/r/talkbusiness/comments/79uaxa/first_amazon_destroyed_retail_now_its_coming_for/)   *^(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))*", "\"Forbes is simply a well-distrubted content farm. Forbes doesn't write articles to \"\"inform the reader\"\" or \"\"make a coherent argument.\"\" Forbes writes articles simply to get attention from crowds to increase readership to increase ad revenue.  Forbes' business model is quite simple: (1) hire a bunch of pseudo-intellectual \"\"executive writers\"\" and have them scribble whatever idiotic idea comes to mind. And since these \"\"executive writers\"\" are such genius, they don't even to do research. The end result is a magazine and website written in doublespeak. (2) have an outsourced bureau in India construct lists of the \"\"words richest\"\" and \"\"most expansive\"\" things/people^1.  This way the publication appeals to the not-so-bright-and-rather-gullible-mid-level-executive manager^2 who is looking at ways to get ahead in his job so he/she can afford to buy Rolex watches and Armani tuxes so they can appear to be rich, powerful, and successful. These mid-level-executives try to implement all the bad ideas they pick up reading in the work place.  Of course this nothing new. The majority of business/investing magazines operate in the same manner (e.g. Smart Money, Money, Entrepreneur, etc). Think of Forbes as Cosmopolitan of business periodicals^3. Think of Forbes as Paris Hilton in a crowd of other attention-hungry socialites in front of a bored paparazzi^4.  In general, magazines are full of pointless and misleading information--the business of magazines has been marginalized into the business of cheaply putting words (and pictures) between advertisements. Forbes isn't about providing its readers with smart analysis; Forbes is about making a cheap magazine and filling it up with ads. So writers are judged on sheer output, not quality^5.   Today an article made it to the front page of reddit titled *89 Business Cliches That Will Get Any MBA Promoted And Make Them Totally Useless*^6 --I found this article to be wonderfully meta, since it implies that people who follow what they preach are useless. This gives me hope. Of course if things continue to degrade magazines will likely be entirely picture based by about 2020^7.  Please make it a point to only read/watch/listen/buy media that at least attempts to produce quality and unbiased content. If companies stop getting paid to manufacture shit, they will hopefully stop making shit.  **tl;dr** Forbes is a very elaborate content farm  1. Bonus points are awarded for lists that also tie-in three or more cleavage pics  2. there are quite a few of these people  3. Cosmo: \"\"10 ways to bring your man to orgasm\"\", Forbes: \"\"10 buzzwords you need in your resume\"\"  4. My point being things will naturally become quite obscene/ridiculous/dumb.   5. AMA Request: Forbes Editor/Writer  6. [link](http://www.forbes.com/sites/ericjackson/2012/06/19/89-business-cliches-that-will-get-any-mba-promoted-to-middle-management-and-make-them-totally-useless/)  7. In which case, we can only hope that either: magazines go bankrupt, 2012 Apocalypse predictions are correct.  edits* grammar elaboration being anal\"", "Yes, you can do this buy placing a conditional order to buy at market if the price moves to 106 or above. Once the price hits 106 your market order will hit the market and you will purchase the stock at 106 or above. You can also place a tack profit order at 107 linked to your initial conditional buy order, so that once you buy order is executed and you buy at 106, a take profit order will be executed only if the price reaches 107 or above.  If the price never reaches 106, neither your market buy order or take profit order will hit the market and you won't buy or sell anything."]}
+{"query": "person on loan with cosigner", "corpus": ["\"This will probably require asking the SO to sign a quitclaim and/or to \"\"sell\"\" him her share of the vehicle's ownership and getting it re-titled in his own name alone, which is the question you actually asked. To cancel the cosigner arrangement, he has to pay off the loan. If he can't or doesn't want to do that in cash, he'd have to qualify for a new loan to refinasnce in his name only, or get someone else (such as yourself) to co-sign. Alternatively, he might sell the car (or something else) to pay what he still owes on it. As noted in other answers, this kind of mess is why you shouldn't get into either cosigning or joint ownership without a written agreement spelling out exactly what happens should one of the parties wish to end this arrangement.  Doing business with friends is still doing business.\""], "neg": ["\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/features/2017-06-08/no-one-has-ever-made-a-corruption-machine-like-this-one) reduced by 96%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Structured Operations, perhaps the farthest-reaching, most efficient corruption machine in modern business, was about to run out of road. By Odebrecht's admission in U.S. District Court in Brooklyn last December, Structured Operations doled out some $788 million in bribes in Brazil and 11 other countries, securing more than 100 contracts that generated $3.3 billion of profit for the company.  > It's the biggest corruption-related fine ever levied on a company, eclipsing a $3.16 billion fine in Brazil tied to corruption allegations against another target of the Car Wash probe, Brazilian beef giant JBS SA. For decades, Odebrecht has cultivated a certain corporate lore.  > In exchange, the company admitted in its settlement of corruption charges in U.S. federal court, the governments of those countries granted Odebrecht contracts that generated $1.4 billion in profit.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6gbhxq/no_one_has_ever_made_a_corruption_machine_like/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~140495 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*: **Odebrecht**^#1 **bank**^#2 **company**^#3 **Antigua**^#4 **Brazil**^#5\"", "\"If a stock is trading for $11 per share just before a $1 per share dividend is declared, then the share price drops to $10 per share immediately following the declaration. If you owned 100 shares (valued at $1100) before the dividend was declared, then you still own 100 shares (now valued at $1000). Generally, if the dividend is paid today, only the owners of shares as of yesterday evening (or the day before maybe) get paid the dividend. If you bought those 100 shares only this morning, the dividend gets paid to the seller (who owned the stock until yesterday evening), not to you. You just \"\"bought a dividend:\"\" paying $1100 for 100 shares that are worth only $1000 at the end of the day, whereas if you had just been a little less eager to purchase right now, you could have bought those 100 shares for only $1000. But, looking at the bright side, if you bought the shares earlier than yesterday, you get paid the dividend.  So, assuming that you bought the shares in timely fashion, your holdings just lost value and are worth only $1000.  What you do have is the promise that in a couple of days time, you will be paid $100 as the dividend, thus restoring the asset value back to what it was earlier.  Now, if you had asked your broker to re-invest the dividend back into the same stock, then, assuming that the stock price did not change in the interim due to normal market fluctuations, you would get another 10 shares for that $100 dividend making the value of your investment $1100 again (110 shares at $10 each), exactly what it was before the dividend was paid. If you didn't choose to reinvest the dividend, you would still have the 100 shares (worth $1000) plus $100 cash. So, regardless of what other investors choose to do, your asset value does not change as a result of the dividend.  What does change is your net worth because that dividend amount is taxable (regardless of whether you chose to reinvest or not) and so your (tax) liability just increased.\"", "\"Think about the implications if the world worked as your question implies that it \"\"should\"\":  A $15 share of stock would return you (at least) $15 after 3 months, plus another $15 after 6 months, plus another after 9 and 12 months.  This would have returned to you $60 over the year that you owned it (plus you still own the share).  Only then would the stock be worth buying?  Anything less than $60 would be too little to be worth bothering about for $15? Such a thing would indeed be worth buying, but you won't find golden-egg laying stocks like that on the stock market.  Why?  Because other people would outbid your measly $15 in order to get this $60-a-year producing stock (in fact, they would bid many hundreds of dollars).  Since other people bid more, you can't find such a deal available. (Of course, there are the points others have brought up: the earnings per share are yearly, not quarterly, unless otherwise noted.  The earnings may not be sent to you at all, or only a small part, but you would gain much of their value because the company should be worth about that much more by keeping the earnings.)\"", "Is it true that due the to the increase in interest rates that inflation is likely to increase as well? It is typically the reverse where inflation causes interest rates to rise. Interest rates fundamentally reflect the desire for people to purchase future goods over present day goods.  If I loan money to someone for 5 years I lose the ability to use that money.  In order to entice me to loan the money the borrower would have to offer me an incentive, that is, they would have to give me additional money at the end of that 5 years.  This additional money is the interest rate and it reflects the desire of people to spend money in the future versus the present day.  If offered the same amount of money today versus 5 years from now almost everyone would chose to take the money now.  Money in the present is more valuable than the same amount of money in the future. Interest rates would still exist even with a currency that could not be printed. I would still prefer to have the currency today than in the future. If the currency is continually devalued (i.e. the issuer is printing more of the currency) than borrowers may charge additional interest to compensate for the loss in purchasing power when they make a loan. Also, it is hard to compare interest rates and inflation.  Inflation is very difficult to calculate. New products and services, as well as ever changing consumer desires, continually change the mixture of goods in the market so it is nearly impossible to compare a basket of goods today to a basket of goods 5, 10, 20, or 30 years ago.", "\"The market will always be efficient. What they forgot in 1999 is that gold prices had been going down for several years and therefore stock prices were going up, but no trend lasts forever.  The \"\"dot com\"\" boom was not a result of magic new technologies, it was the result of the end of the Cold War when people started getting rid of their gold reserves.\"", "I would not remove the current social programs . I wouldn't keep the current school system in the States or Canada if I was going to do this either . Public tax payed schools and apprenticeship programs only . So not qualified would not really be an issue , there would be something . Not wanting to is actually kind of the point , since apparently according to the article  most unemployed men really want to do just do drugs or it doesn't say so but I suspect stay home and play video games or both  .", "There might just not be anything useful for you to do with that 'value'. As others mentioned, HELOCs have their risks and issues too. There is no risk-less way to take advantage of the value (outside of selling) It is similar to owning a rare stamp that is 'worth a million' - what good does it do you if you don't sell it? nothing. It is just a number on a sheet of paper, or even only on some people's minds."]}
+{"query": "What are the differences between gold/siver “coin” vs. “round”?", "corpus": ["\"Coins are legal tender. They're authorized by governments and have a face value. Rounds are simply coined pieces of metal minted by private manufacturers. They do not have any face value and are not legal tender. Rounds are used to own metal, they have no value other than the value of the metal in them. Any premium you pay over the price of the metal is the mint's profit. Coins are also used as bulions (i.e.: to own metal and create profits for the government), but many times coins have limited issue and become valuable because of the rarity, specific issues with a specific coin (mistakes, impurities, exclusive designs), etc. So they also may have some numismatic value (depends on the specific coin). Coins also have the assurance of quality of the authorizing government (and fakes are dealt with by the law as forgery of coins is illegal and is a crime), rounds however do not enjoy such protection, and any one can mint them (only copyright/trademark protections apply, where the enforcement is by the owner and not the government). Re the advantages - coins (if you pick the right ones...) appreciate much more than the metal. However, this is mostly in hindsight, and most of the \"\"bulion\"\" coins do not appreciate significantly beyond the price of the metal unless there's something else significant about them (first year of issue, high quality certification, etc). Rounds on the other hand are cheaper (1 oz round will be significantly cheaper than 1 oz coin), and monitor more closely the price of the metal. It is unlikely for rounds to significantly deviate from the spot price (although this does happen occasionally, for specific designs or if a mint goes out of business).\""], "neg": ["A childhood friend just had his sentencing hearing the other day after pleading to robbing 2 banks 5 times over the span of 11 months.  He only cleared $34k and now he's going away for 7.5 years, best case scenario.", "When people voice or express racist discriminatory views for public consumption they are signifying to the world that they have lost all sense of the concept of socialization, and that they wish to be alone and isolated from civilized educated people.  Politics is knowing when to leave the world stage, and racism is not knowing you are just about to, Mr. Faber. Have fun counting your money you anal sadistic antisocial buffoon knuckledragger piece of sociopathic shit.  Bon Voyagee'....", "Your local board of health will have all the guidelines in a neat package for you. Call the country health department for food related business requirements.   Be prepared to fill out a shitload of forms, pay a shitload of fees, and wait a shitload of days for processing.   Also, good luck!", "\"Here is one study http://rfs.oxfordjournals.org/content/7/4/711.short I quote from the abstract  \"\"In a variety of tests, marginal price drop is not significantly   different from the dividend amount. Thus, over the last several   decades, one-for-one marginal price drop has been an excellent   (average) rule of thumb.\"\"\"", "A family of three is dad, mom and kid, not dad, mom and three kids.  Also, a Mercedes isn't a need nor are people at the poverty level even considering it.  You can't compare a Mercedes on a lease to basic needs such as shelter, food and clothing.", "This has been rehashed many times over, you should not have a family of three if you are on minimum wage.   You can't afford a Mercedes lease on the minimum wage does that mean you should increase it? No. You simply make decisions to support your lifestyle, don't bring three kids(or significant other and a kid, either way not relevant) into your life if you can't support yourself.    edit: Was expecting downvotes, I suggest you take a basic Economics class.", "\"Completely linear?  We don't do that. Our daughter has a fixed allowance, and we expect a certain amount of help around the house as being part of the family.  We don't make any explicit ties between the two, and we don't seem to have any problems. We bought an eBay lot of Polly Pockets and divided them up into $5 bags.  (This is a better deal that what we could get in the store new.)  Her allowance isn't enough that she can \"\"buy\"\" one every week. After sensing her frustration we gave her the opportunity to earn some more money by doing extra work.  It happened to be cleaning up after our dogs in the back yard, a chore we had neglected for quite a while.  She stuck with the job, and truly earned that money.  (She'll be six in January.)  What's more, it was a good deal for me.  It needed to be done, and I didn't really want to do it. :) So, for now this seems like a fair balance.  It prevents her from getting the idea that she won't work unless she gets paid, but she also knows that working harder does have its rewards. We still have time to teach her the idea of working smarter. (This isn't a formal study.  It's just my experience.)\""]}
+{"query": "What's the appeal of dividends in investing? [duplicate]", "corpus": ["\"A dividend is one method of returning value to shareholders, some companies pay richer dividends than others; some companies don't typically pay a dividend.  Understand that shareholders are owners of a company.  When you buy a stock you now own a portion (albeit an extremely small portion) of that company. It is up to you to determine whether holding stock in a company is worth the risk inherent to equity investing over simply holding treasury notes or some other comparable no risk investment like bank savings or CDs.   Investing isn't really intended to change your current life.  A common phrase is \"\"investing in tomorrow.\"\"  It's about holding on to money so you'll have it for tomorrow.  It's about putting your money to work for you today, so you'll have it tomorrow.  It's all about the future, not your current life.\""], "neg": ["Necklaces are extra like a sign of class within the present iteration. Humans could have a lot of options and designs to prefer from jewelers and will have an opportunity to create their own design situated on the supply. It's certainly a excellent funding for folks to purchase any form of awesome name necklace, because it could aid you construct a fame and fetch extra money someday. Necklaces would on the whole be luxurious than any other pieces of jewelry, because the utilization of metallic would normally be high than other kinds.", "\"I'm not so sure, most of these \"\"savings\"\" from the report is from the construction industry, they're struggling as it is and the fact they are adding jobs is a good sign even if the wages are less than before. We just saw a bubble  burst in real estate, of course any company that is benefiting from a growing bubble is going to be able to pay their employee's a lot more than they could after the bubble burst, assuming the companies are even around still.\"", "\"On a longer time scale, the plot thickens:  It almost looks random.  A large drop in real rates in the mid-70s, a massive spike in the early 80s, followed by a slow multi-decade decline. The chaos doesn't seem to be due to interest rates.  They steadily climbed and steadily fell:  All that's left is inflation:  First, real rates should be expected to pay a moderate rate, so nominal rates will usually be higher than inflation. However, interest rates are very stable over long time periods while inflation is not.  Economists call this type of phenomenon \"\"sticky pricing\"\", where the price, interest rates in this case, do not change much despite the realities surrounding them. But the story is a little more complicated. In the early 1970s, Nixon had an election to win and tried to lessen the impacts of recession by increasing gov't spending, not raising taxes, and financing through the central bank, causing inflation.  The strategy failed, but he was reelected anyways.   This set the precedent for the hyperinflation of the 1970s that ended abruptly by Reagan at the beginning of his first term in the early 1980s.  Again, interest rates remained sticky, so real rates spiked. Now, the world is not growing, almost stagnating.  Demand for equity is somewhat above average, but because corporate income is decelerating, and the developed world's population is aging, demand for investment income is skyrocketing.   As demand rises, so does the price, which for an investor is a form of inverse of the interest rate. Future demand is probably best answered by forecasters, and the monetarist over and undertones still dominating the Federal Reserve show that they have finally learned after 100 years that inflation is best kept \"\"low and stable\"\":  But what happens if growth in the US suddenly spikes, inflation rises, and the Federal Reserve must sell all of the long term assets it has bet so heavily on quickly while interest rates rise?  Inflation may not be intended, but it is not impossible.\"", "Propworld Realty offers luxurious Office Space for Rent in Noida at very economical rentals. As we all know good office space influence your business.  In today scenario office space is now being seen as a significant factor in recruiting, maintaining and maximising talent. Hence,if you are looking  supreme quality Office Space for Rent in Noida then call us 09810000375.", "\"Because people are willing to trade for it.  People are willing to trade for Gold because: The value of gold goes up because the demand for it goes up, while the supply has been basically static (or growing at a low static rate) for a long time.  The demand is going up because people see it as a safe place to put their money.   Another reason Gold's value in dollars goes up, is because the value of the item it's traded against (dollars, euros, yen, etc) goes down, while its own value stays roughly the same. You point out Gold is not as liquid as cash, but gold (both traded on an exchange, and held physically) is easily sold.  There is always someone willing to trade you cash for gold.  Compare this to some of the bank stocks during the first part of our current recession.  People were not willing to give much of anything for your shares.  As the (annoying, misleading) advertisements say, \"\"Gold has never been worth zero\"\".\"", "There was an NPR (I think) story a couple of years ago about the cost of college. They found that while sticker prices were going up, the price most people paid wasn't actually rising that fast. This was at least true in top tier schools. I think some state schools have other issues, like the state cutting back on funding so raising tuitions and/or cutting back on scholarships and grants.  The weird thing I learned from the piece was that raising prices was a way to appear more attractive to top students. Apparently the psychological factors around getting a $10k scholarship to a $15k school or a $30k scholarship to a $35k school make the more expensive one look better.", "It's not a peer reviewed article in nature. It's an opinion piece on their website.   Don't be so foolish.   >Nobody here is passing any judgment on Trump, the OP is showing that there's a bias for people with higher education to vote liberal. That's just a fact, nobody is saying that this statistic invalidates conservative beliefs.  Get fucking real. They both came our guns blazing."]}
+{"query": "What is the difference between trading and non-trading stock?", "corpus": ["Every company has Stocks.   For the stocks to be traded via some stock exchange, the companies must follow the eligibility criteria and guidelines. Once done, these are then listed on the stock exchange and can be traded. The advantage [amongst others] of listing is liquidity and stocks can easily be bought and sold.  Some small companies or closely held companies may not want to list on stock exchange and hence are not traded. This does not mean they can't be bought and sold, they can be outside of the market, however the deals are complex and every deal has to be worked out. During the course of time a stock that is traded on a stock exchange, would either fail to meet the criteria or voluntarily choose not to be traded and follow the delisting process [either by stock exchange or by company]. After this the stocks are no longer traded on the exchange."], "neg": ["The main question is, how much money you want to make?  With every transaction, you  should calculate the real price as the price plus costs. For example, if you but 10 GreatCorp stock of £100 each, and the transaction cost is £20 , then the real cost of buying a single share is in fact buying price of stock + broker costs / amount bought, or £104 in this case.  Now you want to make a profit so calculate your desired profit margin. You want to receive a sales price of buying price + profit margin + broker costs / amount bought. Suppose that you'd like 5%, then you'll need the price per stock of my example to increase to 100 + 5% + £40 / 10 = £109.  So you it only becomes worth while if you feel confident that GreatCorp's stock  will rise to that level. Read the yearly balance of that company to see if they don't have any debt, and are profitable. Look at their dividend earning history. Study the stock's candle graphs of the last ten years or so, to find out if there's no seasonal effects, and if the stock performs well overall. Get to know the company well. You should only buy GreatCorp shares after doing your homework.  But what about switching to another stock of LovelyInc? Actually it doesn't matter, since it's best to separate transactions. Sell your GreatCorp's stock when it has reached the desired profit margin or if it seems it is underperforming. Cut your losses! Make the calculations for LovelyCorp's shares without reference to GreatCorp's, and decide like that if it's worth while to buy.", "Here's a sneak peek of /r/iamveryrich using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/iamveryrich/top/?sort=top&t=all) of all time!  \\#1: [This guy just graduated highschool.](http://imgur.com/SD97y6T) | [27 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/iamveryrich/comments/6ndqxe/this_guy_just_graduated_highschool/)   \\#2: [My kid will drive a Lamborghini to school](https://i.redd.it/4w4zsdtztkxy.jpg) | [13 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/iamveryrich/comments/6b7vus/my_kid_will_drive_a_lamborghini_to_school/)   \\#3: [No jokes on my watch](https://i.redd.it/3p7xtoa5tbwy.jpg) | [3 comments](https://np.reddit.com/r/iamveryrich/comments/6a08qg/no_jokes_on_my_watch/)  ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| ^^Now ^^with ^^97% ^^less ^^bold ^^| [^^Contact ^^me](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| [^^Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| [^^Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/6l7i0m/blacklist/)", "I realize you're probably looking for methods on the large scale.  However, I sell a lot of homes to wealth advisers and was always curious about how they consistently pull in business.  The obvious answer is networking, then word of mouth.  Do right by your clients and they'll brag to their equally high networth friends.  One buddy of mine spends a lot of time taking his clients (and their friends) out to dinners, golfing, and mini-vacations.  Surprise, surprise, those friends become clients too.  Rinse and repeat.  Other than that, hang out at high end bars and other places higher networth people in their 30's and 40's would hang out.  Then ABC.", "According to the 401K information from the IRS' website, it seems that you could seemingly get away with a salary as low as $53,000. It's tough, and I'd suggest speaking with an Accounting professional to get the clear answers, because as Brick's answer suggests, the IRS isn't super clear about it.  An excerpt from a separate page regarding 401K contributions: The annual additions paid to a participant’s account cannot exceed the   lesser of: There are separate, smaller limits for SIMPLE 401(k) plans. Example 1: Greg, 46, is employed by an employer with a 401(k) plan and   he also works as an independent contractor for an unrelated business.   Greg sets up a solo 401(k) plan for his independent contracting   business. Greg contributes the maximum amount to his employer’s 401(k)   plan for 2015, $18,000. Greg would also like to contribute the maximum   amount to his solo 401(k) plan. He is not able to make further   elective deferrals to his solo 401(k) plan because he has already   contributed his personal maximum, $18,000. He has enough earned income   from his business to contribute the overall maximum for the year,   $53,000. Greg can make a nonelective contribution of $53,000 to his   solo 401(k) plan. This limit is not reduced by the elective deferrals   under his employer’s plan because the limit on annual additions   applies to each plan separately. https://www.irs.gov/retirement-plans/plan-participant-employee/retirement-topics-401k-and-profit-sharing-plan-contribution-limits", "The ignorant and absolutely misleading or flat out lying done by these companies to sway politicians in favor of fracking is intellectually insulting to someone whose head is not firmly rammed up his own ass. Specifically, me. Fracking is no bueno because it is no safeo. Why not also store spent nuclear fuel rods close to an aquifer while we're doing stupid things?", "\"He will receive it just like any other non-spouse beneficiary you could have named.  The money can stay in your 401K account if he wants to keep it there. For simplicity, your nephew will want to roll the money over to another qualified account, such as an IRA. The account must be titled in your name, for the benefit of him as beneficiary (aka, \"\"beneficiary IRA\"\").  Regardless of where the money is kept, he will be required to start withdrawing the funds a little bit each year, known as the Required Minimum Distribution (RMD) and it will appear as taxable income to him each year. There is no early withdrawal penalty in this case. Optionally, he can stretch out his RMDs over his own life expectancy. He would do this to lower his potential tax obligation, and to keep the money in his account longer, hopefully growing over time. See Publication 590-B , Distributions from IRA.\"", "At TAPE-RITE we are “The Specialists in Specialty Tapes”SM . We stock a wide range of tapes including: double-coated, electrical, Teflon (PTFE), Kapton (Polyimide), fiberglass, foam, aluminum, cloth, military & aerospace spec, high temperature and many. for details call us at: 516-406-8294 / 800-532-2309 Fax at: 516.328.0344 E-mail at: sales@taperite.com visit us: http://taperite.com/"]}
+{"query": "Is it financially advantageous and safe to rent out my personal car?", "corpus": ["The moment that you start to rent your car to strangers you are talking about using your car as a business. Will it be financially advantageous? If you can convince somebody to rent your vehicle for more than your required monthly payments then it might be. Of course you have to determine what would be the true cost of ownership for you. It could include your auto loan, and insurance, but you would be saving on the garage costs. Of course if you don't have it rented 100% of the time you will still have some costs. Your insurance company will need to know about your plan. They charge based on the risk. If you aren't honest about the situation they won't cover you if something goes wrong. The local government may want to know. They charge different car registration fees for businesses. If there are business taxes they will want that.  Taxes. you are running a business so everybody from the federal governemnt to the local government may want a cut. Plus you will have to depreciate the value of the item. Turning the item from a personal use item to a business item can have tax issues. If you don't own it 100% the lender may also have concerns about making sure their collateral survives. Is it safe? and from the comments to the question :  Should I do a contract or something that would protect me? Nope. it isn't safe unless you do have a contract. Of course that contract will have to be drawn up by a lawyer to make sure it protects you from theft, negligence, breach of contract.... You will have to be able to not just charge rent, but be able to repossess the car if they don't return it on time. You will have to be able to evaluate if the renter is trustworthy, or you may find your car is in far worse shape if you can even get it back."], "neg": ["\"The Euro is not the reason for the debt crisis. It is only preventing those countries affected from using the easy way out. The fault is entirely that of those countries.  They were given billions and billions in structural aid, to put the \"\"convergence criteria\"\" into reality. Instead they chose bubble economies. And no, this is not the same all around Europe. I don't see France or Germany having a giant property bubble.\"", "\"Hurd did almost as much in his short time there to gut R&D, engineering, and every other \"\"cost centre\"\" within HP as he could, leading to a dearth of product and technology in the pipeline.  Tough to innovate with nothing but sales and marketing.\"", "Yeah, but based on his age I would guess he started really loading up on coins and gold stocks in the latter 1970s, as many goldbugs did. Those bets would have lagged inflation since, underperforming nearly any other investment.", "\"Inflation, like trade deficits or surpluses, have winners and losers in an economy. Clear losers are people who are on a fixed income, as they often have a fixed income and a prices keep on going up, meaning they can afford less.  Numerous articles on the internet discuss the inflation of the 1970s, here are Google's results.  I'm not so sure that governments want \"\"some inflation\"\" as much as they desperately want to avoid deflation. Deflation means that the price for today's product, like a car, will decrease in price tomorrow (or a month from now) which creates a powerful incentive for people to put off a purchase until later, which brings consumer demand down in a country's economy.\"", "I hear what you are saying, but it doesn't seem to ring true.  The subsidies again may exacerbate the issue, but they aren't CAUSING the issue.  The real issue is the regulatory burden in your explanation here, not the subsidies.  But again, I think the large companies' abilities to sue forever, or buy out of existence, the smaller companies, or to gain regulation that does disproportionately favor the larger companies, is the real issue, then.  Subsidies are only a catalyst to help the process go faster.", "\"There is no equation. Only data that would help you come to the decision that's right for you.  Assuming the 401(k) is invested in a stock fund of one sort or another, the choice is nearly the same as if you had $5K cash to either invest or pay debt.  Since stock returns are not fixed, but are a random distribution that somewhat resembles a bell curve, median about 10%, standard deviation about 14%. It's the age old question of \"\"getting a guaranteed X% (paying the debt) or a shot at 8-10% or so in the market.\"\" This come up frequently in the decision to pre-pay mortgages at 4-5% versus invest. Many people will take the guaranteed 4% return vs the risk that comes with the market. For your decision, the 401(k) loan, note that the loan is due if you separate from the company for whatever reason. This adds an additional layer of risk and another data point to the mix. For your exact numbers, the savings is barely $50. I'd probably not do it. If the cards were 18%, I'd lean toward the loan, but only if I knew I could raise the cash to pay it back to not default.\"", "Here's an Irish government publication that should give you some background information to get you started. In a nutshell, you get tax benefits, but cannot withdraw money without penalty until you reach retirement age."]}
+{"query": "How much financial information should a buyer give an estate agent?", "corpus": ["\"My guess is they are fishing for business for their in-house finance person. In the UK, all the estate agency chains (and many of the smaller outfits) have financial advice firms they are affiliated with, often to the extent that a desk in each branch will be for 'the finance guy' (it's usually a guy). The moment you show any sign of not quite having the finances for a place you like, they will offer you a consultation with the finance guy, who \"\"will be able to get you a deal\"\". On commission, of course. What you need to say with regards to financing is (delete as applicable) \"\"I am a cash buyer\"\" / \"\"I have an Agreement In Principle\"\". And that's it. They do not 'need' to know any more, and they are under obligation to pass your offer on to the vendor.\""], "neg": ["Please expanded on your reasoning and which side you are defending (pro-DACA or anti-DACA). Allowing it to remain is a slight to legal immigrants and should have gone through Congress in the first place. That being said, to remove those here presently is far to costly of an idea to entertain, both monetarily and politically. Therefore a middle road is the route that must be taken... and that requires active, and most importantly constructive, discussion. My first comment is purposely broad for this reason. Please detail a better solution that works for all parties.", ">OK, great, where do I apply for my refund?  An odd question, but I'll answer it if you really don't know.  Tax credits will only likely be a refund if you pay too much tax during the year, otherwise they will be reductions in your yearly tax bill.  In most countries, tax credits are awarded when paying taxes.  Assuming you are from the United States, that would likely be in April on your individual income tax form.  Tax credits can be earned for doing anything the government deems desirable or worthy of exception.  Examples include buying a first house, having children, starting or running a business, paying tuition, adopting a child,  caring for an elderly or disabled person, earning money overseas, paying certain types of medical insurance, and being married in addition to purchasing a zero emission or low emission vehicle.", "If you've got the money to pay off your credit cards, do it. Today, if possible. There is no need to pay another penny of interest to them.  They may or may not cancel your cards. That is up to them. We can't know what will trigger an individual bank to cancel your card. The answers you got on your other question offer some speculation on why some banks might cancel, but this is not something banks reveal. Anything you do on your own to try to keep the cards open is just a guess, and may or may not succeed.  But ask yourself: why do you want to keep these cards?  Is it for the convenience of the card? I agree that credit cards (paid in full monthly) are convenient, but when they start costing you money, they aren't worth it anymore, in my opinion. Debit cards have most of the same conveniences of credit cards, and are free.  If it is for emergencies, I recommend instead building up an emergency cash fund. That way, if an emergency arises, you won't be forced to borrow money at high credit card interest rates.  If the reason you want to hang on to the credit card is so you can spend more than you have, then you will find yourself in the same situation again. If I were you, I would pay off the cards ASAP. If the banks cancel your cards, just switch to a debit card and be thankful that you are no longer continuously leaking money to the banks.", "\"Bank of America has been selling off their local branches to smaller banks in recent years.  Here are a few news stories related to this: Along with the branch buildings, the local customers' savings and checking accounts are sold to the new bank.  It is interesting that you were told that your savings account is being sold, but that your checking account will remain with BofA.  I guess it depends on the terms of the particular sale. Here are your options, as I see it: Let the savings account move to the new bank, and see what the new terms are like.  You might actually like the new bank.  If you don't, you can shop around and close your account at the new bank after it has been created. Close your account now, before the move.  If you have a different bank you'd like to move to, there is no need to wait. Since your checking account is apparently staying with BofA, you could move all your money from your savings account to your checking account, closing your savings account.  Then after \"\"mid August\"\" when the local branch switches to the new bank and everyone else's savings account has moved, you can call up BofA and tell them you want to move some of the money from your checking account into a new savings account. If you really have your heart set on staying with BofA, option 3 looks like a good, easy choice. To address your other concerns: Bank of America is a big credit card company, so I doubt that your credit card is being sold off.  Your credit card account should stay as-is.  Even if your savings account and checking account are at a different bank, there is no need to switch credit cards. Your savings and checking accounts have nothing to do with your credit report or score, so there is no concern there.  If you end up wanting to switch to a new credit card with a different bank, there are minor hits to your credit score involved with applying for a new card and closing your current card, but if I were you I would not worry about your credit score in this.  Switch credit cards if you want a change, and keep your credit card if you don't.\"", "It would depend on the market you are in, state/city. 15k isn't a lot to get started on anything really serious. As for kicking the guy out? Wouldn't that take money away from your father from rent? If you know anything about PC repair, you can go get your A+ cert and setup shop in your home, and leave the money coming in for rent. Build up a client base and when you start growing, rent your own space or then kick the guy out. Crawl, before you walk. It seems you want to start out running.   Overall, I would just say look at your local market, and figure out what they are in need of, then go from there. That is the safest way you could possibly use the money.   If you know anything about cars, you can go to auctions, and ads in the paper, buy cars, fix them or put them up for sale. Ideally you could buy about 3 or 4 cars with that money, then make about 1k on each by reselling. Depending on your area after 3 cars in x amount of time, you may have to get a dealers license.", "\"Create an account called, say, \"\"Paycheck\"\".  When you get paid, create an entry with your gross income as a deposit.  For each deduction in your paycheck, create a minus (or expense) entry.  After doing that, what will be left in the Paycheck account will be your net income.  Simply transfer this amount to the real account your paycheck goes into (your checking account, probably). Almost all the time, the value of your Paycheck account will be 0.  It will be nonzero only for a moment every two weeks (or however often you get paid). I don't know if this is the standard way of doing it (in the professional accounting world).  It's a way I developed on my own and it works well, I think.  I think it's better than just adding a deposit entry in your checking account for your net income as it lets you keep track of all your deductions. (I use Quicken for the Mac.  Before they added a Paycheck feature, I used this method.  Then they removed the Paycheck feature from the latest version of Quicken for the Mac and I now use this method again.)\"", "\"Let's pretend that the author of that article is not selling anything and is trying to help you succeed in life.  I have nothing against sales, but that author is throwing out a lot of nonsense to sell his stuff and is creating a state of urgency so that people adopt this mindset.  It's clever and it obviously works. From a pure time perspective, most people won't make enough money to run their own business and be as profitable as if they worked for a company.  This is a reality that few want to acknowledge.  If you invested in yourself and your career with the same discipline and urgency as an entrepreneur, most people would be better off at a company when you consider the benefits and the fact that employees have a full 7.5% of social security paid by their employer (entrepreneurs see the full 15% while employees don't).  Why do I start here, because this author isn't telling you that the more people take his advice, the more their earnings will regress to the mean or below.  In fact, most of my entrepreneur friends have to go back to work when their reality fails after they burn through their savings. 401ks are not a perfect system, but there are more 401k millionaires now than ever before this, and people who give the author's advice are always looking to avoid doing what they need to do - save for retirement.  Most people I know sadly realize this in their 50s, when it's too late, and start trying to \"\"catch up.\"\"  I don't blame the author for this, as he knows his article will appeal to younger people who don't have the wisdom to see that his advice hasn't been great for most.  The reality is that for most people 401ks will provide tax advantaged savings that you can use when you're older; taxes will eat at your earnings, so these accounts really help. Finally, look at the article again especially the part you quote.  He says inflation will carve out what you save, yet inflation is less than 2%.  Where is he getting this from?  In the past decade, we've seen numerous deflationary spirals and the market overall has come back from the fall in 2009.  Again, this isn't \"\"good enough\"\" for this author, so buy his stuff to learn how to succeed!  There have been numerous decades (50s,70s) that were much worse for investors than this past one.\""]}
+{"query": "Is capturing a loss a unique opportunity?", "corpus": ["I agree, one should not let the tax tail wag the investing dog.  The only question should be whether he'd buy the stock at today's price. If he wishes to own it long term, he keeps it. To take the loss this year, he'd have to sell soon, and can't buy it back for 30 days. If, for whatever reason, the stock comes back a bit, he's going to buy in higher.  To be clear, the story changes for ETFs or mutual funds. You can buy a fund to replace one you're selling, capture the loss, and easily not run afoul of wash sale rules."], "neg": ["In places like the midwest city where I live, this is false, the cost of living is low.  I pay 340 a month, have a yard, kitchen, own bathroom, jam room, bedroom, own shower, great neighborhood downtown etc.  When I started out, I made minimum wage and lived with roommates in the same nice neighborhood.   This is just false.", "\"Answers: 1. Is this a good idea? Is it really risky? What are the pros and cons? Yes, it is a bad idea. I think, with all the talk about employer matches and tax rates at retirement vs. now, that you miss the forest for the trees. It's the taxes on those retirement investments over the course of 40 years that really matter. Example: Imagine $833 per month ($10k per year) invested in XYZ fund, for 40 years (when you retire). The fund happens to make 10% per year over that time, and you're taxed at 28%. How much would you have at retirement? 2. Is it a bad idea to hold both long term savings and retirement in     the same investment vehicle, especially one pegged to the US stock     market? Yes. Keep your retirement separate, and untouchable. It's supposed to be there for when you're old and unable to work. Co-mingling it with other funds will induce you to spend it (\"\"I really need it for that house! I can always pay more into it later!\"\"). It also can create a false sense of security (\"\"look at how much I've got! I got that new car covered...\"\"). So, send 10% into whatever retirement account you've got, and forget about it. Save for other goals separately.  3. Is buying SPY a \"\"set it and forget it\"\" sort of deal, or would I need     to rebalance, selling some of SPY and reinvesting in a safer vehicle     like bonds over time? For a retirement account, yes, you would. That's the advantage of target date retirement funds like the one in your 401k. They handle that, and you don't have to worry about it. Think about it: do you know how to \"\"age\"\" your account, and what to age it into, and by how much every year? No offense, but your next question is what an ETF is! 4. I don't know ANYTHING about ETFs. Things to consider/know/read? Start here: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/etf.asp 5. My company plan is \"\"retirement goal\"\" focused, which, according to     Fidelity, means that the asset allocation becomes more conservative     over time and switches to an \"\"income fund\"\" after the retirement     target date (2050). Would I need to rebalance over time if holding     SPY? Answered in #3. 6. I'm pretty sure that contributing pretax to 401k is a good idea     because I won't be in the 28% tax bracket when I retire. How are the     benefits of investing in SPY outweigh paying taxes up front, or do     they not? Partially answered in #1. Note that it's that 4 decades of tax-free growth that's the big dog for winning your retirement. Company matches (if you get one) are just a bonus, and the fact that contributions are tax free is a cherry on top. 7. Please comment on anything else you think I am missing I think what you're missing is that winning at personal finance is easy, and winning at personal finance is hard\"", "Yes, it is possible, and many companies do it for legitimate reasons.  For example renewing subscriptions or one-click ordering. The only way to completely stop it would be to cancel the card.  More realistically, check your bill whenever it arrives, and report any unauthorized transactions to the card issuer.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.uslifeinsurance.ml/2017/07/chinese-solar-industry-making-25.html) reduced by 74%. (I'm a bot) ***** > China's solar industry is expected to produce 25 percent more panels in 2017 than last year, supported by domestic sales and demand from the United States and emerging markets, the head of a Chinese industry association said.  > China was expected to produce solar panels with a combined capacity of 60 gigawatts this year, said Wang Bohua, secretary general of China's photovoltaic industry association.  > Environment group Greenpeace said solar curtailment rates across China rose 50 percent in 2015 and 2016, with more than 30 percent of available power in northwestern province Gansu and Xinjiang failing to reach the grid.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6orer4/chinese_solar_industry_making_25_percent_more/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~172582 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*: **China**^#1 **industry**^#2 **solar**^#3 **produce**^#4 **Wang**^#5\"", "I'm an old-school Cyberpunk and Shadowrun fan, so I start thinking in those terms, but for now, I'd settle for eyes that can see better than 20/20 and ears that can hear better than normal if I want to buy them.  I have an eye disorder and what I have to go through to get 20/30 vision is fairly difficult for me, but I'm not bad enough that the doctors want to try any more-permanent solution, so I'm stuck with what I've got. If I could pay $20,000 and have a set of 20/15 eyeballs installed that never get old, I'd start saving up for them today.", "Will there be a scenario in which I want to sell, but nobody wants to buy from me and I'm stuck at the brokerage website? Similarly, if nobody wants to sell their stocks, I will not be able to buy at all? Yes, that is entirely possible.", "IKEA put lots of money and effort into their stores and the layout, making you walk a certain way and to buy as much as possible. Their stores are highly successful and if the website experience was easy, then users wouldn't go into the store.   They actively make it harder to make web purchases than most other places. They charge a shitload for shipping, dont have all the availabilities and really make it a pain in the ass to order online."]}
+{"query": "Dividend vs Growth Stocks for young investors", "corpus": ["\"The key is to look at total return, that is dividend yields plus capital growth. Some stocks have yields of 5%-7%, and no growth. In that case, you get the dividends, and not a whole lot more. These are called dividend stocks. Other stocks pay no dividends. But if they can grow at 15%-20% a year or more, you're fine.These are called growth stocks. The safest way is to get a \"\"balanced\"\" combination of dividends and growth, say a yield of 3% growing at 8%-10% a year, for a total return of 11%-13%. meaning that you get the best of both worlds.These are called dividend growth stocks.\""], "neg": ["hmmm. I think it's because in both cases, you must pay for it up front, before the positions are closed out. You own nothing except the right to buy the stock re: the call, and the obligation to buy the stock re: the short.  You buy a call, but must borrow the stock, for which you must put some margin collateral and there is a cost to borrow. You pay for that, of course.  I wouldn't call it lending though.", "It may not be an ideal option, but you could use an HSA as a tax-sheltered investment vehicle.   The contribution limit is only $3,350 for an individual and $6,650 for a family in 2015 (plus $1K if you're 55+), so you're only making up a small portion of the 401(k) limit.  Also, you (and a family member to get the higher contribution limit) have to be covered by a qualifying high-deductible health insurance plan (HDHP) to be eligible to make HSA contributions.  As such, it may not be the best option if you regularly incur significant medical expenses.  And in many cases, the investment fees in an HSA are higher than you would find in a 401(k) or IRA. The investment choices can be limited, so it is important to research the options before selecting a provider. All that being said, the contributions and growth are both tax-deferred (tax-free if you use it for healthcare). Then at age 65 or Medicare eligibility you can withdraw the funds without penalty and pay only income tax, even if they are not used toward healthcare expenses.", "\"But how much does efficiency in internet shopping and warehouse shipping to homes translate to retail stores.  Also a lot of the reason that Whole Foods's competitors are able to beat them on price is [because they use unscrupulous suppliers who are organic in name only.](https://www.washingtonpost.com/business/economy/why-your-organic-milk-may-not-be-organic/2017/05/01/708ce5bc-ed76-11e6-9662-6eedf1627882_story.html)  If you're buying \"\"organic\"\" food from Wal-Mart, Albertson's, etc. you're frequently being played for a fool.\"", "The big picture is terrible. It is beyond repair. If the FED wants to stand in front of the coming train, then goodbye to the FED. As Bernanke prints more money, credit will deflate even faster! Who would want to lend money to the US government and the US consumer who has already displayed inability to pay. Consumers consume, go into debt and go bankrupt. Only producers prosper. That is not us. Government intervention into free markets to save obsolete industries is delaying the recovery. Instead of getting further into debt, we need to re-align our economy to focus on what works. Our problem was debt to begin with and we are doing more of the same to fix the problem. It won't work. Kondratieff Winter has started!", "Besides, driving there and back contributes to climate change, which is already contributing to even more starvation in Bangladesh, where starvation is something that the people there haven't been able to deal well with for quite a few decades already.  If somebody really wants a crappy burger the least they could do is ride a bicycle or walk there and back.", "Zimbabwe was a fine place to live when it was Rhodesia. Zambia, which is welcoming back a number of Whites, is doing better now as well, where the same cannot be as well said for Zimbabwe.       Material resources are not the source of most country's wealth anyway, or we would not see countries like Hong Kong, Singapore, Liechtenstein, Luxembourg, or Switzerland develop. And yet, we do. The common thread between them is simple: freedom and intelligence - things Africa lacks and cannot hope to create unless what most would call a tragedy were to occur.      I wouldn't kid yourself, really. Many countries have had exceptionally long histories with many a chance to develop and yet they have not done so well as those with brighter populations. Many have had very short histories, with little chance to develop and yet they have done exceptionally. As stated above, there are common threads and that's what Faber is clearly referencing, not some mixed-blessing of resources or somesuch.    Don't be foolish. There are no other sufficient explanations after properly interrogating the issue.", "This doesn't make much sense. What costs are you referring to? And aren't they using roads, airports etc that federal money goes into? Do you think payroll taxes paid through employees should be the major consideration on payment of taxes for corporations? Also, do you think European criticism of Amazon for avoiding paying taxes is off-base?"]}
+{"query": "Is www.onetwotrade.com a scam?", "corpus": ["\"OneTwoTrade is a binary option seller, and they are officially licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority. They are not in any way licensed or regulated as an investment, because they don't do actual investing. Is your money safe? If you mean will they take your money and run off with it, then no they probably won't just take your deposit and refuse to return any money to you for nothing - that would be a terrible way to make money for the long-term. If you mean \"\"will I lose my money?\"\" - oh yeah, you probably will! Binary options - outside of special sophisticate financial applications - are for people who think day trading has too little risk, or who would prefer online poker with a thin veneer of \"\"it's an investment!\"\"  In the words of Forbes, Don't Gamble On Binary Options:  If people want to gamble, that’s their choice. But let’s not confuse   that with investing. Binary options are a crapshoot, pure and simple. These kinds of businesses run like a casino - there's a built-in house advantage, you are playing odds (which are against you), and the fundamental product is trying to bet on short-term volatility in financial markets. This is often ridiculously short-terms, measured in minutes. It's often  called \"\"all or nothing options\"\", because if you bet wrong you lose almost everything - they give you a little bit of the money you bet back (so you will bet again, preferably with more of your own money). If you bet correctly you get a pay-out, just like in craps or roulette. If you are looking to gamble online, this is one method to do it. But this isn't investing, you are as mathematically likely to lose your money and/or become addicted as any other form of money-based gambling, and absolutely treat it the same way you would a casino: decide how much money you are willing to spend on the adventure before you start, and expect you'll likely not get much or any of that money back. However, I will moralize on this point - I really hate being lied to. Casinos, sports betting, and poker all generally have the common decency to call it what it is - a game where you are playing/betting. These sorts of \"\"investment\"\" providers are woefully dishonest: they say it's an exciting financial market, a new type of investment, investors are moving to this to secure their futures, etc. It's utterly deceptive and vile, and it's all about as up-front and honest as penny auction websites. If you are going to gamble, I'd urge you to do it with people who have the decency to to call it gambling and not lie to you and ask for a \"\"minimum investment\"\".\""], "neg": ["It's working well by one metric: covering the uninsured. However, Obamacare doesn't do enough to control costs. Wait a few years for double-digit premium increases due to the continuing spiral of costs and it's not going to be working so well. IMHO", "I'm not sure I'd say the assets they had were worthless. One of the big controversies was whether it was a solvency crisis (bad assets) or a liquidity crisis (fine assets, but if everyone sells illiquid assets there's a fire sale problem).   The US and Buffett bet it was a liquidity crisis, and they were proven right.", "I personally use mint.com and find the alerting feature to be handy.  The reports and ledger are nice for a web page and attractive, but I use Quicken for really keeping track of my money and budget.  Mint.com just doesn't offer the depth I want; but a lack of depth is a feature for some people. The one thing I do is to check my accounts online every couple of days (not just via mint's interface).  I am still protected from fraud if someone steals my money regardless of the vector of attack.  So mint's fault or not, I have to keep on top of my outgoing and incoming transactions with frequency so I can stop problems before they get too deep. summary:  the security is important, but being secure or not doesn't absolve me of being aware of all the transactions on my account.  I will still be protected by consumer laws (as much protection as that is) but I can't expect mint to fix any problems it might cause.", "IANAL, I am married to someone in your situation. As a US citizen age 26 who has not had any contact with the IRS, you should most definitely be worried... As a US citizen, you are (and always have been) required to file a US tax return and pay any tax on all income, no matter where earned, and no matter where you reside.  There are often (but not always) agreements between governments to reduce double taxation.  The US rule as to whether a particular type of income is taxable will prevail. As a US citizen with financial accounts (chequing, saving, investment, etc.) above a minimum balance, abroad, you are required to report information, including the amounts in the account, to the US government annually (Look up FBAR).  Failure to file these forms carries harsh penalties. A recent law (FATCA) requires foreign financial institutions to report information on their US citizen clients to the US, irrespective of any local banking privacy laws.  It's possible that your application triggered these reporting requirements. You will not be allowed to renounce your US citizenship until you have paid all past US taxes and penalties. Good new:  you are eligible in ten years or so to run for President. Don't believe any of this, or that nothing has been missed; you must consult with a local tax expert specializing in US/UK tax laws.", "\"Asset management typically refers to the \"\"product\"\"  group e.g. Mutual fund, etf, etc., like invesco offering qqq or some emerging market mutual fund.  Capital management is more vague and can refer to a wide range of financial products and services including asset management and stuff like ptfl planning, wealth advisory etc.  That said they are both used interchangeably and not like anyone would correct you if you used one vs the other...\"", "Now in this revolutionary time of Information technology, every business is totally depending on Website design and developments. But there are many developers and many design companies are in this world, so whom to choose? So many questions can lead a man to confusions.To know more visit http://voipconnect.in/ and call us at +91-7008220621 now", "\"It includes whatever you want to do with your investment.  At least initially, it's not so much a matter of calculating numbers as of introspective soul-searching.  Identifying your investment objectives means asking yourself, \"\"Why do I want to invest?\"\"  Then you gradually ask yourself more and more specific questions to narrow down your goals.  (For instance, if your answer is something very general like \"\"To make money\"\", then you may start to ask yourself, \"\"How much money do I want?\"\", \"\"What will I want to use that money for?\"\", \"\"When will I want to use that money?\"\", etc.)  Of course, not all objectives are realistic, so identifying objectives can also involve whittling down plans that are too grandiose. One thing that can be helpful is to first identify your financial objectives: that is, money you want to be able to have, and things you want to do with that money.  Investment (in the sense of purchasing investment vehicles likes stocks or bonds) is only one way of achieving financial goals; other ways include working for a paycheck, starting your own business, etc.  Once you identify your financial goals, you have a number of options for how to get that money, and you should consider how well suited each strategy is for each goal. For instance, for a financial goal like paying relatively small short-term expenses (e.g., your electric bill), investing would probably not be the first choice for how to do that, because: a) there may be easier ways to achieve that goal (e.g., ask for a raise, eat out less); and b) the kinds of investment that could achieve that goal may not be the best use of your money (e.g., because they have lower returns).\""]}
+{"query": "How could a company survive just on operations cash flow, i.e. no earnings?", "corpus": ["It is true that operation profit comes from gross profit however it is possible for a company to have negative net profit yet have postive cash flow , it has to do with the accounting practice A possible example is that a company has extremely high depreciation expense of fixed asset hence net profit will be negative but cash flow will be positive. Assuming the fixed asset has been fully paid for in earlier years"], "neg": ["Those are some of the least useful regulations. Kills legitimate market making function in less liquid transactions.  The whole of the regulatory framework should have been leverage, capital and liquidity testing for too big to fail banks. The rest of the rules are overkill and compliance jobs bills. Unless your a compliance professional working in these fields you won't even notice.", "You'll almost never be able to patent an app idea. When it comes to software you almost always just have to accept that others are going to be able to copy your idea, so to protect your business you have to do it either a) First, and well enough to lock in a first mover advantage or b) Better than others can  You haven't said if you're a coder or not, but generally if you can develop a MVP version of it before going to Kickstarter, that's much, much better. Almost no one is going to back a Kickstarter that just has an app idea.  After that, learn as much as you can about online marketing. Don't assume that just because you have a good idea the app will take off. Getting users is hard, very hard.", "irresponsible jerk? go fuck yourself.    I did nothing illegal, unethical, immoral, or irresponsible. I racked up a large amount of debt (as the banks intended) and when I got into a position I couldn't pay any longer I tried to negotiate.  I spent hours on the phone, days all in all. the banks response (six different banks) we don't give a fuck. so I took that attitude and ran with it.  it's only business.  in addition I profited by a few thousand dollars suing a collection agency/lawyer group that got a judgement against me using forged documents. JUdgment was removed, my lawyer got 7 grand, I got three, and the debt was erased.  win, win, win, and did I say fuck you? fuck you.", "And now it has come out about another breach in March.  They hired an outside firm to come in and do damage control.  Are we really to believe that the CFO had no knowledge of this before he sold his shares?  Seriously spending that kind of money (at least six figures per month) on an outside security consulting firm wouldn't require sign-off from the CFO?", "Greek bank deposits are backed by the Greek government and by the European Central Bank. So in order to lose money under the insurance limits of 100k euros the ECB would need to fail in which case deposit insurance would be the least of most peoples worries. On the other hand I have no idea how easy or hard it is to get to money from a failed bank in Greece. In the US FDIC insurance will usually have your money available in a couple of days. If there isn't a compelling reason to keep the money in a Greek bank I wouldn't do it.", "\"I've had this problem (but not this bad), so this is what worked for me:  1)Remove all of your saved credit card information from any shopping site. Convenience is a huge enabler.   2)Physically track your spending on non-essentials. Keep a little journal of it. I found that actually writing it out and the total made me take note of it more.  3) I joined a saving/investing app that I contribute towards a Roth IRA and a savings account. Sometimes when that \"\"extra\"\" money in my checking account is burning a hole in my pocket, I'll contribute that extra money. It still feels nice and it's going towards good things.   4) Develop a hobby that doesn't overly tax your wallet. This might go towards making you feel better and thus make you less prone to retail therapy.  As for getting yourself out of credit card debt, can you sell off the meaningless material things you've been buying and put that money to paying down your debt?\"", "I think you raise a very good point here.   It is a very well-known fact that the US is not a leader in automated manufacturing. Europe has traditionally been the place that consumes the majority of the automated manufacturing equipment that, in turn, comes out of Japan.   Japan specializes in the manufacture of automated manufacturing equipment and has since the US ceded this market to them in the 1950s offering the Japanese access to the technology created at General Motors called ladder logic and programmable logic controllers. These technologies were created from scratch on the shop floor at General Motors at a time when there was a saying that what is good for General Motors is good for the America.  This was back before semiconductor transistors were affordable. Those early manufacturing robots actually used arrays of electromechanical relays and ladder logic which is still used till this days in the robots that come out of Japan is still based on metaphorical relays although they are now virtual constructs.   The Japanese ran with the tech and now many people believe that the Japanese invented it. Certainly they refined it over the years but the early work was handed to them in part as an effort to win them over from their potential allegiance with the Soviets. Japan was always a much larger lynch-pin than either Korea or Vietnam where the actual military battles went down. What was really scary to America was losing Japan and the transfer of robotics technology to the Japanese was part of the arrangement to keep them cozy with the US military empire.   But the largest customer was not within Japan. The actual sales of equipment went to the Europeans. That's where automated manufacturing is currently at its peak. However, things have been rapidly changing and for over a decade the fastest rising automation market has been China.   Currently Foxconn or HongHai the large contract manufacturer famous for their Apple contracts is in the process of building an automation base in the middle of Taiwan.   If you want jobs in automated manufacturing technology you should be studying Chinese as well as microcontrollers."]}
+{"query": "Will ADR owner enjoy same benefit as common shares holders", "corpus": ["The essential difference b/n ADR and a common share is that ADR do not have Voting rights. Common share has.  There are some ADR that would in certain conditions get converted to common stock, but by and large most ADR's would remain ADR's without any voting rights. If you are an individual investor, this difference should not matter as rarely one would hold such a large number of shares to vote on General meeting on various issues. The other difference is that since many countries have regulations on who can buy common shares, for example in India an Non Resident cannot directly buy any share, hence he would buy ADR. Thus ADR would be priced more in the respective market if there is demand. For example Infosys Technologies, an India Company has ADR on NYSE. This is more expensive around 1.5 times the price of the common share available in India (at current exchange rate). Thus if you are able to invest with equal ease in HK (have broker / trading account etc), consider the taxation of the gains in HK as well the tax treatment in US for overseas gains then its recommended that you go for Common Stock in HK. Else it would make sense to buy in US."], "neg": ["\"This is my two cents (pun intended).  It was too long for a comment, so I tried to make it more of an answer.  I am no expert with investments or Islam: Anything on a server exists 'physically'.  It exists on a hard drive, tape drive, and/or a combination thereof.  It is stored as data, which on a hard drive are small particles that are electrically charged, where each bit is represented by that electric charge.  That data exists physically.  It also depends on your definition of physically.  This data is stored on a hard drive, which I deem physical, though is transferred via electric pulses often via fiber cable.  Don't fall for marketing words like cloud.  Data must be stored somewhere, and is often redundant and backed up. To me, money is just paper with an amount attached to it.  It tells me nothing about its value in a market.  A $1 bill was worth a lot more 3 decades ago (you could buy more goods because it had a higher value) than it is today.  Money is simply an indication of the value of a good you traded at the time you traded.  At a simplistic level, you could accomplish the same thing with a friend, saying \"\"If you buy lunch today, I'll buy lunch next time\"\".  There was no exchange in money between me and you, but there was an exchange in the value of the lunch, if that makes sense.  The same thing could have been accomplished by me and you exchanging half the lunch costs in physical money (or credit/debit card or check). Any type of investment can be considered gambling.  Though you do get some sort of proof that the investment exists somewhere  Investments may go up or down in value at any given time.  Perhaps with enough research you can make educated investments, but that just makes it a smaller gamble.  Nothing is guaranteed.  Currency investment is akin to stock market investment, in that it may go up or down in value, in comparison to other currencies; though it doesn't make you an owner of the money's issuer, generally, it's similar.  I find if you keep all your money in U.S. dollars without considering other nations, that's a sort of ignorant way of gambling, you're betting your money will lose value less slowly than if you had it elsewhere or in multiple places. Back on track to your question: [A]m I really buying that currency?  You are trading a currency.  You are giving one currency and exchanging it for another.  I guess you could consider that buying, since you can consider trading currency for a piece of software as buying something. Or is the situation more like playing with the live rates? It depends on your perception of playing with the live rates.  Investments to me are long-term commitments with reputable research attached to it that I intend to keep, through highs and lows, unless something triggers me to change my investment elsewhere.  If by playing you mean risk, as described above, you will have a level of risk.  If by playing you mean not taking it seriously, then do thorough research before investing and don't be trading every few seconds for minor returns, trying to make major returns out of minor returns (my opinion), or doing anything based on a whim. Was that money created out of thin air? I suggest you do more research before starting to trade currency into how markets and trading works.  Simplistically, think of a market as a closed system with other markets, such as UK market, French market, etc.  Each can interact with each other.  The U.S. [or any market] has a set number of dollars in the pool.  $100 for example's sake.  Each $1 has a certain value associated with it.  If for some reason, the country decides to create more paper that is green, says $1, and stamps presidents on them (money), and adds 15 $1 to the pool (making it $115), each one of these dollars' value goes down.  This can also happen with goods.  This, along with the trading of goods between markets, peoples' attachment of value to goods of the market, and peoples' perception of the market, is what fluctates currency trading, in simple terms.  So essentially, no, money is not made out of thin air.  Money is a medium for value  though values are always changing and money is a static amount. You are attempting to trade values and own the medium that has the most value, if that makes sense.  Values of goods are constantly changing. This is a learning process for me as well so I hope this helps answers your questions you seem to have.  As stated above, I'm no expert; I'm actually quite new to this, so I probably missed a few things here and there.\"", "\"If by \"\"investment\"\" you mean something that pays you money that you can spend, then no. But if you view \"\"investment\"\" as something that improves your balance sheet / net worth by reducing debt and reducing how much money you're throwing away in interest each month, then the answer is definitely yes, paying down debt is a good investment to improve your overall financial condition. However, your home mortgage might not be the first place to start looking for pay-downs to save money.  Credit cards typically have much higher interest rates than mortgages, so you would save more money by working on eliminating your credit card debt first. I believe Suze Orman said something like: If you found an investment that paid you 25% interest, would you take it?  Of course you would!  Paying down high interest debt reduces the amount of interest you have to pay next month.  Your same amount of income will be able to go farther, do more because you'll be paying less in interest. Pay off your credit card debt first (and keep it off), then pay down your mortgage. A few hundred dollars in extra principal paid in the first few years of a 30 year mortgage can remove years of interest payments from the mortgage term. Whether you plan to keep your home for decades or you plan to move in 10 years, having less debt puts you in a stronger financial position.\"", "In the United States, post-dating a check, on its own, has no valid use. It can be cashed at any time at the discretion of the bank. You would need to send a notice of postdating to your bank describing the check. This doesn't prevent the recipient of cashing the check, but it does prevent your bank from charging your account until the date you specify NOTE: This may be considered a form of stop payment, and you may be subject to the fees noted by your institution.  Source: [Uniform Commercial Code - Article 4A § 4-401] (c) A bank may charge against the account of a customer a check that is otherwise properly payable from the account, even though payment was made before the date of the check, unless the customer has given notice to the bank of the postdating describing the check with reasonable certainty. [...] If a bank charges against the account of a customer a check before the date stated in the notice of postdating, the bank is liable for damages for the loss resulting from its act. The loss may include damages for dishonor of subsequent items under Section 4-402.", "Pretty sure that's a theory for one.  Two just because you are paying someone $20 that doesn't mean they will be as productive as 3 at $12.  To put it one way, that is like saying someone in California (where minimum wage will hit $15 soon and that lots making $20 as well) will be more productive than someone in say Ohio with a lower minimum wage.  I know the topic isn't about minimum wage, but its the best way I could describe my point.", "\"I definitely can recommend you a site called babypips. Their beginner course section is great to get a good overview what you \"\"could\"\" do in FOREX trading. For starting out I definitely recommend a dummy account! (NEVER use real money in the beginning!)\"", "True Financial is your lender of choice for online auto title loans in California. Car Title Loans can be arrange with minimal fuss, low hassle and low documentation. There are number of easy ways for you to finance through us and lead the way in making fast, cost effective title loans to help you. Best of all you get to keep your car to enjoy as you usually do.", "Great question. Surprisingly, stock returns and GDP growth are mostly unrelated. In fact, they are slightly inversely correlated when you look across countries. Consider a firm that earns $100 on average per year with zero growth. If investors apply a 10% discount rate to this firm, the company will have a market value of $100/10% = $1,000. If it continues to earn $100 per year, it will produce 10% returns despite zero growth in earnings. You can see that realized returns are largely a function of the return investors demand for putting their money in risky assets.  I say mostly unrelated because an increase in GDP growth may increase our firms earnings (though the relationship to earnings per share is muddied by new share issuances, buybacks, M&A, etc.). But you can see from the above example that returns can vastly exceed growth in perpetuity."]}
+{"query": "How to invest 10k dollars, at the age of 23?", "corpus": ["\"An investment in knowledge always pays the best interest, as Ben Franklin said. However, this is not a question I can answer for you, as it depends on the opportunities that are specifically available to you as an individual. Sometimes opportunities will knock on your door and you can take advantage, other times you have to create that door to allow opportunities to knock. Maybe you have a friend that is opening a side business, maybe there is a class you can get into at a trivial cost. What I suggest is to start investing just to get into the habit of it, not so much for the returns. Before you do, however, any financial advisor will advise you to begin with a emergency fund, worth about 3-6 months of your expenses for that time. I wanted to hit the ground running and start investing in stocks, but first things first I guess. \"\"Millionaire Next Door\"\" will help you get into a saving mindset, \"\"I will teach you to be rich\"\" is ok, plenty of other books. My advice is keep doing what you're doing, learn to start saving, and once you have obtained an emergency fund of the amount of your choosing, start looking to invest in Index Funds or ETFs through any platform that has LOW FEES!! I use Betterment, but Vanguard is good too, as they allow you to get your feet wet and it's passive. Hope this helps.\""], "neg": ["If you need to send out a pitch deck to angels and VC's, look up Angel Vision Investors. This is a fast and easy way to get your pitchdeck into the inboxes of thousand of qualified investors today; ultimately leading to getting you the funding you want.", "It is said that behind every successful man is a great woman. This saying applies in the world of fashion, too, albeit with a few tweaks to it: behind every successful designer or fashion brand is a dependable fashion publicist from a trusted PR agency.", "Are you a beginner in website designing? Find out how to use of web design tools properly by enrolling in a private training course at Controla Ltd. Through this, you will get the right skills and knowledge required in using software like Adobe Photoshop, Adobe Flash and Adobe Illustrator. You can even customise your course, and work at your own pace during the training. Log on to Controla Ltd’s website - www.controla.co.uk, for more details.", "\"Your Spidey senses are good. A good friend would not put you in such a position. It's simple, to skirt some issue (we'll get to that in a second) you are being asked to lie. All for a 15% return on your $$$$. <<< How much is that?  You can easily lend him the money, and have a better paper trail. But the bank is not going to like that, and requires this money from friends or family to be a gift. I've heard mortgage guys at the bank say \"\"It's just a formality, we need this paperwork to sell the loan to the investors.\"\" These bankers belong in jail, or at least fired and barred from the industry. They broke the economy in 2008, and should be stopped from doing it again.\"", "Tradable is a much broader term than marketable.  For example, some programmers/developers sell their services online, hence programming is a tradable service.  However, it is not a security nor is it marketable since it cannot readily be converted to cash.  All marketable securities are, by definition, tradable.", "\"/endthread   But honestly, we should have a link to something like this in the sidebar, since quite a few people visit this subreddit for \"\"what are my chances / how do I break in\"\" advice. A lot of your response applies to others as well (and honestly it's kind of annoying seeing redundant threads about career advice).   Either that, or we direct everyone to /r/financialcareers.\"", "There are many other good answers here, but I just wanted to note that it could be dangerous to rely on the changes in alimony and child support that you've mentioned. You have no way of predicting if your ex will lose her job or take the kids back more of the time. If you already have a house and mortgage and all of a sudden alimony and child support go up again, you could be in big trouble. Congrats on everything getting better, it sounds like you're dealing well with a crappy situation. Good luck!"]}
+{"query": "Is it safe to accept money in the mail?", "corpus": ["On your end of the deal, the biggest risk is probably counterfeiting. That said, I'd think that most of the downside would be for the buyer since they would have no way to prove that they paid you.  Perhaps a better alternative is to send the items COD (Collect On Delivery aka Cash on Delivery). The USPS and some other carriers offer this service, which can be an effective way to remotely negotiate a cash sale. I double checked the USPS site and they do accept cash for COD deliveries: Recipient may pay by cash or check (or money order) made out to   sender. (Sender may not specify payment method.) You might want to double check this if you go with USPS or FedX."], "neg": ["I agree with you. I'm a millennial. I'm not some old dude sitting in a chair writing on Reddit without first hand knowledge. I took out six figures of college debt, but spent a long time calculating my expected ROI.  Years after working I lived in relative poverty to pay of my loans and finally have done so.   I totally believe in many forms of loan forgiveness, but a blanket forgiveness I cannot support.", "Somewhat bad example there, those monopolies have a high cost of entry. You can open an online store for next to nothing, if you need more eyeballs then pay for advertising or setup a store on an existing platform like Amazon/eBay/Facebook/Etsy.", "Both modi and rajan have said that they are on the same page.  Some of the concerns you're expressing about India not being the same as us is exactly what he's addressing in a general macro manner. Monetary policy can only do so much and over use will hurt more than help, so fiscal policy is needed to fit the actual economic environment of the country. He stood up against the greater banking and economic consensus in 2005 when everyone derided him as a luddite. But you have to realize that USD is the common reserve currency of the world so the fed makes the rule and everyone has to react accordingly.", "Sell half. If it's as volatile as you say, sell it all and buy on another dip. No one can really offer targeted advice based on the amount of information you have provided.", "Our second to last addition was due to buying out a smaller business. We do call locally owned and small scale businesses often but they surprising have a contract set up with a different company or aren't looking to sell right away.", "\"C'mon, Bill - you're better than this.  Aside from the fact that he accumulated his personal wealth through ruthless profiteering and tax shelters, it's just a flat out bad idea.  It was an even worse idea when some neckbeard actor and commie guitarist started pushing it.  All this tax will do is hamper the ability to do business (i.e., market liquidity), and end up being shouldered by small banks and in the end, the consumer.  Big banks will find their ways around this, no problem, but the boutique capital firms will surely struggle.    This isn't just a \"\"oh, we'll institute this micro-tax and everyone is happy!\"\" - they want to tax the underlying value of assets on each trade.  This creates a direct impact to free-market trading which I don't believe they've accounted for (which is shocking, really).  It's a tax on the top and bottomline, and a general tax on the actual execution point of an entire industry.  It's a half-baked idea that shouldn't have gotten as far as it did.\"", "\"The answer to the question, can I exercise the option right away? depends on the exercise style of the particular option contract you are talking about. If it's an American-style exercise, you can exercise at any moment until the expiration date. If it's an European-style exercise, you can only exercise at the expiration date. According to the CME Group website on the FOPs on Gold futures, it's an American-style exercise (always make sure to double check this - especially in the Options on Futures world, there are quite a few that are European style): http://www.cmegroup.com/trading/metals/precious/gold_contractSpecs_options.html?optionProductId=192#optionProductId=192 So, if you wanted to, the answer is: yes, you can exercise those contracts before expiration. But a very important question you should ask is: should you? Option prices are composed of 2 parts: intrinsic value, and extrinsic value. Intrinsic value is defined as by how much the option is in the money. That is, for Calls, it's how much the strike is below the current underlying price; and for Puts, it's how much the strike is above the current underlying price. Extrinsic value is whatever amount you have to add to the intrinsic value, to get the actual price the option is trading at the market. Note that there's no negative intrinsic value. It's either a positive number, or 0. When the intrinsic value is 0, all the value of the option is extrinsic value. The reason why options have extrinsic value is because they give the buyer a right, and the seller, an obligation. Ie, the seller is assuming risk. Traders are only willing to assume obligations/risks, and give others a right, if they get paid for that. The amount they get paid for that is the extrinsic value. In the scenario you described, underlying price is 1347, call strike is 1350. Whatever amount you have paid for that option is extrinsic value (because the strike of the call is above the underlying price, so intrinsic = 0, intrinsic + extrinsic = value of the option, by definition). Now, in your scenario, gold prices went up to 1355. Now your call option is \"\"in the money\"\", that is, the strike of your call option is below the gold price. That necessarily means that your call option has intrinsic value. You can easily calculate how much: it has exactly $5 intrinsic value (1355 - 1350, undelrying price - strike). But that contract still has some \"\"risk\"\" associated to it for the seller: so it necessarily still have some extrinsic value as well. So, the option that you bought for, let's say, $2.30, could now be worth something like $6.90 ($5 + a hypothetical $1.90 in extrinsic value). In your question, you mentioned exercising the option and then making a profit there. Well, if you do that, you exercise your options, get some gold futures immediately paying $1350 for them (your strike), and then you can sell them in the market for $1355. So, you make $5 there (multiplied by the contract multiplier). BUT your profit is not $5. Here's why: remember that you had to buy that option? You paid some money for that. In this hypothetical example, you payed $2.30 to buy the option. So you actually made only $5 - $2.30 = $2.70 profit! On the other hand, you could just have sold the option: you'd then make money by selling something that you bought for $2.30 that's now worth $6.90. This will give you a higher profit! In this case, if those numbers were real, you'd make $6.90 - $2.30 = $4.60 profit, waaaay more than $2.70 profit! Here's the interesting part: did you notice exactly how much more profit you'd have by selling the option back to the market, instead of exercising it and selling the gold contracts? Exactly $1.90. Do you remember this number? That's the extrinsic value, and it's not a coincidence. By exercising an option, you immediately give up all the extrinsic value it has. You are going to convert all the extrinsic value into $0. So that's why it's not optimal to exercise the contract. Also, many brokers usually charge you much more commissions and fees to exercise an option than to buy/sell options, so there's that as well! Always remember: when you exercise an option contract, you immediately give up all the extrinsic value it has. So it's never optimal to do an early exercise of option contracts and individual, retail investors. (institutional investors doing HFT might be able to spot price discrepancies and make money doing arbitrage; but retail investors don't have the low commissions and the technology required to make money out of that!) Might also be interesting to think about the other side of this: have you noticed how, in the example above, the option started with $2.30 of extrinsic value, and then it had less, $1.90 only? That's really how options work: as the market changes, extrinsic value changes, and as time goes by, extrinsic value usually decreases. Other factors might increase it (like, more fear in the market usually bring the option prices up), but the passage of time alone will decrease it. So options that you buy will naturally decrease some value over time. The closer you are to expiration, the faster it's going to lose value, which kind of makes intuitive sense. For instance, compare an option with 90 days to expiration (DTE) to another with 10 DTE. One day later, the first option still has 89 DTE (almost the same as 90 DTE), but the other has 9 DTE - it relatively much closer to the expiration than the day before. So it will decay faster. Option buyers can protect their investment from time decay by buying longer dated options, which decay slower! edit: just thought about adding one final thought here. Probabilities. The strategy that you describe in your question is basically going long an OTM call. This is an extremely bullish position, with low probability of making money. Basically, for you to make money, you need two things: you need to be right on direction, and you need to be right on time. In this example, you need the underlying to go up - by a considerable amount! And you need this to happen quickly, before the passage of time will remove too much of the extrinsic value of your call (and, obviously, before the call expires). Benefit of the strategy is, in the highly unlikely event of an extreme, unanticipated move of the underlying to the upside, you can make a lot of money. So, it's a low probability, limited risk, unlimited profit, extremely bullish strategy.\""]}
+{"query": "Can a stock exchange company actually go bust?", "corpus": ["A stock exchange is a marketplace where people can bring their goods [shares] to be traded. There are certain rules. Stock Exchange does not own any shares of the companies that are trading in.  The list of who owns with stock is with the registrar of each company. The electronic shares are held by a Financial Institution [Securities Depository]. So even if the exchange itself goes down, you still hold the same shares as you had before it went down. One would now have to find ways to trade these shares ... possibly via other stock exchange. This leaves the question of inflight transactions, which again would be recorded and available. Think of it similar to eBay. What happens when eBay goes bankrupt? Nothing much, all the seller still have their goods with them. All the buyers who had purchased good before have it when them ... so the question remains on inflight goods where the buyer has paid the seller and not yet received shipments ..."], "neg": ["What the fuck is up with these comments? Are you all uneducated middle Americans?   College is 100% worth it. Kids just need to have more knowledge about loans in general. And how college is an investment in yourself, so choose to study something of value.", "The special rights for corporations come automatically when US companies become a multinational. And that binds the US, just like it did, for example, Slovakia, [blocking their right to have affordable health care](http://www.italaw.com/sites/default/files/case-documents/italaw3206.pdf), because an insurance company had silently, invisibly finagled a SUPERIOR right to massive compensation, basically free money.", "You need to talk to the 401(k) administrator, or HR, for the exact details. Typically, you can only borrow 50% of your balance, and can pay it back up to a ten year term. Some plans have different rules, this is just a common offering.  The larger issue is whether the loan prevents you from making further deposits till repaid. This would cost you not just the growth in the account, but the matched deposits for those years. That would be a deal killer for me. If that were the case, I'd drop my deposits to only get the match, and save for a real deposit without the loan.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.washingtonexaminer.com/need-proof-that-tax-cuts-promote-economic-growth-look-to-the-states/article/2638023) reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; A new report released this week by the Tax Foundation - along with assessment of states&amp;#039; fiscal health, economic performance, and population changes - confirm that states with lower taxes and reasonable levels of government spending have stronger economies and are more attractive for businesses and individuals.  &gt; The State Business Tax Climate Index is an annual ranking of state tax systems and how well they are structured to promote economic growth.  &gt; Big-government, high-tax, reckless-spending states such as Vermont, California, New York, and New Jersey find themselves at or near the bottom of tax climate and fiscal health rankings, as well as the bottom in economic outlook.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/78j193/need_proof_that_tax_cuts_promote_economic_growth/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~234422 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*: **State**^#1 **tax**^#2 **new**^#3 **economic**^#4 **fiscal**^#5\"", "If we knew for sure that euros are only going to be more expensive in the future, then the answer would be easy: Buy them all at one time, so that we are getting them at the best price.  Of course, we can't assume that to be the case, they could get cheaper, so the answer gets more complicated. Focusing strictly on monetary considerations, there are two factors to examine: Using answers to this Travel Stack Exchange question as a reference, you see that the cost of currency conversion can be as low as 1%-2% if you make the transaction with a debit card, but can be as high as 15%.  So, buying 1000 euros a month would cost between 20 and 150 euros. Examining a two year chart of the Euro-Canadian Dollar exchange rate gives us an idea of how much the currency fluctuates. Over the past two years, a euro has cost has much as $1.54 CAD and as little as $1.26 CAD, a 22% spread. Looking at it on a month-to month basis, we see that monthly changes have been as high as .05 to .07 (4-5%).  As such, buying 1000 euros a month could cost 50 CAD more (or less) on a monthly basis due to variance in the exchange rate.   If we anticipate our overhead cost of currency conversion to be more than 5%, it doesn't make sense to do multiple transactions; the costs are likely to outweigh the benefits. If we can keep them under that amount, then multiple transactions are advantageous when the euro is cheaper. The problem is somewhat analagous to that of someone who wants to make an annual investment in a mutual fund and is unsure of whether to make the purchase all at once, or to divide it over multiple purchases. One can't know for sure which way the mutual fund price is going to move over the time period Dollar cost averaging, spreading the purchase over regular intervals, is the generally accepted solution to this problem.   As such, so long as we can keep the overhead cost of currency transactions low (<5%), doing transactions on a regular basis positions ourselves to take advantage of possible drops in the price of euros and reduces the risk of buying euros when they are most expensive.  If we can't keep the cost low, then currency fees would be greater than potential price drops and we would be better off doing a single transaction.", "One of the many reasons why condominiums became popular in the Philippines as a modern family-home is because of its location, in which most of these types of [condo in Philippines](http://www.ayalalandpremier.com/One-serendra.php) are found outside Metro Manila, either in the outskirts or in some popular neighboring provinces surrounding the capital, such as in Tagaytay and Laguna. These types of condominiums are known as condominium complexes.", "\"Plenty of links around, under the \"\"monetization\"\" heading. However my understand came from a local app developer who's done a number of presentations. He's been tweaking and trying to find new ways to develop his now quite successful app, with the aim of earning enough that he doesn't have to work doing databases.  What he found was that ranking in app searches was dependent on downloads, and revenues (paid or ads) were dependent on total installs. Therefore if you go the paid app way, you don't get the downloads to get placement on search returns, so you don't get downloads - a negative spiral. In addition it's another barrier to get your potential user over. Thus you want free as the initial price.  You can try the freemium route - but it really depends on continued usage rate. If people are to buy it in-app, then then need to regularly use it (and it has to be designed this way). But if you do this, you can get regular ad revenue as well - it might not be much, but it adds up.  Hence his statement was to design to have high value ads built in to the way the app works, and allow people to also pay to get rid, or add new functionality.\""]}
+{"query": "What is a 401(k) Loan Provision?", "corpus": ["\"Congratulations on the job offer!  That type of matching sounds good if you plan to stay at a company for more than a year. My experience has been that 401k matching can range from 2% up to 8% for your typical starting job, so a total of 6% is good. You would definitely want to contribute at least 5% to take advantage of the \"\"Free\"\" money. Loan provision could mean that loans from 401k are allowed. I did some research and found that not all company 401ks allow for you to take a loan out of your 401k. Typically this is bad practice since you are robbing your 401k of it's major advantage - tax free compound interest.  Source\""], "neg": ["Thanks for the comment,  Yes and it seems to be getting worse now not better I'm afraid.  Stories spread like wildfire in the markets here when a store pulls the wool over someones eyes and makes a fist full of cash, this means more and more people want a slice of it. Be careful.", "It's really not DRM, it was never intended to be. It was their one lowest price model, to offer something more affordable before the model 3 release. No other models are affected, and the expected market size was so small it was cheaper than designing one more lower capacity battery. Everyone knew what they were buying, and can upgrade to the next model up at any time. I don't see how this is possibly a bad thing, that model is already discontinued as well and this will never be a thing again. Remember the alternative is for those few owners to just have a 60kwh battery, and not be able to do this, this was not possible on any other models.", "Ci sono molte forme di energia rinnovabile. La maggior parte di queste energie rinnovabili dipende in un modo o nell'altro dalla luce solare. Il vento e la potenza idroelettrica sono il risultato diretto del riscaldamento differenziale della superficie terrestre che porta all'aria in movimento (vento) e formazione di precipitazioni quando l'aria viene sollevata. Energia Rinnovabile solare è la conversione diretta della luce solare utilizzando pannelli o collettori. L'energia di biomassa è immagazzinato nella luce solare contenuta nelle piante.", "It is obvious that Putin is not afraid of breaking any rules, he shows that he can be just like american presidents - do whatever he wants even if Russians and the world says NO. I don't think a war will start but who knows how far things can get.", "The size of our government has been growing right alongside the inequality gap. I would say there is a connection, as the wealth of the many is funneled to the cronies of the few. Remember, a majority of our Representatives comprise the 1%, its no secret they help each other out.", "The Robber Barrons are in power and once they sink their claws into our system (and they have had them sunk in for decades) it will be hard to get rid of them, but for our own future we have to try to remove them.", "\"Yes. Filling all the orders of just reservations will bring in over 2 billion in revenue. Spending 1.16 billion to make 2+ billion isn't bad business. It is the \"\"it takes money to make money\"\" rule of life.   EDIT: I re-ran the numbers (assuming every order is the base model) and its more like 2.1 billion.\""]}
+{"query": "Setting up general ledger/tax reporting for a Real Estate Rental LLC in GnuCash", "corpus": ["No, GnuCash doesn't specifically provide a partner cash basis report/function. However, GnuCash reports are fairly easy to write. If the data was readily available in your accounts it shouldn't be too hard to create a cash basis report. The account setup is so flexible, you might actually be able to create accounts for each partner, and, using standard dual-entry accounting, always debit and credit these accounts so the actual cash basis of each partner is shown and updated with every transaction. I used GnuCash for many years to manage my personal finances and those of my business (sole proprietorship). It really shines for data integrity (I never lost data), customer management (decent UI for managing multiple clients and business partners) and customer invoice generation (they look pretty). I found the user interface ugly and cumbersome. GnuCash doesn't integrate cleanly with banks in the US. It's possible to import data, but the process is very clunky and error-prone. Apparently you can make bank transactions right from GnuCash if you live in Europe. Another very important limitation of GnuCash to be aware of: only one user at a time. Period. If this is important to you, don't use GnuCash. To really use GnuCash effectively, you probably have to be an actual accountant. I studied dual-entry accounting a bit while using GnuCash. Dual-entry accounting in GnuCash is a pain in the butt. Accurately recording certain types of transactions (like stock buys/sells) requires fiddling with complicated split transactions. I agree with Mariette: hire a pro."], "neg": ["Well, I believe some would argue that the governing structures are somewhat different, as a king is basically the top of an aristocracy, and a representative government is supposedly invested by a popular mandate to act as stewards of the people.  It's a polite fiction governments maintain, these days.", "Not too crazy about the article; skimmed it.  He could have boiled it down into:  tl;dr:  software does stuff i don't want to lol and i have a rich friend lolol.  software lol.  software? diversify and be passive lol.  software, k? k, bye.", "You can create a PIN to file electronically at the link below: http://www.irs.gov/Individuals/Electronic-Filing-PIN-Request  Perhaps for the first issue, are all boxes and lines filled out correct? Did you correctly add your W2?", "You could always maintain a limit order to sell at a price you're comfortable with.", "I agree with you. B&amp;M is not going anywhere. People like to see what they are buying. Thats why i never buy shirts online because they might be a bad quality. But to add to the Best Buy roast. When i went to buy my 3ds it took 20 minutes to get help i was planning on leaving.  When amazon announced the WF deal many, if not all, retailer's hearts skipped a beat.  When i got the bloomberg notification i had to read it 2-3 times to make sure i read it right.", "Well, considering the US barely buys any Saudi oil...anywhere in the US is usually a good assumption.  Of course that completely ignores the global nature of oil prices and why you don't actually have to buy from them for them to benefit from the demand in the US.", "You're absolutely correct. If you have maxed out your retirement investment vehicles and have some additional investments in a regular taxable account, you can certainly use that as an emergency source of funds without much downside. (You can borrow from many retirement account but there are downsides.) Sure, you risk selling at a loss when/if you need the money, but I'd rather take the risk and take advantage of the investment growth that I would miss if I kept my emergency fund in cash or money market. And you can choose how much risk you're willing to take on when you invest the money."]}
+{"query": "Can my accounting for Tax Basis differ from my broker's", "corpus": ["No. If you didn't specify LIFO on account or sell by specifying the shares you wish sold, then the brokers method applies.  From Publication 551 Identifying stock or bonds sold.   If you can adequately identify the   shares of stock or the bonds you sold, their basis is the cost or   other basis of the particular shares of stock or bonds. If you buy and   sell securities at various times in varying quantities and you cannot   adequately identify the shares you sell, the basis of the securities   you sell is the basis of the securities you acquired first. For more   information about identifying securities you sell, see Stocks and   Bonds under Basis of Investment Property in chapter 4 of Pub. 550. The trick is to identify the stock lot prior to sale."], "neg": ["\"Paying off a loan early isn't a bad thing.  Having a credit card for 6 months and then closing it is probably unneeded; pay it off and then keep it as an emergency card.   The key is debt:available credit ratio.  Look at this article for example which explains the different elements; the only one you're affecting here is the second, your debt load.  If you're not planning on asking for another loan in the next six months, none of this really matters - assuming you are paying it off for sure, in six months, your debt will be gone and your credit score recovered from any hit it takes (and if you get a $1500 credit card and only put $300 on it, it might actually improve your credit). But having an open $1500 credit card with a 0 balance will probably improve your credit rating, unless you have a really high amount of available credit.  It will improve your debt/credit ratio (ie, total $ you owe divided by total $ you could put on your CCs/revolving credit). This is all aside from the \"\"is it a good idea to borrow money for a 3 month vacation before starting working\"\", which the answer is \"\"Well, not exactly\"\".  That's not from a credit perspective, just from a living within your means perspective.  If you have a firm job that will easily pay off the vacation, it's probably not a bad thing, but definitely a certain number of people will take this and end up in 'spending bad habits' that last their life.  Be aware of that, and if you're just loaning yourself money from the future, make sure you understand the terms of that loan... and are certain you can pay it off.\"", "ICSE The subjects that are offered are isolated into three gatherings. ICSE Home Tuition in Mumbai Gathering I incorporates Compulsory Subjects — English, History and Civics, and Geography, and Indian Language, Group II which incorporates any two from Mathematics, Science (Physics, Biology, Chemistry) as partitioned subjects, Environmental Science, Computer Science, Agricultural Science, Commercial Studies, Technical Drawing, A Modern Foreign Language, ICSE Home Tuition in Mumbai A Classical Language and Economics, and Group III has any one from Computer Applications, Economic Applications, Commercial Applications, Art, Performing Arts, Home Science, Cookery, Fashion Designing, Physical Education, Technical Drawing Applications, Yoga, and Environmental Applications. In subjects where there are more than one paper (e.g., Science), the imprints acquired in the subject are figured by taking the normal of the considerable number of papers in the subject. Applicants showing up for the examination need to think about six subjects, with one to three papers in each subject. ICSE Home Tuition in Mumbai For subject HC&amp;G the paper 1 comprises of History and Civics and paper 2 comprises of Geography. ICSE Home Tuition in Mumbai Science comprises of three papers each for Physics, Chemistry, and Biology. This makes for a sum of eight to eleven papers, contingent upon the subjects. ICSC comes about are taken from best five of six subjects out of which English imprints is necessary. ICSE Home Tuition in Mumbai We are passionate about teaching. We ICSE Home Tuition in Mumbai Academy nurture our students to possess confidence and the necessary skills to get the success in exams. Why Choose OM Academy We IICSE Home Tuition in Mumbai completely believe in balance approach to excel in exams. Hence we provide the academic and non-academic courses to enhance the ability of the students to perform better in the real life challenges.", "Wait just a second there...  &gt; A sign advertised lots priced from the $300,000s to the $600,000s. Robinson told me that 27 of the Hideaways’ 58 sites have already been purchased, with the completed homes selling for as much as half a million dollars.  So, I have to buy a lot for $600,000 - then spend hundreds of thousands more building a house on that lot - and then you're telling me that the very best I can possibly do, is to then sell it for $500,000???", "Well, he could negotiate with the bank to pay off the loan before the foreclosure takes effect. That would obviously cost him a large pile of cash but might remove the foreclosure, and possibly the late payments, from his record. But the real answer is that, having signed the note, he should have been making sure payments occurred so it never got close to foreclosure. That's what he promised the bank he would do. Having failed to do so, he really isn't in a position to complain when they tell other businesses that he didn't meet that promise.", "I would base my decision off of regulatory climate and look primarily into eastern Europe to tackle the higher growth climate; let's say Estonia or Lithuania. Estonia ranks better in surveys tracking hours senior managers spend dealing with regulatory issues. Lithuania seems to have the edge in terms of just getting the business started, land purchased and enforcing contracts and cross border trade.   They probably have better demographics in terms of workforce.   Links: http://www.doingbusiness.org/rankings http://www.nationsencyclopedia.com/WorldStats/ESI-senior-management-time-regulation.html", "\"There are two issues here: arithmetic and psychology. Scenario 1: You are presently paying an extra $500 per month on your student loan, above the minimum payments. Your credit card company offers a $4000 cash advance at 0% for 8 months. So you take the cash advance, pay it toward the student loan, and then instead of paying the extra $500 per month toward the student loan you use that $500 for 8 months to repay the cash advance. Net result: You pay 0% interest on the loan, and save roughly 8 months times $4000 times the interest on the student loan divided by two. (I say \"\"divided by two\"\" because it's not the difference between $4000 and zero, but between $4000 and the $500 you would have been paying off each month.) Clearly you are better off. If you are NOT presently paying an extra $500 on the student loan -- or even if you are but it is a struggle to come up with the money -- then the question becomes, can you reasonably expect to be able to pay off the credit card before the grace period runs out? Interest rates on credit cards are normally much higher than interest rates on student loans. If you get the cash advance and then can't repay it, after 8 months you are paying a very steep interest rate, and anything you saved on the student loan will quickly be lost. What I mean by \"\"psychological\"\" is that you have to have the discipline to really repay the credit card within the grace period. If you're not very confidant that you can do that, this plan could go bad very quickly. Personally, I've thought about doing things like this many times -- cash advances against credit cards, home equity loans, etc, all give low-interest money that could be used to pay off a higher-interest debt. But it's easy to get into trouble doing things like this. It's easy to say to yourself, Well, I don't need to put ALL the money toward that other debt, I could keep a thousand or so to buy that big screen TV I really need. Or to fail to pay back the low-interest loan on schedule because other things keep coming up that you spend your money on instead, whether frivolous luxuries or true emergencies. And there's always the possibility that something will happen to mess up your finances, from a big car repair bill to losing your job. You don't want to paint yourself into a corner. Finally, maxing out your credit cards hurts your credit rating. The formulas are secret, but I understand that if you use more than half your available credit, that's a minus. How much it hurts you depends on lots of factors.\"", "I'm pretty abnormal, because I actually strongly supported/support the War in Afghanistan, and am ambivalent towards the war in Iraq because I strongly value that Saddam was deposed.  That said, you are right.  It's crazy that these engagements are still continuing.  Nothing really changes that much."]}
+{"query": "Does the common advice about diversification still hold in times of distress", "corpus": ["The common advice you mentioned is just a guideline and has little to do with how your portfolio would look like when you construct it. In order to diversify you would be using correlations and some common sense. Recall the recent global financial crisis, ones of the first to crash were AAA-rated CDO's, stocks and so on. Because correlation is a statistical measure this can work fine when the economy is stable, but it doesn't account for real-life interrelations, especially when population is affected. Once consumers are affected this spans to the entire economy so that sectors that previously seemed unrelated have now been tied together by the fall in demand or reduced ability to pay-off. I always find it funny how US advisers tell you to hold 80% of US stocks and bonds, while UK ones tell you to stick to the UK securities. The same happens all over the world, I would assume. The safest portfolio is a Global Market portfolio, obviously I wouldn't be getting, say, Somalian bonds (if such exist at all), but there are plenty of markets to choose from. A chance of all of them crashing simultaneously is significantly lower. Why don't people include derivatives in their portfolios? Could be because these are mainly short-term, while most of the portfolios are being held for a significant amount of time thus capital and money markets are the key components. Derivatives are used to hedge these portfolios. As for the currencies - by having foreign stocks and bonds you are already exposed to FX risk so you, again, could be using it as a hedging instrument."], "neg": ["You should be saving as much money as you can afford in your 401k up to the maximum allowed. If you don't contribute at least 6%, then you are essentially throwing away the match money that your employer is offering. Start out with the target date fund. You can always change your investment option later once you learn more about investing, but get started saving right away and get that match!", "\"Zip code, as well as billing address, is used in conjunction with the Address Verification Service (AVS).  AVS is a web (or phone) service that actually verifies the address with the billing address on file with the issuing bank.  It does not use the credit card stripe.  You can see more information from various sources such as bank merchant help pages like Bank of America's. As far as what is stored on the stripe, it varies some by bank (as there are some \"\"optional\"\" areas).  The standards are discussed here. Fields include your account number, name, the expiration date, some card-specific stuff, and then the discretionary section.  I would not expect much in terms of address type information there. So - the answer to your question is that they can't really take much more than your name and CC #, unless you give it to them.  If you give a false zip code, you may have your purchase rejected.  They certainly do keep track of the credit card number, and I would suppose that is the most valuable piece to them; they can see you make purchases across time and know for a fact that it's the same exact person (since it's the same card). Additionally, zip codes for AVS from pay-at-the-pump are supposedly not generally used for marketing (see this article for example).  That is probably not true at at-the-register (in-person) collections, most of those aren't for AVS anyway.  Even California permits the pay-at-the-pump zip verification as long as it's only used for that (same article).  I would assume any information given, though, is collected for marketing purposes.\"", "Disallowed losses due to the wash sale rule are added to the basis of the repurchased shares.  In your example, on day two you paid $0.70 per share. Then the disallowed $0.30 loss from the previous day gets added to the basis, making your total basis $1.00 per share. When you sell at the end of the day for $1.00 per share, your net gain/loss is zero. Furthermore, you can recapture disallowed losses by selling the last lot of ABC, completely divesting yourself of all holdings in ABC for at least 31 days. Even if that last lot was a loss, when taking into account the increased basis from previously disallowed wash sale losses, you can claim the loss fully on this last, non-wash sale.", "I checked this myself and there is no monetary penalty for late filing. However, since I am late I have to do all publication over again which costs me extra $50.", "The only way for a mutual fund to default is if it inflated the NAV. I.e.: it reports that its investments worth more than they really are. Then, in case of a run on the fund, it may end up defaulting since it won't have the money to redeem shares at the NAV it published. When does it happen? When the fund is mismanaged or is a scam. This happened, for example, to the fund Madoff was managing. This is generally a sign of a Ponzi scheme or embezzlement. How can you ensure the funds you invest in are not affected by this? You'll have to read the fund reports, check the independent auditors' reports and check for clues. Generally, this is the job of the SEC - that's what they do as regulators. But for smaller funds, and private (i.e.: not public) investment companies, SEC may not be posing too much regulations.", "\"I am confused how you spin an \"\"infinite mileage warranty\"\" into something negative.  Even if they have found powertrain failures (to your point)... they are handling it and their customers about as well as anyone could.  Yes, it is good PR because that in-turn will increase sales / revenues / profits.  What company doesn't want to do that?  Perhaps you're in the anti-Tesla circle-jerk?\"", "Nissan warranties their battery for 100K / 8 years, so it will be interesting to see how they handle a possible problem. As electric cars become more widespread it will also be interesting to see if the second-life market for batteries for static storage comes to pass, a big rebate for your old battery with limited range, but still lots of storage could take out  a good chunk of the cost for new batteries."]}
+{"query": "How to calculate a mutual fund's yield", "corpus": ["If the expense ratio of the fund is 0.00% then yes.  However, if the fund has expenses of 1% then if the NAV of the fund is $10/share the expenses would cause you to see only $.002 a share and thus you'd have $.10 in total as the expenses first cut down the yield."], "neg": ["Magnifique Mosaic Lamps boule en mosaïque de verre craquelé Vert/Doré pour mettre une ambiance tamisée dans votre salle à manger ou dans votre pièce à vivre. En détail :       Type de produit : Mosaic Lamps table  Couleur : Vert - Doré - Métal laqué noir - Joint noir Matière : Abat-jour : globe en verre recouvert de mosaïque craquelée, jointoyée - Piètement : métal laqué Caractéristiques : 1 x 25W E14 Dimensions : Ø 15,5 cm x H 22,2 cm", "There are quite a few details missing. What was your status in India when the property was purchased. How was the property funded? As your status now is PIO, assuming you have registered as PIO, and the purchase was funded from NRE account; You can credit the original purchase price into NRE account and repatriate. The capital appreciation has to be credited to NRO, tax paid and apply for repatriation. A certificate from qualified chartered accountant is required. Essentially it certifies you have paid tax and are compiling with FEMA (Foreign exchange management act) If you are not registered as PIO, you would need to apply to RBI (Reserve Bank of India, similar to fed) for permission to sell as this transaction falls under FEMA. You would in any case need a CA. A lawyer would also help. Assuming you were reporting this property in your US IRS returns ... You are liable for taxes in US.  India and US have some amount of DTAA( dual tax avoidance agreement)", "Your response give me hope for you, attitude is one of the things you can change! It may sound strange, but to love others you need to love yourself first.  Sometimes that means accepting who you are today and dedicating yourself to small changes that make life better! Start by finding good role models for caring people and try to be more like them.", "\"You owe only $38,860 to pay off your loan now, possibly less.   From what you say about your loan, tell me if I got this right: 30 year loan $75,780 original loan amount 9% annual interest rate $609.74 monthly payment You have made 272 payments Payment number 273 is not due until late 2019, possibly early 2020 If I have correctly figured out what you have done, you have been making monthly payments early by pulling out payment coupons before they are due and sending them in with payment.  You are about 4 years ahead on your payments.   If I have this correct, if you called the bank and asked \"\"what is my payoff amount if I want to pay this loan off tomorrow\"\" they would answer something like $38,860.  When you pay a loan off early, you don't just owe the sum of the coupons still remaining.  In your case, you owe at least $16,000 less! Indeed, if there is some way to convert your 4 years of pre-payments into an early payment, you would owe even less than $38,860.  I don't know banking law well enough to know if that is possible.   You should stop pulling coupons out of your book and paying them early.  Any payments you make between now and when your next payment is actually due (late 2019 sometime?) you should tell the bank you want applied as an early payment.  This will bring your total owed amount down much faster than pulling coupons out of your book and making payments years early.   If there is someone in your family who understands banking pretty well, maybe they can help you sort this out.  I don't know who to refer you to for more personal help, but I really do think you have more than $16,000 to gain by changing how you are paying your mortgage.   Good luck!\"", "\"I know of one practical difference between business checks (8\"\" check) and personal checks (6\"\" check) dealing with the paper check conversion rule to electronic debit.   The National ACH Association, created a rule that allows receivers of checks without an \"\"Auxiliary On-Us\"\" field, to convert your check into an electronic debit via the ACH network.  By default, 6\"\" checks (personal checks) do NOT have the AUX ON-US field, and are eligible to be converted to ACH debit. If you do not want your paper checks converted to ACH debits, then start using business checks with the AUX ON-US field populated.  You can use business checks for business or personal checking accounts. More information can be found below: http://www.deluxe.com/miscfiles/pdf/AuxOnUsField.pdf http://www.achrulesonline.org/\"", "You can write industry loss warrants. This is the closest thing I’ve found since I’ve been interested in this side of the ILS trade. Hedge funds and asset managers can do this. From what I understand it’s you selling the risk.   Want to start a fund? 🤔", "\"This post may be old anyhow here's my 2 cents. Real world...no. Compounding is overstated. I have 3 mutual funds, basically index funds, you can go look them up. vwinx, spmix, spfix in 11 years i've made a little over 12,000 on 50,000 invested.  That averages 5%. That's $1,200 a year about. Not exactly getting rich on the compounding \"\"myth?\"\". You do the math. I would guess because overly optimistic compounding  gains are based on a straight line gains. Real world...that aint gonna happen.\""]}
+{"query": "How to invest in the Russian oil market?", "corpus": ["The Russian ETFs may be broad, but a quick glance at ERUS and RBL's sector breakdown shows they're 45% and 47% energy sector, and their top holding is Gazprom comprising 9% and 14% of each ETF respectively, with plenty more oil and gas companies in their top 10 too.  A harder question would be how to invest in Russia and avoid oil I think (and even then, the economy is thoroughly bound up in it). To rework a meme... In Soviet Russia, oil invest YOU!"], "neg": ["The problem is not just the minimum wage. It's that the minimum wage is not enough to live on, and yet it's simultaneously extremely difficult to earn more than minimum wage if you're trapped in the cycle of earning minimum wage and spending all your money and free time keeping your head above water.", "... can someone explain to me why vanguard of all companies would be asking for this? If they're a company based on broad index funds, then whether or not exxon or Chevron or whoever else has climate change risk is irrelevant to that model, right?", "\"You don't need a law degree, but it is pretty negligent to ask the internet legal advice. But hey, I guess you know better than me man.  My statements were more to say \"\"I don't know how nebraska works so you can't assume what I say is true everywhere.\"\"  Speaking of which &gt;Nepotism laws only apply to public sector jobs.  Doesn't apply everywhere anyway. You shit on me for trying not speak in incorrect definitive yet you then go ahead and make a false statement unilaterally.\"", "\"&gt;Privatization and outsourcing of knowledge is much cheaper than in-house economies of scale... wait, what?  It's a short-term gain ... problem with short term things is that when you do them repeatedly year-after-year, you pile-up a long-term loss (which eventually comes home to roost).  &gt;When this grand experiment is proven to not be the panacea of the business world's quest for cost reduction, we'll all look back and laugh at how silly these guys were.  You mean like the housing bubble, when *everyone* was getting rich \"\"flipping\"\" their homes back and forth between each other.  &gt;It's like saying it's cheaper for a family of four to eat out three times a day, seven times a week (at restaurant that serves food with quality comparable to home cooking) than it is to cook at home. We all know home cooked meals are more cost effective unless you're eating the bottom of the barrel fast food, even then, externalities of health and well being make the savings questionable.  Well said.\"", "Some other suggestions: Index-tracking mutual funds. These have the same exposure as ETFs, but may have different costs; for example, my investment manager (in the UK) charges a transaction fee on ETFs, but not funds, but caps platform fees on ETFs and not funds! Target date funds. If you are saving for a particular date (often retirement, but could also be buying a house, kids going to college, mid-life crisis motorbike purchase, a luxury cruise to see an eclipse, etc), these will automatically rebalance the investment from risk-tolerant (ie equities) to risk-averse (ie fixed income) as the date approaches. You can get reasonably low fees from Vanguard, and i imagine others. Income funds/ETFs, focusing on stocks which are expected to pay a good dividend. The idea is that a consistent dividend helps smooth out volatility in prices, giving you a more consistent return. Historically, that worked pretty well, but given fees and the current low yields, it might not be smart right now. That said Vanguard Equity Income costs 0.17%, and i think yields 2.73%, which isn't bad.", "Wow. That's quite possibly the most ignorant thing I've ever read.   So that confirms that you don't know anyone who follows that religion. You know, you could learn a lot if you turned off Fox News for a few minutes and spoke to someone who looks or worships differently than you. The internet could be a great tool if you did something other than read about things that confirm your (incorrect) assumptions about other people.   For the entirety of our country, there have been people on the wrong side of history. People who were pro slavery, people who were pro segregation. You, my friend, are going to find out one day that you were the asshole spraying the fire hose. Pardon my bluntness, but you're a real piece of shit.", "You're right, but you also probably know a lot about technology. You are in the minority when it comes to the average e-book user. Most people don't know how to do anything else on an e-book reader other than read e-books."]}
+{"query": "How are mortgage payments decided? [duplicate]", "corpus": ["It's easiest to get your payment from the PMT function in Excel or Google Sheets.  So a $100,000 30 year mortgage at 3% looks like this: The basic calculation is pretty simple.  You take the annual interest rate, say 3%, divided by 12, times the existing principal balance: The idea is that borrowers would like to have a predictable payment.  The earlier payments are proportionally more interest than principal than later payments are but that's because there is much more principal outstanding on month 1 than on month 200."], "neg": ["For an extra $99.99/month, upgrade your speed! 50mph potential now available as an upgrade from standard 30mph capabilities!! Or, for real speed demons, access blinding 70mph premium service for just $199.99/month*  *3-year contract, a $5,000 early termination provision applies", "Aside from everyone else's explanation about bundling them with other mortgages, a buddy of mine who worked at a boutique lending group basically said that they KNOW these people can't pay the loans back and thus the bank will be able to take over ownership of the home.  Since **housing prices are guaranteed to go up**, they'll be able to make money once they re-sell the property.", "\"She pissed off a customer service person, and that person obviously called over and had her good reviews \"\"filtered\"\". I'm betting she's not an easy person to get along with, and Yelp doesn't necessarily HAVE to give you good reviews - they just have to \"\"promote\"\" you. I'm not a business owner, so I will honestly admit I don't know the details of the service you are guaranteed to receive when you pay Yelp.\"", "Your very first link says that there's an average fifteen point difference between IQ scores for blacks and whites. A full standard deviation and they have no explanation as to why that is.  It backs up my original point directly. Of course you didn't actually read that.", "Its not going off at a tangent. You need to be fully grounded in healthcare in order to understand it. If you are grounded in economic abstraction you will never understand it, because it is not like any other economic activity.    If you treat it like a business, it will be very expensive because it deals with the most precious thing that people have, their lives.", "The stock market was already reaching highs way before trump took office. Fortune 500s and Dow were already reporting record profits every quarter before trump. The dozens of new retail/food/medial/plaza buildings to open this year in my city were already being built and going to open. The expansion on our already brand new hospital was already happening. The new school and medical university has nothing to do with trump. No i don't think the new 10,000 home development site approval has anything to do with trump. Trump literally has done nothing so far but win the election. These things were happening already. Employers are already desperate for employees I don't think anyone is hiring more because trump is in office when they were hiring already.", "Lets be real here about this economic stuff. The uber rich do no work, get all the money, through stock ownership and a tax system thats made for them, by them.   The working poor do all the work, get none of the reward. Either you need universal basic income or you need a 15 dollar min wage. UBI i think is better.   Edit: the middle and upper classes do hard work. But at least they get a piece of the pie"]}
+{"query": "What does “Net Depreciation in Fair Value” mean on a financial report?", "corpus": ["First, the annual report is just that, a snapshot that shows value at the beginning and end of the period. Beginning = Aug 08 = $105B End =       Aug 09 =  $89B Newsletter date May 10 = $96B Odd they chose end of August as it's not even a calendar quarter end. The $16B was market loss during that period. Nearly half of that seemed to be recovered by the time this newsletter came out. The balance sheet also has to show deposits and payments made to existing retirees. I haven't looked at the S&P numbers for those dates, but my gut says this is right. The market tanked and the plan was down, but not too bad.  Protect? The PBGC guarantees pensions up to a certain limit. I believe that in general, teachers are below the limit and are not at risk of a reduced benefit. You do need to check that your plan is covered. If not, I believe the state would take over directly. I hope this helps."], "neg": ["&gt;how can one argue plastic's inability to store value comes artificially/by opinion?  That's backwards. Gold's *ability* to store value is artificial. Plastic's value is naturally determined by the market. It's cheap to produce, and abundant. Therefore, the market dictates it's going to be cheap.  Gold is artificially priced because it still retains many of its characteristics as a store of value for things unrelated to itself. People, for example invest in gold bullion, driving up the price. It's abundant, though costly to produce; yet its quantity and cost of production don't determine its price. Investors do.  You don't see people investing in plastic bars.", "I can't see how. Portland raised their minimum wage by 50 cents a year ago ($9.25 to $9.50), which is probably not enough to drown any restaurants that aren't already in trouble. The plan for $15 minimum wage is a gradual increase over 5 years.   The next increase will come July 1st, as far as I can tell. That will be the one to watch.", "&gt; But does that mean that we can blame a poor child for being born poor?  No, we should feed the poor/hungry child. But most importantly, we should help families and educate people to become responsible parents. Because that's where the most damage is being done.", "I agree with the consensus as far as getting a cheaper car, paying with cash, getting a more fuel efficient car, etc.  But I'd like to point out, you should make sure you really need a car at all.  I ride a bike to work!  If I need a car, I can use Zipcar or City Car Share or borrow a friend's car, rent a car, take the train, ride a bus, walk.  But mostly, ride my bike.  Burn fat not gasoline! ;)", "As for refinancing: Many institutions charge up-front fees when doing any type of vehicle loan. Typically this is in the neighborhood of 1% the value of the loan, with a floor of $100 (although this may vary by lender). However, for the loan the be secured by the vehicle, the principle value must be less than the collateral value. In your case, this means there is a collateral shortfall of $4,000. When working with a traditional bank, you would have two options: pay the difference up front (reducing the principle value of the loan), or obtaining a separate loan for the difference. This separate loan would often have a higher interest rate unless you have some other form of collateral to secure it with. I doubt CarMax would do a separate loan. All that being said, if you plan on selling the vehicle within the next twelves months, don't bother refinancing. It won't be worth the hassle.", "Information is useless in this case.  IR is useful when you are trying to replicate the risk exposures of an index and beat it. I.E.If I am a tech fund, I would compare myself to the tech S&amp;P.  IR is useless in this case as it is just the ratio of excess returns over the benchmark to vol.  From a trading sense he needs a rate of wins to losses, so a sharpe like construct of R/SemiDeviation. Essentially his avg return divided by negative volatility.  Going further on that is omega which introduces a threshold as in trading you care more about the equity curve so MAXDD is probably more relevant.", "\"TL;DR: Sure, \"\"do your own homework\"\" is sometimes a cop out. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our homework. I agree that in many cases this is a cop-out by commentators. However, even if you believe in perfect market efficiency, there is benefit in \"\"doing your homework\"\" for many reasons. One of which you already mention in the question: different stocks all with the same \"\"value\"\" might have widely ranging risk. Another factor that might vary between stocks is their tax consequences. High dividend stocks might be a better fit for some buyers than others. One stock might be priced at $40 because there is a small chance they might get regulatory approval for a new product. This might make this stock very risky with a 20% of being $150 in 12 months, and a 80% chance of being $20. Another stock might be priced at $40 because the company is a cash cow, declining in revenues but producing a large dividend of $0.40 per quarter. Low risk, but also with some potential tax disadvantages. Another stock might be priced at $40 because it's a high growth stock. This would be less risky than the first example, but more risky than the second example. And the risk would be more generalized, i.e. there wouldn't be one day or one event that would be make or break the stock. In short, even if we assume that the market is pricing everything perfectly, not all stocks are equal and not all stocks are equally appropriate to everyone. Sometimes when we hear an analyst say \"\"they should have done their homework\"\" they are really saying \"\"This was a high risk/high reward stock. They should have known that this had a potential downside.\"\" And that all assumes that we believe in 100% pure market efficiency. Which many disagree with, at least to some extent. For example, if we instead subscribe to Peter Lynch's theories about \"\"local knowledge\"\", we might believe that everyone has some personal fields of expertise where they know more than the experts. A professional stock analyst is going to follow many stocks and many not have technical experience in the field of the company. (This is especially true of small and mid cap stocks.) If you happen to be an expert in LED lighting, it is entirely feasible (at least to me) that you could be able to do a better job of \"\"doing homework\"\" on CREE than the analysts. Or if you use a specialized piece of software from a small vendor at work, and you know that the latest version stinks, then you will likely know more than the analyst does. I think it is somewhat akin to going to a doctor. We could say to ourselves \"\"the doctor is more knowledgeable about me than medicine, I'm just going to do what they tell me to do.\"\" And 99% of the time, that is the right thing to do. But if we do our \"\"homework\"\" anyway, and research the symptoms, diagnoses, and drugs ourselves as well, we can do get benefits. Sometimes we just can express our preferences amongst equal solutions. Sometimes we can ask smarter questions. And sometimes we have some piece of knowledge that the doctor doesn't have and can actually make an important discovery they didn't know. (And, just like investing, sometimes we can also have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and do ourselves harm if we go against the advice of the professionals.)\""]}
+{"query": "Long term drip (dividend reinvestment plan) stock", "corpus": ["\"If you sold the stock for a profit, you will owe tax on that profit. Whether it is taxed as short-term or long-term capital gains depends on how long you held the stock before selling it. Presumably you're going to invest this money into mutual funds or something of that sort. Those may pay dividends which can be reinvested, and will grow in value (you hope) just as the individual stock shares would (you hope). Assuming the advice you've been given is at all reasonable, there's no need for buyer's remorse here; you're just changing your investing style to a different point on the risk-versus-return curve. (If you have to ask this question, I tend to agree that you should do more homework before playing with shares in individual companieS ... unless you're getting thess shares at employee discount, in which case you should still seriously consider selling them fairly quickly and reinvesting the money in a more structured manner. In a very real sense your job is itself an \"\"investment\"\" in your employer; if they ever get into trouble you don't want that to hit both your income and investments.)\""], "neg": ["Investopedia defines it in the following way: It's essentially a market order that doesn't get entered until the last minute (or thereabouts) of trading. With this type of order you are not necessarily guaranteed the closing price but usually something very similar, depending on the liquidity in the market and bid-ask for the security in question. Traders who believe that a security or market will move more heavily during the last few minutes of trading will often place such an order in the hopes of having their order filled at a more desirable price.", "This is only one of a series of questions your friend needs to understand. They will also need to know what happens to: vacation balances; the vacation earning schedule; retirement fund matching; the pension program; all the costs and rules regarding health, dental and vision;life insurance amounts. Some of these can be changed immediately. Some will not be changed this year because of IRS regulations. Everything can be changed by the next year. But there is no way to know if they will change a little a possible or as much a possible. It will depend on if they are buying the company, or if the company is going out of business and the new company is buying the remnants. They may also be essentially terminating the employees at the old place, and giving them the first opportunity for interviews. If they are essentially quitting they will not have to continue paying into the plan. The bad news is that their last day of work is also probably their last day to incur expenses that they can pay for with the flexible plan. If They are being purchased or absorbed the company will likely make no changes to the current plan, and fold them into the plan next year. I have been involved with company purchases and company splits, and this is how it was handled.", "It's important to distinguish between speculation and investing. Buying something because you hope to make money on market fluctuations is speculation. Buying something and expecting to make money because your money is providing actual economic value is investing.  If Person A buys 100 shares of a stock with the intent of selling them in a few hours, and Person B buys 100 shares of the same stock with the intent of holding on to it for a year, then obviously at that point they both have the same risk. The difference comes over the course of the year. First, Person B is going to be making money from the economic value the company provides over the whole year, while the only way Person A can make money is from market fluctuation (the economic value the company provides over the course of an hour is unlikely to be significant). Person B is exposed to the risk of buying the stock, but that's counterbalanced by the profit from holding the stock for a year, while Person A just has the risk. Second, if Person A is buying a new stock every hour, then they're going to have thousands of transactions. So even though Person B assumed just as much risk as Person A for that one transaction, Person A has more total risk.", "That's very inconvenient if you ask me.  This is my opinion. Anytime I shop for shoes and even when I observe others, different shoes are tried on until one is bought. And I'm not talking about trying on couple pairs either.  Maybe others can guess what shoe will fit on their feet without trying them on.", "On average, you should be saving at least 10-15% of your income in order to be financially secure when you retire.  Different people will tell you different things, but really this can be split between short term savings (cash), long term savings (401ks, IRAs, stocks & bonds), and paying down debt. That $5k is a good start on an emergency fund, but you probably want a little more.  As justkt said, 6 months' worth is what you want to aim for.  Put this in a Money Market account, where you'll earn a little more interest but won't be penalized from withdrawing it when its needed (you may have to live off it, after all). Beyond that, I would split things up; if possible, have payroll deductions going to a broker (sharebuilder is a good one to start with if you can't spare much change), as well as an IRA at a bank. Set up a separate checking account just for rent and utilities, put a month's worth of cash in there, and have another payroll deduction that covers your living expenses + maybe 5% put in there automatically.  Then, set up automatic bill payments, so you don't even have to think about it.  Check it once a month to make sure there aren't any surprises. Pay off your credit cards every month.  These are, by far, the most expensive forms of credit that most people have.  You shouldn't be financing large purchases with them (you'll get better rates by taking a personal loan from a bank). Set specific goals for savings, and set up automatic payroll deductions to work towards them.  Especially for buying a house; most responsible lenders will ask for 20% down.  In today's market, that means you need to write a check for $40k or $50k.  While it's tempting to finance up to 100% of the property value, it's also risky considering how volatile markets can be.  You don't want to end up owing more on the property than it's worth two years down the road. If you find yourself at the end of the month with an extra $50 or so, consider your savings goals or your current debt instead of blowing it on a toy.  Especially if you have long term debt (high balance credit cards, vehicle or property loans), applying that money directly to principal can save you months (or years) paying it back, and hundreds or thousands of dollars of interest (all depending on the details of the loan, of course). Above all, have fun with it :)  Think of your personal net worth as you do your Gamer score on the XBox, and look for ways to maximize it with a minimum of effort or investment on your part!  Investing in yourself and your future can be incredibly rewarding emotionally :)", "It's not unusual/undesirable. If everyone prepaid their mortgage, banks would not like this, but we're in no danger of that :). Also, the amount you are pre-paying is not so significant as to make them pay special attention. In many cases when a borrower pre-pays, they will not continue to do so over the life of the loan since it's so easy to stop at any time, and the extra payments are voluntary. Depending on who originated the mortgate, it might be sold even more often than in your case. It's no longer commonplace for a bank to hold a mortgage to maturity, now that banks and other institutions have separated the origination of the loan from its servicing. It's likely that your mortgage was bundled with others through a process called securitization, and will be bought/sold based on the bank's need for liquitity or to balance out the maturity of its assets and liabilities (whether they need more cash now versus later), or based on the types of ways your bank has decided that it wants to make money versus farming out other types of business to others. What would substantially change the value of your mortgage to a bank is if it were performing (ie you are paying on time) but then became non-performing (ie you fall behind in your payments). It's also possible that if you have a very small mortgage or principal balance, that there is very little risk to the bank, and little difference between the present and future values of your loan, but banks don't typically make these types of transactions based on the characteristics of an individual loan.", "\"My parents and I were suckered into buying this kind of thing when I was in high school. The sales people literally told us that it could be used to pay off student loans - they left out the \"\"in the event of your death\"\" part. We knew it was a life insurance policy, but were told that it would \"\"mature\"\" 6 months after graduation from college, and that it would then be disbursed to pay off loans, even if I didn't die. That seemed strange to us, so we explicitly asked several different ways whether it would pay off the loans after graduation, even if I lived, and they just straight up told us, \"\"Yes.\"\" I'm guessing this ploy is still being used. Also, last I checked, student loans are non-transferable in the unfortunate event that your child dies - which means the loan is forgiven anyway - so this whole thing seems like garbage to me, at least in the student loan sense. I would steer clear from this stuff - it's pure snake oil in my experience.\""]}
+{"query": "Why small retail stores ask for ID with a credit card while big don't", "corpus": ["Because large stores do not pay their cashiers enough that the companies can dock the employees' pay if they allow a bad credit card to go through.  So most cashiers at large stores won't take the extra effort to check the card properly.  As a result, large stores come up with other ways to handle potential credit card fraud.  For example, they calculate a certain amount of fraud as expected and include it in their price calculations.  Or they can use cameras to catch fraudsters.   At small stores, there is a much higher chance that the cashier is either the owner or a relative of the owner.  And even those who are unrelated tend to be hired by the owner directly.  The owners do have their pay docked if a bad credit card is accepted, as their pay is the profit from the business.  So they tend to create protocols that, at least in their mind, reduce the chance of taking a bad credit card.  The cashier is often the only employee in the store to check anything.   Another issue is that small stores have a harder time getting approved to accept credit cards.  The companies that process the credit cards can take back their machine if there is a lot of fraud.  So the companies can require more from small stores than they can from big stores.  Those companies can't stop processing cards for Safeway, because they need Safeway as much if not more than Safeway needs them.  So the processors have more leverage to make small stores do what they want.  And small stores can feasibly fire (non-owner) cashiers who do not comply.   Owners of course can't be fired.  But they are far more vulnerable to business losses.  So it is really important to an owner to keep the credit card machine.  And it is pretty important to avoid losses, as it is their money directly.   Relatives of owners may be safe from firing, but they are not safe from family retaliation like taking away television privileges.  And they may also think of the effect of business losses on the family.   Large stores can fire cashiers, but they are chronically understaffed and almost none of their cashiers will consistently follow a strict protocol.  Since fraudsters only need to succeed once, an inconsistent application is almost as bad as no application.  They might charge the cashiers for fraud, but then they would have to pay the cashiers more than minimum wage specifically for that reason (e.g. a $50 a month bonus for no fraud).  For many of them, it's cheaper to risk the fraud.   And large stores can't mix owners and relatives of owners into the mix.  It's hard to say who owns Safeway.  And even if you could, the relationship between one fraud transaction and the dividend paid on one share of stock is tiny.  It would take thousands of shares to get up to a penny."], "neg": ["The answers you've received already are very good. I truly sympathize with your situation. In general, it makes sense to try to build off of existing relationships. Here are a few ideas: I don't know if you work for a small or large company, or local/state government. But if there is any kind of retirement planning through your workplace, make sure to investigate that. Those people are usually already paid something for their services by your employer, so they should have less of an interest in making money off you directly. One more thought: A no-fee brokerage company e.g. Charles Schwab. They offer a free one hour phone call with an investment adviser if you invest at least $25K. I personally had very good experiences with them. This answer may be too anecdotal and not specifically address the annuity dilemma you mentioned. That annunity dilemma is why you need to find someone you can trust, who is competent (see the credentials for financial advisers mentioned in the other answers), and will work the numbers out with you.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-27/climate-shocks-may-cost-u-s-1-billion-a-day-as-planet-heats-up) reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Stronger hurricanes, hotter heat waves, more frequent wildfires and more severe public-health issues are all adding to the costs of climate change, which will reach almost $1 billion a day in the U.S. within a decade, according to a report released Wednesday.  &gt; Total costs to address the impact of rising temperatures will swell 50 percent by 2027, to $360 billion annually, according to the study from the Universal Ecological Fund.  &gt; If global warming goes unchecked, corn and soybean production may fall as much as 30 percent in the next three decades, costing farmers as much as $25 billion annually, according to the study.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/73888a/climate_shocks_may_cost_us_1_billion_a_day_by_2027/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~218914 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*: **economic**^#1 **study**^#2 **billion**^#3 **U.S.**^#4 **change**^#5\"", "\"&gt; Though I'd counter that if your goal is to manipulate economic exchanges between individuals with the intention of guiding the economy at large to a specific desired outcome, I think that capitalism is not the economic system for you :P   Touche :)   I will say that, to your point, I have come to believe that there are two forces at odds that are required for a robust and long lived prosperous society:  1.  A capitalist system that encourages innovation through competition and  2.  A government to check the inevitable concentration of wealth that capitalism naturally trends toward.  They most effective ways for a government to check that concentration is through a progressive tax system, and a check on the power that the concentration of wealth creates (eg: forcing employers to pay a living wage instead of using a bully pulpit to extract the maximum effort for the lowest possible cost, as shown by the \"\"robber barons\"\" etc of the 1900s).  Either way, I'll admit that I am not talking about pure capitalism.  However, like the philosopher Georg Hegel theorized, all ideas go through a process of thesis (the first idea: aka capitalism), antithesis (the countering idea: in this case socialism), and then synthesis (the resulting compromise).  The synthesis then becomes the new thesis for the system to further evolve upon.  It's time for American capitalism to evolve.\"", "What is not permitted in Islam is the practice of making unethical or immoral monetary loans that unfairly enrich the lender. Originally, usury meant interest of any kind. A loan may be considered usurious because of excessive or abusive interest rates or other factors. But In case of financial markets, people borrow money to make money and both parties benefits, and no one is taking advantage of the other. I may be wrong in interpreting this way, God knows the best.", "&gt; Google and others essentially have in-house investment banking departments that are vetting, valuing, negotiating, and sealing these deals. These M&amp;A guys are mostly former bankers.  Corporations are also making more use of consultants for M&amp;A deals, often former banking MDs who play a similar 'oversight' role as they would in a bank.   Perhaps we are seeing the emergence of a new business model - fixed price costs (no commission),  in-house at junior levels and highly flexible at senior levels. By cutting out the bank there are huge amounts of money to be saved.  I agree with you about the article being a bit silly. The vast majority of deals are done is small sub-sections of industry where everyone knows the potential targets. A match.com style dating for m&amp;a algorithm wouldn't really add much value.", "Firstly 795 is not even. Secondly - generally you would pay tax on the sale of the 122 shares, whether you buy them back or not, even one minute later, has nothing to do with it. The only reason this would not create a capital gains event is if your country (which you haven't specified) has some odd rules or laws about this that I, and most others, have never heard of before.", "You definitely can under those conditions. Just be very careful to specify that you are making extra principal payments."]}
+{"query": "Do the nasdaq small cap stocks or penny stocks get promoted?", "corpus": ["\"The penny/pink sheet stocks you tend to see promoted are the ones a) with small public floats or, b) they are thinly traded.  This means that any appreciable change in buy/sell volume will have an outsized effect on the stock's share price, even when the underlying fundamentals are not so great.  Promoters are frequently paid based on how much they can move a stock's price, but such moves are not long-lasting.  They peter out when the trading volumes return to more normal ranges for the stock because all of the hype has died out. There are some small-cap NASDAQ stocks which can be susceptible to promotion for the same reason -- they have small floats and/or are thinly traded.  Once someone figures out the best targets, they'll accumulate a position and then start posting all kinds of \"\"news\"\" on the web in an effort to drum up interest so they can sell off their position into the buying that follows.   The biggest problem with penny/pink sheet stocks is that they frequently fail to publish reliable financial statements, and their ownership is of a dubious nature.  In the past, these types of stocks have been targeted by organized crime syndicates, which ran their own \"\"pump and dump\"\" operations as a way to make relatively easy money.  This may still be true to some extent today.   Be wary of investing in any publicly-traded firm that has to use promoters to drum up investor interest, because it can be a serious red flag.  Even if it means missing out on a short-term opportunity, research the company before investing.  Read its financials, understand how it has behaved through its trading history, learn about the products/services it is selling.  Do your homework.  Otherwise you are doing the investing equivalent of taking your money and lighting it on fire. Remember, there's a good reason these companies are trading as penny/pink sheet stocks, and it generally has nothing to do with the notion (the promoters will tell you) that somehow the \"\"market has missed out on this amazing opportunity.\"\"  Pump and dump schemes, which lie at the heart of almost all stock promotion, rely on convincing you, the investor, that you're smart enough to see what others haven't.  I hope this helps. Good luck!\""], "neg": ["As someone who spends a lot of time in France, I learned that many French banks will issue debit cards to US citizens, as an add-on feature to a bank account.  The fees are not low.  Societe Generale charges 8 Euros per month, Credit Agricole charges 30 Euros a year, BNP Paribas charges 12 Euros a month.  I'm sure other banks will issue cards as well.  You need to show 2 items proving US residence, such as a utility bill, plus a passport.  They can open an account immediately, on that basis and it takes about 7-10 days to get your debit card.", "Depending on jurisdiction, the fact that you made some payments might give you an ownership share in the house in your own right. What share would be a complex question because you might need to consider both the mortgage payments made and maintenance. Your sister might also be able to argue that she was entitled to some recompense for the risk she describes of co-signing, and that's something that would be very hard to quantify, but clearly you would also be entitled to similar recompense in respect of that, as you also co-signed. For the share your mother owned, the normal rules of inheritance apply and by default that would be a 50-50 split as JoeTaxpayer said. You imply that the loan is still outstanding, so all of this only applies to the equity previously built up in the house prior to your mother's death. If you are the only one making the ongoing payments, I would expect any further equity built up to belong solely to you, but again the jurisdiction and the fact that your sister's name is on the deeds could affect this. If you can't resolve this amicably, you might need to get a court involved and it's possible that the cost of doing so would outweigh the eventual benefit to you.", "Domini offers such a fund.  It might suit you, or it might include things you wish to avoid. I'm not judging your goals, but would suggest that it might be tough to find a fund that has the same values as you. If you choose individual stocks, you might have to do a lot of reading, and decide if it's all or none, i.e. if a company seems to do well, but somehow has an tiny portion in a sector you don't like, do you dismiss them? In the US, Costco, for example, is a warehouse club, and treats employees well. A fair wage, benefits, etc. But they have a liquor store at many locations. Absent the alcohol, would you research every one of their suppliers?", "I am sorry for your troubles, but impressed with your problem solving skills.  Keep going, things will get better.   Your best hope is to find a place that does manual underwriting.  If they do computer generated stuff, then you will be kicked for sure.  If you can show 20% down, and have some savings, and have some history of paying bills, then you might be approved.   Here in Florida, RP Funding still does manual underwriting.  Another one that is mentioned is Church Hill mortgage.  Also you might check with local credit unions. Of course your best bet to be approved is to be open and state upfront the challenges.  You have to find someone that has the ability to think, has the ability to see passed the challenges, and has the authority to do so.", "\"&gt;\"\"Our support for these (shareholder resolutions on climate risk) proposals is not a matter of ideology, it's a matter of economics,\"\" he said. \"\"To the extent there are significant risks to a company's long-term value proposition, we want to make sure there is long-term disclosure of those risks to the market.\"\"  the irony is indescribable\"", "Here is the solution: any money made inside the United States will be taxed under US tax law.  You want to do business here, open up a US headquarters that handles all the sales tracking and reporting. No tax dollars, no operations inside the US.   The united states carries such bulk buying power that companies will be forced to abide by its rules.", "\"By issuing additional equity. In this case, the pie isn't \"\"fixed,\"\" it's getting bigger. Now, to avoid lawsuits and other potential issues (some of which may be unavoidable), the owner will likely need to subscribe for additional equity himself.  Example:  100 shares outstanding. 51 to owner, 49 to 2 others.  That 49 will have to equal 20%, as none of their shares are being sold (likely). This means total shares will need to be increased to 245.  Subtract 49 from that number: 196  Marcus gets half of that at a determined price. 98  Owner must increase his stake from 51 to 98 shares. To do so, he'll need to contribute additional cash for the same price Marcus gets in on. That could be expensive.\""]}
+{"query": "How do I Fundamentally Analyze this Stock so I may see if the Company is Running Well?", "corpus": ["a) Nothing would support this company going back to $.50 per share b) Fundamentally the market for this sectors has been obliterated and the fundamentals don't look like they will improve. Similar companies experience what this one is and will be going through, they borrow the hilt and hope they can pump enough oil and sell the oil at a high price. Oil goes below, WAYYY below the price they can sell it at and even break even, so they are burning cash until they declare bankruptcy. This company is not an exception. So here is what to look at on their balance sheet: assets and liabilities. Liabilities are debt. Their debt is over 50% of their assets, that debt has interest and there is NO WAY they are making a profit. Their website's last financial statement is from September 30th.. LOL, so they haven't even released a quarterly financial statement in two quarters straight, so have they released anything? Given what we know about the dire state of the entire oil drilling industry, lets see if these guys are the exception to the rule (spoiler; they aren't) February 15th, 2015 http://www.marketwatch.com/story/strategic-oil-gas-ltd-provides-operations-update-2015-02-19-16173591 The Company prudently elected to stop the winter Muskeg drilling program     in order to preserve capital. So now they aren't even getting new assets to resale, they aren't making any money from that operation, their debt still has interest payments though. Approximately 700 Boe/d of production has been shut-in by suspending     operations at Bistcho, Cameron Hills and Larne, which are not economic     at current commodity prices. Predictable. Also, you should notice from their actual financial statements (from 6 months ago, lol) (when the price of oil was over 100% higher than it is today, lol), this company already wasn't a good performer. They have been financing themselves by doing private placements, by issuing shares to investors that are not you, and diluting the share value of ALL OTHER SHAREHOLDERS. Dead in the water. I got this from skimming their financial report, without even being familiar with how canadian companies report. Its just bad news. You shouldn't be married to this investment."], "neg": ["No. Black Scholes includes a number of variables to calculate the value of the derivative but taxation isn't one of them. Whether you are trading options or futures, the dividend itelf may be part of the equation, but not the tax on said dividend.", "\"Look at the graph in the article and one of the legends say \"\"Thinking their funny\"\".  &gt; I understand your cynicism of bad products, but how will people find out about your good product?  It's actually easier than ever today because today you can easily search for what you need and you are exposed to media more than ever. There also tools to show specific ads depending on the viewer location, keywords and data on the user.  The challenge is that few bad companies selling junk and crap have huge advertising budget and overwhelm the users who search for one thing and get TONS of ads for something they did not even search for.\"", "You're eligible to do whatever you please, regardless of what you owe as long as you're in a payment plan approved by the IRS which you follow religiously.  That said, let me incorporate some of the comments, as they're important: ChrisInEdmonton said: Note that almost all such 'opportunities' are scams. In order to   provide a complete answer, you'll need to explain the terms of your   installment agreement with the IRS. Also, just curious. If you have   the money to start up a business, why aren't you using it to pay back   the money you owe John Bensin added: I strongly recommend you read through a few links on work-at-home   scams, e.g. fraud.org, forbes, Wikipedia, and the FTC   before joining something like this, to be safe", "Deming Electro Plating Corporation specializes in all types of electroplating and surface finishing services in New York. We provide high quality metal finishing work using top grade materials. With over 60 years of experience in electroplating services we provide fastest turnaround time on all types of finishing work.", "I have a fb account, I never use it. I wont delete it, because those bastards actually wont let you. So Ive intentionally become a dead customer to them. I actually campaign to my friends to communicate with me via any other method. I hate everything fb stands for as a company. Imo this company defines narcissitic scum, a stunt in our socities development selling out our privacy for the quick buck without even realizing the damage theyve done. I know they wont go away anytime soon, but their user base is dramatically loosing value to advertisers. Talks of less fb engagement is no secret in social media buzz. A lot of lame attempts to blame it on the new algorithim or newsfeed changes but when you read between the lines, you can tell more and more people are using it less and less. With an exception to the older gen, who quite honestly dont really understand fb anyway. Seems like any fade after it reaches mass adoption.", "Indiabulls. Low brokerage (If you bargain) I'm user of it and I'm getting 25paisa for delivery and 5 paisa for intraday. All transactions can be done online. Also they provide an stand alone application PowerIndiabulls, which is too good and appraised by many users as best in the industry. Not sure about it, but I think Powerindiabulls application is the answer for this. Please have a look at their website for more details.", "The value of Coins & Currency is more of Demand Vs Supply Situation. The value of Coins is not just due to it being old, but also   For example the 1876 US Nickel around 300,000 were minted. The 1916 US Nickel around 400,000 were minted.  However the 1916 Nickel is at more premium than the 1876. This is because there are many collectors who want to complete the collection post 1900. They can never complete the 1800 to 1900 collection as other year coins are not available.   It is hard to tell which currency will catch craze amongst collectors. That's what will drive the prize. For example if 50 years from now, Zimbabwe becomes a leading developed country, there will be craze / nostalgia to collect things of past.   Certain coins like the American Double Eagle are a craze because the design is very good, its made of Gold, has history to it. It's sold for USD 7-8 Million, Or the USD 1 Dollar uncut sheets [16 notes in a sheet], the sheet goes for around 1-2 Million USD As an individual if you have some coins / currencies keep them more as a hobby than as something that would return value.   Investments in Collectibles and Art is an emerging form of investment and needs to be looked at separately and shouldn't be mixed with a simple hobby."]}
+{"query": "Is it a good practice to keep salary account and savings account separate?", "corpus": ["\"This seems like a risky setup.  All it takes is one missed or delayed transfer for you to overdraw your \"\"savings\"\".  There is a benefit to keeping your regular expenses and savings separate, and I can see some benefits in having multiple checking accounts depending on how you organize your finances, but I don't see a benefit to having a paycheck go to one account and all regular spending (and \"\"savings\"\") come from another.  It requires some regular maintenance to transfer money over to use for regular spending.  I suppose if you have a checking account that earns interest, but requires direct deposits, and a savings account that earns slightly higher interest you could squeeze out a bit, but it's probably not worth the effort these days unless you have a LOT of money going in and out. Also, it should not be easy to tap into savings, but your day-to-day spending should be very accessible.  All those factors suggest (to me) that your paycheck should go into your regular spending account, and keep your savings separate.\""], "neg": ["Enormous revenue, not profits. Profits would be taxed. Doesn't seem like a problem to me. You can't spend money without realizing the profits - it's wealth on paper. (You can do interesting things like use it for donations to offset current income, as an individual. Or use it as collateral for transactions without actually selling it and realizing the gains.)", "Do NOT use the same LLC.  By default he would own 1/2 of the DBA so you would have to hire an attorney to section it off.  Then you have to worry about him changing his mind later and suing you if the DBA is sucessful.  Not to mention the EIN controls the cash and tax flow and the DBA would be using the same EIN so it gets really murky.  Don't even consider it, just create a new LLC.", "There are plenty of firewalls - Fortinet and Sonicwall UTM, and dedicated DLP devices - that do SSL MITM to sniff traffic for violations. Your employer simply installs the relevant cert on your machine first and most people never notice.  Worth noting: Fortinet has a default setting to NOT monitor or log traffic from bank and health SSL sites. It can be disabled though.", "Right you **don't** ever want to use that account for your traditional 401k rollovers.  Realistically, you could *probably* still have it reclassified as a traditional IRA and roll your traditional 401ks into it, which was basically your original idea except none of the funds would be Roth; but if you see yourself ever potentially contributing to a Roth IRA going forward (which makes all the more sense if you have only traditional 401k funds in your retirement portfolio so far), there's nothing *wrong* with having both types of IRA at the same time.  But no, don't cross the streams!  :)", "There is a very steep learning curve in any area of finance. I have no idea what all goes into a PhD in a hard science but, if you're worried about the math and programming stuff, I would look at Pharma and Biotech coverage groups. Reach out to people in the space and see what they say. Also, leverage the Alumni network from your school as you can probably make some headway with the schools you named.", "Can't be true.  I read r/economy and I know **real** inflation is 15%, **real** unemployment is 25%, we're in a double-dip recession, a second tsunami of mortgage foreclosure is coming, hundreds of cities are going to default on their bonds, and ...  And we're all going to die on the side of the road.  Alone.  In the rain.  Edit: [See](http://www.reddit.com/r/economy/comments/2dm13e/job_surge_suggests_higher_wages_are_coming/cjr00wh)?  And this guy is an optimist.", "Everybody on the car title will need to participate in the selling process. The person who is buying the car will need everybody to sign the paperwork so that nobody months later tries to say they never agreed to sell the car. The money will have to be sent to the lender to pay off the rest of the loan. If the money isn't enough to pay off the loan everybody will have to decide how the extra money will be sent to the lender. This will have to be done as part of the selling process because the lender doesn't want you to sell the car and keep the cash. Once the car is gone so is the collateral and they can't take it back if you miss payments.  If the cousin is too far away to participate in the selling of the car, you may need the buyer and the lender to tell you how to proceeded. If you are selling at a dealership they will know what documents and signatures will be needed, the bank will also know what to do. If the loan is almost paid off it may be easier to pay the loan first, and then get the title without the lenders name before trying to sell it."]}
+{"query": "How an ETF reinvests dividends", "corpus": ["Let me answer by parts: When a company gives dividends, the share price drops by the dividend amount.  Not always by that exact amount for many different reasons (e.g. there are transaction costs if you reinvest, dividend taxes, etc). I have tested that empirically. Now, if all the shareholders choose to reinvest their dividends, will the share price go back up to what it was prior to the dividend? That is an interesting question. The final theoretical price of the company does not need to be that. When a company distributes dividends its liquidity diminish, there is an impact on the balance sheet of the company. If all investors go to the secondary market and reinvest the dividends in the shares, that does not restore the cash in the balance sheet of the company, hence the theoretical real value of the company is different before the dividends. Of course, in practice there is not such a thing as one theoretical value. In reality, if everybody reinvest the dividend, that will put upward pressure over the price of the company and, depending on the depth of the offers, meaning how many orders will counterbalance the upward pressure at the moment, the final price will be determined, which can be higher or lower than before, not necessarily equal. I ask because some efts like SPY automatically reinvest dividends. So what is the effect of this reinvestment on the stock price? Let us see the mechanics of these purchases. When a non distributing ETF receives cash from the dividends of the companies, it takes that cash and reinvest it in the whole basket of stocks that compose the index, not just in the companies that provided the dividends. The net effect of that is a small leverage effect. Let us say you bought one unit of SPY, and during the whole year the shares pay 2% of dividends that are reinvested. At the end of that year, it will be equivalent to having 1.02 units of SPY."], "neg": ["\"&gt;Basically interest rates are near 0 and the banks are very risk adverse right now, so they sit on reserves instead of lending them out.  There is a very significant reason (actually a couple) that the banks are \"\"sitting on reserves\"\":  1. The large banks have HUGE derivative exposure and HUGE potential losses (and anyone who denies that has apparently been hiding under a rock and missed the news of JPMorganChase) -- while the reserves held are not enough to cover ALL of those potential derivative losses (nor do they have to), the bankers are uncertain of what their REAL exposure is, and so they want to (and indeed are probably being told to) hold onto enough to prevent a catastrophic \"\"insolvency\"\" situation.  2. The Fed is paying interest on excess reserves (likewise, this is no secret). This serves a two-fold purpose of making the banks *appear* to be solvent (even in the face of potentially HUGE derivative exposure); and secondarily it is a way to \"\"gift\"\" the banks with money -- known as \"\"recapitalizing\"\" them.  What Krugman is engaging in is simple misdirection. Now whether this is because he actually believes his own bullshit, or whether he is being intellectually dishonest... is anyone's guess. (Hanlon's razor would tell us it is the former, rather than the latter; but that isn't really dispositive in a single case and is rather a general principle. Occam's razor doesn't tell us anything in regard to this, since either is a fairly simple and straight-forward explanation; and given the history of \"\"economists\"\" as being professional apologists &amp; apparatchiks in service of the financial &amp; government establishment, the latter is at least as likely as the former.)\"", "I agree that there is a lot of filtering going on. I run filters for people's blogs and news sites I rarely read. The caveat is that I unblock sites I use frequently, and pay for YouTube Red, music streaming and Patreon to support content creators that I enjoy. This, to me, is an issue of the ad targeting not being mature enough yet. Once companies figure out that I'm responsive to ads on certain sites but will blacklist others that do the same, they can selectively serve ads on platforms I'm more likely to engage with. In the meantime the shotgun approach is what advertisers go for.   The future is really in honing how and when these ads are delivered, as well as offering more widespread alternatives to ads, such as subscription services.  For what its worth, I also run noscript. I've had ISPs in the past that had data caps, and given how much data I already use via streaming and Steam, I need every spare Mb I can get.", "Written by salesmen, for clueless executives.   Why bother to ask your in house tech people for their input? It's so degrading when everyone knows you are better than they are.  it goes so wrong almost every time.", "\"[ See Hopstar's comment : ](http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/ujwei/dont_mean_to_be_alarmist_but_the_tv_business_may/c4w52l9)  &gt; They're an exception to all of this because they're owned by \"\"a joint venture of NBCUniversal (Comcast/General Electric), Fox Entertainment Group (News Corp) and Disney-ABC Television Group (The Walt Disney Company), with funding by Providence Equity Partners, the owner of Newport Television...\"\"  &gt; Even with the full support of three major conglomerates, the service is still gimped (delays in broadcasting new episodes, limited availability of past episodes/seasons) by their fear of change.\"", "After doing some investigating, my employers contract with the credit card company has a clause that basically specifies that despite my name being on the credit card, and bills being sent to me, all liability is on the company. Additionally, the employer reserves the right to garnish wages in the event of a balance on the card. So it looks like it won't affect my credit score. I appreciate all of the advice.", "I'm not exactly sure what you mean by this statement.  As a libertarian myself, the only thing that's really surprising to me is that it was Keynes who said it. It's pretty much standard fare for liberterian socioeconomic thought to decry corporatism / rent-seeking while simultaneously praising industriousness and capitalism as we understand it to be.  All this is saying to me is that Keynes *understood* what capitalism was, but recommended what he recommended anyhow. Which is unfortunate, but not really surprising now that I think about it given how the Chicago School operates in general.", "\"Again massive generalisations I haven't looked at the numbers at all, so could be way off, and it will be a local issue.   If overall housing demand &gt; supply; little movement in price  If current supply = current demand; then the increase in supply should lower prices a little. I'd expect a lot of conversions to enable greater access to the housing market from first time buyers (which is generally where the growth comes from).   If current supply &gt; current demand (rare, Detroit, some \"\"company towns\"\" where the company has left etc) ; prices should already be depressed, more supply pushes them lower still. If people can keep up with mortgage payments then all okay, if not repossessions. I doubt this option is large enough to carry much risk.    I'm fairly sure any bank has people far smarter, and far more qualified,  than me looking at macro trends with actual data, so whatever shocks are coming from the boomers dying off will be well managed.\""]}
+{"query": "Passing money through a different account to avoid cash pay-in fees", "corpus": ["\"Let me do the math. .6% * (not large) = really tiny. Since \"\"not large\"\" = \"\"small\"\" , etc.  I suggest that even a small chance that you need to explain this to anyone in the future is a sign to avoid the risk. Yes, there are times that it's illegal. A real estate office may not deposit escrow funds into anything but a segregated escrow account.  In your case, even if legal, it messes up 'the books' and can cost you more in grief than the 'tiny amount' saves you in cash.\""], "neg": ["\"When did I say that?     All I said was that my success had nothing to do with luck. Partly because I did more than just work hard and partly because there is *no such thing as luck*.    They may be working just as hard or harder than me, but are they doing all the right things to increase their chances of success? Did they major in business or journalism? Do they network, or is that \"\"a fucking bullshit game\"\" they don't want to play? Do they ask for letters of recommendation, or think that people just automatically write them and know where to send them? I've actually met many people who think it's rude to ask for a letter of recommendation. Do they use their resources wisely or spend their student loan money on Macbooks and iPhones? There's more factors at play than simply the number of hours they work in a day or their GPA.\"", "Western Union is one way to send emergency cash to a family member. It seems suspicious as a method of goods payment because many frauds have used it as a means of collecting irreversible payments. EBay and Paypal would be a better more trustworthy way to sell to usa customers.   Most USA banks need a USA address for the account owner..... But you may not need a USA bank account as PayPal can store and exchange funds to other currencies.", "They are a distributer. They're not doing anything but making products available. If Shimano wants to sell me a reel and I don't like Bass pro now, I'll go to Shimano website. easy. Or you know, another company who can do it better can come along. My main point is this isn't like a utility company that has a monopoly where you only have one choice on how to get gas to heat your home in the winter.  That have much different powers and potential problems.", "You don't need to notify the IRS of new members, the IRS doesn't care (at this stage). What you do need, if you have a EIN for a single-member LLC, is to request a new EIN since your LLC is now a partnership (a different entity, from IRS perspective). From now on, you'll need to file form 1065 with the IRS in case of business related income, on which you will declare the membership distribution interests on Schedules K-1 for each member.", "\"Is english not your first language? I'm not trying to be rude i just want to understand if the difficulty in communicating with you comes from a language barrier or something else.  Finance and accounting knowledge are things people go to university for years for, just to learn the basics to get in the door. What you're asking requires years of experience and earned expertise.  The expectation that you can just post here with some questions and suddenly have enough of a grasp to become a decision maker with respect to these situations is borderline offensive to professionals like myself.  Either you need this knowledge for a practical application, or an academic pursuit. It seems to be the latter given your previous message. There are textbooks dedicated to what you're asking about, if you are really serious about learning then go pick them up and put in the hours necessary just like anyone else. Otherwise stop wasting peoples time on here.  If you have one or two small questions to help clarify something you've been self studying that's fine, but honestly coming on here and asking \"\"how can a company issue bonds and what are bonds is it like a mortgage\"\" is absolutely a waste of time and reeks of laziness on your part.\"", "Well they did not seem to be able to shoot down the two that flew over Japan and those were definitely a threat, so it seems to me the only non-threatening missiles they seem to be able to shoot down are the ones they fire them selves  I am starting to wonder and its starting to seem the missile shields might just be another big military boondoggle.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.japantimes.co.jp/opinion/2017/07/10/commentary/world-commentary/trumps-trade-trap/#.WWOdSOmQyUk) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Trump sees the costs of these programs as showing that past U.S. leaders were willing to sacrifice the interests of ordinary Americans to meaningless global cooperation.  &gt; U.S. officials negotiated horrible trade deals; American workers lost their jobs to imports; our putative allies didn&amp;#039;t pick up their fair share of military spending.  &gt; Last week, Europe and Japan announced they&amp;#039;re negotiating a trade agreement that covers 40 percent of world trade and excludes the U.S. Being outside these agreements would weaken U.S. exports.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6mg13e/trumps_trade_trap/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~163838 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*: **U.S.**^#1 **Trump**^#2 **American**^#3 **trade**^#4 **percent**^#5\""]}
+{"query": "How will the net assets of a bankrupt company be divided among the common share holders", "corpus": ["All investors of equal standing get the same proportion of the net assets on bankruptcy but not all shareholders are of equal standing. In general, once all liabilities are covered, bond holders are paid first as that type of investment is company debt, then preferred stock holders are paid out and then common shareholders. This is the reason why preferred stock is usually cheaper - it is less risky as it has a higher claim to assets and therefore commands a lower risk premium. The exact payout schedule is very corporation dependent so needs research on a per firm basis."], "neg": ["\"Holy crap you really bought what was being sold.  For 8 years I watched as my gun owning friends, some I would call 2nd amendment \"\"enthusiasts\"\" go crazy as they talked about all the ways their gun owning rights were threatened by that man in the white house.   All the while gun and ammo sales went like gangbusters.  He acted once (twice?) to expand gun rights and, to my knowledge, did nothing to set them back.    For 8 years FUD was spread throughout the \"\"2nd amendment community\"\" while gun and ammo manufacturers profited like crazy and nothing actually threatened them and the NRA was turned into a parody of itself.  It's ...  Odd.\"", "\"The question should read: \"\"Borrow huge money for speculating\"\". This is a bad idea on many levels. The lowest rates available will be from time-limited credit card offers, followed by broker margin accounts. Personal loans are going to be higher. My advice: if you insist on throwing your money away, go to Vegas with $40k. At least you'll get some complimentary food and drink.\"", "That is not completely true. Many of these companies use public easements or have had public funds invested in them.  And the infrastructure would continue to be privately owned, there would just be some regulations placed on how they can operate it.", "The answers provided already pretty much answer the differences and trade-offs, and I'd agree with recommending an online savings account like ING because the rate is just about the same as most CDs you'll find right now.  It's really a matter of when the CD rate is higher, and you can accept not accessing the money, then the CD is a better value, otherwise go with the savings account. However, here is an interesting option with CDs that helps with not being able to access the money: a CD ladder.  Basically, you get a CD every 3 months (or some other acceptable time frame), starting with 3, 6, 9, and 12-month CDs.  When the time is up for each of them, take that money and put it back into a new yearly CD.  Eventually you will get to the point when you have all of the CDs long-term, but you'll get some of the money every 3 months.  If you need the money, you'll have the option to use it, but you can always just keep it going, too.  The exact timing you use depends on your situation, but it's a great way to help get around not being able to access the money for a year or more.", "I am no expert, but lots of things can cause drops.  Large unsecured revolving debt (credit cards) - even jf you payoff monthly, unpaid medical bill, acquiring multiple credit cards or other multiple credit searches, any form of lawsuit, and I am sure several other things", "Our Website https://www.shedcard.com/ Rent to Own Sheds are economical and extremely versatile structures that come in many sizes, colors and styles. These sheds can be used for a number of functional duties including storage, a tool shop or even a playhouse. Most of these metal sheds can be set up easily in almost any level area of your yard. The process just requires a little patience, an extra pair of hands and a few common tools that you probably already own.  My Profile : https://www.houzz.in/user/renttoownbarns More Links : http://imgur.com/puN9hpn http://imgur.com/79h0O0h", "Don't all of the major bitcoin processors limit the risk to basically zero for the large multinationals that choose to accept bitcoin? I haven't been involved recently, but I know when bitpay and coinbase were starting, whatever bitcoin you received was automatically transferred to USD at the current rate, unless you opted out and chose to keep the bitcoin."]}
+{"query": "Can an Indian citizen/resident invest in a US company and collect the profits in India?", "corpus": ["Every month I will get a return in from my share of the profit which would be used for repayment of capital and interest in India. Not to sure what the business plan is. Please factor all the modalities, Exchange rate fluctuations, etc. My concern is regarding RBI rules and regulations, FEMA guidelines, and Income tax. Under the Liberalized Remittance Scheme; Funds can be transferred outside India. Any profit you make will be taxable in India. You will have to declare this pay tax in as per schedule."], "neg": ["Don't know about rest of the world but oat based milk products (yoghurt, milk, cream, anything) and other similar plant based products (soy being biggest) are currently a huge trend here in Finland. Their major consumers are urban folk (more expensive than regular milk) but it is spreading across the country", "I would suggest equity research, or as mentioned, consulting. You could go into IB. Your main hindrance is your age, how long has it been since you finished your PhD?  Equity Research: you will analyze companies, on an individual and micro basis, and provide macro point of views on the industry etc.   Sales/Trading: you will not get a job in trading, sales...maybe, if you get a bank large enough that has a healthcare/industrial chemicals sales positions, but this is a job that requires you to be able to sell your bank's point of view to large, very sophisticated clients, and provide them with better ideas than other sales guys, so that they will trade with your bank...can you learn finance and the industry fast enough? You would be better off working in a buy side shop (there are tons in boston)  IB: never met anyone that likes ib. depends on the bank but even mid market small banks it is 80hr weeks on avg. bulge bracket its 100. but you would likely start as an associate, (if at all) so that would go down really fast, (3-5 yrs to vp)  If you went to a top tier school, find alum from your school that work at banks and talk to them first, a 30 min conversation with anyone is incredibly useful. Just ask them how to get in. Also make sure you know all the capital markets firms in your area, know what all the fields are from a basic level (read the shit on wallstreetoasis etc) so that you dont waste time when talking to people.   You will likely need a CFA level 1 to get any traction, unless you can find some people that are willing to pull for you, which you will find is actually more simple than it seems - people love helping their alma matter, and every firm is always looking for smart people. anyways, sign up for the december 2012 cfa exam, and download/buy the schweser notes (don't read the actual books) this will be a great refresher about finance and economics even if you don't end up switching careers.  actual answers to your questions 1) yes 2) start as an associate in ib, spend 3 years doing bs, and workin average 90hrs a week, either quit of become vp and start selling work vs doing it 3) ib: immediate sales/trading: immediate, buy side: varies on the firm, size, performance, could be immediate, could be the year after, or you could get fired after 3 months because your phd isnt as useful as they thought it was. 4) mentioned above...a few years, its managable, suck it up 5) no sorry   goodluck", "\"Perhaps the real question you are asking is \"\"How can the tax code be fixed to make it simple for everyone (including me), and what would it take to effect those changes\"\"? There are really two causes for the complexity of the tax code. Many of those who enter Government hold a desire for power, and Government uses the tax code as one lever of power to distribute largess to their supporters, and to nudge everyone to behaviors which they favor. The current system enables incumbents to spend taxpayer money to reward those they favor, and thus they accumulate power and security. Those who enter Government also love to spend money (especially other people's money), and their rapacious behavior recognizes no boundaries. They will spend money without control until the taxpayers yank them to a brutal stop. They enact complex rules which are used to ease the (tax) burden for some, which buys their support (with taxpayer money), and they spend money to benefit those which they favor. The system of lobbyists and contributors exists to entice Government to treat them and the causes they support favorably. This system enables incumbents to spend taxed money to reward those they favor, and to tax those they disfavor. Thus their greed is satisfied, and their power is increased. The freedom you seek is not available, although you can minimize the effort required for compliance. You can take the standard deduction, and use nothing but the W-2 provided by your employer, and unless you are subject to the Alternative Minimum Tax, you will find that the tax software will do most of the work for you. Do you want to approach the Nirvana of minimal effort to appease your tax collectors? Avoid starting your own business, charitable donations, investment income, 1099 income, and you will need minimal paperwork. Avoid earning enough to risk the AMT (Alternative Minimum Tax). Refuse to take the mortgage interest deduction, tax credits for electric vehicles, tax credits for high-efficiency appliances and air conditioners, tax credits for residential solar panel installations. Do not own investments which pay interest, or own stocks where you need to track the \"\"basis\"\" (purchase price) of the stocks, nor buy and then sell valuable items that might gain value (where you would need to track the purchase price, the \"\"basis\"\"). Avoid owning and leasing a rental home for income, deducting businesses expenses and mileage for business purposes, contributions to a retirement plan (outside an employer plan) -- all complicate your tax filing. The solution you truly desire is either a \"\"Flat Tax\"\" or the \"\"Fair Tax\"\". These solutions would effect either a single tax rate (with no deductions or adjustments to income, yeah right), or a national retail sales tax, which would tax the money spent in the economy regardless of the source of the money (legal, gifts, crime) and there would be no need to report income, or classify it. The largest objection to either is that the tax code might become less \"\"progressive\"\" (increasing tax rate with increasing income). Good Luck!\"", "This thread has been linked to from elsewhere on reddit.    - [/r/bestof] [/u/Beebles1 explains how to break into the finance sector](http://np.reddit.com/r/bestof/comments/2dl483/ubeebles1_explains_how_to_break_into_the_finance/)   *^If ^you ^follow ^any ^of ^the ^above ^links, ^respect ^the ^rules ^of ^reddit ^and ^don't ^vote ^or ^comment. ^Questions? ^Abuse? [^Message ^me ^here.](http://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%2Fr%2Fmeta_bot_mailbag)*", "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.", "No.  You already received the deduction, since that lost FSA money was pre-tax.  You can't double dip.  However if your FSA amount was less than your actual expenses, you can file on the difference. Example: $4500 actual expenses, $3000 FSA (lost).  You can get the dependent care credit based on $1500.", "\"EDIT: It was System Disruption or Malfunctions August 24, 2015 2:12 PM EDT   Pursuant to Rule 11890(b) NASDAQ, on its own motion, in conjunction   with BATS, and FINRA has determined to cancel all trades in security   Blackrock Capital Investment. (Nasdaq: BKCC) at or below $5.86 that   were executed in NASDAQ between 09:38:00 and 09:46:00 ET. This   decision cannot be appealed. NASDAQ will be canceling trades on the   participants behalf. A person on Reddit claimed that he was the buyer. He used Robinhood, a $0 commission broker and start-up.  The canceled trades are reflected on CTA/UTP and the current charts will differ from the one posted below.  It is an undesired effect of the 5-minute Trading Halt.  It is not \"\"within 1 hour of opening, BKCC traded between $0.97 and $9.5\"\".  Those trades only occurred for a few seconds on two occasions.  One possible reason is that when the trading halt ended, there was a lot of Market Order to sell accumulated.  Refer to the following chart, where each candle represents a 10 second period. As you can see, the low prices did not \"\"sustain\"\" for hours.   And the published halts.\""]}
+{"query": "How do I know when I am financially stable/ready to move out on my own?", "corpus": ["One big deciding factor will be what standard of living you want to maintain once you move out.  Your parents have had years to get raises, accumulate savings, and establish the standard of living you are used to.   Regardless of how much you save up now, you'll still have to be living at or below your means once you move out, that means that all the expenses you currently have covered by your parents have to come out of something you are currently spending elsewhere.  If they can come out of whatever extra money you have now, then great.  If not, you'll have to re-align your budget to align with your income. In my experience, seeing my friends and I move out, this was the biggest issue.  Those who settled into a new standard of living until their wages went up did fine (even the few who moved out at 18 with no savings).  Those who couldn't drop the extra expenses, and wanted to continue living at their parent's standard of living either never left home, ended up moving back, or ended up massively in debt.  We're only just hitting 30 now, so it didn't take long for things to settle out."], "neg": ["\"I used to travel a lot for work, in '14 I spent 35 work weeks on the road, so I know air travel pretty well. Thing is, anyone who travels that often generally doesn't need to pay for a better seat. I got upgraded to first class for free about 50% of the time, some trips I'd get first class on all the flights. At the worst, you're sitting in the coach \"\"plus\"\" with larger seats, more legroom, and often free drinks. Regular fliers don't sit in the back by the bathrooms, they're sitting further up right behind first class. Either you travel infrequently enough that you can suck it up for a coach flight every so often, or you're traveling often enough that you don't need to worry about it.\"", "Around 22 million bitcoin maximum. I can't remember full details but it's designed to dish out 12.5 coins every 10 minutes on average. Sometimes it might be 10 seconds, sometimes an hour, and half every 4 years until 22 million it just halved so in about 3.5 years you will get 6.25. Now to SEND bitcoin you can bribe miners and pay a few cents to jump the line, so you get your 12.5 + the donated coin.   As for eth it's confusing shit. Bitcoin is like a virtual dollar, eth you can 'transform' into other things to do things I don't know what it's for. Research 'dao' and eth. Dao was some sort of contract system using eth.", "\"For personal investing, and speculative/ highly risky securities (\"\"wasting assets\"\", which is exactly what options are), it is better to think in terms of sunk costs. Don't chase this trade, trying to make your money back. You should minimize your loss. Unwind the position now, while there is still some remaining value in those call options, and take a short-term loss. Or, you could try this.  Let's say you own an exchange traded call option on a listed stock (very general case). I don't know how much time remains before the option's expiration date. Be that as it may, I could suggest this to effect a \"\"recovery\"\".  You'll be long the call and short the stock. This is called a delta hedge, as you would be delta trading the stock. Delta refers to short-term price volatility.  In other words, you'll short a single large block of the stock, then buy shares, in small increments, whenever the market drops slightly, on an intra-day basis. When the market price of the stock rises incrementally, you'll sell a few shares. Back and forth, in response to short-term market price moves, while maintaining a static \"\"hedge ratio\"\". As your original call option gets closer to maturity, roll it over into the next available contract, either one-month, or preferably three-month, time to expiration. If you don't want to, or can't, borrow the underlying stock to short, you could do a synthetic short. A synthetic short is a combination of a long put and a short call, whose pay-off replicates the short stock payoff.  I personally would never purchase an unhedged option or warrant. But since that is what you own right now, you have two choices: Get out, or dig in deeper, with the realization that you are doing a lot of work just to trade your way back to a net zero P&L.  *While you can make a profit using this sort of strategy, I'm not certain if that is within the scope of the money.stachexchange.com website.\"", "I recently lent some money to my sister.  While I generally agree with Phillip that lending to family and friends should be avoided, I felt I needed to make an exception.  She really needed the cash, and my husband and I agreed that we would be ok without it.  Here are some guidelines I used that may be helpful to others: In the end, I think lending to family and friends should be avoided, and certainly should not be done lightly, but by communicating clearly and directly, and keeping careful records, I think you can help someone out and still avoid the lingering awkwardness at future Thanksgivings when one person is convinced that the other owes one more payment, and the other swears it was paid in full.", "\"The danger to your savings depends on how much sovereign debt your bank is holding.  If the government defaults then the bank - if it is holding a lot of sovereign debt - could be short funds and not able to meet its obligations. I believe default is the best option for the Euro long term but it will be painful in the short term.  Yes, historically governments have shut down banks to prevent people from withdrawing their money in times of crisis.  See Argentina circa 2001 or US during Great Depression.  The government prevented people from withdrawing their money and people could do nothing while their money rapidly lost value. (See the emergency banking act where Title I, Section 4 authorizes the US president:\"\"To make it illegal for a bank to do business during a national emergency (per section 2) without the approval of the President.\"\"  FDR declared a banking holiday four days before the act was approved by Congress.  This documentary on the crisis in Argentina follows a woman as she tries to withdraw her savings from her bank but the government has prevented her from withdrawing her money.) If the printing press is chosen to avoid default then this will allow banks and governments to meet their obligations.  This, however, comes at the cost of a seriously debased euro (i.e. higher prices).  The euro could then soon become a hot potato as everyone tries to get rid of them before the ECB prints more.  The US dollar could meet the same fate. What can you do to avert these risks?  Yes, you could exchange into another currency.  Unfortunately the printing presses of most of the major central banks today are in overdrive.  This may preserve your savings temporarily. I would purchase some gold or silver coins and keep them in your possession.  This isolates you from the banking system and gold and silver have value anywhere you go.  The coins are also portable in case things really start to get interesting.  Attempt to purchase the coins with cash so there is no record of the purchase.  This may not be possible.\"", "What's easy? Debt, personal, marketing related finance.   What we look for in hires is simple though - modeling skills (everyone thinks they're better than they actually are) and case analysis (same story). If you can get those two under your belt, and a good school under your name you should be good.", "I was also going to mention people going through savings during unemployment.  And given the unemployment figures, 28% having no emergency savings even seems low.  Purely anecdotal but I cleared through my savings a few years ago during seven months of unemployment and have several friends who did the same and/or racked up thousands in debt."]}
+{"query": "Can I deduct taxes for home office as a freelance computer software developer?", "corpus": ["This answer is assuming you're in the US, which apparently you're not. I doubt that the rules in the EU are significantly different, but I don't know for sure. In case of an IRS control, is it ok to say that I regularly connect   remotely to work from home although in the work contract it says I   must work at client's office? No. Are there any other ways I can prove that this deduction is valid? No. You can't prove something is valid when its not. You can only deduct home office expense if it is used exclusively for your business, and your bedroom obviously is not."], "neg": ["This is a great answer.  It's worth noting that often internal charging is commonly an issue in less clear cut situations like IT departments charging for their services - there is much less of an 'real' value that they could charge for their services to the outside world (as it is an internal service not a physical product that is relatively liquid), yet their chargeable costs gets inflated and can slow down businesses by making projects seem more expensive than they are. I would describe that as one of the most common gripes.  Also I'd argue that your latter scenario where profits are shifted around to reduce tax bills IS well understood by the top of the business, and unlikely to create a situation where divisions are mistakenly regarded as unprofitable (unless the CFO / FD is missing from all the board meetings!). It's a situation that is carefully designed by the business.", "All forms of liquid investing necessarily have the same expected value. If any one form were more profitable, money would flood in, equalizing it. Day trading is unusual in two key ways. First, although the expected value is the same, the risk profile is very different. For example, would you wager a dollar on the flip of a coin?  You might.  Why not, after all? Would you wager a million dollars?  Probably not. The risk is too great. Similarly, day trading can easily lose you all of your investment, which is why you should be careful doing it. (In his memoirs Liar's Poker, Michael Lewis tells an anecdote about a rich bond trader who proposes a million-dollar, even-money bet with his rival, an amount both could just barely afford to lose.  The rival, not wanting to play but not wanting to lose face by declining, accepted.. with the proviso that the stakes be raised to 10 million dollars! The trader backed down.) Also, the efficient market only guarantees the price will be efficient.  It says nothing about transaction costs.  A busy day-trader can easily incur thousands in commission and other fees.", "Bermis Inc has a team of industrial electricians that can handle all of your electrical construction and maintenance needs.  This includes lighting retrofits, single equipment installs, full production lines to complete plant relocations and incoming service upgrades.", "You might want to check again on the whole best standard of living thing. http://www.telegraph.co.uk/travel/news/countries-with-the-highest-standard-of-living-social-progress-index/ Not even in top 12. We also have by far the highest incarceration rate in the world, housing more prisoners than China with 1/4 the population. Our infant mortality rate is the highest in the developed world. Our healthcare is also the worst in developed countries and even some developing ones despite paying more for it than in any other country in the world. We rank near last in education despite also paying the most for it. It's is almost as if adding a profit motive to social services results in the highest costs with the lowest output. Europe is doing great actually, pretty much is the reverse of all these statistics.", "I actually think it's the opposite.  Outside the city is tons of infrastructure and there would be no traffic issues at all.  As I said Raytheon had multiple large campuses in Tewksbury, woburn, Waltham, and Andover.  It also has sites in many other towns. Amazon could set up shop just outside the city.   Also if they were intent on being in the city they could probably find good space in the seaport district or southie.", "That's not how science works. Demonstrating non-spurious correlation is the responsibility of the author. Null hypothesis and all that.  That is to say, if some guy on the street tells you something, it's not _your_ responsibility to spend your time explaining to him or others how he might be wrong.", "For most business purposes, Gmail/ Outlook should suffice. Just make sure your username sounds professional enough.   Try and stick to FirstName+LastName @ Gmail/Outlook dot com, if that's available. You could also get yourself NameOfYourBusiness @ Gmail/ Outlook dot com  If you want to come across as a well established business, and only if you've some cash to spare every year, getting yourself a domain name would be a good idea. But, if your business/ services aren't too popular, yet; I'd suggest you defer that expense."]}
+{"query": "Company asking for card details to refund over email", "corpus": ["If it is a well known company that wants to give you a refund, I would not worry about giving them your credit card number.  However, I would never type my credit card number into an e-mail message. E-mail messages are very insecure, and can be read by many people along its way to the destination. They also can be archived in many places, meaning that your number will continue to be posted out there for someone to grab in the future.  If you need to give this company your credit card number, do it over the phone.  Having said that, ultimately you are not generally responsible for fraudulent charges if your card number is stolen and misused. I've had so many fraudulent charges, despite my being relatively careful with my number, that I don't really worry much anymore about losing my number. I just check my statement for false charges, and when they happen,  the bank cancels the charge and issues me a new number. It has happened to either my wife or I maybe 5 times over the last two years."], "neg": ["Here's my approach: As for Google Docs, I think that its safe enough for most people. If you in a profession that was subject to heavy regulatory scrutiny, of if you are cheating on your taxes, I would probably not use a cloud provider. Many providers will provide documents to government agencies without a subpoena or notice to you.", "\"Although they may have some similar functions, CPAs and Enrolled Agents operate in two rather different areas of the accounting \"\"space.\"\" CPAs deal with financial statements, usually of corporations. They're the people you want to go to if you are making an investment, or if you own your own business, and need statements of pretax profit and loss prepared. Although a few of them are competent in taxation, the one thing many of them are weak at is tax rules, and this is where enrolled agents come in. Enrolled agents are more concerned with personal tax liability. They can 1) calculate your income taxes, and 2) represent you in hearings with the IRS because they've taken courses with IRS agents, and are considered by them to be almost \"\"one of us.\"\" Many enrolled agents are former IRS agents, actually. But they are less involved with corporate accounting, including things that might be of interest to stock holders. That's the CPA's province.\"", "\"&gt; company was incorporated, which makes it a public institution and that changes things.  People keep saying this, but it simply is not true.  No business is ever a \"\"public institution\"\".  Even publicly traded companies are still *privately owned*.  They are \"\"public\"\" only in the sense that they extend the opportunity to own a part of the company to the larger public.  Insfar as this is true, they incur certain responsibilities to be transparent in reporting their financials, for example.  But the idea that any private institution - corporation, church, parochical school, or small business ought to be forced to hire on the basis of someone else's idea of fairness is idiotic.  It's a fundamental matter of property rights.  Except in matters of fraud or force, I should be free to dispose of my property - say my business - in any way I wish, hiring, serving, or otherwise running that business as I see fit.  If it is OK to force private sector institutions to hire and serve people because the government says so, then by the same reasoning the government should be able to force you to invite certain classes of people to your dinner parties.  Even in the extreme cases of outright bigotry - say the KKK member that owns a business and hates blacks or the Muslim shop onwer that hates Jews - this should not be prevented.  However offensive I most of the rest of my fellow citizens find the Klackers or the nutjob Islamists, they too have rights and privileges under our system and they too should not have those rights removed to suit my sense of fair play.\"", "\"&gt;&gt; Did President Trump...then come out saying he now opposed Medicare doing so?  &gt; Yes. So he said that.  Great, I wasn't sure we could find agreement there.  &gt; Did he ACT to make it so? Maybe, as usual, he's playing business chess...  That argument cuts both ways.  Maybe this is part of his master plan to get Medicare Part-D to negotiate drug prices, but maybe this is part of his master plan to maximize pharmaceutical company profit.  At the end of the day you have to judge a person on what he says and what he appears to do.  &gt;&gt; Has President Trump...prepare for the upcoming problems caused by global warming?  &gt; Absolutely not! Absolutely not!  I agree.  &gt; President Trump is not against any method or measure to reduce pollution or emission.  [Global warming is a serious risk to this country](https://www.americansecurityproject.org/climate-security/).  Given that it is President Trump's job to protect the country, a position of bring \"\"not against emission reductions\"\" doesn't cut it.   Thanks for answering my questions.  From your earlier replies I wasn't sure you understood how someone might see my issues as reflective of a president who is not working in the best interests of his people.  Of course you can disagree but you're not going to change my mind by dismissing what I see as tests of character and asking me to provide another.  &gt; I am not happy with everything he said or do before and after the elections.  That's great.  Like and dislike him for your own reasons and challenge both perspectives.\"", "&gt;Obviously, if we've got far, far fewer government workers that any any point since World War II  Got a cite?  The number of federal workers has expanded steadily for a while now, but a cite might save me from trying to napkin math population ratios and whatnot.", "Yes a minor can have a checking account, or a savings account. They can even get a debit card. The money in that bank account belongs to the minor. The account can be established as soon as the are assigned their social security number. If they are a newborn the account is generally set up as a joint account with a parent to facilitate transferring money into the account. For us the money was birthday gifts from relatives.  The IRS allows minors to receive small amounts of interest, or other unearned income, tax free. In 2015 that is up to $1,050, if they have no earned income. When bank rates were higher some parent's wanted to put all their saving under their child's name, of course in the eyes of the law the money belonged to the child and was only to be spent for items that benefited the child. Credit cards are another matter because the CARD act in 2009 required lenders to only give credit to those under 21 who had proof of sufficient income, unless there was a co-signer. You do have to be careful when talking about owning a house as minor. They generally can't sign a contract. You could gift the house to the minor, but if it was time to sell it the courts would insist on appointing a legal guardian to represent the interest of the child. That could add significant time to the transaction.", "They also pay really well and give people freedom.  The dignity you get from not having to worry about your time off being refused or worrying about picking your kid up in an emergency is priceless and builds loyalty."]}
+{"query": "What percent of a company are you buying when you purchase stock?", "corpus": ["What percent of a company are you buying when you purchase stock? The percent of a company represented by a single share can be calculated by percent = 1/number_of_shares*100% Apple comprises 5,250,000,000 shares, so one share makes up about 1.9e-8% of a company, or 0.000000019% of Apple."], "neg": ["\"&gt; Wal-Mart already pays below market wages anyway.  What they pay *is* the market wage by definition.  &gt; They are just treated worse.  In which case, why don't they work for one of those other employers?  &gt; People don't choose to work for Wal-Mart vs other places, it's because Wal-Mart literally shuts down entire small towns mainstreets.  In what way does that force people to work for Wal-Mart? You act like the only way to get a job is to work for them. If you do not like the job that Wal-mart offers you, there is no compulsion to accept it.  &gt; Nothing I'm talking about has anything to do with productivity, which really doesn't apply here. At the retail level, all workers are essentially the same. What, exactly, are they producing? They provide a service.  They are producing the service of retail. Shelves need to be stocked, registers need to be manned, things need to be cleaned, prices need to be adjusted, etc. etc. Employees can be nicer to the customers, or faster at performing tasks, or less likely to make mistakes, or hundreds of other things. Workers are *not* essentially the same - if they were, they would tend to have the same wage.  \"\"Production\"\" does not refer solely to the creation of goods. It refers to anything that results in an increase of *wealth* - in other words, it is any action that produces something of *value* to someone.\"", "If he asked you to invest his money with certain objectives which resulted in you buying specific stocks for him with his money, then sell all the stocks which you bought with his money and the capital and profits to him. You may want to calculate the trading fees that you incurred while buying these specific stocks and taxes from the sale of these stocks, withholding them to over the trading fees that you have already paid and the taxes that you might still need to pay. If you traded with his money no different than yours, then I would think of your investment account as a black box. Calculate the initial money that you both invested at the time you added his capital to the account, calculate how much it all is currently worth, then liquidate and return a percentage equal to that of his initial investment. You can account for trading fees and taxes, subtracting by the same percentage.", "I filed all my tax returns when I was abroad so they know how much I   made (just not how much I saved). I smell problems here. If you were compliant wrt to your filings, you must have filed FBAR forms and form 8938. Even if you were below the threshold for form 8938, you will probably be above it when you move back to the US - the threshold for people living in the US is much lower. Do I still need to declare it, even though I might not intend to use   this money to help my kids through college? I believe so. Here's what they want: Nothing there suggests that it is only limited to the accounts in the US or to the money you intend to use to help your kids through college.", "Are you kidding? The stock markets just took a nose dive this week. Perfect buying opportunity. Just be sure to dollar cost average your way in to avoid excessive timing risk.", "Long-term capital gains, as you note, get special tax treatment.  They are lower than regular income tax rates.  Short-term capital gains aren't penalized, they are just treated as regular income under the regular rates.  So, from a tax perspective, the day-trader gets by the same way as the rest of us because they are paying the same rates on the same progressive income tax scale.", "Oh what a crock of shit. The guy basically admits his bias in regards to being fired in that statement alone.  The government isn't afraid of Bitcoin. Anyone who thinks that they are is a fucking moron.  /u/SatyapriyaCC posts in fucking /r/conspiracy, so there you go.", "One reason why some merchants in the US don't accept Discover is that the fee the store is charged is higher than the average. Generally a portion of transaction fee for the network and the issuing bank goes to the rewards program. In some cases a portion of the interest can also be used to fund these programs. Some cards will give you more points when you carry a balance from one month to the next. Therefore encouraging consumers to have interest charges. This portion of the program will be funded from the interest charges. Profits: Rewards: Some rewards are almost always redeemed: cash once the amount of charges gets above a minimum threshold. Some are almost never redeemed: miles with high requirements and tough blackout periods.  Credit cards that don't understand how their customers will use their cards can run into problems. If they offer a great rewards program that encourages use, but pays too high a percentage of points earned can lead to problems. This is especially true when a great percentage of users pay in full each month. This hurt Citibank in the 1990's. They had a card with no annual fee forever, and a very high percentage never had to pay interest. People flocked to the card, and kept it as an emergency card, because they knew it would never have a annual fee."]}
+{"query": "Can two companies own stock in each other?", "corpus": ["Yes, this can and does certainly happen. When two companies each own stock in each other, it's called a cross holding. I learned about cross holdings in reference to Japanese companies (see Wikipedia - Keiretsu) but the phenomenon is certainly not exclusive to that jurisdiction.  Here are a few additional references:"], "neg": ["I personally don't agree with a currency union. I'd rather follow Ireland's example when they gained independence and created the Irish Pound and peg it to Sterling, which they did for over 70 years before transitioning to the Euro.   There isn't any debt to reject or default on.The UK treasury has already assured the debt market that it's 100% responsible for it.  Scotland has no responsibility for taking on any debt, but might/will in response to negotiations and in return for something.   Debt markets will be far more receptive of a country which has 0 government debt. We're not talking South Sudan or a tin pot south american country, we're talking about a mature northern european democratic state.   I should also note, that oil is a bonus, but not a required export. With oil, Scotland has higher revenue per person than the entire UK,  but if it disappeared tomorrow, we're only slightly below the UK average.  [Institute for financial studies.](http://www.ifs.org.uk/publications/6881)", "The incestuous relationship between America's richest one percent and their political lackeys and lobbyists is sickening American society, and yet the press pretends that everything will be just hunky-dory when housing starts pick up. The politicians manage to conduct political campaigns totally devoid of the real issue—the huge and growing gap between the rich few and the impoverished many. Meanwhile our police, who are supposed to protect us, harass citizens exercising their First Amendment rights to assemble and protest injustice. Wake up, Wall Street: you can't shove this under the rug.", "Mr. Raphael Lilla is a business enthusiast with more than 20 years of experience working in the Swiss and International financial markets. An honoured member of the International Society of Business Leaders, Raphael has a Degree in Master in Law. Currently, he is operating in the bullion market as Executive Director of SBC Group AG, Switzerland, and as Managing Director of Swiss Bullion Company International LLC, Dubai.", "Each year lightning strikes cause billions of dollars in property damage and complete devastation. The harm to structures, electronics, building systems and vehicles can be extensive, causing loss of product and major downtime. To safeguard your structure from any type of Lightning damage, it is essential to get a risk assessment done by lightning consultants. Feel free to visit us at: http://www.lightningprotection.com/", "As your is a very specific case, please get an advice of CA. It should not cost you much and make it easier. The sale of agriculture land is taxable in certain conditions and exempt from tax in other cases. Sale of agricultural land is subject to capital gains tax. But there are certain exemptions under Section 54B, subject to conditions, which are as follows:    If deemed taxable, you can avail indexation, ie the price at which you grandfather got [the date when he inherited it as per indexation] and pay 10% on the difference. If the price is not known, you can take the govt prescribed rate.   As there is a large deposit in your fathers account, there can be tax queries and need to be answered. Technically there is no tax liable even if your grandfather gifts the money to your father. More details at http://www.telegraphindia.com/1130401/jsp/business/story_16733007.jsp and http://www.incometaxindia.gov.in/publications/4_compute_your_capital_gains/chapter2.asp", "I've never had a problem with connection or speed. But they have given me the run around since the start.   Signed up for just Internet at the beginning. They told me to try Prism TV. If I don't like it, I can cancel it within 30 days and get my money back. Canceled within 2 weeks. Still got charged for the TV.   It's been an on going battle. Let's see if this month's bill is finally correct. It's been 5 months now.", "Once, back when I had a bank account, I tried to pay a large emergency dental bill with my debit card. It rejected it as it turned out the bill was less than a dollar over what I had in the account. I thought there was enough money so I tried again, 3 times. They charged me an overdraft for each attempt even though the debit never went through. This was without overdraft protection, as overdraft protection would have allowed the debit and charged me one overdraft. I don't know the details but federal regulations have changed how they do this.  To me overdraft protection rejects any debit that attempts to overdraft my account and doesn't charge me with an overdraft that didn't actually occur as a result of the charge being rejected, but that's not how it works."]}
+{"query": "Sell home to buy another home for cash", "corpus": ["The cleanest way to accomplish this is to make the purchase of your new house contingent on the sale of your old one.  Your offer should include that contingency and a date by which your house needs to sell to settle the contract.   There will also likely be a clause that lets the seller cancel the contract within a period of time (like 24-48 hours) if another offer is received.  This gives you (the buyer) at least an opportunity to either sell the house or come up with financing to complete the deal. For example, suppose you make an offer to buy a house for $300,000 contingent on the sale of your house, which the seller accepts.  In the meantime, the seller gets an offer of $275,000 in cash (no contingency).  The seller has to notify you of the offer and give you some time to make good on your offer, either by selling your house or obtaining $300,000 in financing.  If you cannot, the seller can accept the cash offer. This is just a hypothetical example; the offer can have whatever clauses you agree to, but since sale contingencies benefit the buyer, the seller will generally want some compensation for that benefit, e.g. a larger offer or some other clause that benefits them. Or do I find a house to buy first, set a closing date far out and then use that time to sell my current one? Most sellers will not want to set a closing date very far out.  Contingency clauses are far more common. In short, yes it's possible, and any competent realtor should be able to handle it.  It also may mean that you have to either make a higher offer to compensate for the contingency and to dissuade the seller from entertaining other offers, or sell your home for less than you'd like to get the cash sooner.  You can weigh those costs against the cost of financing the new house until yours sells."], "neg": ["\"These are two different ways of processing payments. They go through different systems many times, and are treated differently by the banks, credit card issuers and the stores. Merchants pay different fees on transactions paid by debit cards and by credit cards. Debit transactions require PIN, and are deducted from your bank account directly. In order to achieve that, the transaction has to reach the bank in real time, otherwise it will be declined. This means, that the merchant has to have a line of communications open to the relevant processor, that in turn has to be able to connect to the bank and get the authorization - all that while on-line. The bank verifies the PIN, authorizes the transaction, and deducts the amount from your account, while you're still at the counter. Many times these transactions cannot be reversed, and the fraud protections and warranties are different from credit transactions. Credit transactions don't have to go to your card issuer at all. The merchant can accept credit payment without calling anyone, and without getting prior authorizations. Even if the merchant sends the transaction for authorization with its processor, if the processor cannot reach the issuing bank - they can still approve the transaction under certain conditions. This is, however, never true with debit cards (even if used as \"\"credit\"\"). They're not deducted from your bank account, but accumulated on your credit card account. They're posted there when the actual transaction reaches the card issuer, which may be many days (and even many months) after the transaction took place. Credit transactions can be reversed (in some cases very easily), and enjoy from a higher level of fraud protection. In some countries (and most, if not all, of the EU) fraudulent credit transactions are never the consumer's problem, always the bank's. Not so with debit transactions. Banks may be encouraging you to use debit for several reasons: Merchants will probably prefer credit because: Consumers will probably be better off with credit because:\"", "If any academic framework worked, your teachers would be the richest people on the planet. However, you must read up on macro and micro economic factors and make an educated guess where the market(or stock) would be at the date of expiry. Subtract the Strike Price from your determined price and calculate your potential profit. Then, if you are getting paid more or less the same thing as of today, sell it and switch to a safer investment till expiry (For example:- Your potential profit was $10, but you are getting $9 as of today, you can sell it and earn interest(Safer investment) for the remaining time.) Its just like buying and selling stocks. You must set a target and must have a stop loss. Sell when you reach that target, and exit if you hit the stop loss. If you have none of these, you will always be confused(Personal experience).", "So you'd prefer someone else to do your work for you? Someone figure out who's the bad guy, and figure out how to punish them? You are too busy filling your Jeep and drinking your latte to actually be a responsible member of society? It is attitudes like that which lead to tyranny. How can you trust those in power, if you have no idea whats right or wrong?", "Without knowing the WSC's objectives, priorities of those objectives and affordability we cannot determine which type of insurance is best. Life insurance for seniors is very expensive if you examine the per unit cost (e.g. cost per $1000 of death benefit). Therefore affordability is a critical deciding factor for WSC.  Let's assume that we know the WSC's affordability and therefore the monthly premium is a fixed determined number, then there is a inverse relationship between the length of coverage and the amount of coverage. We have to achieve a balance between these two factors to best meet the WSC's objective. If the proposed plan is not affordable then the WSC must leave out his/her objectives with lesser priorities out of the total coverage amount.", "This essentially depends on how you prefer to measure your performance. I will just give a few simple examples to start. Let me know if you're looking for something more. If you just want to achieve maximum $ return, then you should always use maximum margin, so long as your expected return (%) is higher than your cost to borrow. For example, suppose you can use margin to double your investment, and the cost to borrow is 7%. If you're investing in some security that expects to return 10%, then your annual return on an account opened with $100 is: (2 * $100 * 10% - $100 * 7%) / $100 = 13% So, you see the expected return, amount of leverage, and cost to borrow will all factor in to your return. Suppose you want to also account for the additional risk you're incurring. Then you could use the Sharpe Ratio. For example, suppose the same security has volatility of 20%, and the risk free rate is 5%. Then the Sharpe Ratio without leverage is: (10% - 5%) / 20% = 0.25 The Sharpe Ratio using maximum margin is then: (13% - 5%) / (2 * 20%) = 0.2, where the 13% comes from the above formula. So on a risk-adjusted basis, it's better not to utilize margin in this particular example.", "To figure this out, you need to know the price per share then vs the price per share now.  Google Finance will show you historical prices.  For GOOG, the closing price on January 5, 2015 was $513.87.  The price on December 31, 2015 was $758.88.  Return on Investment (ROI) is calculated with this formula: ROI = (Proceeds from Investment - Cost of Investment) / Cost of Investment Using this formula, your return on investment would be 47.7%.  Since the time period was one year, this number is already an annualized return.  If the time period was different than one year, you would normally convert it to an annualized rate of return in order to compare it to other investments.", "Peer to peer lending isn't FDIC insured.  You can lose all your investment with peer to peer lending, whereas you will not lose your deposited money in a savings account, even if it doesn't grow very fast."]}
+{"query": "Should I use an NRE or NRO account to transfer money from India to the US? Any reports needed?", "corpus": ["Deposits into NRE account can only be done from funds outside India. So your brother cannot deposit into your NRE account.  He can deposit in NRO account or directly wire transfer the funds. Both these require some paper work depending on the amount."], "neg": ["Regardless of whether a stock is owned by a retail investor or an institutional investor, it is subject to the same rules.  For example, say that as part of the buyout, 1 share of Company B is equivalent to 0.75 shares of Company A and any fractional shares will be paid out in cash.  This rule will apply to both the retail investor who holds 500 shares of Company B, as well as the asset manager or hedge fund holding 5,000,000 shares of Company B.", "\"This information is clearly \"\"material\"\" (large impact) and \"\"non-public\"\" according to the statement of the problem.  Also, decisions like United States v. Carpenter make it clear that you do not need to be a member of the company to do illegal insider trading on its stock. Importantly though, stackexchange is not a place for legal advice and this answer should not be construed as such.  Legal/compliance at Company A would be a good place to start asking questions.\"", "Paying yourself first involves getting some part of your income somewhat out of reach, with the intent that you don't spend it during the month.  It could be a retirement account, a savings account, or something similar. It's in contrast to saving whatever is left over at the end of the month: paying yourself last. The intent is to renormalize spending levels down, effectively living on a smaller income and saving or investing the difference.  The lower spending levels will become normal, and it won't feel quite as much like a belt-tightening exercise.", "In the UK (similar laws exist throughout Europe, see European Consumer Rights Directive), you have the right to return for a refund for any goods that are bought off-premises for 14 days after delivery. http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-contracts-regulations I understand that consumer protections in the USA are not as strong though.", "The simple answer is that you have to read the terms and conditions when you sign up for a checking account at the bank. The process of fraud investigation varies from bank to bank.  Ultimately most banks will refund the money if you are not deemed negligent. Some banks offer quick reimbursement during fraud claims, but many will not refund the money until the investigation is complete (which can take several weeks). Checking accounts are terrible security problems. If you're looking for ways to avoid a hassle, stop writing checks and using ATM/Debit cards. If you must send checks to pay bills, use the bill-pay system that is now common with most banks (they use a service to send checks on your behalf and don't even charge you for postage unless you ask for expedited processing).", "remember that IV is literally the volatility that would be present to equate to the latest price of a particular option contract, assuming the Black-Scholes-Merton model. Yahoo's free finance service lists the IV for all the options that it tracks.", "The Geloman's Indian Spares provide the best Indian motorcycle parts at an affordable price. You can get a better part from our spare parts store by also considering what you will get with it. If you are going to be using the Indian motorcycle spares for the actual engine, you really should go for the best spare parts workshop. This is because they are normally warranted and you are able to take it back to the store if it's not the right thing or the right size or if it doesn't work like it should."]}
+{"query": "Where do large corporations store their massive amounts of cash?", "corpus": ["You can find out the general types of investments by reading the public corporation 10-Q report that is filed with the SEC it can be accessed via the EDGAR system. It will not tell you what securities they have, but it does identify the short term and long term investments categories and their value."], "neg": ["That's really high for short term debt. Do some research, short term is lower risk generally so rates are low. I'm not gonna waste my time but it would have to be real junk to pay close to that high.", "\"From my days in e-commerce they break down like this? The company doesn't know a debit from a credit card.  Got the Visa logo, then it is a Visa through the company's payment gateway.  The gateway talks to the bank and that is where the particulars for money is figured out. When I programmed gateway interfaces, I had the option to \"\"authorize\"\" or check for funds (which didn't reserve anything, just verified funds existed), run for batch (which put a hold on the funds and collected them at the end of the night) or just take the money. Most places did a verify during the early checkout stages and then did a batch at the end of the night.  The nightly batch allows a merchant to cancel a transaction without getting charged a fee. The \"\"authorize\"\" doesn't mean the money is tied up, although that might be your banks policy.  Furthermore, an authorize can only last for so many days.  This also explains why most of your banks don't report your transactions to you the day of.  There is a bunch more activity on your card than the transactions that complete.\"", "\"EDIT: It was System Disruption or Malfunctions August 24, 2015 2:12 PM EDT   Pursuant to Rule 11890(b) NASDAQ, on its own motion, in conjunction   with BATS, and FINRA has determined to cancel all trades in security   Blackrock Capital Investment. (Nasdaq: BKCC) at or below $5.86 that   were executed in NASDAQ between 09:38:00 and 09:46:00 ET. This   decision cannot be appealed. NASDAQ will be canceling trades on the   participants behalf. A person on Reddit claimed that he was the buyer. He used Robinhood, a $0 commission broker and start-up.  The canceled trades are reflected on CTA/UTP and the current charts will differ from the one posted below.  It is an undesired effect of the 5-minute Trading Halt.  It is not \"\"within 1 hour of opening, BKCC traded between $0.97 and $9.5\"\".  Those trades only occurred for a few seconds on two occasions.  One possible reason is that when the trading halt ended, there was a lot of Market Order to sell accumulated.  Refer to the following chart, where each candle represents a 10 second period. As you can see, the low prices did not \"\"sustain\"\" for hours.   And the published halts.\"", "There are various exchanges around the world that handle spot precious metal trading; for the most part these are also the primary spot foreign exchange markets, like EBS, Thomson Reuters, Currenex (website seems to be down), etc. You can trade on these markets through brokers just like you can trade on stock markets.  However, the vast majority of traders on these exchanges do not intend to hold any bullion ownership at the end of the day; they want to buy as much as they sell each day.  A minority of traders do intend to hold metal positions for longer periods, but I doubt any of them intend to actually go collect bullion from the exchange.  I don't think it's even possible. Really the only way to get bullion is to pay a service fee to a dealer like you mentioned.  But on an exchange like the ones above you have to pay three different fees: So in the end you can't even get the spot price on the exchanges where the spot prices are determined.  You might even come out ahead by going to a dealer. You should try to find a reputable dealer, and go in knowing the latest trade prices.  An honest dealer will have a website showing you the current trade prices, so you know that they expect you to know the prices when you come in. For example, here's a well-known dealer in Chicago that happily shows you the spot prices from KITCO so you can decide whether their service fee is worth it or not.", "Silly people  Its not what Libya and Iraq lacked   Its what North Korea and Pakistan Have and what Ukraine had but gave away . .poor fools  and what Iran and Saudi Arabia should have  Chocolate covered doughnuts with a nice yellow cake middle and sprinkles on top", "\"Verbal agreements are not legally binding. Unless you have signed a new lease agreement, you are not obligated to continue renting the property - you are free to go.  On the other hand, if you really like the place and want to stay, you should sign another lease agreement. This agreement will be binding on whomever owns the home - whether it is your current landlord, a bank or a new purchaser.  But, if you go this route, make sure that there is not a clause that says the lease agreement is void upon foreclosure (or something similar). This is a standard clause in lease agreements allowing the bank to cancel the lease. Another option, if you really like the house is to offer to buy the property. If the property is being foreclosed on, you could suggest buying on a short sale. Here is a link to an article I wrote entitled \"\"Buy Instead of Rent: A Recovering Real Estate Market\"\" that discusses the benefits of buying rather than renting.\"", "This!  5) 3rd shifts. China will continue to produce your product after the run is done and direct sell it. Bring in the white guy. At the end of the day, he is to take the moulds with him. Arrange this ahead of time. Sometimes they'll sell all the pieces that failed QC with your product name on it. Then thousands of angry customers are contacting you and complaining about broken products, demanding refunds. Have the destruction of failed QC products babysat.   This is why getting components made in china but assembly in North America is a lot smarter. Use different factories for different parts, redo QC steps here.  An underwater scooter manufacturer had their product made in china. They knew they would be knocked off so they sabotaged their own product. They spec'd the scooter with seals that would intentionally fail, they deleted the catalytic battery caps and some key safety systems. An 'overhaul/QC' line was set up in North America where they tore down every scooter, did their own QC and replaced the seals, caps and other components. Surprise! 2 months later Chinese clone scooters hit our shores and during testing they all imploded and failed during the first dives."]}
+{"query": "Should I finance a new home theater at 0% even though I have the cash for it?", "corpus": ["\"Be very careful with this.  When we tried this with furniture, they charged an \"\"administrative\"\" fee to setup the account.  I believe it was about $75.  So if you defer interest for one year on a $1000 purchase and pay a $75 administrative fee, it's 7.5% interest. Also, they don't always send you a bill when it's due, they just let you go over the date when you could have paid it without paying interest, and then you owe interest from the date of purchase.  These plans are slimy.  Be careful.\""], "neg": ["&gt;We actually had to request a few of them to come back in part-time since it is rather difficult to find experienced machinists.  That's the scary part.   There's no entry path into these jobs.   A lot of companies only seem to want to hire people who somehow earn these skills through osmosis and don't want to hire people on straight out of school.  Some career paths are easier than others, but it really feels in some cases like it's a closed loop.    Teachers for example are clinging to their career long after they should.", "Why don't you just put your down payment on one of your credit cards? (Note: I'm not actually suggesting that you do this. Please read on.) There are a few reasons why you wouldn't (or couldn't) do this: The interest rates on the cards you have is very high.  You don't have enough of a credit limit on any one of your cards for the down payment.  These two reasons highlight the answer to your question.  Credit card companies charge very high interest rates. These high rates allow them to make money even when some of their customers default. They know that not everyone will pay them back, so they make sure to make a hefty profit on those who do.  Secondly, credit card limits are often much lower than the amounts of car and home loans. This limits the risk to the credit card company. Sure, you have $100,000 in total credit limit, but this is split among nine different companies.  When a bank offers a traditional loan for a large sum of money at relatively low interest, they need to be able to limit their risk somehow. They do this by ensuring that their customers actually have the ability to pay them back.", "\"I'm not a fan of \"\"You have $2000 worth of transactions before you have to give us your checking account number\"\", even though they are nice enough to let us delete and recreate our accounts.  I wonder how many of the cuts are engineers and how many are bureaucrats.\"", "I highly doubt Walmart will be killed off by Whole Foods-Amazon. Sure you can buy tons of organic food at Wal mart and prices there might get squeezed but is Whole Foods brick and mortar stores also going to start carrying motor oil, tires, and cheap ass Hanes white shirts? I know Amazon carries those but it's still online.", "H1B visas are not terrible, and I am not against all H1B visas. However, it is a bald faced lie to suggest the number 1, if not only, reason companies use them is to cut labor costs. These companies are not advertising they could have hired local talent, but chose to provide the job to someone from a poorer region.  I think whatever city everybody in the world wants to work or go to school, like Tokyo or London or Paris or Boston, that is going to have the world's best talent. Also, if those people go back to their homelands, they don't bring with them the ideas from the city they worked or matriculated, but rather the best ideas from all over the world.  That isn't at all what is happening in technology. There are plenty of computer science and electrical engineer majors in the USA out of work, and some making six figures with a BS degree and 3 years experience, but so many are out of work. Many of those jobs were outsourced, but the talent used was so poor, the cost to upkeep or update was so expensive, that many companies brought back the jobs to the USA. Those companies still want to hire the same low cost workers, but want them working in the USA for reasons I will spare, here. The USA talent pool is so full, and jobs so scarce, it drives down wages; not actually, because what really happens in the company is toxic to work for, and demands 16 hour days, 7 days a week, for the same great salary that may have once been 40 hours a week with fun puzzles and entertainment and space and a gym on site, etc.  Stopping H1B visas would force companies to bring back their on site gyms, large break rooms, increase work life balance, etc.  Stopping H1B visas mean a lot of billion dollar tech companies would have to pay their shareholders and executives *less* this year than last year, which is outrageous in the **race to the bottom**", "Ashland Global Holdings Inc. (ASH) sold off their ownership in Valvoline Inc. (VVV).  Friday, May 12 was the distribution date of the sale; at the end of the day, every stockholder of ASH received 2.745338 shares of VVV stock for each share of ASH held.  That is why the value of ASH has dropped significantly on open this morning. Sources:", "Looks like it's $500 to start (certificate of organization) and $500 per year after that (for an annual report). Start here: http://1.usa.gov/haxLUB And that's just for the state to recognize you as an LLC."]}
+{"query": "I file 83(b) election, but did't include a copy of it in that year’s tax return", "corpus": ["\"I've consulted with 5-6 accountants and people who've had the issue before. The advice I received boils down to: \"\"If you do not attach your 83b with your personal tax return it is not effective. However you can still correct the requirement to file it along with your tax return, because you are within the 3 year window of when the return was originally due.\"\" So you can amend your return/file it late within a certain window and things should be OK. The accountants that have confirmed this are Vanessa Kruze, Wray Rives and Augie Rakow - all of them corporate and credible accountants. You also need to keep onto the confirmation the IRS sent you in case of an audit. There is nothing on IRS.gov about attaching your 83b on a filed late or amended return but those accountants are people who say they've seen it happen frequently, have consulted with the IRS for solutions and that's the one they'd advise one to do in such situation. disclaimer: I am not a CPA\""], "neg": ["One advantage not pointed out yet is that closed-end funds typically trade on stock exchanges, whereas mutual funds do not.  This makes closed-end funds more accessible to some investors. I'm a Canadian, and this particular distinction matters to me.  With my regular brokerage account, I can buy U.S. closed-end funds that trade on a stock exchange, but I cannot buy U.S. mutual funds, at least not without the added difficulty of somehow opening a brokerage account outside of my country.", "What options do I have? Realistically?  Get a regular full time job.  Work at it for a year or so and then see about buying a house. That said, I recently purchased a decent home.  I am self-employed and my income is highly erratic.  Due to how my clients pay me, my business might go a couple months with absolutely no deposits.   However, I've been at this for quite a few years.  So, even though my business income is erratic, I pay myself regularly once a month.  In order to close the deal with the mortgage company I had to provide 5 years worth of statements on my business AND my personal bank accounts.  Also I had about a 30% down payment.   This gave the bank enough info to realize that I could absolutely make the payments and we closed the deal. I'd say that if you have little to no actual financial history, don't have a solid personal income and don't have much of a down payment then you probably have no business buying a house at this point.  The first time something goes wrong (water heater, ac, etc) you'll be in a world of trouble.", "The reality is that for labor is cheap for software startups. A couple of founders can usually take a prototype to the point where they can get the seed capital to hire labor at market rates, so why would they give up significant equity to employees? Plus, if they need cheap employees, there are always contractors and naive new grads who will gladly take below-market salary for 0.1% of the company. (in options, vested over four years, of course)", "\"Well, the first one is based on the \"\"Pert\"\" formula for continuously-compounded present value, while the second one is the periodically-compounded variant.  Typically, the continuously-compounded models represent the ideal; as the compounding period of time-valued money shrinks towards zero, and the discount rate (or interest rate if positive) stays constant over the time period examined, the periodic equation's results approach that of the continuously-compounded equation. Those two assumptions (a constant rate and continuous balance adjustment from interest) that allow simplification to the continuous form are usually incorrect in real-world finance; virtually all financial institutions accrue interest monthly, for a variety of reasons including simpler bookkeeping and less money paid or owed in interest. They also, unless prohibited by contract, accrue this interest based on a rate that can change daily or even more granularly based on what financial markets are doing. Most often, the calculation is periodic based on the \"\"average daily balance\"\" and an agreed rate that, if variable, is based on the \"\"average daily rate\"\" over the previous observed period. So, you should use the first form for fast calculation of a rough value based on estimated variables. You should use the second form when you have accurate periodic information on the variables involved. Stated alternately, use the first form to predict the future, use the second form in retrospect to the past.\"", "\"Again, one of the most reliable news sources in the world:  https://mediabiasfactcheck.com/new-york-times/  \"\"Factual Reporting: HIGH\"\"  If you listen to Trump or Breitbart, then you may not think so, but those are the moguls of fake news. Objective review shows that NYT is highly accurate.  And just so we're clear, Forbes, a conservative business magazine, calls the NYT the most accurate news source in the US: https://www.forbes.com/sites/berlinschoolofcreativeleadership/2017/02/01/10-journalism-brands-where-you-will-find-real-facts-rather-than-alternative-facts/#a8aaa70e9b5a\"", "I'm amazed anyone is able to airbnb honestly.  I've stayed in about 6 of them, and most neighborhoods and apartment complexes are super butthurt about airbnb, when like half of the people living there are large families or have more people in a unit than an airbnb anyways.  2 people staying in a 3br when 1 or two people stay there normally is no different than 4 people living in the 3br yearround, except that the airbnb example uses less apartment and community resources anyways.", "A professional home inspection will clue you in on any problems you might be buying, so it's important in any real estate transaction. If the seller finances the loan, you need a lawyer. It might be a nice opportunity - being in the right place at the right time.  You just have to investigate all angles."]}
+{"query": "Are traders 100% responsible for a stock's price changes?", "corpus": ["\"Traders = every market participant. Not some shadow figure that excludes you just because you passively drop cash into a 401k Vanguard fund every paycheck. So yes, if everyone stopped trading then the price won't move. Trades are 100% responsible for the prices you see on charts and tickers. A stock won't be worth \"\"$100\"\" if nobody ever traded $100 for it. It only has that price now or in the past because somebody placed an order for it at $100 and somebody else filled that order at $100\""], "neg": ["Thank you, finally somebody else who is able to explain this basic premise.   It's odd how many people operate on the assumption that businesses operate on a margin so thin that every $1 of increased cost must be added to the product price. It just bears no resemblance to reality...", "uh, pretty sure it goes to Cap Hill with UW coming soon. it is one line but if you live near it i hear it's amazing. and a ton of people live near it. now the cap hill streetcar on the other hand..", "That is a pretty exclusive club and for the most part they are not interested in highly volatile companies like Apple and Google. Sure, IBM is part of the DJIA, but that is about as stalwart as you can get these days. The typical profile for a DJIA stock would be one that pays fairly predictable dividends, has been around since money was invented, and are not going anywhere unless the apocalypse really happens this year. In summary, DJIA is the boring reliable company index.", "We at doylesailstasmania.vendecommerce.com offer a range of top quality sailing equipment at affordable costs. We also provide Dr sail composite repair a brand new adhesive product designed to get you out of trouble like ripped sail, hull and deck delamination. Contact today for more details!", "\"You are correct. There's no reason for it even though UAVs can do it. An auto pilot isn't going to land you in the East River with much success.  edit: You can kick the auto-pilot in at a pretty low altitude. Imagine accidentally activating the \"\"auto take off feature\"\"? Yeesh! Plus, (as a former private pilot myself) the pilot is generally scanning the engine instruments for green while the throttles are pushed up.\"", "My wife has subscribed for trips or whatever so she could preload stuff for offline play.  Total shit show.  Wasn't clear when stuff was actually downloaded.  Seemingly downloaded stuff wouldn't play.  We're going for a long trip in a couple months and would like to subscribe again to pre-load stuff, not sure it is worth it.  We've only used it on Android and it is definitely far from stable.  Crashes are _very_ common.  Having to kill the app and restart it is almost a daily occurrence.  Crashing like the one I screenshot isn't surprising or unusual.  It really is a garbage app.  If possible I'll often use youtube instead if the content is there too, even though that means my screen needs to stay on to keep playing.  We have Google Nexus phones from right before they switched to the Pixel name.  So they're about as vanilla standard Android as phones can get.", "I would suggest talking to your parents about potentially co-signing on the loan with you. Just make sure that you are the primary holder of the loan. Sure, there is some risk for your parents, but they know you better than anyone so let them make the decision if they want to help you or not.  If for some reason they can't help you, such as they've declared bankruptcy, then following the other answers' advice is the way to go."]}
+{"query": "Where to invest proceeds from home sale to be used to buy new house within five years?", "corpus": ["\"For a two year time frame, a good insured savings account or a low-cost short-term government bond fund is most likely the way I would go. Depending on the specific amount, it may also be reasonable to look into directly buying government bonds. The reason for this is simply that in such a short time period, the stock market can be extremely volatile. Imagine if you had gone all in with the money on the stock market in, say, 2007, intending to withdraw the money after two years. Take a broad stock market index of your choice and see how much you'd have got back, and consider if you'd have felt comfortable sticking to your plan for the duration. Since you would likely be focused more on preservation of capital than returns during such a relatively short period, the risk of the stock market making a major (or even relatively minor) downturn in the interim would (should) be a bigger consideration than the possibility of a higher return. The \"\"return of capital, not return on capital\"\" rule. If the stock market falls by 10%, it must go up by 11% to break even. If it falls by 25%, it must go up by 33% to break even. If you are looking at a slightly longer time period, such as the example five years, then you might want to add some stocks to the mix for the possibility of a higher return. Still, however, since you have a specific goal in mind that is still reasonably close in time, I would likely keep a large fraction of the money in interest-bearing holdings (bank account, bonds, bond funds) rather than in the stock market. A good compromise may be medium-to-high-yield corporate bonds. It shouldn't be too difficult to find such bond funds that can return a few percentage points above risk-free interest, if you can live with the price volatility. Over time and as you get closer to actually needing the money, shift the holdings to lower-risk holdings to secure the capital amount. Yes, short-term government bonds tend to have dismal returns, particularly currently. (It's pretty much either that, or the country is just about bankrupt already, which means that the risk of default is quite high which is reflected in the interest premiums demanded by investors.) But the risk in most countries' short-term government bonds is also very much limited. And generally, when you are looking at using the money for a specific purpose within a defined (and relatively short) time frame, you want to reduce risk, even if that comes with the price tag of a slightly lower return. And, as always, never put all your eggs in one basket. A combination of government bonds from various countries may be appropriate, just as you should diversify between different stocks in a well-balanced portfolio. Make sure to check the limits on how much money is insured in a single account, for a single individual, in a single institution and for a household - you don't want to chase high interest bank accounts only to be burned by something like that if the institution goes bankrupt. Generally, the sooner you expect to need the money, the less risk you should take, even if that means a lower return on capital. And the risk progression (ignoring currency effects, which affects all of these equally) is roughly short-term government bonds, long-term government bonds or regular corporate bonds, high-yield corporate bonds, stock market large cap, stock market mid and low cap. Yes, there are exceptions, but that's a resonable rule of thumb.\""], "neg": ["Jordan, no need to worry about adult stuff, you go play with your friends in the sand box. Let mommy and daddy worry about that.  EDIT: Why are you all downvoting me? i explained it to him as though he were five. ITS A JOKE.", "Probably because it's a question of Excel vs Access, not VBA vs SQL. You probably don't need VBA for any of the calcs that the OP mentions.  Excel is the one tool everyone uses in Finance. CR and SSRS require tools and permissions that the average guy simply won't have, and a level of expertise that is not useful for most front/middle-office analysis work.  I usually see these done in Excel. SSRS and CR seem like way overkill for something done trivially and transparently in Excel, whose presentation will change frequently anyway.  Depending on what OP is talking about, analysis is not reporting, and flexibility and transparency usually win. Especially when you want to poke around the underlying data and iterate with other people.  SSRS and CR only make sense when you know what you're looking for, that the data is appropriate for it and you don't expect it to change.", "\"I'll try to give you some clues on how to find an answer to your question, rather than answering directly the question asked.  Why not answer it directly? Well, I can, but it won't help you (or anyone else) much in two months when the rates change again. Generally, you won't find such in brick-and-mortar banks. You can save some time and only look at online banks. Examples: ING Direct (CapitalOne), CapitalOne, Amex FSB, E*Trade, Ally, etc. There are plenty. Go to their web sites, look for promotions, and compare. Sometimes you can find coupons/promotions which will yield more than the actual savings rate. For example, ING frequently have a $50 promotion for opening a new account. You need to understand that rates change frequently, and the highest rate account today may become barely average in a week. There are plenty of sites that offer various levels of comparison information. One of the most comprehensive ones (IMHO) is Bankrate.com. Another place to look is MoneyRates.com. These sites provide various comparisons, and you can also find some promotions advertised there. There are more similar sites. Also, search the Internet and you can find various blog posts with additional promotions – frequently banks give \"\"referral bonuses\"\" to provide incentive for clients to promote the banks. Do some due diligence on the results that appear promising. Not much. You won't find any savings account that would keep the value (purchasing power) of your money over the long term. Keeping money in savings accounts is a sure way to lose value because the inflation rate is much higher than even high-yield savings accounts. But, savings accounts are safe (insured by FDIC/NCUA up to the limit), and very convenient to keep short term savings – such as an emergency fund – that you cannot afford to lose to investments. Sometimes you'll get slightly better rates by locking up your money in a Certificate of Deposit (CD), but not significantly higher when the CD is short-term.\"", "Here are some significant factors affect the company stock price performance: Usually, profitability is known to the public through the financial statements; it won't be 100% accurate and people would also trade the stock with the price not matching to the true value of the firm. Still there are dozens of other various reasons exist. People are just not behaving as rational as what the textbook describes when they are trading and investing.", "Are you looking for something like Morningstar.com?   They provide information about lots of mutual funds so you can search based on many factors and find good candidate mutual funds. Use their fund screener to pick funds with long track records of beating the S&P500.", "I think it is my favorite time of the week. Not just because it is a weekend and I can cook delicious weekend treats for my boys, but because it is the time to recharge and be silent.Easy Home Based Business,successful business tips,business tips for success,7 Essential Tips for Success,Business Ideas on a Budget", "You should not pay down the debt in collections until you have a reasonable amount of money to offer as a settlement. The exception is the traffic fines -- you may have legal liability for not paying them."]}
+{"query": "ESPP cost basis and taxes", "corpus": ["If the $882 is reported on W2 as your income then it is added to your taxable income on W2 and is taxed as salary. Your basis then becomes $5882. If it is not reported on your W2 - you need to add it yourself. Its salary income. If its not properly reported on W2 it may have some issues with FICA, so I suggest talking to your salary department to verify it is. In any case, this is not short term capital gain. Your broker may or may not be aware of the reporting on W2, and if they report the basis as $5000 on your 1099, when you fill your tax form you can add a statement that it is ESPP reported on W2 and change the basis to correct one. H&R Block and TurboTax both support that (you need to chose the correct type of investment there)."], "neg": ["The other answers assumed student loan debt -- and for that, it's rarely worth it (unless your company only offers managed plans w/ really bad returns, or the economy recovers to the point where banks are paying 5% again on money market accounts) ... but if it's high rate debt, such as carrying a credit card debt, and the current rate of returns on the 401k aren't that great at the time, it would be worth doing the calculations to see if it's better to pay them down instead. If you're carrying extremely high interest debt (such as 'payday loans' or similar), it's almost always going to be worth paying down that debt as quickly as possible, even if it means forgoing matching 401k payments. The other possible reason for not taking the matching funds are if the required contributions would put you in a significant bind -- if you're barely scraping by, and you can't squeeze enough savings out of your budget that you'd risk default on a loan (eg, car or house) or might take penalties for late fees on your utilities, it might be preferable to save up for a bit before starting the contributions -- especially if you've maxed your available credit so you can't just push stuff to credit cards as a last resort.", "&gt;First, federal labor law bars even non-union employers like Google from punishing an employee for communicating with fellow employees about improving working conditions. The purpose of the memo was to persuade Google to abandon certain diversity-related practices the engineer found objectionable and to convince co-workers to join his cause, or at least discuss the points he raised.   &gt;In a reply to the initial outcry over his memo, the engineer added to his memo: “Despite what the public response seems to have been, I’ve gotten many personal messages from fellow Googlers expressing their gratitude for bringing up these very important issues which they agree with but would never have the courage to say or defend because of our shaming culture and the possibility of being fired.” The law protects that kind of “concerted activity.”   &gt;Second, the engineer’s memo largely is a statement of his political views as they apply to workplace policies. The memo is styled as a lament to “Google’s Ideological Echo Chamber.” California law prohibits employers from threatening to fire employees to get them to adopt or refrain from adopting a particular political course of action.  https://www.cnbc.com/amp/2017/08/07/it-may-be-illegal-for-google-to-punish-engineer-over-anti-diversity-memo-commentary.html  The employee was also fired after making a complaint to the NLRB. &gt;Damore said he was exploring all possible legal remedies, and that before being fired, he had submitted a charge to the U.S. National Labor Relations Board (NLRB) accusing Google upper management of trying to shame him into silence.   https://www.reuters.com/article/us-google-diversity-idUSKBN1AO088", "You are currently $30k in debt.  I realize it is tempting to purchase a new car with your new job, but increasing your debt right now is heading in the wrong direction.  Adding a new monthly payment into your budget would be a mistake, in my opinion. Here is what I would suggest.  Since you have $7k in the bank, spend up to $6k on a nice used car.  This will keep $1k in the bank for emergencies, and give you transportation without adding debt and a monthly payment.  Then you can focus on knocking out the student loans.   Won't it be nice when those student loans are gone?  By not going further into debt, you will be much closer to that day.  New cars are a luxury that you aren't in a position to splurge on yet.", "\"Yes, there are legal problems with what he did. To prevent fraud, the US government regulates who can give public investment advice and how they can do it. If you're getting paid to advise an individual, you have to pass certain examinations and maintain ongoing government certification. If you hold a position in a stock you're touting, you legally have to disclose it using particular language. And if you're a corporate insider or hold a significant position in a company, you're restricted on what you can say about the company and when you can say it. Mr. Jackson, aka 50 Cent, held a significant position in the company he tweeted about. My guess is the guys in the suits came to visit Mr. Cent, because if you go to the article the OP links to, at the bottom they mention Mr. Cent's tweet has been deleted and replaced with \"\"go talk to your investment advisor\"\".\"", "The assumption that bonds have been issued with a negative coupon is not correct, or at least is has not occurred thus far.  We'll look at this future possibility in the final paragraph. For now, lets look at the current bond market. The issuance of government bonds which carry a negative gross redemption yield is the result of governments issuing bonds at an issue price which exceed the nominal/redemption price and any coupon yield receivable over the life of the bond.  I can find no instances of bonds with a negative coupon, though many have tiny positive coupon yields. The short seller of a bond with a negative gross redemption yield will be liable to pay the buyer the interest amount determined by the coupon.  If the short seller has borrowed the bonds in order to sell them, then the short seller will receive the interest due from the lender to offset the interest paid to the buyer.  If the short seller has not borrowed the bonds, but has sold them using some sort of synthetic contract such as a Contract for Difference, then the short seller will pay the coupon without receiving any offsetting payment. I thought this was an interesting question and it will be interesting to see if, at some time in the future, governments do ever issue bonds with a negative coupon.  To date, this does not appear to have happened. So what would happen if we assume that a government issues a bond with a negative coupon.  The buyer of the bond would be required to pay the equivalent yield to the government according to the bond contract specification.  If an investor sells short such a bond, they would then become entitled to receive the interest from the buyer.  If they have borrowed the bonds in order to sell them short, then they would pay any interest received back to the lender - this chain should eventually end with the ultimate owner/lender paying the government their dues.  If they have sold short using a synthetic contract, then presumably they would keep the interest from themselves.", "Yes that is actually on the win side for ebooks. The only thing is I'm not sure you can leave your account to your heirs but they probably don't feel like dealing with your big physical library of things they don't care about - so not really much loss there.", "I work at BATS Chi-X Europe and wanted to provide some clarity/answers to these questions. BATS Chi-X Europe is a Recognised Investment Exchange, so it is indeed a stock exchange.  Sometimes the term “equity market” could be used when explaining our business, but essentially we are a stock exchange.  As some background, BATS Chi-X Europe was formed by the acquisition of Chi-X Europe by BATS Trading in November 2011. At the time of the acquisition, each company operated as a Multilateral Trading Facility (MTF) for the trading of pan-European equities via a single trading platform. The category of MTF was introduced by MIFID (markets in Financial Instrument Directive) in 2007, which introduced competition in equities trading and allowed European stocks, to be traded on any European platform. Until 2007, many European stocks had to be traded only their local exchanges due to so-called “Concentration Rules”. Following the acquisition, BATS Chi-X Europe became the largest MTF in Europe, offering trading in more than 2,000 securities (2,700 securities by September 2013) across 15 major European markets, on a single trading platform.  In May 2013, BATS Chi-X Europe received Recognised Investment Exchange status from the UK Financial Conduct Authority, meaning that BATS Chi-X Europe has changed from an MTF status to full exchange status. In response to question 1: The equities traded on BATS Chi-X Europe are listed on stock exchanges such as the LSE but also listed on the other European Exchanges. The term “third party” equities is not particularly useful as all stock trading in Europe is generally a “second hand”  business referred to as “secondary market” trading. At the time of listing a firm issues shares; trading in these shares after the listing exercise is generally what happens in equity markets and these shares can be bought and sold on stock exchanges across Europe. Secondary market trading describes all trading on all exchanges or MTFs that takes place after the listing. In response to question 2: BATS Chi-X Europe trades over 2,700 stocks on its own trading platform. When trading on BATS Chi-X Europe, orders are executed on their own platform and will not end up of the LSE order books or platform. The fact that a stock was first listed on the LSE, does not mean that all trading in this stock happens via the LSE. However settlement process ensures that stocks end up being logged in a single depository. This means that a stock bought on BATS Chi-X Europe can be offset against the same stock sold on the LSE.  In response to question 3: As noted above, BATS Chi-X Europe received Recognised Investment Exchange (RIE) status from the UK Financial Conduct Authority in May 2013, meaning that BATS Chi-X Europe has changed from an MTF status to full stock exchange status. As an exchange / RIE, BATS Chi-X Europe is authorised to offer primary and secondary listings alongside its existing business.  According to the Federations of European Securities Exchanges (FESE), BATS Chi-X Europe has been the largest equity exchange in Europe by value traded in every month so far in 2013. In August, 24.1% of European equities trading in the 15 markets covered were traded on BATS Chi-X Europe. In July and August, the average notional value traded on BATS Chi-X Europe was around €7.2 billion per day. Hope this information is helpful."]}
+{"query": "Deducting business expenses paid for by gift card", "corpus": ["To quote the answer you linked to: Perhaps the simplest way to think about this is you can only deduct an expense that you actually incur. In other words, the expense should show up on a bank or CC statement. So, if your business purchased the $1000 gift card for $800, you should see a $800 charge appearing on a business CC or bank statement. You would therefore be able to deduct the $800, but not the full $1000 of items that you purchase with it. Side Notes:"], "neg": ["Delta hedging is not the same as being delta neutral, what you just described is being delta neutral. There exist reasons for a retail trader to be conscious of delta when choosing an option.", "The reason I don't know of any banks who would offer this to you (even if you held the investment account with their bank) is that there is no upside to the bank. It is a good idea for you, but what would they have to gain from this arrangement?  The reason banks require a down payment is underwriting quality. If you can afford a significant down payment, they know that there is a significantly lower chance that you will default. However, if you were to provide an investment account as collateral, you would receive all the upside, and any downside would reduce their collateral as a percent of the amount loaned. This sort of idea could potentially work along the lines of a margin call (ie you have to provide additional capital if your asset value drops), but this would have the effective of leveraging the bank's risk, when their objective is to lower their risk through requiring a down payment. I don't see a reason why the bank would take on the risk that you would need to provide additional capital down the road with no upside for them. Additionally, many banks have backed away from the kinds of zero-down-payment and negative-amortization-ARM loans that got them (or the people they sold them to) in trouble over the last few years in an effort to reduce how much risk they take on. I think that in theory, you'd have to offer a lot more benefit to the bank, and that in practice it's probably a non-starter right now.", "You do not need to have 'high net value', and yes, you can invest in it. Typically, fund companies require a minimum investment, that could be 100, it could be a 1000. 5000 should be enough for 99.9 % of all funds for an initial investment. What you need is an investment company that manages the account for you. I cannot name those for your country, but they should be easy to find (companies like IMG, and Fidelity might serve your country). You then open an account with the company of your choice, transfer the money, and tell them which fund it shall go in; all this is possible online. You can also go to see an agent in person, and he will fill the forms for you, and handle all the action, but he might take a fee for it.", "Yup. I scrutinize the income statement I receive from my employer every year. What I make vs what the company actually invests in me as an employee is really astounding. Beyond my hourly wage, the company pays for my health insurance premium (all but $10/check), and pays for a medical flex-spending account. On top of this (I know this isn't taxes but it's still an expense and government sanctioned) if I do some dumbass thing to get myself hurt at work, they'd pay all medical bills since it happened on their property.   We recently had a bit of a wake-up call this summer, as the board of directors warned everyone that the current medical plan our company provides to us is not sustainable, and will have to undergo changes (we're going to either start paying for our premiums, decrease our flex accounts, or charge smokers additional fees) beginning Jan 1st. Lots of people are complaining about this. I don't think they're aware of the horde of expenses and fees that the company swallows for them in other ways.  There's property taxes, business income taxes, excise taxes, customs/duty taxes, state taxes... along with meeting the restrictions and standards of certain governmental agencies (like OSHA). I don't know how a small business owner could ever maintain control over all of this financial mess and be able to help their customers or other employees.   There's OSHA, a profit-seeking (through citations) business now, instead of a partner and ally to businesses. A typical 'violation' is $70K, and a 'repeat' violation is $140K. Imagine running a small grocery store, and having to pay this fine because you accidentally had a piece of styrofoam lying on top of a cooler not built to withstand overhead weight. Or because someone wasn't wearing safety shoes in the store. You'd simply go out of business.", "subsidy - financial support. For example subsidized housing - when the government pays a part of your rent (usually for low income families). or subsidized student loan - when somebody else is paying interest on the money you borrowed while you are in school.", "Education in India has always been the need of the hour. Education implies to the growth of every human being in the society in the form of mentality, knowledge, difference between right and wrong etc. The importance of education not only related to the development of intellectual skills and knowledge but also to the effective…", "Aha, perhaps...also, perhaps someone like Louis with a product such as this, to the (reasonably) technically literate while pushed through a next-generation service that isn't rapacious when it comes to something as simple as digitally moving money...perhaps it's time.  Shake our fists to the heavens, and all."]}
+{"query": "Tax brackets in the US", "corpus": ["\"Yes, your tax bracket is 25%.  However, that doesn't mean that your take home pay will be 75% of your salary.  There is much more that goes into figuring out what your take home pay will be. First, you have payroll taxes.  This is often listed on your pay stub as \"\"FICA.\"\"  The Social Security portion of this tax is 6.2% on the first $118,500 of your pay and the Medicare portion is another 1.45% on the first $200,000.  (Your employer also has to pay additional tax that does not appear on your stub.)  So 7.65% of your salary gets removed off the top. In addition to the federal income taxes that get withheld, you may also have state income taxes that get withheld.  The amount varies with each state. Also, the 25% tax bracket does not mean that your tax is 25% of your entire salary.  You step through the tax brackets as your income goes up.  So part of your salary is taxed at 10%, part at 15%, and the remainder is at 25%. The amount of federal income tax that is withheld from your paycheck is really a rough estimate of how much tax you actually owe.  There are lots of things that can reduce your tax liability (personal exemptions, deductions, credits) or increase your tax (investment income, penalties).  When you do your tax return, you calculate the actual tax that you owe, and you either get a refund if too much was taken out of your check, or you need to send more money in if too little was taken out.\""], "neg": ["\"I just wanted to give you a different perspective, as I own a house (purchased with a mortgage), with my girlfriend. I think it can be done safely and fairly, but you do need to involve legal help to do it right. There really is nothing to be terrified about, the extra cost to set this up was almost irrelevant in the bigger picture of legal costs around purchasing and the documents describing the ownership scheme are quite straightforward. Maybe it's a UK thing, but it seems rather commonplace here.  We've chosen to hold this as \"\"tenants in common\"\" and use a trust deed for this when we purchased. We had a solicitor write the trust deed and it clearly states what percentage of the house is owned by either party and exactly what the steps would be taken, should we decide to end the trust (e.g. in case of a split-up). This includes things like the right to buy out the other person before selling on the market etc.  We also had to make wills separately to indicate what should happen with our percentage of the property in case one of us died as with this type of ownership it doesn't automatically go to the other person.  Finally we're both on the mortgage, which I guess is the main difference versus your situation. But again, you could get legal advice as to how this should best be handled.\"", "*People clamoring for more and more regulation will always be disappointed because businesses will always find ways to get around it.*  This is only true in America where we have too many retards who believe regulation doesn't work (thus you get broken regulation you basically wished for).  Canada's financial regulatory system (which actually has teeth, unlike their American counterparts) did a magnificent job avoiding the financial meltdown.", "I know folks who considered retiring to another country. Their conclusion was that while base cost of living was lower, the cost of the things that they enjoy doing -- not to mention the cost of spending time with friends they didn't want to give up -- would be sufficiently higher to erase most of the advantages. Those of us who grew up in or close to cities feel much the same way about moving out to less-populated and less-expensive parts of our own country.  Basically, when cost of living is high it tends to be because there are more people who want to live there and are competing for resources (and driving prices up). Low cost of living is generally tied to less-desired locations, for the same reasons. IF you can find a location that appeals to you, and if you can get the resources there which your preferred lifestyle requires, this may make sense. For a while there were a number of professional writers moving from the US to Ireland, in part because the Irish tax structure heavily favored writers and other creative artists. (Katherine Kurtz spent several years living in a renovated Irish castle.) I'm not sure how many have stayed there after the novelty wore off.", "Because they found their scapegoat.  They will parade and flog him while all his former coworkers are able to hide in his shadow.  He will be the public spectacle to show that the government is being tough on banks and CEO's, while they do nothing about the revolving door between finance and government he waltzed back and forth through.", "I made upwards of 3M from 200K by trading stocks, which I made from a business that I invested 20K in.  HOWEVER, DO NOT use trading stocks as a source of income, you're gambling with your precious cash. There are safer alternatives.", "\"Rebalancing has been studied empirically quite a bit, but not particularly carefully and actually turns out to be very hard to study well.  The main problem is that you don't know until afterward if your target weights were optimal so a bad rebalancing program might give better performance if it strayed closer to optimal weights even if it didn't do an efficient job of keeping near the target weights. In your particular case either method might be preferred depending on a number of things: You can see why there isn't a generally correct answer to your question and the results of empirical studies might very wildly depending on the mix of assets and risk tolerance.  Still if your portfolio is not too complicated you can estimate the costs of the two methods without too much trouble and figure out if it is worthwhile to you. EDIT In Response to Comment Below: Your example gets at what makes rebalancing so hard empirically but also generally pretty easy in practice.  If you were to target 75% Equity (25% bonds?) and look at returns only for 30 years the \"\"best\"\" rebalancing method would be to never rebalance and just let 75% equity go to near 100% as equity has better long term returns.  This happens when you look only at returns as the final number and don't take into account the change in risk in your portfolio. In practice, most people that are still adding (or subtracting in retirement) to a retirement portfolio are adding (removing) a significant amount compared to the total amount in their portfolio.  In the case you discribe, it is cheaper (massively cheaper in the presence of load fees) just to use new capital to trade toward your target, keeping your risk profile.  New money should be large enough to keep you near enough your target.  If you just estimate the trading costs/fees in both cases I think you'll see just how large the difference is between the two methods this will dwarf any small differences in return over the long run even if you can't trade back all the way to your target.\"", "https://www.socialyup.com/buy-facebook-poll-votes : If you want to get the instant success in the Business contest then get real Facebook poll votes from this site at the cost reliable price. This way you will get the maximum number of votes on your post that will help you to win this online Facebook contest."]}
+{"query": "What is the economic explanation for the high cost of weddings?", "corpus": ["\"There is the price they want and the price you pay. Everything is negotiable when its a service (always possible, but usually harder with actual \"\"goods\"\"). You should always haggle and price match your vendors. You can also try going to different vendors and not telling them its for a wedding and see if there really is a price difference. For example, call up a florist and say you need X, Y, and Z for a corporate banquet or for a special event for which you cannot give the details. If you then tell them its actually a wedding, and they blindly raise it without a good justification, move on. That said, they jack up the price because they know most people will says \"\"it's my wedding\"\", \"\"it's once in a lifetime\"\", \"\"it's MY special day\"\", etc.... The same is true about diamonds, their price does not reflect the actual supply and demand ratio, just the perception that has been created. However, as mentioned in some of the comments above, the service provided at a wedding may be different or more involved than just a normal dinner The more important issue is ensuring there are no back fees, no hidden fees, and you have well written, well reviewed contracts. For example, we know a couple whose caterer added a mandatory 20% gratuity, regardless of the service which was provided. Most venues or restaurants will not be making the bar a lose-leader, but they will charge for other things.  You can also save money by buying used or looking on ebay for prices closer to wholesale for the product. I think a good analogy to this is the Recent Time Magazine article on the price of healthcare - it costs a lot because its a small market and its harder to navigate, and most are not experienced shoppers in the area or don't have control over the individual item costs.\""], "neg": ["Need access to hassle free bridging loans?  Call 020 7722 7547! At Fincorp, we are bridge loan specialists. Located at 58 Acacia Road London, we provide loans up to 70% of the property value. Get in touch with us today!", "I disagree that it is a silly way to do business. I think many industries are actually moving in the direction of MLM. The whole idea with a successful MLM like amway is that they spend no money on advertising. Did you know most companies spend about a third of their revenue back into advertising? Amway instead pays back that money as a bonus to their distributors. I can't remember which year off the top of my head but a couple years ago amway paid back over 4 billion dollars in bonus to their people. Now look at Uber, they are kind of cutting out the middle man also. Interesting right?", "You can take a shortcut and make a few cumulative transactions, maybe just estimate how much of your spending landed in each of your budget categories, but you will lose a lot of the value that you were building for yourself by tracking your spending during the earlier months. I reconcile my budget and categorize my spending on a monthly basis. It's always a chore to pull out the big stack of receipts and plow through them, but I've learned the value of having an accurate picture of where all my money went. There is no clean way to fake it. You can either take the time and reconcile your spending, or you can take a short cut. It probably renders your efforts to track everything from the beginning of the year invalid though. If you want to start over this month (as you did at the beginning of the year) that would probably be a cleaner way to reconcile things.", "At least you did it right.  The earliest lesson I had with this concept was from a friend who got hired for a summer to put page numbers in pdf documents (this would've been back when formatting pdf docs was still classified under Magic).  She unfortunately like many of us stupid kids thought the world was a nice place. She just auto-formatted the page numbers in and then taught others how to do it...  Big mistake as she got terminated shortly after with the job finished.", "Complexity has mentioned some good points. I'd also like to add on the downsides:  It's not that easy to get rid of a tenant!  Imagine if your tenant passed your background check with flying colors but then turned out to be the tenant from hell...  How would you resolve the situation?  If the thought of that kind of situation stresses you (it would stress me!), I would consider carefully whether you really want to be a landlord.", "\"I use the (gratis, libre) command-line program ledger for my personal accounts.  It handles funds across accounts gracefully, through a feature called \"\"Virtual Accounts\"\".  A transaction can add or subtract money from a virtual account, which need not balance with all the other entries in the transaction.  Then it's just a matter of setting up reports to include or exclude these accounts.\"", "&gt; seems determined to blow up the deficit, just has the last Republican president did. And the Republican before that.  It's the only sensible thing the Republicans do.    Deficit spending is stimulus, and that increases the prosperity of the public.    They do it to try and provide cover for allowing the wealthy to gut our economy.  What we need is to embrace stimulus wholeheartedly and then shift the entirety of the tax burden onto the wealthy."]}
+{"query": "Bid-Ask at market open, which comes first? [duplicate]", "corpus": ["\"When you place a limit sell order of $10.00 (for a stock on an option) you are adding your order to the book.  Anyone who places a buy at-the-market or with a limit price over $10.00 will have that order immediately fulfilled through the offer you have placed on the book. On the other hand, if that other person places a buy for $8.00, then the spread will now be \"\"$8.00 bid, $10.00 ask\"\". Priority is based on first the price (all $9.99 asks will clear before $10.00) and within each bucket this is based on the time your order was submitted. This is why in bidding markets (including eBay) buying at $x.01 is way better than $x.00 and selling at $x.99 is better than $(x+1).00. Source: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Order_(exchange) under \"\"first-come-first-served\"\"\""], "neg": ["This may be best handled by an expert. Look for somebody recommended by a church, homeless shelter, food pantry, office of unemployment, office of disability,  or Veterans services to advise you on maximizing support for your father.  You want to know what type of help you can give without causing the overall level of support to drop. You may even find there are other avenues of assistance.", "\"No, there are neither advantages nor disadvantages. I'll take on this question from an accounting standpoint.   Financial statements, the tools at which the market determines (amongst other things) the value of a stock, are converted at year end to the home currency (see 1.1.3).If Company A has revenue of 100,000 USD and the conversion to EUR is .89, revenue in the European market will be reported as 89,000 EUR. These valuations, along with ratios, analysis, and \"\"expert\"\" opinions determine if a person should own shares in Company A.  Now, if we're talking about comparing markets this is a entirely different question.  Example:  Should I buy stock of Company A, who is in the American market (as an European)?  Should I buy stock of Company B, who is in the European market (as an American)? I would recommend this as additional level of diversification of your portfolio to inlcude possible large inflation of either the currency. The possible gains of this foreign exchange may be greater if one or the other currency becomes weak.\"", "My response was actually about the stupidity of nitpicking and the fallaciousness of the public preoccupation with minimalist government spending.  I made no argument that the government need to be lavish.  And I agree, first class is not necessary in almost all cases. But it is easier to be productive in first class.  And if you're competing with the private sector for talent, there are certain places that skimping is both counter to productivity and strategic outcomes.  You want the best medical doctors working for the NIH and the CDC. Forcing shitty working conditions on them out of rigid demands is not a useful tactic.  And, again, I agree: harassing entry level and working class employees over small issues isn't good for the staff, the government or the people they serve.  If you want to find CHIP and food programs, quit giving out corporate welfare in the form of overpurchasing military hardware the Pentagon doesn't even want just for the sake of chest thumping and looking good.  And stop insisting that all taxes are spent inefficiently - it's untrue.  But making highly educated, powerful government employees live on the cheapest possible benefits and costs of employment is silly. And counterproductive - it moves you closer to ensuring government dollars are inefficient because no one talented will bother staying.", "\"Stock returns cannot be evaluated on its own. You need to take into account inflation and the return of other investment vehicles. Over the long run, you want to earn more than your peers (ie inflation), or lose less than them. Stock lets you buy into the profits of a company managed by others. So the fundamental question is \"\"do those company managers make better decision than average person?\"\" Of course there are times when they make awful decisions (eg just before dotcom bubble), and sometimes the best decision is to close the business. But overall those people are much better educated, have higher IQ, more resourceful, etc, and so over long time and across all the companies, this is correct and hence the stock market premium.\"", "I should apply for everything I can on the same day, get approved for as many as I can First it may not sound as easy. You may hardly get 2-3 cards and not dozens. Even if you submit the applications the same day; If you still plan this and somehow get too many cards, and draw huge debt, then the Banks can take this seriously and file court case. If Banks are able to establish the intent; this can get constituted as fraud and liable for criminal proceedings. So in short if someone has the money and don't want to pay; the court can attach the wage or other assets and make the person pay. If the intent was fraud one can even be sent to jail.", "Idk what the problem is. My selection of outdoor sports equipment has never been bigger. I love these stores and I don't know how not too. I miss the small bait shop that was around the corner, but I loved that Bass pro catalog as a kid and now there is 4 bass pros within 4 hours of me, Walking in these stores is like heaven.", "If you are looking for a simple formula or buying order / strategy to guarantee a lower buying price, unfortunately this does not exist.  Otherwise, all investors would employ this strategy and the financial markets would no longer have an validity (aka arbitrage).  Buying any investment contains a certain level of risk (other than US treasuries of course). Having said that, there are many option buying strategies that can employed to help increase your ROR or hedge an existing position.  Most of these strategies are based a predicted future direction of a stock on the investor's part.  For example, you hold the Ford stock and feel they are releasing their earnings report next week.  You feel that they will not meet investors' expectations.  You don't want to sell your shares but what you can do is buy put options.  If the stock does indeed go down then you make money on your put options. Here is a document on options.  It is moderately technical but very good if you want a good introduction on the subject.  The strategy that I described above is on pg 33. http://www.m-x.ca/f_publications_en/en.guide.options.pdf"]}
+{"query": "Hired with W-9, will I owe estimated tax quarterly?", "corpus": ["You must pay your taxes at the quarterly intervals. For most people the withholding done by their employer satisfies this requirement. However, if your income does not have any withholding (or sufficient), then you must file quarterly estimated tax payments.  Note that if you have a second job that does withhold, then you can adjust your W4 to request further withholding there and possibly reduce the need for estimated payments.  Estimated tax payments also come into play with large investment earnings. The amount that you need to prepay the IRS is impacted by the safe harbor rule, which I am sure others will provide the exact details on."], "neg": ["Email marketing has numerous advantages to the business.  It's is very growable for any business. You can send marketing messages at once to thousands of clients, which helps you to save time. If you want to Email marketing gainesville fl for your small business, then you can visit our website. We will provide you many internet marketing campaigns. Our service packeges are  less expensive compared to other marketing company.", "Your comment regarding your existing finances is very relevant and helpful. You need to understand that generally in personal finance circles, when a strong earning 22 year-old is looking for a loan it's usually a gross spending problem.   Their car costs $1,000 /month and their bar tabs are adding up so the only logical thing to do is get a loan.  Most 22-year-olds don't have a mortgage soaking up their income, or a newborn.   With all of this in mind I essentially agree with DStanley and, personally, and many people here would probably disagree, I'd stop the 401(K) contribution and use that money to pay the debt.  You're still very young from a retirement standpoint, let the current balance ride and forego the match until the debt is paid.  I think this is more about being debt free at 22 quickly than it's about how much marginal money could be saved via 401(k) or personal loan or this strategy or that strategy.  I think at your age, you'll benefit greatly from simply being debt free. There are other very good answers on this site and other places regarding the pitfalls of a 401(k) loan.  The most serious of which is that you have an extremely limited time to pay the entire loan upon leaving the company.  Failure to repay in that situation incurs tax liability and penalties.   From my quick math, assuming your contribution is 8% of $70,000 /year, you're contributing something in the neighborhood of $460/month to your 401(k).  If you stopped contributing you'd probably take home a high $300 number net of taxes.  It'll take around 20 months to pay the loan off using this contribution money without considering your existing payments, in total you're probably looking at closer to 15 months.  You'll give up something in the neighborhood of $3,500 in match funds over the repayment time.   But again, you're 22, you'll resume your contributions at 24; still WAY ahead of most people from a retirement savings standpoint.  I don't think my first retirement dollar was contributed until I was about 29.  Sure, retirement savings is important, but if you've already started at age 22 you're probably going to end up way ahead of most either way.  When you're 60 you're probably not going to bemoan giving up a few grand of employer match in your 20s. That's what I would do. Edit: I actually like stannius's suggestion in the comments below.  IF there's enough vested in your plan that is also available for withdrawal that you could just scoop $6,500 out of your 401(k) net of the 10% penalty and federal and state taxes (which would be on the full amount) to pay the debt, I'd consider that instead of stopping the prospective contributions.  That way you could continue your contributions and receive the match contributions on a prospective basis.  I doubt this is a legitimate option because it's very common for employers to restrict or forbid withdrawal of employee and/or employer contributions made during your employment, but it would be worth looking in to.", "You can be favor of this instance of the mechanism, as well as in favor of the mechanism's existence while still disagreeing with its implementation elsewhere. Private companies should be allowed to do this, even if sometimes I don't like who they choose to use it against.", "\"RealPay has developed a user friendly early debit order solution that operates in the NAEDO (Non-Authenticated Early Debit Order) payment stream. This system enables users to electronically deduct time sensitive future dated instalments directly from clients’ bank accounts.\"\"\"", "I think you are interpreting their recommended numbers incorrectly.  They are not suggesting that you get 13-21 credit cards, they are saying that your score could get 13-21 points higher based on having a large number of credit cards and loans. Unfortunately, the exact formula for calculating your credit score is not known, so its hard to directly answer the question.  But I wouldn't go opening 22+ credit cards just to get this part of the number higher!", "Avoiding tobacco, etc is fairly standard for a fund claiming ethical investing, though it varies. The hard one on your list is loans.  You might want to check out Islamic mutual funds. Charging interest is against Sharia law.  For example: http://www.saturna.com/amana/index.shtml From their about page: Our Funds favor companies with low price-to-earnings multiples, strong   balance sheets, and proven businesses. They follow a value-oriented   approach consistent with Islamic finance principles. Generally, these   principles require that investors avoid interest and investments in   businesses such as liquor, pornography, gambling, and banks. The Funds   avoid bonds and other conventional fixed-income securities. So, it looks like it's got your list covered.  (Not a recommendation, btw. I know nothing about Amana's performance.) Edit: A little more detail of their philosophy from Amana's growth fund page: Generally, Islamic principles require that investors share in profit   and loss, that they receive no usury or interest, and that they do not   invest in a business that is prohibited by Islamic principles. Some of   the businesses not permitted are liquor, wine, casinos, pornography,   insurance, gambling, pork processing, and interest-based banks or   finance associations. The Growth Fund does not make any investments that pay interest. In   accordance with Islamic principles, the Fund shall not purchase   conventional bonds, debentures, or other interest-paying obligations   of indebtedness. Islamic principles discourage speculation, and the   Fund tends to hold investments for several years.", "I disagree. I use it daily to set reminders, send texts, and schedule meetings. It's very nearly always faster than doing it by hand. Occasionally it will beef something so that I have to enter it by hand, but not often enough to counter the very real time it does save me."]}
+{"query": "Wife sent to collections for ticket she paid ten years ago", "corpus": ["\"The first thing you should do is write a letter to the collection company telling them that you dispute all charges and demand, per section 809 of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, that they immediately validate and confirm any and all debts they allege you owe. You should further request that that they only communicate with you by mail. Section 809 requires them to examine the legal documents showing you allegedly owe a debt and they are required to send this to you. This all creates a useful paper trail. When you send the letter, be sure to send it as certified mail with a return receipt. From your description, it doesn't sound like this will do anything, but it's important you do it within 30 days of them contacting you. This is because the law allows them to assume the debt is valid if you don't do it within 30 days of their initial contact. I recommend you speak with an attorney. Most states have a statute of limitation on debt of about 4 or 5 years. I don't know if that applies to courts though. Whatever you do, be very careful of the language you use when speaking with them. Always refer to it as \"\"the alleged debt,\"\" or \"\"the debt you allege I owe.\"\" You don't want them misconstruing your words later on. As far as proving you paid it, I would look through every scrap of paper I'd ever touched looking for it. If that proves fruitless, try going to the courthouse and looking through their records. If they're saying you didn't pay, that's a long shot, but still worth a try. You could also try bank records from that time, like if you have a Visa statement showing $276.17 paid to the Nevada Court or something like that. If all else fails, the law allows you to send the collector a letter saying that you refuse to pay the debt. The collection company then legally must stop contacting you unless it's to tell you they are suing you or to tell you they won't contact you again. I strongly advise against this though. Your best bet is going to be speaking with a qualified attorney. Edit: You should also pull your credit reports to make sure this isn't being reported there. Federal law gives you the right to have a free copy of each of your credit reports once every year. If it is being reported, send a certified letter with return receipt to each bureau which is reporting it telling them you dispute the information. They then are required to confirm the information. If they can't confirm it, they must remove it. If they do confirm it, you are legally entitled to put a statement disputing the information next to it on your credit report. I am not an attorney. This is not legal advise. You should consult an attorney who is licensed to practice law in your particular jurisdiction.\""], "neg": ["\"Dear \"\"benevolent\"\" sister, The mortgage, utilities, and taxes for this home can no longer be paid and the bank will repossess it within the coming months. Thank you for your time\"", "They mostly make money off of the spread between your order and the spread of the buy and sell currently in the market. As others have previously explained, their buy/sell spreads are a little lacklustre.", "Basically the balance you see in your account is the amount of money you currently have a right to (based on the fact that you have deposited it with the bank) you can of course take this money out pretty well whenever you like or move it however you like. However your bank account is not physical money, the currency you deposite is warehoused and used as the bank sees fit, your account is simply a statement keeping track of how much money the bank is holding for you.   The banks ability to use deposited funds to make money relies on the fundamental assumption that not everyone is going to withdraw all of there deposited funds at once. All banks will have legislated liquidity requirements (how much money needs to be kept in cash or near cash securities (short term interest bearing paper basically) in order to allow for pretty much any reasonable number of people to withdraw any amount of money.Additionally the bank as you said makes money on its loans, securities trading and investment banking activities, that money belongs to the bank and gives them even more money to play around with.  Obviously there have historically been instances in which bank runs occur (everyone tries to withdraw all there money at once, bank dosent acctually have enough liquid assets to pay) or cases in which a bank experiences solvency issues for other reasons (having to pay out poorly thought out speculative securities transactions RE north american housing crash in 2008) in these cases there are consumer protection agencies that insure financial institutions against insolvency (varies by country) But under most normal circumstances the bank uses some portion of deposited funds to make money and has systems in place to ensure an individual person can access there deposited funds as needed.   TLDR: account statement just shows how much money you have given the bank and can thus claim back from them (in the form of withdraw) bank has legally dictated cash reserve percentage to allow for everyone to withdraw money when they need it under most normal circumstances.", "I'd roll them all into one account, just for your own convenience.  It's a pain to keep track of lots of different accounts, esp. since you need logins/passwords, etc for all of them, and we all have plenty of those.  :) Pick a place like Vanguard or Fidelity (for example), where you can find investment options with lower fees, and do the standard rollover.  Once all the accounts are rolled into one, you can think about how to invest the stuff.  (Some good investments require larger minimums, so if you have several old 401ks, putting them together will give you more options.) Rolling them over is not hard, if you have paperwork from each of the 401ks.  You might be able to DIY online, but I found it helpful to call and talk to a person when I did this.  You just need account numbers, etc.  If you are moving brokerage accounts, you may need to provide paper documents/applications, which might require getting them notarized (I found a notary at my bank, even though the accounts I was moving from and to weren't at my bank), which means you'll need to provide IDs, etc. and get a special crimped seal after the notary witnesses your signature.", "\"If we can agree that 2010 was closer to the low of 2009 than 2007 then the rich did all the buying while the super-rich did all the selling. http://www2.ucsc.edu/whorulesamerica/power/wealth.html Looks like the rich cleaned up during the Tech Crash too, but it looks like the poor lost faith. That limited data makes it look like the best investors are the rich. Market makers are only required by the exchanges to provide liquidity, bids & asks.  They aren't required to buy endlessly. In fact, market makers (at least the ones who survive the busts) try to never have a stake in direction.  They do this by holding equal inventories of long and shorts.  They are actually the only people legally allowed to naked short stock: sell without securing shares to borrow.  All us peons must secure borrowed shares before selling short. Also, firms involved in the actual workings of the market like bookies but unlike us peons who make the bets play by different margin rules.  They're allowed to lever through the roof because they take on low risk or near riskless trades and \"\"positions\"\" (your broker, clearing agent, etc actually directly \"\"own\"\" your financial assets and borrow & lend them like a bank). http://www.finra.org/web/groups/industry/@ip/@reg/@notice/documents/notices/p004001.pdf This is why market makers can be assumed not to load up on shares during a decline; they simply drop the bids & asks as their bids are hit.\"", "How to solve pet pee needs in the middle of the night when you live in a high-rise apartment can be a real challenge. A San Diego start-up company has come up with a unique product that helps both property managers and tenants.", "If cash donations are not deductable, stock contributions aren't either and I believe the same rules apply as for a private party."]}
+{"query": "US tax for a resident NRI", "corpus": ["If you are tax-resident in the US, then you must report income from sources within and without the United States.  Your foreign income generally must be reported to the IRS.  You will generally be eligible for a credit for foreign income taxes paid, via Form 1116. The question of the stock transfer is more complicated, but revolves around the beneficial owner.  If the stocks are yours but held by your brother, it is possible that you are the beneficial owner and you will have to report any income. There is no tax for bringing the money into the US.  As a US tax resident, you are already subject to income tax on the gain from the sale in India.  However, if the investment is held by a separate entity in India, which is not a US domestic entity or tax resident, then there is a separate analysis.  Paying a dividend to you of the sale proceeds (or part of the proceeds) would be taxable.  Your sale of the entity containing the investments would be taxable.  There are look-through provisions if the entity is insufficiently foreign (de facto US, such as a Subpart-F CFC).  There are ways to structure that transaction that are not taxable, such as making it a bona fide loan (which is enforceable and you must pay back on reasonable terms).  But if you are holding property directly, not through a foreign separate entity, then the sale triggers US tax; the transfer into the US is not meaningful for your taxes, except for reporting foreign accounts. Please review Publication 519 for general information on taxation of resident aliens."], "neg": ["Agreed. The 6 is so unappreciated, it's a fantastic car. Maybe the most beautiful US sedan available and way better than the new Camery  and Accord. I thought the 2 and 5 were also great and innovative in the US but never sold well. At least they are doing OK with their auto based SUV's.", "&gt;Mr. Bishop says he puts out an average of 35 posts a week, and estimates that he would need to spend a minimum of $9,100 a year if he opted to pay fees to promote each one of them to his more than 1,500 followers.  Who the hell wants to hear about a company 35 times a week?", "I edited in the total annual out of pocket for each level to help illustrate what's going on. Your question makes sense, of course, but it's less a matter of afford vs an attempt to save. The way these plans work is to allow some choice based on your past experience. I can afford any option, but knowing the number of visits we have had in the past, the lowest cost option has the highest premium. A young couple who hardly sees a doctor may choose the highest deductible, risking the potential $3434 extra they may pay in a bad year for the savings of $1016.  Personally, I'd not be able to guess accurately enough to benefit from the middle choices, and can see the two extremes being picked most often.", "\"In theory, say we had two soft drink companies, and no other existed. On Jan 1, they report they each had 50% market share for the past year. Over the next year, one company's gain is the other's loss. But over the year, for whatever reason, the market has grown 10% (all the stories of bad water helped this), and while the market share ends at 49/51, the 49 guy has improved his margins, and that stock rises by more than the other.  In general, companies in the same industry will be positively correlated, and strongly so.  I offer my \"\"spreadsheets are your friend\"\" advice. I took data over the last 10 years for Coke and Pepsi. Easy to pull from various sites, I tend to use Yahoo. In Excel the function CORREL with let you compare two columns of numbers for correlation. I got a .85 result, pretty high. To show how a different industry would have a lower correlation, I picked Intel. Strangely, enough, Intel and Pepsi had a .94 correlation. A coincidence, I suppose, but my point is that you can easily get data and perform your own analysis to better understand what's going on.\"", "Regardless of the technicalities of how information was stolen through Kapersky, I am wondering why anyone would use antivirus software, which by definition must operate at a privileged level, that's produced by a company in a country like Russia or China. We already know for a fact that Tencent's WeChat programmatically monitors, censors, and likely reports thought crimes, and I would be surprised if Kapserky is NOT an agent of the Russian government to a similar capacity.", "Using the http://calculators.ato.gov.au/scripts/asp/simpletaxcalc/main.asp calculator and noting all the caveats (Medicare etc) and assuming everything is proportionate you get: You earn: $110,000 less $28,647 tax = $81,353 She earns: $54,000 less $9,097 tax = $44,903 Total net: $126,256 You earn: $88,000 less $20,507 tax = $67,493 She earns: $72,000 less $14,947 tax = $57,053 Total net: $124,546 So, there is about $1,710 in it per annum or $33/week. Long day care will be setting you back $75-185/day so this is pretty small beans. This is all back of the envelope stuff and probably worth paying a few hundred dollars to an accountant to work it all out.", "\"I get the gist of the article, there are some very nice things about Canada. But the idea is pretty silly because it's not that easy to just \"\"flee to Canada\"\" in the first place. Canadian immigration standards for citizens from developed/western countries are some of the steepest of anywhere in the world.   For non-refugees and non-targeted peoples/countries, the Canadian immigration system works on a points system that factors in things like age, education, wealth, professional experience and so on. So if you're a young, childless professional with gobs of money in the bank, you have a fighting chance to move there. Otherwise your chances are extremely low of getting in with the conventional application process. It sucks, but that's the way it is.  Finally, there's always **[this](http://www.forbes.com/sites/robertwood/2014/08/28/u-s-hikes-fee-to-renounce-citizenship-by-422/)** reason.\""]}
+{"query": "Do overall 401(k) contribution limits sum across employers?", "corpus": ["Let me first start off by saying that you need to be careful with an S-Corp and defined contribution plans.  You might want to consider an LLC or some other entity form, depending on your state and other factors. You should read this entire page on the irs site:  S-Corp Retirement Plan FAQ, but here is a small clip: Contributions to a Self-Employed Plan You can’t make contributions to a self-employed retirement plan from your S corporation   distributions. Although, as an S corporation shareholder, you receive   distributions similar to distributions that a partner receives from a   partnership, your shareholder distributions aren’t earned income for   retirement plan purposes (see IRC section 1402(a)(2)). Therefore, you   also can’t establish a self-employed retirement plan for yourself   solely based on being an S corporation shareholder. There are also some issues and cases about reasonable compensation in S-Corp.  I recommend you read the IRS site's S Corporation Compensation and Medical Insurance Issues page answers as I see them, but I recommend hiring CPA You should be able to do option B.  The limitations are in place for the two different types of contributions:  Elective deferrals and Employer nonelective contributions.  I am going to make a leap and say your talking about a SEP here, therefore you can't setup one were the employee could contribute (post 1997). If your doing self employee 401k, be careful to not make the contributions yourself. If your wife is employed the by company, here calculation is separate and the company could make a separate contribution for her. The limitation for SEP in 2015 are 25% of employee's compensation or $53,000.  Since you will be self employed, you need to calculate your net earnings from self-employment which takes into account the eductible part of your self employment tax and contributions business makes to SEP.  Good read on SEPs at IRS site. and take a look at chapter 2 of Publication 560. I hope that helps and I recommend hiring a CPA in your area to help."], "neg": ["Does your wife perform solo or in association with other actor/actresses and other volunteers? The latter arrangement sounds more like an unincorporated association or a partnership, which might be a bit freer to match the revenue and expenses.  By grinding through the proper procedures, it might be possible to get official non-profit status for it, as well.   Ask a professional.", "The exchange rate between two currencies is simply the price that the most recent market participants were able to agree on, when trading. ie: if the USDCAD is 1.36, it's because the last trade that happened where someone bought 1 USD cost 1.36 CAD. There is no one person/organization which 'decides' the rate between two currencies. The rate moves you see is just the reality of money changing hands as people in various situations trade currencies for various reasons. Just like with stocks or any other market product, foreign exchange rates can fluctuate wildly based on many things. It is very difficult to forecast where rates will go, because the biggest changes in rates can often be unpredictable news events. For example, when Brexit happened, the value of the GBP plummeted relative to other currencies, because the market traders had less faith in the UK economy, and therefore weren't willing to pay as much to buy GBP. See more here: https://money.stackexchange.com/a/76482/44232. There is a very high level of risk in the foreign exchange market; for your sake, don't get involved in any trading that you do not well understand, first.", "You're contributing 98.2% of your contributed amount (deducting 1.8%) each month and at the end of the year, deducting a flat 15 pounds.  The easiest way to do this is to use a spreadsheet. But you're missing some key information. What is your expected growth rate and what is your expected inflation rate? Is this a taxable account where you deduct (for example, 35%) of the growth annually for taxes or is this a non-taxable account?", "A few thoughts off the top of my head: Advantages of more than 20% down:  Disadvantages of more than 20% down:", "This is something I love about only investing in tech. Every company I'd want to invest in has a great balance sheet anyway, that's just how their economics work, so I don't have to worry about this. I actually work in reverse. Like with AAPL, I'm deducting their cash from their market cap to get an even more attractive valuation*. As opposed to trying to work out all the complex debt and liabilities of a bank or something.  *AAPL actually does have some debt now but it's dead simple to deduct and only a workaround to their offshore cash.", "Of course it isn't solely responsible, but the way that sugar is sold and advertised makes sugar an insidious way to eat way too many calories.  This is especially true for people who do not have education about diet, and of course children (who are heavily advertised to by the food industry).  That's not at all the point of the documentary either, they talk about many interesting aspects of the sugar industry.  Your comment illustrates part of that; the industry pays a lot of money to put doubt in people's minds.  They are extremely powerful and it's a good chance whatever you read is sugar industry funded propaganda.  Sugar is absolutely responsible for a huge number of health issues, where the fat comes from is not relevant because it's the extra carbs (mostly from sugar) that are responsible for the huge obesity rate in the US.    I really encourage you to watch this movie.  The association with health problems is well established but for a number of reasons it's extremely difficult to run experiments that show sugar caused specific diseases.  The industry is using the same tactics the tobacco industry used to put doubt in people's minds over the studies. It's actually   quite disturbing to see what they are doing to keep the food industry the way it is, especially when you take into account the extent of the health crisis of preventable diseases.", "Not entirely accurate. Urine it depends on frequency of smoking its not a solid number. If say you smoke once and have not for months it would be below a standard test within about 2 maybe 3 days  Maybe even sooner depending on the smoker. To test positive for over 2 weeks you smoke a lot and often."]}
+{"query": "What is meant by one being in a “tax bracket”?", "corpus": ["Tax brackets refer to the range of taxable within which you fall. An income tax bracket usually refers to federal or state tax, not the combined rate. I have put here the tax brackets for 2016 for IRS and State of California.  https://www.irs.com/articles/2016-federal-tax-rates-personal-exemptions-and-standard-deductions  https://www.ftb.ca.gov/forms/2016-california-tax-rates-and-exemptions.shtml According to those, a taxable income of 100,000USD would fall in the 28% bracket for the IRS and 9.30% for State of California. The combined rate is therefore 37.3%. However, this does not mean you would pay 37,300USD. First of all, your applicable tax rate applies only for each dollar in your tax bracket (e.g. 28% * 8,849USD for IRS). Therefore, to calculate your combined taxes you would need to do:  Therefore, your effective tax rate would be much lower than the combined tax rate of 37.3%. Now do note that this is an example to illustrate tax brackets and is nowhere near the amount of taxes you would be required to pay because of various credits and deductions that you would be able to benefit from. Edit: As suggested in the comments, a note on marginal tax rate (referred to here as combined tax rate). This is the rate of taxes paid on an additional dollar of income. Here, every additional dollar of income would be taxed at 37.3%, leaving you with 62.7 cents."], "neg": ["I work from home when I'm not on the road. I don't think I could go back to a desk job. Trust your employees to have discipline and do a good job and you will be rewarded. Those who abuse the system will be weeded out naturally.", "I guess the answer lies in your tax jurisdiction (different countries tax capital gains and income differently) and your particular tax situation. If the price of the stock goes up or down between when you buy and sell then this counts for tax purposes as a capital gain or loss. If you receive a dividend then this counts as income.  So, for instance, if you pay tax on income but not on capital gains (or perhaps at a lower rate on capital gains) then it would pay you to sell immediately before the stock goes ex-dividend and buy back immediately after thereby making a capital gain instead of receiving income.", "The point of buying an index fund is that you don't have to pick winners. As long as the winners are included in the index fund (which can include far more than 500 stocks), you benefit on average because of overall upward historical market performance. Picking only the top 50 capitalized stocks in the S&P 500 does not guarantee you will successfully track the S&P 500 index because the stocks in the tail can account for an outsized amount of overall growth; the top 50 stocks by market capitalization change over time, and these stocks are not necessarily the stocks that perform better.  As direct example, the 10 year average annual return for the S&P top 50 is 4.52%, while the 10 year average annual return for the S&P 500 is 5.10%. Issues of trading and balancing to maintain these aside, these indices are not the same.", "\"While the techniques are well known computer science results, at least in academia they havent been exhaustively applied to everything yet. So LDA and NMF text analysis and stuff are somehow \"\"cutting edge\"\" in academic research only because not many of the older more established professors can get on board as quickly as new students with a programming background. I agree it seems weird, but in the literature these applications are \"\"new\"\" and \"\"hot\"\".   source: finance phd student doing research on machine learning and text analysis.\"", "Digital is the buzz word everywhere and to keep pace with the changing trends, the business world has to become digital in every way. SMO Companies India is a premier digital marketing agency which recognizes the requirements of the clients and worked towards the development of strategies for them which can yield positive results. One such very effective medium to reach the target audience is through the Facebook Advertising plans in India. The professionals in the company are experienced techies who can offer remarkable solutions to connect with the target audience and promote the goods or services among them to generate profits. http://smocompaniesindia.com/facebook-marketing-plan.html", "\"I learned just how stupid and useless Gartner Magic Quadrants were many years ago when I was working at a public utility that was trying to use one to determine \"\"which web server to use.\"\" (I kid you not)  I had one look at the thing and immediately noticed what *wasn't* there: Apache.  This was about 10 years ago when Apache owned like 75% of all websites on the internet (before Microsoft bribed various DNS parking sites).\"", "\"I think that technology has had a huge impact on the salary aspect of \"\"unpaid weekend work\"\". It's so easy to fire off an e-mail in between links while fucking off on Reddit and watching T.V., that I have no problem \"\"working on the weekend\"\". I haven't heard of many jobs in the U.S. that don't compensate for every hour that you are on premise, however, and that would be a very disturbing trend to see emerging.\""]}
+{"query": "Helping my family sell their oil stocks. What to buy?", "corpus": ["\"*(\"\"Fee-only\"\" meaning the only money they make is the fee your folks pay directly; no kickbacks from financial products they're selling.) The answer to this is: for God's sake, leave it alone!  I commend you on wanting to help your family avoid more losses. You are right, that having most of one's retirement in one stock or sector is just silly. And again yes, if they're retired, they probably need some bonds.  But here's the thing, if they follow your advise and it doesn't work out, it will be a SERIOUS strain on your relationship. Of course you'll still be a family and they'll still love you, but emotionally, you are the reason they lost the money, and that will an elephant in between you. This is especially the case since we're talking about a lot of money here (presumably), and retirement money to boot.   You must understand the risk you're taking with your relationships. If you/they lose, at best it'll make things awkward, and you'll feel guilty about their impoverished retirement. At worst it can destroy your relationship with your folks.  What about if you win? Won't you be feted and appreciated by your folks for saving them from themselves? Yes, for a short while. Then life moves on. Everything returns to normal.  But here's the thing. You won't win. You can't. Because even if you're right here, and they win, that means both they and you will be eager for you to do it again. And at some point they'll take a hit based on your advise.    Can I be blunt here? You didn't even know that you can't avoid capital gains taxes by reinvesting stock gains. You don't know enough, and worse, you're not experienced enough. I deduce you're either a college student, or a recent grad. Which means you don't have experience investing your own money. You don't know how the market moves, you just know the theory.  You know who you are? You're me, 20 years ago. And thank God my grandparents ignored my advise. I was right about their utilities stocks back then, too. But I know from what I learned in the years afterwards, investing on my own account, that at some point I would have hurt them. And I would have had a very hard time living with that.  So, tell your folks to go visit a fee-only financial adviser to create a retirement plan.  Perhaps I'm reading into your post, but it seems like you're enthusiastic about investing; stocks, bonds, building wealth, etc. I love that. My advise -- go for it! Pull some money together, and open your own stock account. Do some trading! As much as people grouse about it, the market really is glorious. It's like playing Monopoly, but for keeps. I mean that in the best way possible. It's fun, you can build wealth doing it, and it provides a very useful social purpose.  In the spirit of that, check out these ideas (just for you, not for your folks!), based on ideas in your post:  Good luck.\""], "neg": ["Gosh, I don't know, maybe emergencies or unforeseen expenses like a car repair or maybe even just discretionary $ where you can buy new eyeglasses/frames or, get the fuck outta here, this is going to blow your mind, be impulsive and get on a plane and book a hotel for  3 or 4 days?  Let me guess, your answer to all that is charge it! And since you don't keep $1k in savings pay the minimum balance.  Also:  * https://meetbeam.com/ * https://www.ally.com/bank/savings-account-rates/ * https://www.synchronybank.com/banking/high-yield-savings/", "I like Quicken for personal use, and they have a small business edition if you don't want to move into QuickBooks.", "First price isn't artificially maintained at a level. When a refining company signs a contract to buy crude from a supplier, it promises to buy at a certain price with options for increase and decrease due to the fluctuating prices in the market. And it buys crude to build up a certain buffer to supply itself for a certain duration, in case of supply problems. As it had bought oil at a higher price, it would be reluctant to lower the prices even if the current crude it buys is at a lower cost. If it buys oil from the open market, it has no other option than to pass on the hike on to the consumers, so a more intense fluctuation in the prices of oil at the point, where you buy it. Some airlines used hedging to take care of the spurts in the price of oil, to mantian their operating margins.  And moreover refining and distribution is a very low margin business, so the company has an incentive to sell at a higher cost if required.", "Possibles: stock offering, secondary placement, increase authorized number of shares, shelf registration.", "\"No, virtually ever item in the CPI is adjusted using hedonics, which by definition can only be used to lower inflation, not adjust it up.  Hedonics is not necessarily bad, but it doesn't actually reflect inflation, it reflects standard of living vs. purchasing power, which is not useful for a purely monetary measure.  It also does not correctly reflect that despite the fact that a 1970's 20\"\" TV cannot from an economic standpoint be directly compared to a 2012 20\"\" TV, if the price is the same (adjusted for inflation), inflation represents how the value of the dollar has accrued vs the value of a 20\"\" TV, which is what the definition of inflation is.  So, no, I don't think you're correct on this. This is also kind of glossing over the fact that the CPI essentially makes the bold argument that energy and transportation prices never affect inflation.\"", "\"Echoing that bank fees are mostly \"\"because they can\"\", although partly this is because simply holding onto the money doesn't really pay enough for the physical infrastructure of branches, ATMs and staff. So like a budget airline they make it up on additional fees. But that document doesn't actually say they charge 3% for currency conversion! It's \"\"0.20% of transaction amount\"\" for currency conversion, which is not bad (although watch out for the \"\"spread\"\" between buying and selling rates). I see \"\"International POS/ATM Transaction Fee 3% of transaction amount\"\", which is very different. That's a card fee. The big issue with these is fraud - your card number suddenly being used in a different country will nearly always trigger extra fraud checks. It also involves a much more complicated settlement process. I'm more unimpressed with the monthly service charges and the huge $85 fee for international wire transfers.\"", "\"The argument puts forth a false dichotomy in support of an ideological position.  The \"\"1%\"\" is also a perjorative term that's rapidly becoming noxious.   Entrepreneurs organise the effort that leads to fulfillment of consumer demand and create jobs when doing so.  Consumer demand does not magically result in supply. It requires an organiser.\""]}
+{"query": "Any difficulties in doing deceased relative's taxes?", "corpus": ["There are two different tax returns you'll be doing: one is for her, until the day of her death. The other is for the estate. The personal one you could probably do on your own, it's nothing different from the one for a living person, except for the cut-off date in the middle of the year. The estate tax return may be a bit more nuanced, since it is a trust return and not an individual return, and is done under a different set of rules. I'd suggest talking to a tax professional who'd help you. Your estate executioner should be doing the estate tax return (or hiring someone to do it). Sorry for your loss."], "neg": ["I use the taxi app in the tri-citys it's way quicker then calling dispatch. It's as close to getting uber, in bc as far as I can tell. Gives you the dollar amount when booked and tells you can drivers name you're going to get then you can leave reviews on the cab driver as well.    General wait time on busy nights is under 20mins. Try going through dispatch and its hours and many phone calls to get a cab. I'd call this a huge improvement.", "Your search for Sydney Handyman ends with Sydney Handyman Hire. Our growth in the last few years has come by earning the trust and building good relationships with clients. We have a track record of providing excellent services which allows our clients to focus on their work.  Address: 6/17-21 Bowden Street, Alexandria, NSW 2015,   Phone No: 1300 336 547", "\"In the grand scheme of things, Earth is going to be a barren rock and Sol will have turned into a red giant.    \"\"In our lifetimes\"\" is a decent measure of \"\"very long time\"\" when you're talking about things like economics and Moore's Law.\"", "\"How do I get my money from India to UAE account – what are the options, can I do bank transfer from my mom SB account to my international account. As you have transferred money directly to your Mothers account, getting the money back would need some paper work. Consult a CA and Bank in India, they should be able to help you. There are various limits under FEMA that would be applicable. As the amount is small a self declaration would also suffice. If yes how much do I loose in case of 20 lac due to currency conversion and commission (approximate) Not sure I understand this question, are you asking if you had converted X AED into Rs 20 lacs and now you have 20 lacs will you get back \"\"x\"\" AED or how much less? If you Buy and Sell on the same day, typically there is a spread of 3-5% depending on the currency pair. However rates would have move up or down since then and hence this cannot be answered. You would have to see what the rates are. b. can exchange with Friends in UAE and deposit the same in INR to their SB account in india. Stick to Banks or authorized remittance services [like Western Union / Money Gram / etc]. Any other method you are circumventing law. One is not authorized to convert currency outside the normal Banking Channel.\"", "Not entirely true.  Argentina walks away without the ability to get credit in the normal way, but with other (more expensive) avenues to get credit if needed.  However, they also no longer have to pay the bond debt, which frees up a fair amount of tax income to go to the things they were previously paying with debt.    Singer comes away with... nothing.  He's out the cost of purchasing the debt.  He's out the cost of litigating.  He actually came away with worse than nothing.  He lost bad.", "Yes! You totally get it! I find the previous comment from the other to be the shinny example of what is wrong with the perception of working with an IT professional. Yes there are issues within this industry, but there are in every industry. Yet, the level of rudeness my employees receive from clients because they perceive us as an intrusion in their day is very draining. We're trying to help, tapping your shoes and sighing every 2 minutes that we're not done yet doesn't make the work go faster. One of my employees was screamed at by a manager of a client because their network was down. New to us client and their previous internal person basically used duct tape to assemble their network. We walked into a literal dumpster fire. What the manager didn't realize is that his managers weren't agreeing to what we proposed and there were over 200 emails back and forth between the talking heads before they would finally agree to the work that needed to be done. It was ridiculous.  Overall though I am glad I posted this quandary. It gave me some ideas that hopefully will be really good.", "\"1 - in most cases, the difference between filing joint or married filing single is close to zero. When there is a difference you're better off filing joint.  2 - The way the W4 works is based on how many allowances you claim. Unfortunately, even in the day of computers, it does not allow for a simple \"\"well my deduction are $xxx, don't tax that money.\"\" Each allowance is equal to one exemption, same as you get for being you, same as the wife gets, same as each kid. 3 people X $3800 = $11,400 you are telling the employer to take off the top before calculating your tax. She does this by using Circular E and is able to calculate your tax as you request. If one is in the 15% bracket, one more exemption changes the tax withheld by $570. So if you were going to owe $400 in April, one few exemption will have you overpay $170. i.e. in this 15% bracket, each exemption changes annual withholding by that $570.  For most people, running the W4 numbers will get them very close, and only if they are getting back or owing over $500, will they even think of adjusting.  3 - My recently published Last Minute Tax Moves offers a number of interesting ideas to address this. The concept of grouping deductions in odd years is worth noting.  4 - I'm not sure what this means, 2 accounts each worth $5000 should grow at the same rate if invested the same. The time it makes sense to load one person's account first is if they have better matching. You say you are not sure what percent your wife's company matches. You need to change this. For both of your retirement plans you need to know every detail, exact way to maximize matching, expense ratios for the investments you choose, any other fees, etc. Knowledge is power, and all that. In What is an appropriate level of 401k fees or expenses in a typical plan? I go on to preach about how fees can wipe out any tax benefit over time. For any new investor, my first warning is always to understand what you are getting into. If you can't explain it to a friend, you shouldn't be in it.  Edit - you first need to understand what choices are within the accounts. The 4% and 6% are in hindsight, right? These are not fixed returns. You should look at the choices and more heavily fund the account with the better selection. Deposit to her account at least to grab the match.  As far as the longer term goals, see how the house purchase goes. Life has a way of sending you two kids and forcing you to tighten the budget. You may have other ideas in three years. (I have no P2P lending experience, by the way.)  Last - many advise that separate finances are a bad path for a couple. It depends. Jane and I have separate check books, and every paycheck just keep enough to write small checks without worry, most of the money goes to the house account. Whatever works for you is what you should do. We've been happily married for most of the 17 years we've been married.\""]}
+{"query": "Latest China devaluation (24/08/2015) and the affect on house prices in UK", "corpus": ["No. There is no indication that the recent decline will have an impact on the house market in the UK. The reason(s) for the downward move these last few weeks are mainly due to: The last two points caused the Chinese government to decide to devaluate the Yuan. This in turn triggered an unforeseen panic attack among investors and speculators around the globe starting with the Chinese that are trading on borrowed money (not only on margin but also by using loans). The UK house prices are not influenced by the above factors, not even indirectly. The most important factors for house prices are in general: If you keep the above points in mind you should be able to decide whether now is the right time to buy a house in your area. Given that a lot of central banks (incl. BoE) are maintaining a low interest rate policy (except fed soon), now is a good time to take a mortgage. Sources used: I know interest rates are determined by the BoE which looks at the global picture to determine these rates but the main directive of a central bank is to maintain an inflation close to but not exactly 2 % as to spur on economic growth.  As such, the value of a company as valuated on the stock market is not or barely taken into account. The negligible impact is the reason why I stated that the crash in the summer of 2015 doesn't even have an indirect impact.  Also such a crash is very short lived. It's more the underlying reason for the fears that could cause issues if they drag on."], "neg": ["\"For some people, it should be a top priority.  For others, there are higher priorities.  What it should be for you depends on a number of things, including your overall financial situation (both your current finances and how stable you expect them to be over time), your level of financial \"\"education\"\", the costs of your mortgage, the alternative investments available to you, your investing goals, and your tolerance for risk. Your #1 priority should be to ensure that your basic needs (including making the required monthly payment on your mortgage) are met, both now and in the near future, which includes paying off high-interest (i.e. credit card) debt and building up an emergency fund in a savings or money-market account or some other low-risk and liquid account.  If you haven't done those things, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and do not consider making advance payments on your mortgage.  Mason Wheeler's statements that the bank can't take your house if you've paid it off are correct, but it's going to be a long time till you get there and they can take it if you're partway to paying it off early and then something bad happens to you and you start missing payments.  (If you're not underwater, you should be able to get some of your money back by selling - possibly at a loss - before it gets to the point of foreclosure, but you'll still have to move, which can be costly and unappealing.)  So make sure you've got what you need to handle your basic needs even if you hit a rough patch, and make sure you're not financing the paying off of your house by taking a loan from Visa at 27% annually. Once you've gotten through all of those more-important things, you finally get to decide what else to invest your extra money in.  Different investments will provide different rewards, both financial and emotional (and Mason Wheeler has clearly demonstrated that he gets a strong emotional payoff from not having a mortgage, which may or may not be how you feel about it).  On the financial side of any potential investment, you'll want to consider things like the expected rate of return, the risk it carries (both on its own and whether it balances out or unbalances the overall risk profile of all your investments in total), its expected costs (including its - and your - tax rate and any preferred tax treatment), and any other potential factors (such as an employer match on 401(k) contributions, which are basically free money to you).  Then you weigh the pros and cons (financial and emotional) of each option against your imperfect forecast of what the future holds, take your best guess, and then keep adjusting as you go through life and things change. But I want to come back to one of the factors I mentioned in the first paragraph.  Which options you should even be considering is in part influenced by the degree to which you understand your finances and the wide variety of options available to you as well as all the subtleties of how different things can make them more or less advantageous than one another.  The fact that you're posting this question here indicates that you're still early in the process of learning those things, and although it's great that you're educating yourself on them (and keep doing it!), it means that you're probably not ready to worry about some of the things other posters have talked about, such as Cost of Capital and ROI.  So keep reading blog posts and articles online (there's no shortage of them), and keep developing your understanding of the options available to you and their pros and cons, and wait to tackle the full suite of investment options till you fully understand them. However, there's still the question of what to do between now and then.  Paying the mortgage down isn't an unreasonable thing for you to do for now, since it's a guaranteed rate of return that also provides some degree of emotional payoff.  But I'd say the higher priority should be getting money into a tax-advantaged retirement account (a 401(k)/403(b)/IRA), because the tax-advantaged growth of those accounts makes their long-term return far greater than whatever you're paying on your mortgage, and they provide more benefit (tax-advantaged growth) the earlier you invest in them, so doing that now instead of paying off the house quicker is probably going to be better for you financially, even if it doesn't provide the emotional payoff.  If your employer will match your contributions into that account, then it's a no-brainer, but it's probably still a better idea than the mortgage unless the emotional payoff is very very important to you or unless you're nearing retirement age (so the tax-free growth period is small).  If you're not sure what to invest in, just choose something that's broad-market and low-cost (total-market index funds are a great choice), and you can diversify into other things as you gain more savvy as an investor; what matters more is that you start investing in something now, not exactly what it is. Disclaimer: I'm not a personal advisor, and this does not constitute investing advice.  Understand your choices and make your own decisions.\"", "Firstly well done on building a really sold base of savings. An emergency fund needs to have two key characteristics: Be enough to get you through a typical emergency event (often seen as approx. ~6 months’ salary in your style of situation assuming you have no dependents etc) Be liquid and available to you instantly if an emergency arises Once you have decided how much you will need for 1), you then generally find the best interest available on an instant access savings account and leave it there. It's important to note that because you need it very liquid and very secure you will basically never make (nor should  you expect to make) any sizeable rate of interest on your emergency fund. Once this is done, whatever left should be invested in an asset/mix of assets that best fit your risk profile - of which long term bonds are a completely legitimate option, but it's hard to say without knowing more about your long term aims/liabilities/job market etc.", "Savings accounts have lower fees. If you don't anticipate doing many transactions per month, e.g. three or fewer withdrawals, then I would suggest a savings account rather than a checking account. A joint account that requires both account holder signatures to make withdrawals will probably require both account holders' signature endorsements, in order to make deposits. For example, if you are issued a tax refund by the U.S. Treasury, or any check that is payable to both parties, you will only be able to deposit that check in a joint account that has both persons as signatories. There can be complications due to multi-party account ownership if cashing versus depositing a joint check and account tax ID number. When you open the account, you will need to specify what your wishes are, regarding whether both parties or either party can make deposits and withdrawals. Also, at least one party will need to be present, with appropriate identification (probably tax ID or Social Security number), when opening the account.  If the account has three or more owners, you might be required to open a business or commercial account, rather than a consumer account. This would be due to the extra expense of administering an account with more than two signatories. After the questioner specified interest North Carolina in the comments, I found that the North Carolina general banking statutes have specific rules for joint accounts: Any two or more persons may establish a deposit account...   The deposit account and any balance shall be as joint tenants...   Unless the persons establishing the account have agreed with the bank   that withdrawals require more than one signature, payment by the bank   to, or on the order of (either person on) the account satisfys the bank's obligation I looked for different banks in North Carolina. I found joint account terms similar to this in PDF file format, everywhere, Joint Account: If an item is drawn so that it is unclear whether one payee’s   endorsement or two is required, only one endorsement will be    required and the Bank shall not be liable for any loss incurred by the   maker as a result of there being only one endorsement. also  Joint accounts are owned by you individually or jointly with others.   All of the funds in a joint account may be used to repay the debts of   any co-owner, whether they are owed individually, by a co-owner,   jointly with other co-owners, or jointly with other persons or   entities having no interest in your account. You will need to tell the bank specifically what permissions you want for your joint account, as it is between you and your bank, in North Carolina.", "Let's reverse this.  If you had a business to hold corporate information, and that information was leaked to the world, do you think the corporation would agree that you shouldn't be put out of business?  They would want that and some blood for their troubles.", "Took 4 weeks to study for the 7. I studied in the morning for about 3-4 hrs skimming the book and taking practice exams then would go play golf or do something active to take my mind off of studying.  Passed with an 80%.  I took the 66 and barely studied  maybe 5 days going over practice exams. 84%", "The best office and business telephone systems offered by this company come with features such as telephony, instant messaging, video conferencing and data sharing, into a single robust IP platform. The services are really affordable and customer services are simply unmatched.", "People are downvoting you, but the reality is that a cushion isn't a bad idea.  Not a perpetual thing, but until the OP gets set up with a job place to live etc.  They know the job is going to work out etc., they might want to have some cash, as they are likely not going to forgo eating etc... that said I would treat it as money to be used in place of a credit card (with the high rates) etc...   Again I am not saying spend the money, I am being realistic, that it takes money to secure an apt, and unless you can borrow cheaper than 6% elsewhere (I know I could probably get unsecured money cheaper than that where I live, but I don't know the OPs situation).  I wouldn't invest it given the situation personally.  If you have a great job, it won't matter, you will build up past 1200 soon and can then start to invest a portion of that cash.  If you don't, then you shouldn't be risking debt money, especially if your level of sophistication in the market has you here asking the question.  That 6% savings is tax free as well, so you need to gross it up based on your tax situation.  Also make note of any currency conversions that would need to happen, so depending on what you want to invest in, currency risk could be a real concern as well.  One other reason I think getting down at least a portion of the debt could be good is simplification.  Can't spend money you don't view yourself as having.  Some people might be more disciplined to reign in spending when they see a lower number in their account.  I'm personally not one of those people, but again, I would likely kill the debt off now just to have one less thing on my mind... but only as soon as I am stable (know where I am going to live, have enough to eat, and relatively sure that will continue in the future...)"]}
+{"query": "Reducing taxable income in US in December", "corpus": ["Assuming that what you want to do is to counter the capital gains tax on the short term and long term gains, and that doing so will avoid any underpayment penalties, it is relatively simple to do so. Figure out the tax on the capital gains by determining your tax bracket. Lets say 25% short term and 15% long term or (0.25x7K) + (0.15*8K) or $2950.  If you donate to charities an additional amount of items or money to cover that tax. So taking the numbers in step 1 divide by the marginal tax rate $2950/0.25 or $11,800.  Money is easier to donate because you will be contributing enough value that the IRS may ask for proof of the value, and that proof needs to be gathered either before the donation is given or at the time the donation is given. Also don't wait until December 31st, if you miss the deadline and the donation is counted for next year, the purpose will have been missed. Now if the goal is just to avoid the underpayment penalty, you have two other options.  The safe harbor is the easiest of the two to determine. Look at last years tax form. Look for the amount of tax you paid last year. Not what was withheld, but what you actually paid. If all your withholding this year, is greater than 110% of the total tax from last year, you have reached the safe harbor. There are a few more twists depending on AGI Special rules for farmers, fishermen, and higher income taxpayers.   If at least two-thirds of your gross income for tax year 2014 or 2015   is from farming or fishing, substitute 662/3% for 90% in (2a) under   the General rule, earlier. If your AGI for 2014 was more than $150,000   ($75,000 if your filing status for 2015 is married filing a separate   return), substitute 110% for 100% in (2b) under General rule ,   earlier. See Figure 4-A and Publication 505, chapter 2 for more   information."], "neg": ["Generally, the paperwork realtors use is pre-written and pre-approved by the relevant State and real-estate organizations. The offers, contracts, etc etc a pretty straightforward and standard. You can ask a realtor for a small fee to arrange the documents for you (smaller than the usual 5% sellers' fee they charge, I would say 0.5% or a couple of hundreds of dollars flat fee would be enough for the work). You can try and get these forms yourself, sometimes you can buy them in the neighborhood Staples, or from various law firms and legal plans that sell standard docs. You can get a lawyer to go over it with you for almost nothing: I used the LegalZoom plan for documentation review, and it cost me $30 (business plan, individual is cheaper) to go over several purchase contracts ($30 is a monthly subscription, but you don't have to pay it for more than one month). But these are standard, so you do it once and you know how to read them all. If you have a legal plan from work, this may cover document review and preparation. Preparing a contract that is not a standard template can otherwise cost you hundreds of dollars. Title company will not do any paperwork for you except for the deed itself. They can arrange the deed and the recording, escrow and title insurance, but they will not write a contract for the parties to use. You have to come with the contract already in place, and with escrow instructions already agreed upon. Some jurisdictions require using a lawyer in a real-estate transaction. If you're in a jurisdiction (usually on a county level) that requires the transaction to go through a lawyer - then the costs will be higher.", "\"Many people assume that if the price of something is $10 and they have 1,000 of that thing, they should expect to be able to sell them for something around $10,000.  Such an assumption may hold much of the time, but it doesn't always.  Worse, the cases where it fails to hold are often those where it would be relied upon most heavily.  Such an assumption should thus be considered dangerous. In a liquid market, the quantity of a something that people would be willing to buy at something close to the market price will be large relative to the quantity that people would seek to sell in the short term.  If at some moment in time one person in the market was willing to immediately buy 500 shares at $9.98 and another was willing to immediately buy 750 at $9.97, someone seeking to sell 1,000 shares could immediately receive $997.50 for them (selling 500 to the first person and 500 to the second, who would then be ready to buy 250 more from the first person who was willing to sell for $9.97).  Such behavior would be in line with what many people's assumptions. In an illiquid market, however, the quantity of something that people would be willing to buy near market price could be surprisingly low.  This is more often a problem in the marketplace of things like collectibles than of stocks, but the same thing can happen in the stock market.  If there's one potential buyer for a stock who thinks it's overpriced but has potential and would be worth $9.50, but that person only has $950 to spend, and nobody else thinks the stock would be worth more than $0.02/share, then until people sold a total of 100 shares the price would be $9.50, but after that the price would drop instantly to $0.02.  There would be no \"\"cushioning\"\" of the fall.  If the person with 1,000 shares was first in line, he'd get to sell 100 shares for $950 to the aforementioned seller, but would be unable to get more than $18 for the remaining 900. A major danger with markets is that markets which are perceived as liquid attract people to the buying side, while those which are seen as illiquid repel people.  The danger in the latter is obvious (having people flee a seemingly-illiquid market will reduce its liquidity further) but the former is just as bad.  Having people flock to a market because of its perceived liquidity will increase its liquidity, but can also create a \"\"false price floor\"\", causing demand to appear much stronger than it actually is.  Unless real demand increases to match the false price floor, the people who buy at the higher price will never be able to recoup their investment.\"", "\"I remember when they started the policy of \"\"will not accept ANY lifetime warranty claims for rust\"\". A reasonable enough claim, because there's no such thing as 100% stainless.  However, they started this stupid game where *any* tool with *any* amount of rust on it was automatically a \"\"rust claim\"\".  For example, if a socket for a ratchet was stripped, worn, or chipped to the point of being unusable, and also had a small rust spot, they wouldn't replace it.  Spend a dollar and piss off your customers to save a nickel... go figure.\"", "Expansion of federal influence in education  Expansion of DHS Expansion of military Expansion of domestic surveillance (that's liberal now)  He blew the government up to a size not seen since FDR.  Liberal. He just doesn't line up on all of the social issues that are ultimately wedge issues.", "\"Geez man you're cutting it close to the end of the semester to be at the research stage of your project.  I normally frown on posts that say \"\"LOL DO MY PROJECT FOR ME\"\" but i know a bit about this subject and want to share.  I'm going to focus mostly on the B2B segment here because that's what I know. Many companies aren't spending as much as they used to on IT products or the staff to support them. They're also looking for ways to be more productive with their budgets. The consumer market is spending a lot less and is demanding products that Dell can't make as much money on.  The big things right now are The cloud, virtualization and miniaturization.  So, right now \"\"The Cloud\"\" is the buzzword. Lots of companies are moving their stuff offsite, letting someone else worry about major IT infrastructure. This typically costs the company less in both hardware and personnel costs. Companies still need a onsite presence for critical applications, data and backup but they need a lot less than what was necessary 5 years ago.  Network backbones have grown in scale and many metropolitan areas can now support this type of computing.  You also have virtualization which means you can run multiple \"\"servers\"\" on one physical server. What used to take up an entire rack years ago can now be run on a few servers.  This means companies need less of the IT equipment Dell makes in order to grow and expand.  All that means less of a demand for traditional IT equipment (computers and servers) and more of a demand for the proper software.   I see Dell moving more towards personal devices and larger enterprise equipment &amp; servers. Personal devices include tablets, laptops/netbooks, phones, compact PCs. The business side includes high density servers, storage, software and services. The miniaturization of computer hardware along with the cloud will allow users to access their \"\"desktop\"\" and programs from anywhere and Dell will be providing products to access the cloud. Servers will have terabytes of memory and a large number of cores. (systems with terabytes of memory already exist but the cost is prohibitive for most companies). These systems will be used to support a business' needs through virtualization or provide users with the cloud. Dell has acquired a few software companies over the years and will most likely acquire more &amp; may offer software for cloud computing, IT management and possibly (probably not) virtualization.  Over the past few years the desktop PC market has been shrinking as netbooks and new devices have been released.  They still have a long way to go but someday they will largely replace the PC in homes and businesses; especially as costs come down.   Also, Dell may see lots more money from government and healthcare in the next few years.  The government may choose to spend even more money than they do now on infrastructure and projects to help get us out of the recession. Those projects will need IT resources.  Same goes for healthcare, as the new healthcare laws go into effect they will need more IT resources to get the job done.  source: me, I've worked in the IT industry for the past 9 years. The majority of our business is with Dell products. If you need more details about me send me message.  Also please don't just copy paste my information.  I'm giving you some ideas. Go look them up, learn about them, research them.  College is about learning and one of the points of this project is to expand your knowledge about a subject.  tl;dr due to new technology, people and companies will be buying less, margins will be thinner, Dell will probably focus on new markets.  edit: after going through some of your posts it seems like you are in the IT industry as well so I'm confused and you may already know most of this information.\"", "Recovering after a card number has been stolen is a nuisance; you need to wade through determining which charges are and aren't legit, update the records of anyone who legitimately has your card on file, not have the card available until the replacement reaches you,  etc. And you may be on the hook for the first $50 of the loss, if I remember correctly, unless (as mentioned) the bank waives that. Plus the risk that the card could be the first step in a larger identity theft attempt. And not everyone is so blase' about the bank losing money. Those costs get passed on to us, remember. And some of us actually respect our banks or credit unions. Certainly cards come with some consumer protection, otherwise nobody who thought about this would want to use them. But it's still worth exercising reasonable care to keep the problem from arising.", "What kind of bullshit is this?  &gt;Between October 2008 and July 2014 the working age population grew by 13.4 million persons, but the US labor force grew by only 1.1 million. In other words, the unemployment rate among the increase in the working age population during the past six years is 91.8%.  I can't even...  &gt;The 6.2% US unemployment rate is misleading as it excludes discouraged workers who have given up and left the labor force because there are no jobs to be found.  Uh...that's not how statistics work.  &gt;John Williams of Shadowstats.com calculates the true US unemployment rate to be 23.2%, a number consistent with the collapse of the US labor force participation rate.  Ok, he got this number from the infamous shadowstats. Why is this crap getting upvoted?"]}
+{"query": "Selling on eBay without PayPal?", "corpus": ["I've definitely seen a similar conversation about this, I personally don't buy from eBay (Amazon for me). So I turned to the internet to see what I could find to offer you any additional information (albeit not my personal experience).  I first read this article: CodeNerdz Article and was pretty horrified by the scamming that can happen by buyers. Then, this article by another regular user of eBay, Selling on eBay without PayPal : eBay Guides confirmed the trouble people have with PayPal & eBay. Payment Services permitted on eBay: Allpay.net, Canadian Tire Money, cash2india, CertaPay, Checkfree.com, hyperwallet.com, Moneybookers.com, Nochex.com, Ozpay.biz, Paymate.com.au, Propay.com, XOOM Have you looked into any or all of these?"], "neg": ["First--congratulations!  I certainly wish I could create something worth buying for $1.4 million.  In addition to what @duffbeer703 recommended, consider putting some of the money in Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities (TIPS).  I second the advice on staying away from annuities as well.  @littleadv is right about certified financial planners.  A good one will put those funds in a mix of investments that minimize your potential tax exposure.  They will also look at whether you're properly insured.    Research what is FDIC-insured (and what isn't) here. Since you're still making a six-figure income in your salaried job, be sure not to neglect things like contributing to your 401(k)--especially if it's a matching one.  At your salary level, I think you're still eligible to contribute to a Roth IRA (taxable income goes in, so withdrawals are tax-free).  A good adviser will know which options are best.", "\"Rolling an old 401k into a new 401k is generally only for ease of management. For example, how many bank accounts do you really want? As long as the funds are reasonably allocated I've found it can be a useful \"\"mind game\"\" to leave it separate. Sometimes it's desirable to ignore an account and let it grow, and it is a nice surprise when finally adding all the account balances together. In other words, I keep thinking I've got X (the amount of my biggest or current 401k), which affects/helps my habits and desire to save. When I add them all together I'm shocked to find out I've got Y (the total of all accounts). Personally, I've had big paperwork problems transferring an old 403b (same type process as 401k) even when I had an adviser helping me move it. In the end it was worth moving it, because I'm having the adviser manage it. I'm actually writing this answer specifically because I recently moved a big 401k into a Traditional IRA. A rep from the brokerage, representing my previous employer, kept calling me to find out how they could help (I didn't brush him off). I found that using an IRA provided me with the opportunity to do self-guided investments in funds or even individual stocks, well beyond the limited selection of the old company's 401k. It was useful/interesting to me to invest in low-fee vehicles such as index funds (ie: the Buffett recommendation), and I'll find some stocks as well. Oh and when the old company 401k has certain funds being discontinued, I didn't want to notice the mandated changes years later. So, I'd suggest you consider management and flexibility of the 401k or equivalent, and any of your special personal circumstances/goals. If you end up with a few retirement accounts, I suggest you use an account aggregating website to see or follow your net worth. I know many who, based on various concerns and their portfolio, find an acceptable website to use.\"", "There may be specific answers that can be determined based on the interest rates, amounts, tax provisions, etc. But I'm here to tell you... It is much easier (i.e., less stressful) to own a home when you have less debt. Pay off any and every debt you can before purchasing a home because there will always be something requiring you to spend money once you own one.", "You've thought it through and you know the risks, so more power to you. I'd only add that recovering from big downdrafts gets harder as you age, and you're also depending on the S&amp;P 500's pretty impressive history to repeat. To me the 6%-9% long-run historical range of S&amp;P 500 returns doesn't match up well with the new era of weaker, 2%-ish economic growth since the early 2000s. Insofar as growth is driven by secular trends such as worsening demographics and fewer productivity advances, you're depending on other factors (globalization driving earnings power, central banks continuing to distort asset prices indefinitely, etc.) to get to that long-run 6%-9%. If the S&amp;P enters a leaner couple of decades, it will be much harder to recover from losses.", "They used to. People got hired at entry level jobs and were trained on the job. They learned from the person above them and moved up the ladder. Then they taught the person below them while learning from the person above them. This continued for a whole career. Trades still work this way.  Now we've traded on the job training for minimum hiring requirements. We've traded moving up for having to move to another company. And we've traded proper raises for standard 3% increases until you quit and move to another company to do a job for which you have the minimum hiring requirements.", "\"Step 1: Require all Uber drivers to report to central facilities because \"\"you can't succeed without face to face interaction\"\" or whatever.  Step 2:  Purchase random companies somewhat related to, I guess, cars?  Maybe some random custom rim manufacturers, or the companies that make those shitty aftermarket petals and knobs you see at Autozone?  Instantly shut them down.  Step 3:  Find a way to make the Uber app so completely insecure that Putin gets instant updates every time you hail a ride.  Step 4: New LOGO!!  Step 5: Uber fails, and to celebrate her success, she walks away with 50 million dollar performance bonus, does more sexy photoshoots while bitching about how she is objectified as a woman, and looks forward to being CEO of Snapchat.\"", "In many cases yes.  In the case of an employer handing employees a credit card to use, that is clearly income if the card is used for something other than a business expense. Generally speaking, if you're receiving something with a significant value without strings attached, it is likely taxable. Google no doubt has an army of tax attorneys, so perhaps they are able to exploit loopholes of some sort."]}
+{"query": "How to tell if you can trust a loan company?", "corpus": ["Look for people who have done business with them. If you don't know anyone who has used their services, look for a company that at least has a brick and mortar branch in your area. Being able to deal with them face to face is a must. Have you checked with your local bank?"], "neg": ["In Maryland, a landlord must hold your security deposit in an escrow account and pay you interest when returning the deposit.  The interest is simple interest; it does not compound. The interest rate that they must pay has changed over the last 43 years.  Before October 1, 2004, the rate was 4%.  Until January 1, 2015, the rate was 3%.  Currently, the rate is 1.5% OR the simple interest rate accrued at the daily U.S. Treasury yield curve rate for one year, as of the first business day of each year, whichever is greater.  (This year, the rate is 1.5%.)  Maryland's Department of Housing and Community Development has a Security Deposit Calculator for easy calculation of this interest; however, it only works for deposits since January 1, 2015. It is unclear to me whether the interest rate in effect is the one that was in place when the security deposit was made, or if the rate changes over the years.   At most, if you get 4% interest every year, I would expect you to receive $429.76, which is $158 + ($158 * 4% * 43).  The interest is accrued every 6 months, so you would not get any interest for the 3 months that you rented in your 44th year. (With the new law that took effect this year, interest is accrued monthly.) At least, if the interest rate changes with the new laws, I would expect you to receive $413.18, which is $158 + ($158 * 4% * 32.5) + ($158 * 3% * 10.25) + ($158 * 1.5% * 0.5). Some text on the Security Deposit Calculator suggests that the laws for Prince George's County are different than the rest of the state.  If you are in that county, you'll need to check the local ordinances to see what security deposit policies apply.", "In my opinion, since she will live in one apartment, as will you and your husband, the simplest method is to divide the ratio exactly the same as the area for your living space. If it's 40/60, she puts 40% down, you put 60%. And you split expenses the same.  The tenant income can be applied to the house expenses, as it's no different than giving her 40% and you keep 60%.  No matter how well you get along, it's easy for someone to feel a split of expenses isn't fair unless it's discussed and agreed up front.", "QE was started by Ben Bernanke's FED who was appointed by GWB. The FED is a separate entity from politics regardless of all the attempts to gain control. No politician came up with QE and most didn't support it.   Why would Dems or the GOP run on a program that an independent and privately run central bank created? Do you even understand what the FED is or how monetary policy is set?", "I asked this question in this weeks question thread.  But I'll ask it here too.    If the buy side here is an etf and has an expense ratio of x, does the rebate offset the expense or is accounted some other way? Another way, Is the rebate profit for the fund manager or the fund? Does it get disclosed somehow?", "\"Call me crazy, but doesn't this take us from the realm of *civil* damages, into seeing execs frog-marched into police cars?  Obama may not have gotten his 30-day requirement into law, but [most states follow](http://www.ncsl.org/research/telecommunications-and-information-technology/security-breach-notification-laws.aspx) California's data breach standard; sorry, residents of Alabama and South Dakota, you'll have to take comfort from the shadows when the latest NY AG moves to make a name for himself.  / Hmm, \"\"Eric Schneiderman\"\"... Nope, I don't see any penis jokes there, he's safe.\"", "\"Signing bonuses are probably the most variable of all, as there is a general understanding that more personal factors are taken into account. As a result, HR isn't under a huge obligation to explain away the differences. In comparison, for salary there's the wide expectation that same job = same pay. Since there's so variable, but also fairly rare, \"\"budget\"\" isn't a main concern for many HR departments. And they certainly won't have a finely grained budget breakdown. \"\"This year we'll pay $250.000 for headhunters, $50000 for relocation payments, $100,000 for pension transfers, $150.000 for stock option losses...\"\". It's generally tossed on one big heap, \"\"cost of hiring\"\". So, what can you ask for? That's really a market question. What's your value to the company? How much of that is already reflected in salary and other benefits? The main downside to signing bonuses is that a company won't know how long you'd stay. Your value to the company is probably your monthly work. Therefore they cannot amortize that bonus over a fixed amount of months. What if you leave after 3 months? For that reason, a \"\"conditional\"\" signing bonus is a reasonable offer from your side. E.g. ask for one month salary, conditional on you staying for 24 months, and otherwise you'll repay them from your last salary.\"", "While JB King says some useful things, I think there is another fundamental reason why stock markets go down after disasters, either natural or man-made.  There is a real impact on the markets - in the case of something like 9/11 due to closed airport, higher security costs, closer inspections on trade goods, tighter restrictions on visas, real payments for the rebuilding of destroyed buildings and insurance payouts for killed people, and eventually the cost of a war. But almost as important is the uncertainty and risk. Nobody knew what was going to happen in the days and weeks after an attack like that. Is there going to be another one a week later, or every week for the next year? Will air travel become essentially impractical? Will international trade be severely restricted? All those would have a huge, massive effect on the economy. You may argue that those things are very unlikely, even after something like 9/11. But even a small increase in the likelihood of a catastrophic economic crash is enough to start people selling. There is another thing that drives the market down. Even if most people are sure that there won't be a catastrophic economic crash, they know that other people think there might be and so will sell. That will drive the market down. If they know the market is going down, then sensible traders will start to sell, even if they think there is zero risk of a crash. This makes the effect worse. Eventually prices will drop so far that the people who don't think there is a crash will start to buy, so they can make a profit on the recovery. But that usually doesn't happen until there has been a substantial drop."]}
+{"query": "401k with paltry match or SPY ETF?", "corpus": ["\"Answers: 1. Is this a good idea? Is it really risky? What are the pros and cons? Yes, it is a bad idea. I think, with all the talk about employer matches and tax rates at retirement vs. now, that you miss the forest for the trees. It's the taxes on those retirement investments over the course of 40 years that really matter. Example: Imagine $833 per month ($10k per year) invested in XYZ fund, for 40 years (when you retire). The fund happens to make 10% per year over that time, and you're taxed at 28%. How much would you have at retirement? 2. Is it a bad idea to hold both long term savings and retirement in     the same investment vehicle, especially one pegged to the US stock     market? Yes. Keep your retirement separate, and untouchable. It's supposed to be there for when you're old and unable to work. Co-mingling it with other funds will induce you to spend it (\"\"I really need it for that house! I can always pay more into it later!\"\"). It also can create a false sense of security (\"\"look at how much I've got! I got that new car covered...\"\"). So, send 10% into whatever retirement account you've got, and forget about it. Save for other goals separately.  3. Is buying SPY a \"\"set it and forget it\"\" sort of deal, or would I need     to rebalance, selling some of SPY and reinvesting in a safer vehicle     like bonds over time? For a retirement account, yes, you would. That's the advantage of target date retirement funds like the one in your 401k. They handle that, and you don't have to worry about it. Think about it: do you know how to \"\"age\"\" your account, and what to age it into, and by how much every year? No offense, but your next question is what an ETF is! 4. I don't know ANYTHING about ETFs. Things to consider/know/read? Start here: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/e/etf.asp 5. My company plan is \"\"retirement goal\"\" focused, which, according to     Fidelity, means that the asset allocation becomes more conservative     over time and switches to an \"\"income fund\"\" after the retirement     target date (2050). Would I need to rebalance over time if holding     SPY? Answered in #3. 6. I'm pretty sure that contributing pretax to 401k is a good idea     because I won't be in the 28% tax bracket when I retire. How are the     benefits of investing in SPY outweigh paying taxes up front, or do     they not? Partially answered in #1. Note that it's that 4 decades of tax-free growth that's the big dog for winning your retirement. Company matches (if you get one) are just a bonus, and the fact that contributions are tax free is a cherry on top. 7. Please comment on anything else you think I am missing I think what you're missing is that winning at personal finance is easy, and winning at personal finance is hard\""], "neg": ["Ad-based business model is the hands down best way to go. Imagine an internet where you had to make micropayments to every website you visited. It is just not viable.  The thing is, there are proper and improper ways to do ads. A banner ad? A text ad? Fine. Whatever.  An noisy, seizure inducing ad? Gross. A 30-second video ad to watch a Youtube video? Disgusting. A website that is 90% advertising and 10% content? Worthless.", "\"Instead of getting into complex economic theories, here are the few places I can tell you where the cash has disappeared to:  1. Apple - holding over 100b cash in their vault more than any banks have in their reserves in the world and more than enough to pay off all of the debts of the U.S.  2. Real Estates.........in developing countries, that is :p. You may keep hearing how real estates are de-valuing in the U.S., but in developing countries like the BRICs, they are going higher. Think Hong Kong, Tokyo, Beijing, Shanghai, etc. Yes, it's a proven bubble there. If you have access to their regional news, just listen to how many people in Asia have to borrow from loan sharks to keep their finances afloat.  3. Gold - go see for yourself on goldprice.org, that's where the wealthy individuals put their cash in the so-called \"\"safe haven\"\" next to shotguns. Yes, it's ridiculous and is totally out of anyone's league beyond basic things like air, water, and food.  4. Commodities (gas, food, basic materials) - enough said, check out your local gas pumps and grocery stores.\"", "This is really what excites me, how about we pick some one out of the rest of the 99% of America. . .we have had such a long line of 1% . . of course AIPAC will not be happy and your Master Nathanyahoo will be most disappointed.", "She walks backwards, making sure that the ground is clear. She tenses, bounces up and down to warm up and then, slowly at first, gathering steam, she begins to sprint. She's right on target, her leg goes back and now it's swinging forward, forward and *BOOM* it connects and the can goes flying down the road.  The world markets go wild for another 72 hours before pessimism returns!", "If your gut told you to buy during the depths of '09, your gut might be well-calibrated. The problem is stock market declines during recessions are frequently not that large relative to the average long run return of 9%:  A better strategy might be hold a percentage in equities based upon a probability distribution of historical returns.  This becomes problematic because of changes in the definition of earnings and the recent inflation stability which has encouraged high valuations:  Cash flow has not been as corrupted as earnings now, and might be a better indicator:  This obviously isn't perfect either, but returns can be improved. Since there is no formulaic way yet conventionally available, the optimal primary strategy is still buy & hold which has made the most successful investor frequently one of the richest people on the planet for decades, but this could still be used as an auxiliary for cash management reserves during recessions once retired.", "Let's be real, at this point in time it was pretty well known that these 3 banks weren't going to be allowed to fail no matter what (Goldman Sachs failing lol) . And Buffet is privy to a lot more information than your average investor. Let's not act like he was some heroic figure. Good investment, sure.", "Looking for trusted SEO Consultant in Florida? Christian Ventures is best seo company in Florida provide delivering the highest impact SEO and corporate branding strategies to our clients with a proven record for Increasing Sales. For more information call us on (727) 906 2943."]}
+{"query": "Can the U.S. government retroactively tax gains made earlier in the fiscal year?", "corpus": ["\"You're certainly referring to \"\"Ex Post Facto\"\" laws, and while the US is constitutionally prohibited from passing criminal laws that are retroactive, the US Supreme Court has upheld many tax laws that apply tax code changes retroactively. You might ask a similar question on Law.SE for a more thorough treatment of the legalities of congress passing those laws, but I will stick to the personal finance portion of the question. What this means is that you can't expect that the current tax laws will be in force in the future, and your investment/retirement plans should be as flexible as possible. You may wish to have some money in both Roth and traditional 401(k) accounts. You might not want to have millions of dollars in Roth accounts, because if congress does act to limit the tax benefits of those accounts, it will probably be targeting the larger balances. If you are valuing tax deductions, you should put slightly more weight on deductions that you can take today than deductions that would apply in the future. If you do find yourself in trouble because of a retroactive change, be sure to consult a tax lawyer that specializes in dealing with the IRS to possibly negotiate a settlement for a lower amount than the full tax bill that results from the changes.\""], "neg": ["It sounds like your looking for something like an offshore bank (e.g. an anonymous Swiss bank account).  These don't really exist anymore. I think you should just open a small bank account in your home country (preferably one the reimburses your ATM fees, like Charles Schwab in the US).  If it's a small amount of money, the authorities probably won't care and they won't be able to give you large penalties anyways.", "\"In that case, would it then be assured that the entire classes scores are high if they are based on the weakest student as the bar?  *some of the implementations of \"\"No Child Left Behind\"\" encourage pacing to the slowest student rather than challenging all of them at the level they can be challenged. It's pretty broken.*\"", "So, what is the argument to be bullish on Roku? I absolutely love the interface, so much so that all 4 of the TVs in my house are on a Roku device - or are Roku TV's.  The simplicity and speed destroy most smart TV set-ups, especially Samsung.  I understand that they can be easily copied by the big guys with deep pockets, but is there a scenario where Roku emerges as the primary interface for streaming on TV's?", "I'm in connecticut and I have met with RobertHalf and another recruiting firm. They both said they would be in constant contact with me yet I haven't heard from either so far. I have emailed and called and haven't gotten much.  I try to apply to at least 4 or 5 new positions a day but never hear anything back.  [This](http://www.w3schools.com/sql/default.asp) is what I have been trying to familiarize myself with just to get the gist of SQL.", "\"You might try just asking him, in private. Don't accuse him of misbehaving, just ask how you can improve, which he'll probably tell you if there is some real reason.  \"\"Hey boss, I just wanted to take a minute to check in. I'm trying hard to do a great job. Do you have any suggestions on how I can be a better team member?\"\"\"", "Are you looking for a trustworthy, reliable New York City IT support team to provide your business with a solid foundation for success? ingenuIT is an information technology consulting company focused on helping businesses meet their goals. We provide technology consulting, network implementation &amp; support, cloud &amp; virtualization services, and other mission-critical services.", "When you say consumer, my understanding of GE is that it is an industrial company -- very little of what they do now is consumer facing.   My experience is a few years old - I did work with GE Water, which is now GE Power and Water.  If you want my take, it is Immelt leaving and Flannery putting up a low water mark so he can 'paint the tape' in future years.  IMO Immelt wasn't a bad CEO, but he had decades of Welsh balance sheet to clean up"]}
+{"query": "Can I use a different HSA than PayFlex that came with aetna?", "corpus": ["You can ask your employer for anything that you want. However, most employers, if they are contributing their own money into your HSA, or you are contributing to your own HSA through payroll deduction, only work with one HSA, which is much easier for them to manage. You are free to decline their HSA if you want.  However, if they are kicking in free money into your HSA, I don't recommend that you decline it.  Just pick the best option you have for investing. As for the money that you are contributing, if you don't want to put your own money into your employer's Aetna HSA, you can open up an HSA with any institution you like.  You can even do this and still keep Aetna HSA to take advantage of the employer's contributions.  However, your annual limit is still the total of all contributions to all HSA's in your name, whether you make them or your employer makes them. When deciding whether or not to use payroll deduction into the Aetna HSA or to go your own way, keep in mind that payroll deduction skips some payroll taxes."], "neg": ["How the ruddy hell can a business keep on reporting increase in profits year over year, especially an entity like mcdonalds in a field like fast food. Deeply entrenched in a fast paced competition, and yet stable with its universal brand recognition. Unless you expand into fringe markets like infant fast food or some bizarre explored stuff like that.", "I see you've marked an answer as accepted but I MUST tell you that STOPPING your 401k contribution all together is a bad idea. Your company match is 100% rate of return(or 50% depending on structure).  I don't care what market you look at, or how bad a loan you take out, you will not receive 100% rate of return, or be charged 100% interest. Further, taking out a loan against your 401k effectively does two things: It is a loan that must be repaid according to the terms of your 401k  AND in every 401k I've ever encountered, you cannot make contributions to the 401k until the loan is repaid. This in effect stops your contributions, and will almost certainly save you very little on your interest rates on your current loans. I have 4 potential solutions that may help achieve your goal without sacrificing your 401k match and transferring the debt from one lender to another, but they are conditional. Is your company match 100% up to 4% of your salary, or 50% of your contribution (up to a limit you have not yet reached)? This is important.  If it is 100% up to 4%, stop committing the additional 4% and use that to pay down your debt...and after ward set up that 4% as auto pay into an IRA, not into the 401k.  An IRA will make you more money because YOU have control over its management, not your employer. If it is 50% match, contribute until the match is met because you cannot get 50% rate of return anywhere, then take your additional monies and get an IRA.  As far as your debt, in this scenario simply suck it up and pay it as is.  You will lose far more than you gain by stopping your contributions. If you simply must reduce your expenses by 150$ month try refinancing the mortgage and rolling the 6500$ into it.  If you get a big enough drop in the interest rate you could still end up paying less. OR If you cannot make the gain there, try snowballing the three payments.  You do this by calling your student loan vendor and telling them you need to make much smaller payments, like even zero depending on the type of loan.  Then take ALL of the money you are currently spending on the 3 loans and put into the car payment.  When it's gone, roll the whole thing into the higher interest student loan, then finally roll it all into the last student loan.  You'll pay it off faster, and student loans have lots of laws and regulations regarding working with payers to keep them paying something without breaking them. WHATEVER YOU DO, DO NOT STOP YOUR CONTRIBUTIONS.  50% OR 100%, THAT MONEY IS GUARANTEED AT A HIGHER RATE OF RETURN THAN YOU CAN GET ANYWHERE, ESPECIALLY GUARANTEED.", "Google's management is already acutely aware of hese forces and likely has better intel than any material publicly available. Apple is not in the ISP business and while people having faster internet would possibly benefit Apple to a mild extent this isn't a pressing issue for them.   Unfortunately the dominance of the cable oligopoly is upheld by political forces outside the influence of much of the private sector. I'm not too familiar with the American regulatory system but my guess is the DoJ wouldn't even look twice at this, let alone have any jurisdiction on the matter.   Sorry :(", "The buying service your credit union uses is similar to the one my credit union uses. I have used their service several times. There is no direct cost to use the service, though the credit union as a whole might have a fee to join the service. I have used it 4 times over the decades. If you know what make and model you want to purchase, or at least have it narrowed down to just a few choices, you can get an exact price for that make, model, and options. You do this before negotiating a price. You are then issued a certificate. You have to go to a specific salesman at a specific dealership, but near a large city there will be several dealers to pick from.  There is no negotiating at the dealership. You still have to deal with a trade in, and the financing option: dealer, credit union, or cash. But it is nice to not have to negotiate on the price. Of course there is nobody to stop you from using the price from the buying service as a goal when visiting a more conveniently located dealership, that is what I did last time. The first couple of times I used the standard credit union financing, and the last time I didn't need a loan. Even if you don't use the buying service, one way to pay for the car is to get the loan from the credit union, but get the rebate from the dealer. Many times if you get the low dealer financing you can't get the rebate. Doing it this way actually saves money. Speaking of rebates see how the buying service addresses them. The big national rebates  were still honored during at least one of my purchases. So it turned out to be the buying service price minus $1,000. If your service worked like my experience, the cost to you was a little time to get the price, and a little time in a different dealer to verify that the price was good.", "Hollywood doesn't care about the message that the films produce, they don't care about the social change. All they care about is the money that they will lose if the industry system falls apart. They are worried that what happened/is happening to the RIAA will happen to the MPAA, and that is what they are trying to protect against.   Why would James Cameron go to Fox to distribute his movie, if he could just distribute it himself and keep more of the profits. That's their biggest fear. If they can't control the distribution methods on the internet, then they can't control their inevitable deterioration into obsoleteness.", "Funny, you picked just about the one business that I'm expecting to fall *because* it runs on weak market sentiment.   The moment Uber stops subsidizing their rides it will become far more viable for   localized ridesharing networks to undercut them  and ride the wave of litigation/etc their efforts passed. Not to mention their competition which have much less to pay back to their investors.   Uber users are mostly bellweather fans happy to hop to a new service that undercuts them with no love lost between them and Uber (once they use up any credits/etc they had saved up). Without autonomous, Uber's dead in the water.", "\"Yes sir, I'm working on compiling your \"\"precise evidence,\"\" and I'll have it printed and bound for you on the double.  In the meantime, you can look here as a starting point and try to find the part where the Fed has allowed interest rates to adjust freely, and maybe you can learn why rates are artificial:    http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Federal_Reserve_responses_to_the_subprime_crisis  As for \"\"cahoots\"\" and independent banks and whatever other off-topic nonsense you're babbling about, there was nothing said about cahoots or independent banks.  The interest rates paid for and to US banks are affected by the monetary policy of the Fed.  There is no collusion, or \"\"cahoots,\"\" required for them to follow a common policy of artificially-low interest rates, which was the point of the earlier post.\""]}
+{"query": "What does cryptocurrency mean for governments?", "corpus": ["Government's tax citizens and businesses in their currency. Earnings (even earnings in cryptocurrencies) are taxable income."], "neg": ["See, I agree with all of that!  However, I think Clinton is exactly the same personality, underneath a thin veneer. The only real difference is that she is slightly better at hiding her sociopathy. This actually makes her more dangerous.", "\"Selling as well as buying a stock are part science and part art form.  I remember once selling a stock at its 52 week high too. That particular stock \"\"quadrupled\"\" in value over the next 52 weeks.  Mind you I made 50% ROI on the stock but my point is that none of us have a crystal ball on whether a particular stock will ever stop or start going up or stop or start going down. If someone had those answers they wouldn't be telling you they would be practicing them to make more money! Make up your mind what you want to make and stick by your decisions.  Bulls make money when stocks go up and Bears make money when they go down but pigs don't make money. -RobF\"", "\"You don't state where you are, so any answers to this will by necessity be very general in nature. How many bank accounts should I have and what kinds You should have one transaction account and one savings account. You can get by with just a single transaction account, but I really don't recommend that. These are referred to with different names in different jurisdictions, but the basic idea is that you have one account where money is going in and out (the transaction account), and one where money goes in and stays (the savings account). You can then later on, as you discover various needs, build on top of that basic foundation. For example, I have separate accounts for each source of money that comes into my personal finances, which makes things much easier when I sit down to fill out the tax forms up to almost a year and a half later, but also adds a bit of complexity. For me, that simplicity at tax time is worth the additional complexity; for someone just starting out, it might not be. (And of course, it is completely unnecessary if you have only one source of taxable income and no other specific reason to separate income streams.) how much (percentage-wise) of my income should I put into each one? With a single transaction account, your entire income will be going into that account. Having a single account to pay money into will also make life easier for your employer. You will then have to work out a budget that says how much you plan to spend on food, shelter, savings, and so on. how do I portion them out into budgets and savings? If you have no idea where to start, but have an appropriate financial history (as opposed to just now moving into a household of your own), bring out some old account statements and categorize each line item in a way that makes sense to you. Don't be too specific; four or five categories will probably be plenty. These are categories like \"\"living expenses\"\" (rent, electricity, utilities, ...), \"\"food and eating out\"\" (everything you put in your mouth), \"\"savings\"\" (don't forget to subtract what you take out of savings), and so on. This will be your initial budget. If you have no financial history, you are probably quite young and just moving out from living with your parents. Ask them how much might be reasonable in your area to spend on basic food, a place to live, and so on. Use those numbers as a starting point for a budget of your own, but don't take them as absolute truths. Always have a \"\"miscellaneous expenses\"\" or \"\"other\"\" line in your budget. There will always be expenses that you didn't plan for, and/or which don't neatly fall into any other category. Allocate a reasonable sum of money to this category. This should be where you take money from during a normal month when you overshoot in some budget category; your savings should be a last resort, not something you tap into on a regular basis. (If you find yourself needing to tap into your savings on a regular basis, adjust your budget accordingly.) Figure out based on your projected expenses and income how much you can reasonably set aside and not touch. It's impossible for us to say exactly how much this will be. Some people have trouble setting aside 5% of their income on a regular basis without touching it; others easily manage to save over 50% of their income. Don't worry if this turns out a small amount at first. Get in touch with your bank and set up an automatic transfer from your transaction account to the savings account, set to recur each and every time you get paid (you may want to allow a day or two of margin to ensure that the money has arrived in your account before it gets taken out), of the amount you determined that you can save on a regular basis. Then, try to forget that this money ever makes it into your finances. This is often referred to as the \"\"pay yourself first\"\" principle. You won't hit your budget exactly every month. Nobody does. In fact, it's more likely that no month will have you hit the budget exactly. Try to stay under your budgeted expenses, and when you get your next pay, unless you have a large bill coming up soon, transfer whatever remains into your savings account. Spend some time at the end of each month looking back at how well you managed to match your budget, and make any necessary adjustments. If you do this regularly, it won't take very long, and it will greatly increase the value of the budget you have made. Should I use credit cards for spending to reap benefits? Only if you would have made those purchases anyway, and have the money on hand to pay the bill in full when it comes due. Using credit cards to pay for things is a great convenience in many cases. Using credit cards to pay for things that you couldn't pay for using cash instead, is a recipe for financial disaster. People have also mentioned investment accounts, brokerage accounts, etc. This is good to have in mind, but in my opinion, the exact \"\"savings vehicle\"\" (type of place where you put the money) is a lot less important than getting into the habit of saving regularly and not touching that money. That is why I recommend just a savings account: if you miscalculate, forgot a large bill coming up, or for any other (good!) reason need access to the money, it won't be at a time when the investment has dropped 15% in value and you face a large penalty for withdrawing from your retirement savings. Once you have a good understanding of how much you are able to save reliably, you can divert a portion of that into other savings vehicles, including retirement savings. In fact, at that point, you probably should. Also, I suggest making a list of every single bill you pay regularly, its amount, when you paid it last time, and when you expect the next one to be due. Some bills are easy to predict (\"\"$234 rent is due the 1st of every month\"\"), and some are more difficult (\"\"the electricity bill is due on the 15th of the month after I use the electricity, but the amount due varies greatly from month to month\"\"). This isn't to know exactly how much you will have to pay, but to ensure that you aren't surprised by a bill that you didn't expect.\"", "\"I'm sorry, i should have said I was saying that sarcastically, but those are the arguments which I suspect are being made.  &gt;*\"\"You did not answer my question: Where's my advocate in the negotiations?\"\"*  Its doubtful that they would be among the hundreds (thousands?) of lobbyists. Unless you are a corporation and you have one.  &gt;*\"\"Why should I believe the negotiators have my best interests at heart?\"\"*  I don't think the negotiators have your or the country's best interests at heart. I think they barely even play lip service to it any more.   &gt;*\"\"What's the point of negotiating a treaty that doesn't have the people's interests at heart?\"\"*     Well, look at all the things that are in TTIP, for example, here in the US, by underfunding government agencies tasked with enforcement of existing laws and recommending new ones, the chemical industry has succeeded for the last 25 years or so at preventing a lot of needed regulation of a lot of demonstrably dangerous substances. Particularly a class of chemicals called [endocrine disruptors](http://ehp.niehs.nih.gov/tag/Endocrine-Disruptors/).   Meanwhile, Europe has put into place much more stringent regulations based on the Precautionary Principle, which requires that chemical industry prove some chemicals are safe to get them approved, while the US the key issue is overcoming lobbyists and even chemicals which are clearly dangerous have to go through a lot of hoops before they are regulated, and even when its shown to be extremely likely they are dangerous, it is very difficult when lobbyists are there often regulators are political appointees from the industries they are supposed to regulate. There is no denying that having different regulations is complicated, but what they are promoting as a solution is not a good approach.   They are pushing for what they call regulatory coherence- which is basically the forcing of all environmental and chemical laws in a bunch of countries [into the same mold](http://www.ciel.org/Publications/ToxicPartnership_Mar2014.pdf). It would overrule a lot of state laws involving things like fracking..and food safety -   Instead of raising our standards to the European level, they want to bring theirs down, and get rid of the (IMO, quite prudent) Precautionary Principle, which I think is incredibly stupid. But, people are not aware of this.  There- I think has clearly been a high level decision - some kind of gentlemans agreement between the 5 media corporations that control virtually all US media, to never cover some issues.  To not cover those issues at all. But in Europe they have a similar problem, just not quite as bad. But there people make more of an effort to find out whats really happening. Also there are fewer astroturfers.  (the US is known for massive levels of astroturfing in its online world)  For example, in the UK, there is a lot of protesting because of the implicit goal of the FTAs is to privatize public services, although they deny it, its right there [in agreements like GATS](http://www.iatp.org/files/GATS_and_Public_Service_Systems.htm), framing public services as bad, some kind of theft from companies, and ratcheting any small privatization into a permanent entitlement for that company to that market so its permanent, even if its unsuccessful. Thats been [disastrous to their NHS](https://www.opendemocracy.net/ournhs/john-hilary/on-ttip-and-nhs-they-are-trying-to-bamboozle-us).  How did it get this way? In part its due to the failure of Americans to seek out facts, something people really have to do because there are forces spending a lot of effort into hiding them and trying to exploit positions of trust to create a dangerous false security..  Its a direct result of so much money in politics. The so called \"\"stakeholders\"\" spend a lot of money and energy into getting candidates into office. So then they expect something in return.   This is related: http://www.chemsec.org/what-we-do/influencing-public-policy/news-updates/1321-letter-to-the-ttip-negotiators-signed-by-178-groups\"", "I don't hate your point, but driver chattiness has nothing to do with Uber vs Lyft. I've taken lots of both and many drivers do both as well. I've never been compelled to sit in the front in a Lyft and tip has always been an option with Lyft. No obligation if you don't want to.", "\"The other answers have touched on amortization, early payment, computation of interest, etc, which are all very important, but I think there's another way to understand the importance of knowing the P/I breakdown. The question mentions the loan payment as \"\"cash outflow\"\". That is true, but from an accounting perspective (disclaimer: I am not an accountant, but I know enough of the basics to be dangerous), the outflow needs to be directed to different accounts. The loan principal appears as a liability on your personal balance sheet, which you could use, for example, in determining net worth. The principal amount in your payment should be applied to reduce the liability account. The interest payment goes into the expense account.  Another way to look at it is that the principal, while it does reduce your cash account, can be thought of as an internal transfer to the liability account, thus reducing the size of the liability. The interest payment cannot. Aside: From this perspective, the value of the home is an asset, and the difference between the asset account and the loan liability account is the equity in the house (as pointed out in different language by the accepted answer). Of course, precisely determining the value of an illiquid asset like a house at any given moment pretty much requires you to actually sell it, so those accounts are hard to maintain in real-time (the liability of the loan is much easier to track).\"", "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."]}
+{"query": "understand taxes when geting money from a project built long time ago plus my full time job", "corpus": ["You need to register as self-employed with HMRC (it is perfectly fine to be self-employed and employed by an employer at the same time, in exactly your kind of situation). Then, when the income arrives you will need to declare it on your yearly tax return.  HMRC information about registering for self-employment and declaring the income is here: https://www.gov.uk/working-for-yourself/overview There's a few extra hoops if your clients are outside the UK; the detail depends on whether they are in the EU or not. More details about this are here: https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesses/selling-overseas ."], "neg": ["You could open an HSA with a company like Vanguard or Fidelity that offers lower fees and roll the money there if you want to avoid the $3.50/month. The chances of you going until retirement without opportunities to spend down the money in that account on medical expenses seems rather low.", "\"It's a tricky question w/out more context. If your only options are between stock/funds and letting it sit (i.e. in a saving or CD), I'd have to say option one is the way to go (but that's based on my situation, and you did ask \"\"if you ..\"\").  However, I think the true answer is \"\"it depends.\"\" It depends on your risk tolerance and what are your short-term vs. long-term financial needs. Only after answering those questions you can then seek to strategize and diversify investment accordingly.\"", "A lot of people will probably talk about appearance, body language and all the rest of the social stuff  I say..If you have evidence to prove you are competent to do the job, concentrate on that..just the facts, clearly explained  Of course, if you are incompetent..get a nicer suit, learn how to shake hands and practice brown-nosing", "Votes.  Resources everyone requires.  The ability to sue people forever for the same or similar issue, until those people are financially unable to defend themselves. Control over a “corner” of the market.  The means of production from under their competition. And on and on.", "If you're willing to take on higher risk than a corporate investor (you have to be) and you are smart it's way easier to operate as an individual. Your position/strategy is SO much easier to execute just simply based on trade size, you have relatively no overhead. You won't impact the market at all which is where a heavy hitter might have an advantage, other than that you are in a better position in terms of return vs investment.", "I am in the United States. There is no need to keep the statements in any form forever. Once the bank gives you a 1099 stating how much interest you have earned, you don't need to keep them. If you only have them in electronic form, that is good enough for the IRS. When you do need to show a bank statement, such as when applying for a loan, the loan company will be keeping a copy. It doesn't matter if it was a scan from the original, from a printed PDF, or if you printed it from your archives. In the US they used send the original check back to the person who wrote it, so they could keep it for their records. Then many banks went to carbons, but if you paid extra they would send you the original. Now the bank that cashes the check scans the check and destroys the original. If you want a copy for your records it only exists as a scanned image.", "&gt;The assumption that most of the jobs will be automated doesn't necessarily imply that automation leads to job loss.  That's the problem. Apparently, it does. Every job can be replaced with a new software. Again, short-term there it might not be noticable, but in few decades, there is a high possibility of most jobs being replaced. But this is not the question, the question is, how would businesses make money in case everyone was replaced with a software."]}
+{"query": "Stock stopped trading, what does this mean?", "corpus": ["It looks like JP Morgan can convert your holding to unsponsored ADRs until July.. In any event, you should not completely lose the equity. Volvo still exists as a public company, it's just not tradable on US exchanges. Q1: Yes, you'd need a JPM account.  Your broker should have offered a similar service. If they didn't they are not a broker. Q2: You own 30 shares in Volvo. You need to get your broker to either sell them (off-exchange now) or tell you how to gain access to them."], "neg": ["This idea does not make sense for most mutual funds. The net asset value, or NAV, is the current market value of a fund's holdings, minus the fund's liabilities, that is usually expressed as a per-share amount. For most funds, the NAV is determined daily, after the close of trading on some specified financial exchange, but some funds update their NAV multiple times during the trading day. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Mutual_fund I am not certain, but I believe that OppenheimerFunds does not report intraday prices.  I would call them up and ask.", "\"You could not have two stocks both at $40, both with P/E 2, but one an EPS of $5 and the other $10.  EPS = Earnings Per Share P/E = Price per share/Earnings Per Share So, in your example, the stock with EPS of $5 has a P/E of 8, and the stock with an EPS of $10 has a P/E of 4.  So no, it's not valid way of looking at things, because your understanding of EPS and P/E is incorrect. Update: Ok, with that fixed, I think I understand your question better. This isn't a valid way of looking at P/E. You nailed one problem yourself at the end of the post: The tricky part is that you have to assume certain values remain   constant, I suppose But besides that, it still doesn't work. It seems to make sense in the context of investor psychology: if a stock is \"\"supposed to\"\" trade at a low P/E, like a utility, that it would stay at that low P/E, and thus a $1 worth of EPS increase would result in lower $$ price increase than a stock that was \"\"supposed to\"\" have a high P/E. And that would be true. But let's game it out: Scenario Say you have two stocks, ABC and XYZ. Both have $5 EPS. ABC is a utility, so it has a low P/E of 5, and thus trades at $25/share. XYZ is a high flying tech company, so it has a P/E of 10, thus trading at $50/share. If both companies increase their EPS by $1, to $6, and the P/Es remain the same, that means company ABC rises to $30, and company XYZ rises to $60. Hey! One went up $5, and the other $10, twice as much! That means XYZ was the better investment, right? Nope. You see, shares are not tokens, and you don't get an identical, arbitrary number of them. You make an investment, and that's in dollars. So, say you'd invested $1,000 in each. $1,000 in ABC buys you 40 shares. $1,000 in XYZ buys you 20 shares. Their EPS adds that buck, the shares rise to maintain P/E, and you have: ABC: $6 EPS at P/E 5 = $30/share. Position value = 40 shares x $30/share = $1,200 XYZ: $6 EPS at P/E 10 = $60/share. Position value = 20 shares x $60/share = $1,200 They both make you the exact same 20% profit. It makes sense when you think about it this way: a 20% increase in EPS is going to give you a 20% increase in price if the P/E is to remain constant. It doesn't matter what the dollar amount of the EPS or the share price is.\"", "\"This seems almost overkill, but if you want to... I suppose one thing you could do is create a separate money in transit account, similar to Account Payable and Account Receivable. In your bookkeeping, transfer the money from the source account to the holding account on the date that the source bank withdraws it, and then transfer the money to the destination account on the date that the target bank deposits it. This both makes it clear that there is money going between places, and ensures that the daily balance on each \"\"physical\"\" account is accurate. For cash withdrawals and deposits, I'd just use the date when you make the withdrawal, since that is the day from which the money is available in the new location rather than the old one. Note: I don't know if this is the \"\"proper\"\" way to do it in a random jurisdiction, but I doubt being this explicit can get you into trouble.\"", "Even after the real estate crash, there are banks that lend money outside of the rules I'll share.  A fully qualified mortgage is typically run at debt to income ratios of 28/36, where 28% of your gross monthly income can apply to the mortgage, property tax, and insurance, and the 36% is the total monthly debt (including the mortgage, etc) plus car loan student loan, etc. It's less about the total loan on the potential than about these ratios. The bank may allow for 75% of monthly rent so until rentals are running at a profit, they may seem a loss, even while just breaking even.  This is just an overview, each bank may vary a bit.", "Your plan sounds quite sound to me.  I think that between the choices of [$800 for Loans, $300 for Retirement] and [$1100 for loans], both are good choices and you aren't going to go wrong either way.   Some of the factors you might want to consider: I like your retirement savings choices - I myself use the admiral version of VOO, plus a slightly specialized but still large ETF that allows me to do a bit of shifting.  Having something that's at least a bit counter-market can be helpful for balancing (so something that will be going up some when the market overall is down some); I wouldn't necessarily do bonds at your age, but international markets are good for that, or a stock ETF that's more stable than the overall market.  If you're using Vanguard, look at the minimums for buying Admiral shares (usually a few grand) and aim to get those if possible, as they have significantly lower fees - though VOO seems to pretty much tie the admiral version (VFIAX) so in that case it may not matter so much. As far as the target retirement funds, you can certainly do those, but I prefer not to; they have somewhat higher (though for Vanguard not crazy high) expense ratios.  Realistically you can do the same yourself quite easily.", "I think the two have split in many ways. The majority of academic courses of course elevate competency levels, but they are only available either to those who can afford it, or those willing to suffer the debt. Competency in this context refers to direct training with companies in core skills needed directly on the job. Major organizations are now offering those from low-wage backgrounds a direct route to a career by developing their competencies. After a few years they might not have a credential (i.e. qualification such as  a masters degree) but they will have a resume that's skills-rich; and all of those skills will have been industry tested, not college tested. Hope that makes sense :)", "\"There is no unique identifier that exists to identify specific shares of a stock. Just like money in the bank, there is no real reason to identify which exact dollar bills belong to me or you, so long as there is a record that I own X bills and I can access them when I want. (Of course, unlike banks, there is still a 1:1 relationship between the amount I should own and the amount they actually hold). If I may reach a bit, the question that I assume you are asking is how are shared actually tracked, transferred, and recorded so that I know for certain that I traded you 20 Microsoft shares yesterday and they are now officially yours, given that it's all digital. While you can technically try and request a physical share certificate, it's very cumbersome to handle and transfer in that form.  Ownership of shares themselves are tracked for brokerage firms (in the case of retail trading, which I assume is the context of this question as we're discussion personal finance). Your broker has a record of how many shares of X, Y, and Z you own, when you bought each share and for how much, and while you are the beneficial owner of record (you get dividends, voting rights, etc.) your brokerage is the one who is \"\"holding\"\" the shares. When you buy or sell a stock and you are matched with a counterparty (the process of which is beyond the scope of this question) then a process of settlement comes into play. In the US, settlement takes 3 working days to process, and technically ownership does not transfer until the 3rd day after the trade is made, though things like margin accounts will allow you to effectively act as if you own the shares immediately after a buy/sell order is filled. Settlement in the US is done by a sole source, the Depository Trust & Clearing Corporation (DTCC). This is where retail and institutional trade all go to be sorted, checked and confirmed, and ultimately returned to the safekeeping of their new owners' representatives (your brokerage). Interestingly, the DTCC is also the central custodian for shares both physical and virtual, and that is where the shares of stock ultimately reside.\""]}
+{"query": "How to withdraw money from currency account without having to lose so much to currency conversion?", "corpus": ["If I understand your question, you're misunderstanding the buy/sell spread, and at least in this instance seem to be in an unfortunate situation where the spread is quite large. The Polish Zloty - GBP ideal exchange rate is around 5.612:1.  Thus, when actually exchanging currency, you should expect to pay a bit more than 5.612 Zloty (Zloties?) to get one Pound sterling, and you should expect to get a bit less than 5.612 Zloty in exchange for one Pound sterling.  That's because you're giving the bank its cut, both for operations and so that it has a reason to hold onto some Zloty (that it can't lend out).  It sounds like Barclay's has a large spread - 5.211 Buy, 5.867 Sell.  I would guess British banks don't need all that many Zloty, so you have a higher spread than you would for USD or EUR. Other currency exchange companies or banks, particularly those who are in the primary business of converting money, may have a smaller spread and be more willing to do it inexpensively for you.  Also, it looks like the Polish banks are willing to do it at a better rate (certainly they're giving you more Zloty for one Pound sterling, so it seems likely the other way would be better as well, though since they're a Polish bank it's certainly easier for them to give you Zloty, so this may be less true).  Barclay's is certainly giving you a better deal on Pounds for a Zloty than they are Zloty for a Pound (in terms of how far off their spread is from the ideal)."], "neg": ["No one at my firm uses python, but we have both long-term algo-managed portfolios as well as very successful day trading strategies. I've worked a bit with both, so if you have any questions I'd be happy to try and answer them and if I can't I'll ask at work next week.", "There are the EDHEC-risk indices based on similar hedge fund types but even then an IR would give you performance relative to the competition, which is not useful for most hf's as investors don't say I want to buy a global macro fund, vs a stat arb fund, investors say I want to pay a guy to give me more money!  Most investors don't care how the OTHER funds did or where the market went, they want that NAV to go always up , which is why a modified sharpe is probably better.", "Two of the main ways that investors benefit financially from a stock are dividends and increases in the price of the stock.  In the example as described, the benefits came primarily from dividends, leaving less benefits to be realized in terms of an increase in the value of the company. Another way to put that is that the company paid its profits to shareholders in the form of a dividend, instead of accumulating that as an increase in the value of the company.  The company could have chosen to take those profits and reinvest them in growing the business, which would lead to lower dividends but (hopefully) an increase in the valuation of the stock, but they chose to pay dividends instead.  This still rewards the investors, but  share prices stay low.", "\"I don't read crap I already know about.  I am very sure you are not \"\"done\"\" with me, as I am sure you will reply back to me... until the bitter end when you realize some truth, logic and facts. Prove me wrong.\"", "What I'm saying is the NATO thing is also aggressive, and the coup was aggressive.  Also I think ukraine is just another battle in a very long war between Russian and American oil interests. That's why I don't want to take a side, except keep the American military out of it.", "I'm not sure if you are including the use of credit cards in the intent of your quesiton.  However, I will give you some good reasons I use them even when I can pay cash: 1) I get an interest free loan for almost 30 days as long as I don't carry balances. 2) I get a statement detailing where I am spending my money that is helpful for budgeting. I'd never keep track to this level of detail if I were using cash. 3) Many cards offer reward programs that can be used for cash back. 4) It helps maintain my credit rating for those times I NEED to buy something and pay it off over time (car, house, etc.) 5) Not so much an issue for me personally, but for people that live paycheck to paycheck, it might help to time your cash outflows to match up with your inflows. For a business, I think it is mostly a cash flow issue. That is, in a lot of B2B type businesses customers can pay very slowly (managing their own cash flows). So your revenue can sometimes lag quite a bit behind the expenses that were associated with them (e.g payroll). A business line of credit can smooth out the cash flow, especially for companies that don't have a lot of cash reserves.", "I inherited nothing and have retired comfortably in my 50s after some hard work, tradeoffs etc., however I am quite certain that there are millions who are more intelligent, harder-working, talented and haven't had my luck.  Good luck can get you there, bad luck will stop you, in either case more completely than inheritance, contacts, diligence or talent.  It's worth remembering that the best luck is good health."]}
+{"query": "Books, Videos, Tutorials to learn about different investment options in the financial domain", "corpus": ["Those are some very broad questions and I don't think I can answer them completely, but I will add what I can. Barron's Finance and Investment Handbook is the best reference book I have found. It provides a basic description/definition for every type of investment available. It covers stocks, preferred stocks, various forms of bonds as well as mortgage pools and other exotic instruments. It has a comprehensive dictionary of finance terms as well. I would definitely recommend getting it.  The question about how people invest today is a huge one. There are people who simply put a monthly amount into a mutual fund and simply do that until retirement on one side and professional day traders who move in and out of stocks or commodities on a daily basis on the other."], "neg": ["The simplest way to handle this is for you to rent the apartment and sublet to the girlfriend and friend.  I'd split the utilities evenly, one-third from each.  The reason for this is that each of you contribute evenly to generating the utility bills.  It's not like your income makes the water cost more for you.   Utilities are driven by usage.  Dividing them other than equally is likely to lead to more problems than it solves.  Also, it seems unlikely that a different apartment would use significantly different water, electricity, or internet.  Those are driven by the appliances rather than the size or location of the apartment.  Only pay more for the utilities if you want something that they don't.  For example, maybe you want HBO, etc.  It would be reasonable for you to pay the entire premium if that's a luxury that they simply wouldn't buy.   I'd also divide the groceries evenly if you share and share alike.  If you eat separate meals, you can buy separate groceries.   If the rent can't be split evenly but you could afford it alone, then you can just sign up for it.  If you break up with the girlfriend and/or the friend moves out, you're still fine.  You have your fancy apartment and can afford it.   The bigger problem comes if you can't afford the apartment without both the girlfriend and friend contributing.  If so, you should probably avoid this situation.  It's fragile.  Any person leaving would put you in a financially untenable position.  You can look for a new tenant to replace your friend, but you can't exactly rely on getting a new move-in girlfriend on demand.   Neither the girlfriend nor the friend can afford to be on the main lease.  In case of emergency or tragedy, they couldn't replace you as a tenant.  That's why they should sublet.  Then their obligation is to you, not to the landlord.   How much apartment would the girlfriend and friend get if you weren't involved?  What rents would they pay?  That's probably how much rent they should pay for this apartment.  You want a better apartment (or a better location)?  That's on you.   You should only do this if you want to do it.  If you want to share apartments with the girlfriend and friend, then do so.  Work out something equitable.  If you plan on moving in together to reduce your costs, then you don't sound like you are compatible.  Obviously there are reasons to move in with the girlfriend aside from costs.  Why can't the friend get his or her own place?  The added rent probably won't do more than pay for the added room (you could get a one bedroom without the friend).   That points to an alternative way of calculating the friend's contribution:  the difference between a two bedroom and a one bedroom apartment.  That's the additional cost of the bigger apartment.  If the friend can't afford that, then this might not be a good idea.   Make sure that you can afford the apartment if one or both of the friend and girlfriend move out.  You can eventually replace the friend as the tenant but don't rely on doing the same with the girlfriend.  Share utilities evenly.  Possibly groceries too.  The friend should pay at least the added cost of the additional bedroom.  Don't expect either to pay more in the new apartment than they would pay without you.  You should be the only one on the main lease; sublet to them.", "I work for a punlically traded company. There are plenty of people who work very hard and are smarter than a lptbofbthe executives I know. He could be a cyborg, butbifbhe is the cfo by 29, he had to jump a fuckton of hurdles to get there.", "Oh, man, you are in for a life of disappointment if you think it's this easy. Ask your dad why he didn't think of this idea years ago. Owning and maintaining a business is quite difficult, and the business owners I know are stressed out and work hard just like everyone else. (Except with the added benefit that many people hate them and say that they've only been successful due to dishonesty.)  But, if you want to start, look at your profit and loss statement (you do calculate one, right?) and determine how much additional fixed cost you can afford. Look into local employment law with your lawyer and determine how much an employee would cost. Then figure out the duties you want them to do, and check local job postings to see if someone in your local labor market will meet those needs for the compensation you can give. If so, determine the value of those contributions. If the value is greater than the costs, go ahead and hire. Rinse and repeat.", "\"Um... I wonder why Monsanto has a provision in their licensing contracts to restrict purchasers from replanting seeds from year to year? Must be because no one ever replants seeds...  Go have a look at the Monsanto vs Schmeiser case. Not all, but a few farmers actually develop their own varieties of seeds from... Gasp... Their own plants! This poor sod had the misfortune if having his field contaminated by Monsanto seeds. Which he did not plant. Yes, his intent was questionable when he harvested the seeds from plants he know came from Monsanto seeds to use them for development, yet it remains that farmers do replant seeds, and fields do get invaded by the GMO seeds.   Edit: should os said \"\"I has been said that the TPP and the TAP\"\" contain those provisions, as the documents aren't public, and all if this is hearsay... From the news outlets...\"", "There is no law that requires you to have a separate bank account for your business, or to pay all expenses from a business bank account. It is a GOOD IDEA to have a separate bank account and pay all business expenses from that account and all personal expenses from your personal account, because that makes sorting out what is what much simpler, both in case of an audit and for your own accounting. Whether a particular expenditure is a deductible business expense has nothing to do with what account you pay it from. If you pay advertising expenses for your business from your personal account, that's still (almost certainly) a deductible business expense. If you buy groceries from your business account, that's almost certainly not a deductible business expense. In your case, there are all kinds of rules about when and how much travel is deductible.", "\"I would say \"\"yes\"\" to your question.  CD's purchased from a bank on your behalf by your broker will be FDIC insured and safe.  However, be aware that no one is examining the broker except you to ensure that each CD is actually purchased from an FDIC insured bank.  Don't trust them blindly. See risks mentioned by the FDIC on the subject Remember, the broker should not originate the CD, so the broker's lack of FDIC protection is irrelevant.  The job of a broker is to buy things on your behalf.  If your broker does that appropriately and sticks with FDIC insured CD's, you will be insured. Given the risks and gotchas mentioned in the link, buying directly from a bank instead of through your broker still sounds like good advice to me but you can make your own decision based on your level of trust and aversion to inconvenience.\"", "\"I think a big part of this is sports coverage like he brought up. The only programming I miss from cable are live sports events. Luckily for me my favorite sport, the NFL, has kept games on non-cable television for local markets even when their games are on cable. Otherwise I might actually buy it.   What keeps TV in the game though are the contracts and blackout restrictions. I'm a big Wisconsin sports fan. I dropped cable in favor of picking up the MLB and NBA online options. The MLB one streamed game and looked great. The HD was spectacular and the service good. The NBA wasn't as great quality but definitely better than a free stream, plus I could pick up to 8 teams I wanted to watch. However, because of blackout restrictions and TV contracts I could never watch a Bucks or a Brewers game. The sole reason I purchased the products was to watch my hometown teams but the TV contracts prevented it. The NFL AFAIK only offers NFL replay--you can watch any NFL game 24 hours after it has been played. Anyone looking for a change in these policies can look elsewhere too. The NFL just signed a 10 year deal with television companies. Unless those channels want to start streaming the games on their websites it's not going to happen, unfortunately.   I personally think the leagues are losing profit because they're losing a large audience. There are plenty of customers who stream games illegally online that would happily pay for a higher quality product, but television is preventing this.   Also there has always been the excuse laid out by TV execs that \"\"we don't know how to properly monetize this content on the internet.\"\" That excuse worked 5-10 years ago. I can't seem to buy it now anymore.\""]}
+{"query": "What happens to bank account of non-resident alien who falls out of status?", "corpus": ["Nothing happens. A bank is a business; your relationship with the bank doesn't change because your visa or immigration status changes. Money held in the account is still held in the account. Interest paid on the account is still taxable. And so on. If the account is inactive long enough, abandoned account rules may apply, but that still has nothing to do with your status."], "neg": ["http://www.fdic.gov/deposit/deposits/index.html  FDIC currently insures up to $250,000.  (I would have put that as a comment to Jeffery but it says it was locked.) You don't want to put all your eggs in one basket.  If you shop around, and keep shopping all the time you can keep your accounts in a single place so long as that single place provides the best deal.  Don't have any loyalty to your banking institutions because they don't have any loyalty to you. Also, having lots of accounts means you are familiar with lots of institutions, so you are likely better at shopping around. Things I consider. For fewer institutions: For more institutions:", "Well sure but derivatives valuations that you see on this chart are complete bs. Normally the derivative (future or a swap) is actually worth zero. What this chart is tallying up is the notional which is an arbitrary number only used to calculate the P&amp;L on the derivative. Sorry but this is not really the value of the derivative, so hard to see how derivatives on this chart make any sense at all.", "\"Employers withhold at rates specified in Circular E issued by the IR. You can request that  additional money be withheld (not an issue here) or you can have  reduced withholding by claiming additional allowances on a W-4 (i.e.,  more than just for you and spouse and dependents) if you believe that  this will result in withholding that will more closely match the tax due.  (Note added in edit):Page 2 of the W-4 form has worksheets that can be used to figure out how many additional allowances to request. Also, I wonder if your withholding will be 37% or final tax bill be  26% of your adjusted gross income.  The tax brackets are the tax  on marginal income. If you are in the 28% tax bracket, you owe 28 cents in tax for each additional dollar of income, not 28 cents in tax for every dollar of income.  Your overall tax might well be less than 20% of your income.  As a specific example, in 2011 a married taxpayer filing jointly would be in the  (highest) 35% tax bracket if the taxable income was $379,150 or more (marginal tax rate of 35% is applicable to every dollar more than $379,150) but the tax on  $379,150 itself works out to be $102,574 or 27.05% of the taxable income. So if you do expect to be earning around $350K or more in salary between now and December 31 to hit that 26% that you expect you will owe, you might want to consider paying a tax accountant for advice on how to fill out your W-4 form for your new employer rather than relying on an Internet forum such as this for free advice. Note added in edit:  Your comment \"\"... it is a cocktail of ... federal taxes, state taxes, local taxes, health care ...\"\" on the earlier version of my answer does raise the question of whether you want your employer to withhold 26% instead of 37% and have the money go to meet all these obligations or just 26% towards your Federal income tax liability only. The Federal W-4 form affects only how much money is withheld from your paycheck and sent to the US Treasury.  Some of the money that each of your employers withholds (Social Security and Medicare taxes) is not affected by what you put down on  the W-4 form.  Now, if you hold two jobs and the total income shown on your W-2s is larger than the SS limit, you will  have had too much Social Security taxes withheld, and the excess will be a credit towards your Federal income tax liability.  You have self-employment income too on which you owe Social Security and Medicare taxes and you are making estimated tax payments. The excess Social Security tax payment can count towards this too (as well as income tax on your Schedule C income).  Thus, if your new employer is withholding too much, you might be able to skip making the fourth quarterly payment of estimated tax or make a reduced payment (there is no requirement that the four installments  must be equal).  In short, there are lots of ramifications that you need to take into account before deciding that 26% is the right number. Instead of filling out a W-4  all by yourself right away, I strongly recommend  reading up a lot on income taxes, or play with a tax preparation program (last year's version will do a pretty good job of at least getting you in the right ballpark), or consult with a tax accountant.\"", "Wanna know why? Like a year or two ago, corporate made all of the stores buy these stupid wood-smoked gas grills for like $15k each.  Many franchisees sued.  This is probably the fallout.  We still have the grills, we just don't put the wood in", "\"A $1 note and four quarters are both real money, but how (and when) they become real money is different. The important thing is that the Fed's stockpile of cash that it gets from the Bureau of Engraving and Printing isn't \"\"real money\"\" (i.e. M0) yet. That cash is only used for fulfilling withdrawals from reserve accounts. You can't use it to buy a car, or a house, or to pay Janet Yellen's salary...no one, not even Janet, can use even a single dollar to buy a Diet Coke. In other words, it's not really an asset. Or a liability. Or anything but a stack of paper in the Fed's vaults that looks astonishingly like money, but isn't. The upside to this is that when the BEP makes a delivery of fresh bills to the Fed, or when the Fed destroys old, ratty bills that aren't usable anymore, the Fed's balance sheet doesn't change. That's good! Those are practical considerations, not financial ones. The downside is that there's nothing on the asset side of the sheet to explain how the Fed's liability to a bank is reduced when the bank makes a cash withdrawal from its reserve account. So the Fed balances it's balance sheet by recording an increase in a different liability: the cash in circulation. Kinda like transferring the balance on a credit card: you're paying down one liability by increasing another one. It looks a bit silly, but less silly than recording the destruction of old bills as an \"\"expense\"\" of the face value of the bills. Coins, on the other hand, become money as soon as the Treasury gets them from the Mint. If they wanted to, they could pay their employees' salaries by ordering coins from the Mint for cheap, giving them to their employees at face value, and reaping fat profits as a result. In fact, that's pretty much exactly what they do: when someone wants quarters, the Treasury mints them at less than face value and then sells them at face value. In practice the Fed does all of this buying and then distributes the coins according to demand. The important thing is that this bunch of coins is not like the Fed's stockpile of bills. It's already real money, and therefore shows up as an asset. Not much. If the Fed bought coins at the cheaper price from the Mint instead, stockpiled them like they stockpile bills, then distributed them as usual, the extra profit just goes to the Treasury anyway, like all the Fed's profit does. However, as things are, the Fed's purchases of coins are recorded on the Fed's balance sheet at face value, which is kinda silly.\"", "For the lazy:  1.     Learn to fly  2.     Look after me, you, boat  3.     Entertain everybody with me  4.     Invite nice people back  5.     Start getting the small house together at The Manor  6.     Start buying odds and sods for The Manor  7.     Work with me on projects/sort me out  8.     More shops to be found", "Because libertarian ideology dominates mainstream economics, and that is because many billionaire-backed 'think tanks' promote it. The same thing happened pre-Great Depression; lots of Harvard economists arguing in favour of whatever their rich sponsors wanted. Read The Great Depression by the economist John Kenneth Galbraith; the parallels are distressing."]}
+{"query": "Is it really possible to get rich in only a few years by investing?", "corpus": ["Yes, it's possible. However, it's not likely, at least not for most people. Earning a million is not that difficult, but when you talk about billions that's an entirely different story. I think the key point that you're missing is leverage. It's common knowledge that Warren Buffett likes to have a huge cash warchest at his disposal and does not soak himself in debt. However, in his early years Buffett did not get to where he's at by investing only his own money. He ran what was basically a hedge fund and leveraged other peoples' money in the market. This magnified his returns quite substantially. If you look at Buffett's investments, you'll notice that he had a handful of HUGE wins in his portfolio and many more just mediocre success stories. Not everything he invested in turned to gold, but his portfolio was rocketed by the large wins that continued to compound over many years because he held them for so long. Also, consider the fact that Buffett's wealth is largely measured in Berkshire stock. This stock is a reflection of anticipated future earnings by the company. There's no way that alone could turn   $10k in 1950 into $50B today... could   it? Why not? Take the two founders of Google for example, they became billionaires in short order when Google had it's IPO and basically started in a garage with very little cash. Of course, they didn't do this by buying and selling shares. There are many paths to earnings enormous sums of money like the people you're talking about, but one characteristic that the richest people in society seem to have in common is that they all own their own companies."], "neg": ["\"It's a decision that only you can make. What are the chances that you'll want to take another loan (any loan - car, credit card, installment plan for new fridge, whatever else)? What are the chances that with the bad credit you'll find it hard to rent a place (and in Cali it's hard to rent a place right now, believe me, I bought a place just to save on the rent)? What are the chances that the prices will bounce and your \"\"on-paper\"\" loss will be recovered by the time you actually need/want to sell the house? You have to check all these and make a wise decision considering all the pros and cons in your personal case.\"", "Edit: I a in the United States, seek advice from someone who is also in Australia.  I am getting about 5.5% per year by investing in a fund (ticker:PGF) that, in turn, buys preferred stock in banks. Preferred stock acts a bit like a bond and a bit like a stock.  The price is very stable. However, a bank account is FDIC insured (in the USA) and an investment is not. I use the Reinvestment program at Scottrade so that the monthly dividends are automatically reinvested with no commission. However I do not know if this is available outside of the United States.  Investing yealds greater returns but exposes you to greater risk. You have to know your risk tolerance.", "Businesses from food to retail, all assume the risk of spoilage, theft, or any form of lost assets. It's just business. With that said, I'm sure your mom didn't imagine too many ways she could've lost out when opening her nailshop. I'm unsure what the policy is that you're looking for, but my best advice to you would be to cut your losses and learn from this.  Hopefully you and your mother can be sure to check or figure out a system to ensure customers don't lie about their payments. Good luck", "\"A long time ago, in a galaxy far far away, Rollover IRAs were used for funds that came from (were rolled over from) a 401(k) account or a 403(b) account. All that money (including any earnings in the interim) could be rolled over into a 401(k) plan with a new employer etc.  One could make a regular contribution to a Rollover IRA but once such a commingling of money occurred, none of the money in the Rollover IRA could be rolled over into a 401(k) account etc. In those good old days when contributions to IRAs were made by paper check and \"\"deposit slip\"\", one had to write a letter to the Rollover IRA custodian certifying that the IRA owner understood that the contribution would destroy forever the possibility of rolling over the money into another 401(k) etc. All this went by the wayside a few years ago when the law changed and the distinction between Rollover IRAs and ordinary Traditional IRAs was eliminated. Commingling of IRA contributions and Rollover money from 401(k)s are permitted, and the entire IRA balance could be rolled over into a new 401(k) plan (provided the new plan accepted rollovers). However the adjectives still persist; like chili555, I too have IRAs that are still called Rollover IRA, they all have commingled funds, and if the law ever changes back, none of those IRA accounts would be eligible for rolling over into a new 401(k).\"", "Congrats! That's a solid accomplishment for someone who is not even in college yet. I graduated college 3 years ago and I wish I was able to save more in college than I did. The rule of thumb with saving: the earlier the better.  My personal portfolio for retirement is comprised of four areas: Roth IRA contributions, 401k contributions, HSA contributions, Stock Market One of the greatest things about the college I attended was its co-op program. I had 3 internships - each were full time positions for 6 months. I strongly recommend, if its available, finding an internship for whatever major you are looking into. It will not only convince you that the career path you chose is what you want to do, but there are added benefits specifically in regards to retirement and savings. In all three of my co-ops I was able to apply 8% of my paycheck to my company's 401k plan. They also had matching available. As a result, my 401k had a pretty substantial savings amount by the time I graduated college. To circle back to your question, I would recommend investing the money into a Roth IRA or the stock market. I personally have yet to invest a significant amount of money in the stock market. Instead, I have been maxing out my retirement for the last three years. That means I'm adding 18k to my 401k, 5.5k to my Roth, and adding ~3k to my HSA (there are limits to each of these and you can find them online). Compounded interest is amazing (I'm just going to leave this here... https://www.moneyunder30.com/power-of-compound-interest).", "FTFY:  Repeat after me: Monopolization can only occur when there is a *corrupt* government to limit the emergence of competitors.   How about we stop voting for the limited government idiots and start electing people who have the best interests of the American people at heart.", "\"&gt; people these days believe income is a human right or something.  I believe a full day's work for a living wage is a right, yes.  Do you think a full day's work for a non-living wage is moral?  &gt; if you are not happy with the amount of income you currently make, stop using the internet to bitch about it and use it to better and add value to yourself.  Your argument ignores the possibility that the game is rigged.  People can do things to get a better life in the Hunger Games but that doesn't mean they are fair/moral or part of a society I want to live in.  &gt; The idea of \"\"a fair share of income\"\" teeters on communism, if you ask me.  In our society we need farm workers, ditch diggers, security guards, and dishwashers.  It seems fair to me that if society needs these positions filled then they should pay a wage that allows these workers to be part of the society they enable. I think doing anything else is barbaric.\""]}
+{"query": "Should I keep copies of my business's invoices for tax records?", "corpus": ["It's always beneficial to have detailed business records.  There are any number of reasons where you'd need to prove both the types of services you've rendered and the payment history - you've already noted audits (for IRS taxes).  Other possibilities: Whether these records need to be original or electronic might be the topic for another question."], "neg": ["Investing in individual long-term fixed income instruments now is probably not going to make you much money right now unless you do intend to hold onto the thing and it's low yield for 15 years. The yield is actually not the best out there, see these similar examples: I'm a more aggressive and active investor, so I'd never consider making a 15 year commitment to a low rate like this. If you value stability and safety, and don't care about inflation protection, you may find this an attractive investment. I'm using New York municipal bond funds that I bought a few months back for the stable/safety portion of my portfolio. (I'm a NY resident, so there is a tax benefit)", "I understand your point, but at the end of the day the CEO does know why businesses like his aren't doing well and yet they are still unable to be competitive. That is one of the cornerstones of capitalism, so as entitled as it sounds (I personally don't think it's entitlement) they actually do need to change their entire business model or die and start over. That's a sad fact, but you can't be upset that people generally have less money to spend these days.", "America is an oligarchy, not a democracy or republic. The richest people in the country pay congress to introduce more bills so they can get richer.   This problem is not going away, and the wealth gap is going to continue to widen, and poverty is going to continue to rise.", "If I understand correctly you describe putting a hold on an appartment as such: A sum of money that you give to the owner of the appartment to let them hold it for you because you are probably going to rent. In case you back out of the deal, this money can mitigate the expected loss from turning down other candidates. After asking them to hold the appartment for you, you decided not to rent. Also, you used the bank to get back the hold sum. Regardless of the legal details, it seems very clear to me that after putting down a hold and walking away, you should not get the money back.  There may have been some things that distracted/confused you (call about the key), but if you actually look at the things that happened it seems both right and practical to pay them their reclaimed hold as soon as possible.", "As Waldfee says, CFDs are a derivative (of the underlying stock in this case). If you are from the USA then they are prohibited in the USA as has also been mentioned. They are not prohibited, however, in many other countries including Australia.  We can buy or short sell (on a limited number of securities) CFDs on Australian securities, USA securities and securities from many other countries, on FX, and different commodities. The reason you are paying much less than the actial stock price is worth is because you are buying on margin. When you go long you pay interest on overnight positions, and when you go short you recieve interest on overnight positions (that is if you hold the position open overnight). Most CFDs are over the counter, however in Australia (don't know about other countries) we also have exchange traded CFDs called ASX CFDs. I have tried both ASX CFDs and over the counter CFDs and prefer the over the counter CFDs because the broker provides a market which closely but not exactly follows the underlying prices. Wlth the exchange traded CFDs there was low liquidity due to being quite new so there was the potential to be gapped quite considerably. This might improve as the market grows. All in all, once you understand how they work and what is involved in trading them, they are much easier than options or futers. However, if you are going to trade anything first get yourself educated, have a trading plan and risk management strategy, and paper trade before putting real money on the table. And remember, if you are in the USA, you are actually prohibited from trading CFDs. Regarding the price of AAPL at $50, the price should be the same as that of the underlying stock, it is just that your initial outlay will be less than buying the stock directly because you are buying on margin. Your initial outlay may be as little as 5% or lower, depending on the underlying stock.", "\"You sold $10,000 worth of stock so that money is essentially yours.  However, you sold this stock without actually owning any which means that you, through your broker, are currently borrowing shares amounting to (at the time of your sale) $10,000 from someone who actually owns this stock. You will be paying this person interest for the privilege of borrowing their shares, the exact amount charged varies wildly and depends on factors such as short interest in the stock (loads of people want to go short = shareholders can charge high interest) etc. If I remember correctly hovering over the \"\"position\"\" column in your portfolio in the IB Workstation should give you information about the interest rate charged.  You will have to buy back these shares from the lender at some point which is why the $10k isn't just \"\"free money.\"\" If the stock has gone up in price in the meantime you are going to be paying more than the $10k you got for the same amount of shares and vice versa.\"", "One reason to prefer a dividend-paying stock is when you don't plan to reinvest the dividends.  For example, if you're retired and living off the income from your investments, a dividend-paying stock can give you a relatively stable income."]}
+{"query": "Are there capital gains taxes or dividend taxes if I invest in the U.S. stock market from outside of the country?", "corpus": ["Found a great article (with bibliography) that covers taxation on investment activity by non resident aliens - even covers the special 15% tax on dividends for Canadian residents. It's (dividend tax rate) generally 30% for other NRAs  (your 2nd question). And it confirmed my suspicion that there are no capital gains taxes for NRAs. (1st Q) Source: http://invest-faq.com/articles/tax-non-us-nat.html"], "neg": ["Now manage your router via Linksys smart wifi tools. It let users control or modify home network remotely. So, if you also want new updates directly into your Linksys router then enable this amazing feature today. To know let us know on Toll-free number &amp; do live chat directly with the experts.", "\"Literally got into an argument with someone from Silicon Valley about this. He was 100% convinced that the entire world revolved around them and that were it not for Silicon Valley there wouldn't be any jobs paying 6 figures in other states because \"\"Silicon Valley creates all the jobs\"\"\"", "\"We provide the old Indian motorcycle spare parts online in the world. On the earth, many people are loved for a vintage motorcycle. But old motorcycle spare parts getting the very difficult. If you are looking Vintage Motorcycles for Sale, then \"\"Geloman's Indian Spares\"\" is the best platform for you. You can book in your order online. We will provide you motorcycle With commitment time to minimum shipment charges.\"", "Sure, Yahoo Finance does this for FREE.", "DayPassWireless is a provider of wireless air card rentals, Wi-Fi rental and mobile hotspots rentals nationwide. Sprint, Verizon and AT&amp;T air cards are available on rent for one day to several months with daily rates ranging between $4.79 and $9.79.", "Before answering specific question, you are liable to pay tax as per your bracket on the income generated. I work with my partner and currently we transfer all earning on my personal bank account. Can this create any issue for me? If you are paying your partner from your account, you would need to maintain proper paperwork to show the portion of money transferred is not income to you. Alternatively create a join Current Account. Move funds there and then move it to your respective accounts. Which sort off account should be talk and by whose name? Can be any account [Savings/Current]. If you are doing more withdrawls open Current else open Savings. It does not matter on whos name the account is. Paperwork to show income matters from tax point of view. What should we take care while transfering money from freelance site to bank? Nothing specific Is there any other alternative to bank? There is paypal etc. However ultimately it flows into a Bank Account. What are other things to be kept in mind? Keep proper record of actual income of each of you, along with expenses. There are certain expenses you can claim from income, for example laptop, internet, mobile phone etc. Consult a CA he will be able to guide and it does not cost much.", "\"Clearing means processing unsettled transactions. Specifically - all the money transfers between the banks, in this case. Clearing Bank for RMB business means that all RMB transactions will be cleared through that specific bank. If bank A in Hong Kong gets a check drawn on Bank B in Hong Kong, and the check is in RMB - A will go to the BoC with the check and will get the money, and BoC will take the money from B. That obviously requires both A and B have accounts with BoC. \"\"Sole\"\" clearing house means there's only one. I.e.: in our example, A and B cannot settle the check through C where they both happen to have accounts, or directly with each other. They MUST utilize the services of BoC.\""]}
+{"query": "Do I have to repay the First-Time Homebuyers tax credit if I refinance?", "corpus": ["The Homebuyers Tax Credit was unrelated to whether or not a mortgage was part of the purchase. You will have no issue with this credit if you refinance."], "neg": ["My wife and I set up a shared bank account. We knew the monthly costs of the mortgage and estimated the cost of utilities. Each month, we transferred enough to cover these, plus about 20% so we could make an extra mortgage payment each year and build up an emergency fund, and did so using automatic transactions. Other shared expenses such as groceries, we handled on an ad-hoc basis, settling up every month or three. We initially just split everything 50-50 because we both earned roughly the same income. When that changed, we ended up going with a 60-40 split. We maintained our separate bank accounts, though this may have changed in the future. A system like this may work for you, or may at least provide a starting point for a discussion. And I do strongly advise having a frank and open discussion on these points. Dealing with money can be tricky in the bounds of a marriage.", "Inefficiency is about time spent producing.  If money funnels towards producing rather than (example) gambling, even if producing costs more the money is removed from gambling economy to producing economy.  And if people increase production and speed due to better pay, it's more efficient.    It's never that simple, but it's an important point.", "My brother is worried as in US a transaction of more than 10K can be flagged by IRS. Transactions may be flagged to IRS or any other regulators as required. If the intent is correct, there is nothing wrong, your Brother would have to establish that it was for legit reason. Will it be safe to transfer through wire to wire Transfer or is there any other alternatives All legit transfer mechanism would have the same reporting regulation. There is no one better than other method. As stated earlier, if the purpose is bonafide, there shouldn't be anything to worry about.", "I don't see how it contrasts with any other the other advise here.  I even gave the advice to hold people accountable.  If anything my advise was more hard-line then most that's been given here.  I think you either misread what I wrote or you're completely off base.", "The heart of the problem is that nothing visible/substantial is happening before the next election cycle, so nobody will address the issue. Deeply ingrained myopia for difficult problems prevents most long time-horizon issues from getting a lot of political attention. It's much easier to ignore the issue and pretend that it will go away or be resolved by others.   Secondly, politicians are less likely to speak about any subject that hasn't been funded and pumped-up by lobbyists. The only people speaking about this problem have no lobbyists/money, therefore, they have no political representation.", "\"Well, I'd probably need to buy a lot more [Tide](http://nymag.com/news/features/tide-detergent-drugs-2013-1) to hide any purchases I don't want Uncle Sam to know about (not just drugs, either - When's the last time you paid sales tax at a yard sale?).   Other than that, I doubt it would matter much.  99.9% of my financial transactions are *already* on plastic, and I regularly keep the same \"\"emergency $20 bill\"\" in my wallet for months at a time.\"", "Excellent responses so far.  Because I am a math guy, I wanted to stress the power of compounding. It's great that you are thinking about saving and your future when you are so young.  Definitely be displined about your saving and investing.  You would be surprised how just a small amount can compound over the years. For example, if you were to start with $5000 and contribute $100 per month.  Assuming that you can get 5% ROR (hard in today's world but shouldn't be down the road), your final principal after 28 years (when you are 50 years old) will be over $90,000, which of only $38,000 is what you contributed yourself.  The rest is interest.  You can play with the numbers here: http://www.math.com/students/calculators/source/compound.htm"]}
+{"query": "Pros and cons of investing in a cheaper vs expensive index funds that track the same index", "corpus": ["As has been pointed out, one isn't cheaper than the other. One may have a lower price per share than the other, but that's not the same thing. Let's pretend that the total market valuation of all the stocks within the index was $10,000,000. (Look, I said let's pretend.) You want to invest $1,000. For the time being, let's also pretend that your purchasing 0.01% of all the stock won't affect prices anywhere. One company splits the index into 10,000 parts worth $1,000 each. The other splits the same index into 10,000,000 parts worth $1 each. Both track the underlying index perfectly. If you invest $1,000 with the first company, you get one part; if you invest $1,000 with the second, you get 1,000 parts. Ignoring spreads, transaction fees and the like, immediately after the purchase, both are worth exactly $1,000 to you. Now, suppose the index goes up 2%. The first company's shares of the index (of which you would have exactly one) are now worth $1,020 each, and the second company's shares of the index (of which you would have exactly 1,000) are worth $1.02 each. In each case, you now have index shares valued at $1,020 for a 2% increase ($1,020 / $1,000 = 1.02 = 102% of your original investment). As you can see, there is no reason to look at the price per share unless you have to buy in terms of whole shares, which is common in the stock market but not necessarily common at all in mutual funds. Because in this case, both funds track the same underlying index, there is no real reason to purchase one rather than the other because you believe they will perform differently. In an ideal world, the two will perform exactly equally. The way to compare the price of mutual funds is to look at the expense ratio. The lower the expense ratio is, the cheaper the fund is, and the less of your money is being eroded every day in fees. Unless you have some very good reason to do differently, that is how you should compare the price of any investment vehicles that track the same underlying commodity (in this case, the S&P 500)."], "neg": ["Interactive Brokers provides historical intraday data including Bid, Ask, Last Trade and Volume for the majority of stocks. You can chart the data, download it to Excel or use it in your own application through their API.  EDIT: Compared to other solutions (like FreeStockCharts.com for instance), Interactive Brokers provides not only historic intraday LAST**** trades **but also historic BID and ASK data, which is very useful information if you want to design your own trading system.  I have enclosed a screenshot to the chart parameter window and a link to the API description.", "\"No, I agreed with a situational abstract a few comments ago. The moment you say that the Government has a responsibility to provide anything, you get into what exactly that thing is (in this case a \"\"stable environment\"\").  I agree with the founding fathers.   Life  Liberty  The Pursuit of Happiness\"", "I didn't say you had to have had everything handed to you... I said you could also just be naive.  And judging from your subsequent paragraph, you are.  Not everyone can choose their lot in life.  Though I will say the price of education is absurdly bloated and alternatives to education may be a nice alternative.  Though truth be told, for me at least, college was an invaluable experience.", "\"I don't think there's a rule -- (I can't comment) but Brick cited IRS rules...but IMO Brick missed one thing -- @ashur668 is not looking for a distribution, but is looking for a rollover. My best guess:  that this part of the ruleset is not well defined, and your (and my) employer have chosen to interpret any withdrawl as a \"\"distribution\"\", even if better characterized a rollover. A few months ago, I went so far as to explore if I could use a loophole -- my company had just gone through a merger; I was hoping I could rollover some or maybe all of my 401k to my IRA (I remember now, it would have been everything before starting roth 401k contributions).  My company asserted this was not permitted, and further asserted that the rumors I had heard were mistaken that when we went through a company spin-off a few years before, that nobody under 59 1/2 was permitted to roll over. I did a quick search and found IRS topic 413  As far as I can tell, this topic is silent on the matter at hand. Topic 413 referred me to IRS Publication 575, where I started looking at the section on rollovers.  I read some of it then got bored. Note that we're one step removed -- we are reading IRS publications and interpretations of IRS rules.  I don't know that anybody here has read the actual tax law.  There may be something in there that prevents companies from rolling over before 59 1/2 that is not well codified in IRS publications.\"", "You need a source of delisted historical data. Such data is typically only available from paid sources. According to my records, Lawson Software Inc listed on the NASDAQ on 7 Dec 2001 and delisted on 6 Jul 2011.  Its final traded price was $11.23.  It was taken over by Infor who bid $11.25 per share. Source: Symbol LWSN-201107 within Premium Data US delisted stocks historical data set available from http://www.premiumdata.net/products/premiumdata/ushistorical.php Disclosure: I am a co-owner of Norgate / Premium Data.", "What you propose is to convert unsecured debt into secured debt. Conversion of unsecured debt into secured debt is not generally a good idea (several reasons).  The debt you currently owe does not have assets securing the debt, so the creditor knows they are exposed to risk, and may be more willing to negotiate or relax terms on the debt, should you encounter problems.  When you provide an asset to secure debt, you lose freedom to sell that asset.  When you incur debt their is usually a spending problem that needs to be corrected, which is typically not fixed when a refinance solution is used.  You do not mention interest rate, which would be one benefit to conversion of unsecured to secured debt, so you probably are not gaining adequate benefit from the conversion strategy. This strategy is often contemplated using 'cash-out' refinancing to borrow against a home you already own, and the (claimed) benefit is often to lower the interest rate on the debt.  Your scenario is more complicated in that you have not purchased the home (yet).  Though it may be a good idea to purchase a home, that choice depends on a different set of considerations (children, job stability, rental vs. buy costs, lifestyle, expected appreciation, etc) from how to best handle a large debt (income vs. expenses, how to increase income or reduce expenses, lifestyle, priorities, etc). Another consideration is that you already have a problem with the large debt owed to one (set of) creditor(s), and you have a plan which would shift the risk/exposure to another (set of) creditor(s) who may have been less complicit in accruing the original debt.  Was the debt incurred jointly during the marriage, and something you accepted responsibility to repay? You mention that you make great income, and you specify one expense (rent), but you neither provided the amount of income, total of all your expenses, nor your free cash flow amount, nor any indication of percentages spent on rent, essential expenses, lifestyle, nor amount available to retire debt.  Since you did not provide specifics, we can take a look at three scenarios, scenario #1, $4000/month income scenario #1, $6000/month income scenario #1, $8000/month income Depending upon your income and choices, you might have < $500/month to pay towards debt, or as much as $3000/month to pay towards debt, and depending upon interest rate (which OP did not provide), this debt could take < 2 years to pay or > 5 years to pay. Have you accepted the responsibility for the debt?  It will be a tough task to repay the debt.  And you will learn that debt comes with a cost as you repay it.  One problem people often encounter when they refinance debt is they have not changed the habits which produced the debt.  So they often continue their spending habits and incur new unsecured debt, landing them back in the same problem position, but with the increased secured debt combined with additional new unsecured debt.  Challenge yourself to repay a specific portion of the debt in a specific time, and consider ways to reduce your expenses (and/or increase your income) to provide more money to repay the debt quicker. As you also did not disclose your assets, it is hard to know whether you could repay a portion of the debt from assets you already own.  It makes sense to sell assets that have a low (or zero) return to repay debt that has a high interest rate.  Perhaps you have substantial assets that you are reluctant to sell, but that you could sell to repay a large part of the debt?", "\"Serious, what a stupid bitch. That was a reasonable policy to have. You can't just say there's a life threatening situation and then go \"\"oh, nevermind\"\" when you change your mind when you don't get what you want. This woman should apologize for wasting everyone else's time\""]}
+{"query": "Sale of house profit gifted to child", "corpus": ["1) You parents will have to pay tax on the gain as it wasn't their primary home.  You don’t pay Capital Gains Tax when you sell (or ‘dispose of’) your home if all of the following apply: As I look at it, it is your parents are the ones who own the property and they will have to pay on £60000. But as you say you pay part of the mortgage, I would go to a tax advisor/accountant to confirm if they will only pay on the £15000. I couldn't find any guidance on that matter on gov.uk 2) Inheritance tax will not be levied on it as it is below £325000, but tax will be levied on £325000, less £3000 annual gift allowance. Two articles for further information -  GOV.UK's Tax when you sell your home   Money.co.UK's Gifting money to your children: FAQs"], "neg": ["\"As stated in the other answer, debit card payments even contactless ones, do not debit instantly or anywhere near instantly. They can take several days or even longer. However, the fact that the payment was approved would indicate that the contactless device used by the retailer managed to connect to your bank account and could see there were sufficient funds.  At this time the payment should also have \"\"reserved\"\" the funds so it will be \"\"pending\"\" as such.  Your online banking may not show all types of pending transactions, it may only show Direct Debits for example, if you ring the bank I expect they will be able to see this payment and advise accordingly, out of interest who do you bank with? If you can see your \"\"available\"\" funds you should find that includes this payment having been \"\"reserved\"\" ie you can't use that money, but if it's a small amount you may struggle to spot it.  Again, this will vary by bank and how their internet banking system has been implemented. I would expect this payment to debit your account the working day after you made it, or at worst the day after that.  In theory with \"\"faster payment\"\" technology it could happened within 2 hours but not all banks implemented that system in the same way so delays can and do occur.  If the retailer/merchant banks with the same bank you do, in theory the transaction could be instantaneous, again depending on the bank. Short answer short, the transaction is fine, it won't be void, you just need to wait, probably a day or two. This link has more info, especially useful if you bank with NatWest (as I say the technology is likely to vary by bank to some extent).  Your own bank should have their own version of this. http://personal.natwest.com/personal/current-accounts/your-visa-debit-card/contactless.html\"", "That there are more jobs today isn't a convincing argument. There are more people to feed, more services to provide etc. I worry that large scale automation, particularly in industries with high employment numbers could be disruptive to the economy in general. As new technologies emerge and demand continues to pace population growth, additional workers will always be needed. The question is, what happens when the majority of those jobs are taken by robots, not people.", "Does not surprise me in the least. Sony has zero innovation now. Their audio products are shit. Their TV production is hitting the end of the line. The PS3 barely survived launch and they were beaten badly by an affordable, innovative, and horrendously underpowered competitor. Their online store is a fucking joke and they spend too much time pandering to companies like Capcom and Konami (who have nothing but tapped out IP's now and they keep trying to leech as much out of them as they can which, after RE6 reviews have shown, is about to implode under their own weight). The Vita is not doing well at all and it's library of games is missing high demand games and most of them are ports of their lackluster PS3 counter parts.    I hope their president can turn this shit around, but his task and the depth of the issues may make that impossible. He's just starting to play catch up right now and it's going to be some time before they can surpass anyone.  They need to cut the fat, ditch what's not working for them and never will again (like their smart phones), and focus on innovation instead of beating old ideas into the ground and copycatting their competitors (i.e. PS Move).", "\"Is evaluating stocks just a loss of time if the stock is traded very much? Not at all! Making sound investment decisions based on fundamental analysis of companies will help you to do decide whether a given company is right for you and your risk appetite. Investing is not a zero-sum game, and you can achieve a positive long-term (or short-term, depending on what you're after) outcome for yourself without compromising your ability to sleep at night if you take the time to become acquainted with the companies that you are investing in. How can you ensure that your evaluation is more precise than the   market ones which consists of the evaluation of thousands of people   and professionals? For the average individual, the answer is often simply \"\"you probably cannot\"\". But you don't have to set the bar that high - what you can do is ensure that your evaluation gives you a better understanding of your investment and allows you to better align it with your investment objectives. You don't have to beat the professionals, you just have to lose less money than you would by paying them to make the decision for you.\"", "There was a comic (which I thought might have been on the oatmeal, I can't find it, found it originally on reddit though) where they show a guy who's great in his department and is promoted, great again, promoted, repeat until he's not great... but then they can't demote him, because his old spot's filled, so he's stuck there where he sucks.  edit: apparently [tuna-fish2](http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/nfc8k/famous_last_words_by_bosses_ive_had/c38pfza) says it's the Peter Principle", "And the world keeps turning and turning and turning Trump is more out of his depth on Tuesday than on Monday Now there is no one left to disarm but the American people After all, what do sheeple need weapons for?  Perhaps American exceptionalism is a synonym for American psychosis as our sanity takes its final blind step over the edge and we must turn inwards as the ability to externalize our threats has been lost  Tuesday comes . . .  Whats the worst that could happen?", "... yes you do, that is exactly how our system is set up... that is basically the whole point of the judicial branch...   The whole point is that the legislative branch has to do something in order to balance the system, but if they don't do anything that doesn't stop the rest of the government from using their constitutional powers..."]}
+{"query": "Given current market conditions, how / when should I invest a $200k inheritance?", "corpus": ["\"E) Spend a small amount of that money on getting advice from a paid financial planner. (Not a broker or someone offering you \"\"free\"\" advice; their recommendations may be biased toward what makes them the most money).  A good financial planner will talk to you about your plans and expectations both short and long term, and about your risk tolerance (would a drop in value panic you even if you know it's likely to recover and average out in the long run, that sort of thing), and about how much time and effort you want to put into actively managing your portfolio. From those answers, they will generate an initial proposed plan, which will be tested against simulations of the stock market to make sure it holds up. Typically they'll do about 100 passes over the plan to get a sense of its probable risk versus growth-potential versus volatility, and tweak the plan until the normal volatility is within the range you've said you're comfortable with while trying to produce the best return with the least risk. This may not be a perfect plan for you -- but at the very least it will be an excellent starting point until you decide (if you ever do decide) that you've learned enough about investing that you want to do something different with the money. It's likely to be better advice than you'll get here simply because they can and will take the time to understand your specific needs rather than offering generalities because we're trying to write something that applies to many people, all of whom have different goals and time horizons and financial intestinal fortitude. As far as a house goes: Making the mistake of thinking of a house as an investment is a large part of the mindset that caused the Great Recession. Property can be an investment (or a business) or it can be something you're living in; never make the mistake of putting it in both categories at once. The time to buy a house is when you want a house, find a house you like in a neighborhood you like, expect not to move out of it for at least five years, can afford to put at least 20% down payment, and can afford the ongoing costs. Owning your home is not more grown-up, or necessarily financially advantageous even with the tax break, or in any other way required until and unless you will enjoy owning your home. (I bought at age 50ish, because I wanted a place around the corner from some of my best friends, because I wanted better noise isolation from my neighbors, because I wanted a garden, because I wanted to do some things that almost any landlord would object to, and because I'm handy enough that I can do a lot of the routine maintenance myself and enjoy doing it -- buy a house, get a free set of hobbies if you're into that. And part of the reason I could afford this house, and the changes that I've made to it, was that renting had allowed me to put more money into investments. My only regret is that I didn't realise how dumb it was not to max out my 401(k) match  until I'd been with the company for a decade ... that's free money I left on the table.)\""], "neg": ["Many banks offer online payment. He can add a payee and just type your name and address in. The bank will mail the check out if they cannot deliver payment electronically. Edit: Recently I came across this (Citibank Global Transfer), you and your friend should see if your bank offers a similar service. Citibank requires both of you to have an account with them.", "David Schechtmann provide the best services are set this week for a US soldier from Tennessee who was unaccounted for after being killed by German troops during World War II.Media outlets reports a funeral for Pfc. Reece Gass will be held Saturday at Doughty-Stevens Funeral Home in Greeneville. He’ll be buried with full military honors at a cemetery in Cross Anchor.", "\"&gt;More wisdom from the armchair economist who can't answer a simple question.  Ok dude. You are a complete moron. The reason I didn't bother answering your question is because it has 0 relevance to your original post and my reply, and it's also something you can literally google. So let me do it for you.  &gt;Citibank is the consumer division of financial services multinational Citigroup  This makes Citibank a commercial depository bank.  Now get to your point. And please include how   * Citibank is JP Morgan,   * JP Morgan needed to be bailed out,   * JP Morgan \"\"gambled\"\"  * tax payers covered their losses  * the CEO of a financial institution that was partly responsible for keeping the US economy from the shithole is a \"\"fucker\"\"  fucking retard.\"", "generally i have sufficient funds to last 5 years or so without an income.... When I was a broke kid I would check my accounts often though... so it's just not something I prioritize in my life, already too many other things have my attention.", "\"Sales tactics for permanent insurance policies can get pretty sleazy. Sending home a flier from school is a way for an insurance salesperson to get his/her message out to 800 families without any effort at all, and very little advertising cost (just a ream of paper and some toner). The biggest catchphrases used are the \"\"just pennies per day\"\" and \"\"in case they get (some devastating medical condition) and become uninsurable.\"\" Sure, both are technically true, but are definitely used to trigger the grown ups' insecurities. Having said that (and having been in the financial business for a time, which included selling insurance policies), there is a place for insurance of children. A small amount can be used to offset the loss of income for the parents who may have to take extended time away from work to deal with the event of the loss of their child, and to deal with the costs of funeral and burial. Let's face it, the percentage of families who have a sufficiently large emergency fund is extremely small compared to the overall population. Personally, I have added a child rider to my own (term) insurance policies that covers any/all of my children. It does add some cost to my premiums, but it's a small cost on top of something that is already justifiably in place for myself. One other thing to be aware of: if you're in a group policy (any life insurance where you're automatically accepted without any underwriting process, like through a benefit at work, or some other club or association), the healthy members are subsidizing the unhealthy ones. If you're on the healthy side, you might consider foregoing that policy in favor of getting your own policy through an insurance company of your choice. If you're healthy, it will always be cheaper than the group coverage.\"", "I was specifically talking about property tax which doesn't increase that much with income. But state and local income taxes ratio makes a lot of sense since there are still lots of people that depend on a salary at 1million$ AGI.", "\"When you invest in an S&P500 index fund that is priced in USD, the only major risk you bear is the risk associated with the equity that comprises the index, since both the equities and the index fund are priced in USD. The fund in your question, however, is priced in EUR. For a fund like this to match the performance of the S&P500, which is priced in USD, as closely as possible, it needs to hedge against fluctuations in the EUR/USD exchange rate. If the fund simply converted EUR to USD then invested in an S&P500 index fund priced in USD, the EUR-priced fund may fail to match the USD-priced fund because of exchange rate fluctuations. Here is a simple example demonstrating why hedging is necessary. I assumed the current value of the USD-priced S&P500 index fund is 1,600 USD/share. The exchange rate is 1.3 USD/EUR. If you purchase one share of this index using EUR, you would pay 1230.77 EUR/share:  If the S&P500 increases 10% to 1760 USD/share and the exchange rate remains unchanged, the value of the your investment in the EUR fund also increases by 10% (both sides of the equation are multiplied by 1.1):  However, the currency risk comes into play when the EUR/USD exchange rate changes. Take the 10% increase in the price of the USD index occurring in tandem with an appreciation of the EUR to 1.4 USD/EUR:  Although the USD-priced index gained 10%, the appreciation of the EUR means that the EUR value of your investment is almost unchanged from the first equation. For investments priced in EUR that invest in securities priced in USD, the presence of this additional currency risk mandates the use of a hedge if the indexes are going to track. The fund you linked to uses swap contracts, which I discuss in detail below, to hedge against fluctuations in the EUR/USD exchange rate. Since these derivatives aren't free, the cost of the hedge is included in the expenses of the fund and may result in differences between the S&P500 Index and the S&P 500 Euro Hedged Index.  Also, it's important to realize that any time you invest in securities that are priced in a different currency than your own, you take on currency risk whether or not the investments aim to track indexes. This holds true even for securities that trade on an exchange in your local currency, like ADR's or GDR's. I wrote an answer that goes through a simple example in a similar fashion to the one above in that context, so you can read that for more information on currency risk in that context.  There are several ways to investors, be they institutional or individual, can hedge against currency risk. iShares offers an ETF that tracks the S&P500 Euro Hedged Index and uses a over-the-counter currency swap contract called a month forward FX contract to hedge against the associated currency risk. In these contracts, two parties agree to swap some amount of one currency for another amount of another currency, at some time in the future. This allows both parties to effectively lock in an exchange rate for a given time period (a month in the case of the iShares ETF) and therefore protect themselves against exchange rate fluctuations in that period.  There are other forms of currency swaps, equity swaps, etc. that could be used to hedge against currency risk. In general, two parties agree to swap one quantity, like a EUR cash flow, payments of a fixed interest rate, etc. for another quantity, like a USD cash flow, payments based on a floating interest rate, etc. In many cases these are over-the-counter transactions, there isn't necessarily a standardized definition.  For example, if the European manager of a fund that tracks the S&P500 Euro Hedged Index is holding euros and wants to lock in an effective exchange rate of 1.4 USD/EUR (above the current exchange rate), he may find another party that is holding USD and wants to lock in the respective exchange rate of 0.71 EUR/USD. The other party could be an American fund manager that manages a USD-price fund that tracks the FTSE. By swapping USD and EUR, both parties can, at a price, lock in their desired exchange rates.  I want to clear up something else in your question too. It's not correct that the \"\"S&P 500 is completely unrelated to the Euro.\"\" Far from it. There are many cases in which the EUR/USD exchange rate and the level of the S&P500 index could be related. For example: Troublesome economic news in Europe could cause the euro to depreciate against the dollar as European investors flee to safety, e.g. invest in Treasury bills. However, this economic news could also cause US investors to feel that the global economy won't recover as soon as hoped, which could affect the S&P500.  If the euro appreciated against the dollar, for whatever reason, this could increase profits for US businesses that earn part of their profits in Europe. If a US company earns 1 million EUR and the exchange rate is 1.3 USD/EUR, the company earns 1.3 million USD. If the euro appreciates against the dollar to 1.4 USD/EUR in the next quarter and the company still earns 1 million EUR, they now earn 1.4 million USD. Even without additional sales, the US company earned a higher USD profit, which is reflected on their financial statements and could increase their share price (thus affecting the S&P500). Combining examples 1 and 2, if a US company earns some of its profits in Europe and a recession hits in the EU, two things could happen simultaneously. A) The company's sales decline as European consumers scale back their spending, and B) the euro depreciates against the dollar as European investors sell euros and invest in safer securities denominated in other currencies (USD or not). The company suffers a loss in profits both from decreased sales and the depreciation of the EUR.  There are many more factors that could lead to correlation between the euro and the S&P500, or more generally, the European and American economies. The balance of trade, investor and consumer confidence, exposure of banks in one region to sovereign debt in another, the spread of asset/mortgage-backed securities from US financial firms to European banks, companies, municipalities, etc. all play a role.  One example of this last point comes from this article, which includes an interesting line: Among the victims of America’s subprime crisis are eight municipalities in Norway, which lost a total of $125 million through subprime mortgage-related investments. Long story short, these municipalities had mortgage-backed securities in their investment portfolios that were derived from, far down the line, subprime mortgages on US homes. I don't know the specific cities, but it really demonstrates how interconnected the world's economies are when an American family's payment on their subprime mortgage in, say, Chicago, can end up backing a derivative investment in the investment portfolio of, say, Hammerfest, Norway.\""]}
+{"query": "Does the sale of personal items need to be declared as income on my income taxes?", "corpus": ["\"Books would be considered Personal-Use Property according to Canada's income tax laws.  The most detailed IT I was able to find is IT-332R, which says: GAINS AND LOSSES 3. A gain on the disposition of personal-use property is normally a capital gain within the meaning of paragraph 39(1)(a). Where the property is a principal residence, the gain > is computed under paragraph 40(2)(b) or (c). 4. Under subparagraph 40(2)(g)(iii), a loss on a disposition of personal-use property, other than listed personal property, is deemed to be nil. [...] This part of the bulletin indicates that a gain might be considered a capital gain - not income.  However, you don't get to book a loss as a capital loss.  This is the first hint that your book sale - which is actually an exempt capital loss - shouldn't go on your tax return unless it's one of the \"\"listed\"\" items: LISTED PERSONAL PROPERTY 7. Listed personal property is defined in paragraph 54(e) to mean personal-use property that is all or any portion of, or any interest in or right to, any (a) print, etching, drawing, painting, sculpture, or other similar work of art, (b) jewellery, (c) rare folio, rare manuscript, or rare book, (d) stamp, or (e) coin. So unless you're selling rare books, the disposition (sale) of them is essentially exempt as income, regardless of whether you sold it at a profit or at a loss.  If it is rare, then you might be able to consider it a capital loss, which doesn't help you much unless you had other capital gains, but you can carry over capital losses to future years. There's also a newer IT related to hobbies and \"\"collecting\"\" items, IT-334R2.  This one says: 11. In order for any activity or pursuit to be regarded as a source of income, there must be a reasonable expectation of profit. Where such an expectation does not exist (as is the case with most hobbies), neither amounts received nor expenses incurred are included in the income computation for tax purposes and any excess of expenses over receipts is a personal or living expense, the deduction of which is denied by paragraph 18(1)(h). On the other hand, if the hobby or pastime results in receipts of revenue in excess of expenses, that fact is a strong indication that the hobby is a venture with an expectation of profit; if so, the net income may be taxable as income from a business. The current version of IT-504, Visual Artists and Writers, discusses the concept of \"\"a reasonable expectation of profit\"\" in greater detail. Where a hobby consists of collecting personal-use property or listed personal property, dispositions should be accounted for as described in the current version of IT-332, Personal-Use Property. (emphasis mine) In other words, if it's not the type of thing where you'd make a tax deduction when you bought it in the first place, then you clearly don't need to report it as income when you sell it. Just to be absolutely clear here: The fact that you are selling them at a loss is not actually what's important here. What's important is that, if the books aren't collectibles, then you would have had no expectation of profit.  If you did have that expectation then you could have made a tax deduction when you first purchased them. So in this case, it is probably not necessary for you to report the income; however, for the benefit of other readers, in some cases you might need to report it under \"\"other income\"\" or book it as a capital gain/loss, depending on what those personal items are and whether or not you made a net profit.\""], "neg": ["Sure of course you can do balance transfers like this but you are way late to the party and it has gotten to be pretty challenging finding new cards to transfer balances to. Before the current financial crisis in the US you could get enormous amounts of credit (2-5 times a person's annual income) and transfer balances to your bank account to collect interest . There were a bunch of ways to the transfer everything from direct deposit to your bank account to a balance transfer check payable to yourself to overpaying another credit card and requesting a refund. Over paying another account sets off a lot of red flags now days but other methods still work. The financial atmosphere has changed a lot and there are very few available cards with no balance transfer fees or capped fees and the interest rates are a lot lower now so it really isn't worth doing.", "Eh, you hear this argument all the time, but it doesn't actually work out that way in the real world, though, because corporate pay structure is extremely malleable over time.   If a company makes $100M one year, it will pay the investors what they're expecting, the low-level employees what they're willing to tolerate (which is often the minimum wage), and then the upper management whatever is left (i.e. whatever the company can afford to attract the best management). By bumping up the minimum wage, the main effect is that it forces companies to change their pay structures (which are currently ridiculous - the U.S. CEO-to-avg-worker pay is around 200:1; Japan and Germany are around 15:1, IIRC).  Feel free to dig deeper into the numbers and the studies if you want further evidence, but even a cursory glance at our history (or the current situation in Australia) shows that the effects of a high minimum wage on both inflation and unemployment are largely overstated.", "&gt;PI’s attorney, Dan Webb, said in court Monday that ABC used the term “pink slime” 350 times over the course of its reporting, and that ABC willfully spread this preconceived, negative message. Webb also showed the jurors a picture of lean finely textured beef. “It physically doesn’t look like slime,” he said.  It physically doesn't look like slime, and presumably it isn't slime chemically.   What's their reason for calling it 'pink slime'?   &gt;In fact, the term “pink slime” was coined by one of the segment’s whistleblowing USDA scientists in a 2002 email to colleagues, and a 2009 New York Times piece using the term to describe BPI’s meat product won a Pulitzer Prize.  So, they coined a word to describe something that was intentionally designed to sensationalize it, in a negative way.  If I were on the jury this is the point of fact that I'd base my vote on.  The media needs to be slapped pretty hard when they start actively damaging people and companies to sell stories.", "\"Right, but if you lived in the area, you have already made the decision that they are your \"\"go-to\"\" retailer or not.  The majority of people in their competitive market have decided Market Basket is not their preferred choice, but will this story make them reconsider?\"", "And a few more options: (which both allow payments via mobile phone) And now Visa are getting in on the action.  This isn't live, but worth watching to see what their eventual offer is.", "\"There are more than a few different ways to consider why someone may have a transaction in the stock market: Employee stock options - If part of my compensation comes from having options that vest over time, I may well sell shares at various points because I don't want so much of my new worth tied up in one company stock. Thus, some transactions may happen from people cashing out stock options. Shorting stocks - This is where one would sell borrowed stock that then gets replaced later. Thus, one could reverse the traditional buy and sell order in which case the buy is done to close the position rather than open one. Convertible debt - Some companies may have debt that come with warrants or options that allow the holder to acquire shares at a specific price. This would be similar to 1 in some ways though the holder may be a mutual fund or company in some cases. There is also some people that may seek high-yield stocks and want an income stream from the stock while others may just want capital appreciation and like stocks that may not pay dividends(Berkshire Hathaway being the classic example here). Others may be traders believing the stock will move one way or another in the short-term and want to profit from that. So, thus the stock market isn't necessarily as simple as you state initially. A terrorist attack may impact stocks in a couple ways to consider: Liquidity - In the case of the attacks of 9/11, the stock market was closed for a number of days which meant people couldn't trade to convert shares to cash or cash to shares. Thus, some people may pull out of the market out of fear of their money being \"\"locked up\"\" when they need to access it. If someone is retired and expects to get $x/quarter from their stocks and it appears that that may be in jeopardy, it could cause one to shift their asset allocation. Future profits - Some companies may have costs to rebuild offices and other losses that could put a temporary dent in profits. If there is a company that makes widgets and the factory is attacked, the company may have to stop making widgets for a while which would impact earnings, no? There can also be the perception that an attack is \"\"just the beginning\"\" and one could extrapolate out more attacks that may affect broader areas. Sometimes what recently happens with the stock market is expected to continue that can be dangerous as some people may believe the market has to continue like the recent past as that is how they think the future will be.\"", "\"I'm still recommending that you go to a professional. However, I'm going to talk about what you should probably expect the professional to be telling you. These are generalities. It sounds like you're going to keep working for a while. (If nothing else, it'll stave off boredom.) If that's the case, and you don't touch that $1.4 million otherwise, you're pretty much set for retirement and never need to save another penny, and you can afford to treat your girl to a nice dinner on the rest of your income.  If you're going to buy expensive things, though - like California real estate and boats and fancy cars and college educations and small businesses - you can dip into that money but things will get trickier. If not, then it's a question of \"\"how do I structure my savings?\"\". A typical structure: Anywho. If you can research general principles in advance, you'll be better prepared.\""]}
+{"query": "How will the after market affect the open of the market tomorrow?", "corpus": ["In general a stock can open at absolutely any price with no regard for the closing price or after hours price the previous day. The opening price will be determined by the best bid and offer made by people who decide to trade the next day.  Some of the those people may have put orders in on a prior day that are still on the books and matter, but there's a lot of time overnight for people to cancel orders and enter new ones, which is especially likely to happen if there was substantive news overnight. As for what you can do in your case, you have the same options that you always had:  Sell or hold.  If you're selling, you can sell after hours, in the pre-open hours, or during the trading day.  There's nothing we can say about this case that's really any different than we can say about any other stock on any other day."], "neg": ["Various networking Companies use 192.168.0.1 IP address to access their admin page. We solve issues related to this IP address such as 192.168.0.1 login my account issue, 192.168.0.1 the page cannot be displayed etc. Feel free to contact us through live chat window.", "What do you this hypothesis?  The A-hole logic might by the flip side of our leadership culture. We are constantly being told to work on our leadership skills. But how many of us ever work on our followership skills. Not many--the very name triggers spellcheck. The reality is that most of us can't afford to be autonomous and independent and the A-holes are successful because they do the job for us, albeit unpleasantly.", "Dental implant surgery is your best bet if you’re looking for a more permanent set of replacement teeth and are declared to be a suitable candidate. Compared to a removable denture, a dental implant consists of a sturdy tooth root that holds the artificial crown in place.", "\"I met two MBA graduates from Harvard - both made VPs at large Canadian companies (i.e. $1B or greater annual revenue) after working 2-5 years as management consultants post-graduation - one is now a divisional president making over $500K in salary along. When I asked one of them (one that is not yet making $500K in salary) about the Harvard MBA difference, he said the brand-name and the network probably set it apart from others, since most MBA schools now uses the same material as Harvard's.   I tend to agree with his thoughts - I never did felt the caliber of my professor had much to do with my ability to apply what I learn to practical use.  In my own MBA education, the professor did more facilitation than \"\"teaching\"\".  Apparently that is the norm, as MBA is less about being fed information than it is about demonstrating the ability to analyze and present information.  Back to M.Attia's question, I would go with the highest ranked MBA education I could afford (both financially and lifestyle).  A friend of mine was able to get his employer to pay for the $90K tuition fee from Rotman, along with job security for 5 years (not a bad idea in this economy).  I settled for Lansbridge University in Fedricton because the flexibility of distance learning and cost was important to me, though I was able to get my employer to pay for the MBA after I started (I switched group within the company shortly after I started my MBA and my new boss was able to get the approval without locking me in).\"", "This site has the best information I could find, other than a Bloomberg terminal:    Quantumonline.com QUANTUMONLINE.COM SECURITY DESCRIPTION:  SCANA Corp., 2009 Series A, 7.70% Enhanced Junior Subordinated Notes, issued in $25 denominations, redeemable at the issuer's option on or after 1/30/2015 at $25 per share plus accrued and unpaid interest, and maturing 1/30/2065 which may be extended to 1/30/2080. Interest distributions of 7.70% ($1.925) per annum are paid quarterly on 1/30, 4/30, 7/30 & 10/30 to holders of record on the record date which is the business day prior to the payment date (NOTE: the ex-dividend date is at least 2 business days prior to the record date). Distributions paid by these debt securities are interest and as such are NOT eligible for the preferential 15% to 20% tax rate on dividends and are also NOT eligible for the dividend received deduction for corporate holders. Units are expected to trade flat, which means accrued interest will be reflected in the trading price and the purchasers will not pay and the sellers will not receive any accrued and unpaid interest. The Notes are unsecured and subordinated obligations of the company and will rank equally with all existing and future unsecured and subordinated indebtedness of the company. See the IPO prospectus for further information on the debt securities by clicking on the ‘Link to IPO Prospectus’ provided below.", "All that is an issue with non competitive market.  My premise was that in capitalism, not in crony capitalism nor in heavily regulated so that it is non competitive or high in market barrier.   Way to solve non competitive market due to crony capitalism or too heavily regulated market usually is not more regulation.  That makes it worse. Role of regulation is to factor in extranality, promote transparency and such.  Not inflate wages of people who don't deserve it", "Every reward program has to have a funding source. If the card gives you x percent back on all purchases. That means that their business is structured to entice you to pump more transactions through the system. Either their other costs are lower, or the increased business allows them to make more money off of late fees, and interest. If the card has you earn extra points for buying a type of item or from a type of store (home stores improvement in the Spring), they are trying to make sure you use their card for what can be a significant amount of business during a small window of time. Sometimes they cap it by saying 5% cash back at home improvement stores during the spring but only on the first $1500 of purchases. That limits it to $75 maximum. Adding more business for them, makes more money for them. Groceries and gas are a good year round purchase categories. Yes there is some variation depending on the season, and the weather, but overall there is not an annual cliff once the season ends. Gas and groceries account for thousands of dollars a year these are not insignificant categories, for many families are recession proof. If they perceive a value from this type of offer they will change their buying behavior.  My local grocery store has a deal with a specific gas station. This means that they made a monetary deal. Because you earn points at the grocery store and spend points at the gas station, the grocery store is paying some compensation to the gas station every time you use points. The gas station must be seeing an increase in business so theoretically they don't get 100% compensation from the grocery store.  In cases where credit cards give airline miles, the credit card company buys the miles from the airline at a discount because they know that a significant number of miles will never be used."]}
+{"query": "Can my company buy my personal debt?", "corpus": ["When your debt is forgiven, you have to consider the amount written off as an ordinary income item (with the exclusion of the debt originated from the purchase of primary home). If you're trying to write the debt off from your taxes - then it won't work. Even if you can expense the debt forgiveness, you will incur tax liability on your personal taxes side, and in addition you'll be out of cash in your business. So basically you'll end up paying it with after tax money, exactly the thing you're trying to avoid. In addition, you're dealing with related persons here, which means that the loss deduction might not be allowed (depends on the actual details of the transaction), so you might actually end up paying more taxes with this scheme that just paying off the loan directly (if your business pays taxes separately from your person). A loss on the sale or exchange of property between related persons is   not deductible. This applies to both direct and indirect transactions,   but not to distributions of property from a corporation in a complete   liquidation. For the list of related persons, see Related persons   next."], "neg": ["\"I love the subtitle on this article - \"\"Silicon Valley deals are not based on factors that bankers can model\"\" and another quote \"\"a DCF projection would not be able to help Mark Zuckerberg, the Facebook chief executive, work out whether Snapchat was worth $1bn or $10bn\"\"  What a crock of BS.  A DCF is exactly the methodology you should be using in order to value an acquisition (along with comparable company/transaction methods).    Is it incredibly difficult to use the right variables and forecast the value of these companies?  Yes.  Is the inherent value of a company derived from the expected cash flows generated from that company once you acquire it?  Yes.  Just because it is hard doesn't mean you shouldn't do it.    \"\"Big tech companies have never had more cash than they have today, and they are finding it just as hard to put their money to work as everybody else is.\"\"  Well damn then maybe you should return that money back to the shareholders **who own the company** instead of blowing it on dot-bombs at stupid valuation levels.\"", "What is your focus in your finance coursework? Investments? Wealth management? Corporate finance?  Find something that compliments your desired path. Finance in-and-of itself is one of the most marketable business degrees available (if not THE most), and anything to show you're well-rounded will help get a job.   Don't add real estate as a minor. Most school teach across a $eme$ter what you can learn in a month or two when studying to get your RE license. So, pay thousands of tuition dollar$, or pay the several hundred bucks for your test/course materials.   Experience: finance degree, now a commercial real estate broker", "By not saving some of your income you put yourself at risk of the following: If you are comfortable taking on those risks, then continue what you are doing (I'm not being sarcastic here...some people are perfectly comfortable taking on these risks).  I plan on working until I die so I am not as concerned with saving for retirement but I do save some money for temporary job loss situations. Saving money presents its own set of issues (e.g. Where should I put the money?, Should I invest the money?, What type of investments?).  If you have no interest in researching answers to these type of questions then I would suggest what others have already suggested: have part of your paycheck automatically siphoned into an account that can only be accessed by a trusted family member.", "\"#1  The Affordable Care Act is not a gift to anybody except the insurance and drug industries.   It actually saves the federal government and employers money by giving employers a semi credible \"\"RFOTA\"\" to lay off or cut the hours for their \"\"overpaid older workers\"\" &lt;/sarc&gt; For the government money is saved by shifting families and low paid workers out of expensive government programs like SCIP and Medicaid into hugely profitable individual private insurance plans of lower actuarial value. That effectively shifts the burden to the states and sick people.  Why no discussion about the earth-changing implications of exponential growth in technology on employment?  We need to fund education substantially better or we are soon going to be a nation of largely unemployed people.\"", "Welcome To Shainex Relocation AN ISO 9001:2008 Certified Company SHAINEX PACKERS AND MOVERS is a proud service tax payee Professional Services Provider for Packers and Movers, packing and moving, Domestics Packing Moving, International Packers Movers, International Packing Moving, Car Transportation, Air Cargo, Sea Cargo, Custom Clearance, Warehousing and Insurance Facilities. We also export goods to all worldwide Destinations, we have a lot’s of another exporters export leather Accessories Ready made Garments and Personal Effects as a Baggage, household Items to different Country, International and Domestics. If you interested So Please. Contact us on our Email Shainex Packers and Movers is an ISO certified company and government certified Packers Movers Company. Shainex is a proud service tax payee. Shainex take pride in offering great Packing &amp; Moving Services at reasonable prices. All our employees are well experienced, courteous and careful. We offer personalized service for any kind of relocation requirement whether it is domestic or International and we understand the importance of your belongings. Whether it is office relocation, commercial goods or household items etc, we offer safe packing and moving service. Under the supervision of our expert supervisors, we pack goods depending upon the nature of the item and use appropriate packaging material of best quality such as thermocols, cardboard sheets, gunny bags, plastic bubble sheet, cartons &amp; wooden crates. &amp; Plywood Box The material, which we use in our packing, is of best quality available in Packers Movers Delhi, Packers Movers Noida, Packers Movers Faridabad, Packers Movers Gurgaon, Packers Movers Ghaziabad, Packers Movers Chandigarh, Packers Movers Pune, Movers Packers Mumbai, Packers Movers Ahmadabad, Packers Movers Vadodara, Movers Packers Bangalore, Movers Packers Hyderabad, Movers Packers Chennai and Packers Movers in India. We ensure that all the goods are perfectly packed so that there is no chance of damage during transportation. The moving is with utmost ease and care. The goods are moved without any inconvenience and in a hassle free manner. The understanding of our packers &amp; movers about every aspect of the business creates a facility that provides experienced packing and moving by crews and professionally trained drivers. We relieve you from all your trouble &amp; anxiety by maintaining timely and intact delivery of your consignment, at your doorstep. We pack all your belongings as per the nature of the item and requirement with the help of our professional packing experts. All this leads to safe delivery of our client's goods to the desired destination.", "Under what conditions did you move? My favourite method of judging prices objectively comes from concepts written in Your Money or Your Life by Joe Dominguez. Essentially it normalizes money spent by making you figure out how much an item costs with respect to the number of hours you needed to work to afford it. I prefer that method versus comparing with others since it is objective for yourself and looks beyond just the bare prices.", "Can no one read? I never said anything about equivalence, it was an example of an off the books subsidy. And I'll pose the same question to you as the other commenter, do you think that having solar panels on your roof will keep the government from sending our military to other countries? Because if you do, that's truly laughable.   Apparently that author is clairvoyant enough to announce a 2016 report in an article dated July, 9th 2014. But I'll just assume you didn't actually read any of it. I did, and I'm not saying those figures are wrong, but that report has a clear stated agenda that is anti-oil/coal.  The report I linked was to a US agency that was only making the information available. It may also have inaccuracies, but I'm going to assume that data for identical years in these reports being interpreted wildly differently indicates one is manipulating the information. I'd assume that someone with an agenda would be more likely to manipulate the data than an agency just seeking to publish data.  Regardless, those inconsistencies should have some explanation."]}
+{"query": "Equation to determine if a stock is oversold and by how much?", "corpus": ["There are those who would suggest that due to the Efficient Market Hypothesis, stocks are always fairly valued. Consider, if non-professional posters on SE (here) had a method that worked beyond random chance, everyone seeking such a method would soon know it. If everyone used that method, it would lose its advantage. In theory, this is how stocks' values remain rational.  That said, Williams %R is one such indicator. It can be seen in action on Yahoo finance -  In the end, I find such indicators far less useful than the news itself. BP oil spill - Did anyone believe that such a huge oil company wouldn't recover from that disaster? It recovered by nearly doubling from its bottom after that news. A chart of NFLX (Netflix) offers a similar news disaster, and recovery.  Both of these examples are not quantifiable, in my opinion, just gut reactions. A quick look at the company and answer to one question - Do I feel this company will recover? To be candid - in the 08/09 crash, I felt that way about Ford and GM. Ford returned 10X from the bottom, GM went through bankruptcy. That observation suggests another question, i.e. where is the line drawn between 'investing' and 'gambling'? My answer is that buying one stock hoping for its recovery is gambling. Being able to do this for 5-10 stocks, or one every few months, is investing."], "neg": ["\"Most of the answers here reflect a misunderstanding of what gold actually is from a financial perspective.  I'll answer your question by asking two questions, and I do challenge you to stop and think about what we mean when we say \"\"cash\"\" or \"\"unit of exchange\"\" because without understanding those, you will completely miss this answer. In 1971, the DXY was 110.  For people who don't know, the DXY is the US Dollar Index - it weighs the strength of the US Dollar relative to other currencies.  Hey look, it's a pretty graph of the DXY's history. In 1971, gold was $35 an ounce. The DXY is 97 today. Gold is $1170 an ounce today. Now the questions: If shares of Company A in 1971 were $10 a share, but now are $100 a share and some of this is because the company has grown, but some of it is because of inflation and the DXY losing value, what would the value of the company be if it was held in grams of gold and not dollars? Benjamin Graham, who influenced Warren Buffett, is a \"\"supposed\"\" critic of gold, yet what percent of his life were we not on a gold standard?  In his day, the dollar was backed by gold - why would you buy gold if every dollar represented gold. Finally, consider how many US Dollars exist, and how few metric tonnes of gold exist (165,000).  Even Paul Volcker admitted that a new gold standard would be impossible because the value of gold, if we did it today, would put gold in the $5000-$10000 range - which is absurd: To get on a gold standard technically now, an old fashioned gold   standard, and you had to replace all the dollars out there in foreign   hands with gold, God the price, you buy gold, because the price of   gold would have to be enormous. So, you're all left hoping the Federal Reserve figures how to get us all out of this mess without causing trouble, otherwise, let me just kindly say, you WILL realize the value of gold then. As the old saying goes, \"\"A fool and his money are soon parted.\"\"  I could be wrong, but I'd say that those who've been buying gold since 1971 for their \"\"cash holdings\"\" (not index funds) aren't the suckers.\"", "PE can be misleading when theres a good risk the company simply goes out of business in a few years. For this reason some people use PEG, which incorporates growth into the equation.", "\"It's not at all different from anything that happens in reality. Everybody deals with risk and uncertainty, everybody worries about the future, and everybody puts their best mind to bear on it. You gamble, you hedge your bets, you try to do your best with what you've got and what you're willing to give up. People who aren't in the financial industry can also think about their goals in a fine-tuned, strategic, mathematical way. Being able to accurately model reality is useful for pretty much everything.  The way in which it is actually totally different is not addressed. People who deal in derivatives can do a very precise job of predicting the future. So can astronomers, bullfighters, and migratory fish. The difference is that people who deal in derivatives have the ability to leverage reality to obtain a preferred future reality in a uniquely influential way. The guy is acting like investment banks live up on a mountain and look at tea leaves and send down memos about securities once a year.   &gt;Changing the shape of the graph is in some loose sense the business of the financial system, particularly the big investment banks, which are sometimes thought of as \"\"dealers in risk.\"\"   So are drug dealers. But the guesses investment banks make about the future affect the actual future of investment banks in a way that isn't available to, say, cobblers, so they are dealing with much less of their own risk than most people.   &gt;Buying and selling derivatives means consciously trafficking in risk and uncertainty, in a relatively uncut form. This makes it interesting to people who don't buy or sell derivatives for a living, but who are curious about risk and uncertainty.  It also makes it interesting to people who are curious about why their lives are affected by the the risk and uncertainty of people who trade in derivatives.\"", "No one has said this specifically yet, but you're more likely to avoid the kinds of problems that concern you by choosing makes and models of vehicle that are known to be reliable.  Honda is well-known for the reliability of their cars, so definitely consider them. @MrChrister mentioned Consumer Reports--they are an excellent resource for buying new and/or used cars. @Natashska made a great point about dealers vs. private sellers.  To that point I'll add the following:", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-08-18/barclays-puts-in-sensors-to-see-which-bankers-are-at-their-desks) reduced by 86%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Barclays Plc has installed devices that track how often bankers are at their desks.  &gt; Managers were peppered with queries when investment bank staff in London discovered black boxes stuck to the underside of their desks in recent months, according to several Barclays employees who asked not to be identified speaking about their workplace.  &gt; Hot-desking may appeal as a cost-cutting strategy to Barclays Chief Executive Officer Jes Staley, who has said there are &amp;quot;Tremendous savings&amp;quot; to be made by reducing the bank&amp;#039;s real-estate footprint.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6ukg68/barclays_puts_in_sensors_to_see_which_bankers_are/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~194042 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*: **bank**^#1 **Barclays**^#2 **how**^#3 **devices**^#4 **office**^#5\"", "\"**2009 Aftonbladet Israel controversy**  The Aftonbladet–Israel controversy refers to the controversy that followed the publication of a 17 August 2009 article in the Swedish tabloid Aftonbladet alleging that Israeli troops harvested organs from Palestinians that died in their custody. The article sparked a fierce debate in Sweden and abroad, and created a rift between the Swedish and Israeli governments. Israeli officials denounced the report at the time, labeling it anti-Semitic. The article was written by Swedish freelance photojournalist Donald Boström, and was entitled \"\"Våra söner plundras på sina organ\"\" (\"\"Our sons are being plundered for their organs\"\").  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&amp;message=Excludeme&amp;subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.27\"", "This is why I have gone back to broadcast TV,  because cable TV costs a lot of money for something that is no better. It doesn't seem that long ago that there were no commercials on cable channels. Now there are MORE commercials on cable channels than on broadcast TV. Remember when the scifi channel was full of science fiction instead of...wrestling?  Remember when MTV was about music?  When Discovery was full of science programming, when A&amp;E was about arts and education and the History channel was about more than Nazis, UFOs and imaginary animals? Now it's all just crap and why pay for that?"]}
+{"query": "question about short selling stocks", "corpus": ["If you had an agreement with your friend such that you could bring back a substantially similar car, you could sell the car and return a different one to him.  The nature of shares of stock is that, within the specified class, they are the same.  It's a fungible commodity like one pound of sand or a dollar bill.  The owner doesn't care which share is returned as long as a share is returned.   I'm sure there's a paragraph in your brokerage account terms of service eluding to the possibility of your shares being included in short sale transactions."], "neg": ["\"That's like a car dealer advertising their \"\"huge access\"\" to Chevrolet.  All brokers utilize dark pools nowadays, either their own or one belonging to a larger financial institution.  Why?  Because that's a primary source of broker income.  Example: Under current US regulations the broker is under no obligation to pass these orders to actual (a.k.a. lit) exchanges.  Instead it can internalize them in its dark pool as long as it \"\"improves the price\"\".  So: If a broker doesn't run its own dark pool, then it sends the orders to the dark pool run by a larger institution (JPMorgan, Credit Suisse, Getco, Knight Capital) and gets some fraction of the dark pool's profit in return. Are Mom and Pop negatively impacted by this?  Not for most order types.  They each even got a free penny out of the deal!  But if there were no dark pools, that $1.00 difference between their trade prices would have gone half ($0.50) to Mom's counterparty and half ($0.50) to Pop's counterparty, who could be someone else's Mom and someone else's Pop. So ... that's why brokers all use dark pools, and why their advertisement of their dark pool access is silly.  They're basically saying, \"\"We're going to occasionally throw you a free penny while making 49 times that much from you\"\"! (Note: Now apply the above math to a less liquid product than AAPL.  Say, where the spread is not $0.01, but more like $0.05.  Now Mom and Pop still might make a penny each, while the broker can make $4.98 on a 100 share trade!)\"", "I suspect this is related to the fact that Blue Apron completed its IPO very recently and insider shares are likely still under a lockup period.  So in the case of APRN stock only the 30mm shares involved in the IPO are trading until the insider lockup expires which is usually about 90 days.", "If you help find a suitable next tenant and help smooth out the transition, most landlord generally don't have an issue to terminate the lease early, and move the contract to the new tenant. Remember that the biggest concerns for landlords is that they don't want the place to be empty (leaving an apartment empty costs them money due to tax, strata, bills, etc as well as putting in jeopardy whatever future plans they might have made under the assumption of a stable income from the rent). You could also offer to pay for the listing agent and other switching fees (e.g. putting bills under the new tenant's name, etc). If you don't have an early termination clause the rental agreement, or sometimes even when you do, these things are often negotiable. If you can guarantee that your leave won't leave them with an empty apartment with no-one paying rentals, most reasonable landlords wouldn't have issue with terminating early.  Many rental agreements also have terms regarding early terminations. This usually involves paying a fee which amounts to a month or two of rent. This may vary.", "The term self-directed generally refers to RRSP accounts where the account holder has not only the ability to determine a basic investment asset mix (such as can be accomplished even with a limited selection of mutual funds) but, more specifically, the self-directed account holder has a much wider choice of financial instruments beyond mutual funds, GICs, and/or cash savings. A self-directed RRSP generally permits the account holder to also invest or trade directly in financial instruments such as: Those kinds of instruments are not typically available in a non-self-directed mutual fund or bank RRSP.  Typical mutual fund or bank RRSPs offer you only their choice of products  – often with higher fees attached. Related resources:", "&gt;  It costs as much to project for one guy as for a packed house.  I don't have specific knowledge about movie licensing, but I'd be VERY surprised if the number of tickets to a given showing didn't factor into the actual price paid to the rights holder. I mean, we live in a world where ASCAP charges bars for jukebox plays based on an estimate of how many people in the bar could hear the song.....", "It is worth noting first that interest and short-term dividends/capital gains are all taxed at the same rate. So all the investments below I mention (even savings accounts) will be taxed at the same rate.  Also, even short-term capital losses can often be harvested to reduce your tax rate in many countries. While it is worth paying attention to the taxes when investing in the short term the more important factor is how much risk that you can take or want to take with the money.  Most equity portfolios like the S&P index give a much higher risk that there will be much less in the account when you need to buy.  You generally have a higher expected return with equity but as you mention that return is very random over such a short period. Over such a short variable period many people will invest in short term bond-index funds or just keep the fund in a high-yielding savings account.  With the savings account your money is guaranteed.  Short term bond funds will have generally higher yields but a small chance you may lose money in the short term. Some people can trade short-term bond indices for free with their broker but if you can't be sure to include the trading costs when thinking about which investment to use as with how low yields are currently the fees may eat up any advantage you gain.", "\"A straddle is an options strategy in which one \"\"buys\"\" or \"\"sells\"\" options of the same maturity (expiry date) that allow the \"\"buyer\"\" or \"\"seller\"\" to profit based on how much the price of the underlying security moves, regardless of the direction of price movement. IE: A long straddle would be: You buy a call and a put at the same strike price and the same expiration date. Your profit would be if the underlying asset(the stock) moves far enough down or up(higher then the premiums you paid for the put + call options) (In case, one waits till expiry) Profit = Expiry Level - Strike Price - (Premium Paid for Bought Options) Straddle\""]}
+{"query": "Insurance company sent me huge check instead of pharmacy. Now what?", "corpus": ["The insurance company issued the check.  I'd contact the insurance company to have the current check voided and a new one issued to the pharmacy."], "neg": ["Aloe Vera juice as a herb provides a lot of advantages in the form of better blood circulation, treating Irritable Bowel Syndrome (IBS), detoxification as well as liberation from ache. The gel of aloe vera is drawn out of the leaves belonging to aloe plant and its application can be made topically.", "You have asked about getting a loan, the issue is that you don't have collateral to offer up in exchange for the loan, you also don't have a regular source of income. Getting a low level job, even one not related to your major will provide income. Getting a not-so-perfect job related to your major will allow your to sustain yourself, and provide experience that can help you find the perfect job. The time from application to interview to offer letter to start date can be measured in months. This is even with positions you are perfect for. Since it can take months to get started in a new job you should focus on something that you can get started right away.  This type of job will have a shorter time frame for the interview cycle. You may feel overqualified for the jobs based on the fact you just graduated from college but this was the type of job you should have had to bridge you from school to the job you want.  Regarding the end goal of getting the perfect job, you might have to refocus your efforts. When you had time and money you could afford to be picky about company, location and salary. Now that money is in short supply you will need to change your standards. Keep in mind it is not just an issue about being able to travel to job interviews, it is also about needing a way to afford food, and health insurance. Go back to your college campus and talk to the career counselors they can help your with your resume, and give job search advice. They may also have contacts that can help you find a position with a good local company or even a national company. They may even know of companies that need employees for just a few months to fill a need.", "\"&gt; Do you even know these people and their history to know that they are \"\"undeserving\"\" of higher pay?  if they were worth more, other businesses would offer them higher higher pay. they aren't forced to work for walmart. but if their work makes a business $10/hr, it makes no sense for businesses to offer them more than that - it's a loss to the business.   &gt; Your comments show immense naivety and lack of empathy.  i'm just a med student, but i plan on giving a lot in charity once i'm working. and i'll bet you my charity givings will do many times more good than the gov't would do with it. watch just 2 minutes from this speech. it explains my views.   http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=18zqtVcGxAA#t=7m55s\"", "\"I'm looking forward to not having to read about Market Basket every single day.  Claiming 2M customers \"\"joined a 6-week boycott\"\" is absolutely ridiculous and deceptive.  Pretty much every shelf was empty.  No perishable items were available.  Customers didn't *boycott* Market Basket.  Customers didn't go there because there was nothing to buy.\"", "There are two Aldi's: Aldi Nord and Aldi Süd. Both are based in Germany and are completely separate companies, with Aldi Nord operating the Northern half and Aldi Süd operating in the southern half. The reason that there are two is because the brothers who founded Aldi disagreed over whether or not their stores should sell cigarettes. So in 1960 they split the company and agreed to not compete in each other's territory.   Aldi Süd is the Aldi that we have in the US while Aldi Nord is the Aldi that owns Trader Joe's", "No there are no deductions when converting from an SB a/c to an NRO a/c. However, the bank may charge you a small fee to transfer your funds (Somewhere between 100-500 Rupees). The interest you earn on that NRO account will be deducted at source as compared to your S/B(30.9% p.a). In case you fall within basic exemption limit, you can claim it back at the end of the year, while filing your taxes.  You can remit upto $1 million from your NRO account every year. There are no taxes while you remit the money. However, you will need to fill out form 15CA and 15CB which ensures that the taxes have been collected before the money is remitted out of the country.", "\"I think you're missing a fixed and variable breakout cost per unit here. Fixed costs per unit decrease as volume rises.  If you think VC and equity peeps would throw down bills to a company who can't reasonably argue or support a cash generating model, you're likely mistaken. Uber's infrastructure and rapid scaling are cost intensive, however, once implemented, their costs do not rise 1:1 with every person who hails an Uber, which is what you're implying by leaving us two identical profit margins at vastly different volumes, which only exists in fairy-tale \"\"unicorn\"\" land.   Also, to your comments below: Oh wow, you think a tech company is overvalued? Like that's not the real \"\"soundbite\"\" - same fuckin' soundbite I heard when Amazon was trading at 200 a share.\""]}
+{"query": "How do straddles that involve selling options protect against early assignment?", "corpus": ["Yes, that's the risk. If the stock is bouncing around a lot your options could get assigned.  If it heads south you now are the proud owner of more of a falling stock.  It's good that you're looking to understand the risks of an investment method.  That's important no matter what the method is."], "neg": ["Total employment will drop by 1 million or more but - according to your CEPR study, thanks to TTIP, average household income may rise by as much as 527 euros a year by 2027.   Some of that may be offset by loss of social benefits, for example, the average American spends around $250,000-$300,000 or more over his or her lifetime for health care over an identical Canadian.", "\"Price is current price per share, but you can buy fractional shares. Minimal investment is how later the first purchase of shares must be to make it worth their efforts to set up the account for you. How you manage it is up to you. You can buy or sell shares at any time, pretty much, though it may take a few days for the transaction to \"\"settle\"\" and take effect. You can do this via checks, or you can give the broker (or the investment house, if you are dealing directly with them as I do) permission to take money from or put money to your bank account when you tell them you want to buy or sell shares. You may be able to set up direct deposit; talk to your employer about that. Or you may be able to have your bank make a periodic transfer/purchase for you.\"", "The Livret A is a very specific product. It's tax-exempt and would historically not be available through regular banks. Commercial banks can now offer it but they only collect the money on behalf of the Caisse des dépôts (CDC). The CDC then pays interest to the savers and a commission for the bank. The commission is baked into the system, not charged to the customer directly but since the interest rate is set centrally, banks cannot compete on that. So this is risk-free money for them (but on the flip side it does not help them meet capital adequacy requirements). Other savings account or products have different rules. Another angle to consider is that a livret A was historically very attractive for consumers (and was certainly perceived as such) so that many people would have a checking account at a regular bank and another account at the Caisse d'épargne or the Banque postale just to open a livret A. For commercial banks, the alternative therefore isn't having your money on your checking account vs. your livret A or another savings account, it was having your money on a livret A they administer vs. seeing you run away to another institution. There is also a cap on the livret A and you're not allowed to save more money by opening several of them at different banks. At the same time banks have been complaining that the decrease of the interest rate (and consequently of their commission) makes the whole scheme a lot less interesting for them. For what it's worth, I recently (re)opened a bank account in France after living abroad for a long time and the customer advisor did not seem particularly interested in pushing a livret A.", "wtf.  look at that image.  its supposed to show a horrible, disgusting, greedy, rich, 80-year-old unfairly hoarding money.  but check it out -- the mattresses are old and cheap, bare like in a flophouse, and the bills are $1 and $5.    statistically, i think being scared and hiding your fixed-income under a crappy mattress is a more accurate depiction of old age nowadays, than being a trillionaire and bathing in champagne.  i realize this will be an unpopular thought.  its very satisfying to have a group to blame for everything.  its scary the extent to which we're being led to hate each other in groups  =:-(", "The rule that I know is six months of income, stored in readily accessible savings (e.g. a savings or money market account).   Others have argued that it should be six months of expenses, which is of course easier to achieve.  I would recommend against that, partially because it is easier to achieve.  The other issue is that people are more prone to underestimate their expenses than their income.  Finally, if you base it on your current expenses, then budget for savings and have money left over, you often increase your expenses.  Sometimes obviously (e.g. a new car) and sometimes not (e.g. more restaurants or clubs).  Income increases are rarer and easier to see.   Either way, you can make that six months shorter or longer.  Six months is both feasible and capable of handling difficult emergencies.  Six years wouldn't be feasible.  One month wouldn't get you through a major emergency.   Examples of emergencies:   Your savings can be in any of multiple forms.  For example, someone was talking about buying real estate and renting it.  That's a form of savings, but it can be difficult to do withdrawals.  Stocks and bonds are better, but what if your emergency happens when the market is down?  Part of how emergency funds operate is that they are readily accessible.   Another issue is that a main goal of savings is to cover retirement.  So people put them in tax privileged retirement accounts.  The downside of that is that the money is not then available for emergencies without paying penalties.  You get benefits from retirement accounts but that's in exchange for limitations.   It's much easier to spend money than to save it.  There are many options and the world makes it easy to do.  Emergency funds make people really think about that portion of savings.  And thinking about saving before spending helps avoid situations where you shortchange savings.   Let's pretend that retirement accounts don't exist (perhaps they don't in your country).  Your savings is some mix of stocks and bonds.  You have a mortgaged house.  You've budgeted enough into stocks and bonds to cover retirement.  Now you have a major emergency.   As I understand your proposal, you would then take that money out of the stocks and bonds for retirement.  But then you no longer have enough for retirement.  Going forward, you will have to scrimp to get back on track.   An emergency fund says that you should do that scrimping early.  Because if you're used to spending any level of money, cutting that is painful.  But if you've only ever spent a certain level, not increasing it is much easier.  The longer you delay optional expenses, the less important they seem.   Scrimping beforehand also helps avoid the situation where the emergency happens at the end of your career.  It's one thing to scrimp for fifteen years at fifty.  What's your plan if you would have an emergency at sixty-five?  Or later?  Then you're reducing your living standard at retirement.   Now, maybe you save more than necessary.  It's not unknown.  But it's not typical either.  It is far more common to encounter someone who isn't saving enough than too much.", "Put Options. They're less risky than shorting, and have similar upsides. The major difference is that if the price goes up, you're just out the underwriting price. You'll also need to know when the event will happen, or you risk being outwaited.  More traditionally, an investor would pull their money out of the market and move into Treasury bonds. Recall that when the market tanked in 2008, the price of treasuries jumped. Problem is, you can only do that trade once, and it hasn't really unwound yet. And the effect is most pronounced on short term treasuries, so you have to babysit the investment. Because of this, I think some people have moved into commodities like gold, but there's a lot of risk there. Worst case scenario you have a lot of shiny metal you can't eat or use.", "From the Massachusetts Department of Revenue:   1st - Massachusetts Source Income That is Excluded   Massachusetts gross income excludes certain items of income derived from sources within Massachusetts: non-business related interest, dividends and gains from the sale or exchange of intangibles, and qualified pension income. 2nd - Massachusetts Source Income That is Included:   Massachusetts gross income includes items of income derived from sources within Massachusetts. This includes income: 3rd - Trade or business, Including Employment Carried on in Massachusetts:   A nonresident has a trade or business, including any employment carried on in Massachusetts if: A nonresident generally is not engaged in a trade or business, including any employment carried on in Massachusetts if the nonresident's presence for business in Massachusetts is casual, isolated and inconsequential. A nonresident's presence for business in Massachusetts will ordinarily be considered casual, isolated and inconsequential if it meets the requirements of the Ancillary Activity Test (AAT) and Examples. When nonresidents earn or derive income from sources both within Massachusetts and elsewhere, and no exact determination can be made of the amount of Massachusetts source income, an apportionment of income must be made to determine that amount considered Massachusetts gross income. 4th - Apportionment of Income:   Apportionment Methods:   The three most common apportionment methods used to determine Massachusetts source income are as follows:   Gross income is multiplied by a:   So if you go to Massachusetts to work, you have to pay the tax.  If you collect a share of the profit or revenue from Massachusetts, you have to pay tax on that.  If you work from Oregon and are paid for that work, then you don't pay Massachusetts tax on that.  If anything, your company might have to pay Oregon taxes on revenue you generate (you are their agent or employee in Oregon).   Does the answer change depending on whether the income is reported at 1099 or W-2? This shouldn't matter legally.  It's possible that it would be easier to see that the work was done in Oregon in one or the other.  I.e. it doesn't make any legal difference but may make a practical difference.   All this assumes that you are purely an employee or contractor and not an owner.  If you are an owner, you have to pay taxes on any income from your Massachusetts business.  Note that this applies to things like copyrights and real estate as well as the business.   This also assumes that you are doing your work in Oregon.  If you live in Oregon and travel to Massachusetts to work, you pay taxes on your Massachusetts income in Massachusetts."]}
+{"query": "(Theoretical) Paying credit cards with other credit cards", "corpus": ["If you had a CC issuer that allowed you to do bill-pay this way, I suspect the payment would be considered a cash advance that will trigger a fee and a pretty egregious cash advance specific interest rate.  It's not normal for a credit payment portal to accept a credit card as payment. If you were able to do this as a balance transfer, again there would be fees to transfer the balance and you would not earn any rewards from the transferred balance.  I think it's important to note that cash back benefits are effectively paid by merchant fees.  You make a $100 charge, the merchant pays about $2.50 in transaction fee, you're credited with about $1 of cash back (or points or whatever).  Absent a merchant transaction and the associated fee there's no pot of money from which to apply cash back rewards."], "neg": ["I suggest opening a Credit Card that doesn't charge Foreign currency conversion fees. Here is the list of cards without such a fee, Bankrate's Foreign transaction fee credit card chart", "\"Over on Quantitative Finance Stack Exchange, I asked and answered a more technical and broader version of this question, Should the average investor hold commodities as part of a broadly diversified portfolio?  In short, I believe the answer to your question is that gold is neither an investment nor a hedge against inflation. Although many studies claim that commodities (such as gold) do offer some diversification benefit, the most credible academic study I have seen to date, Should Investors Include Commodities in Their Portfolios After All? New Evidence, shows that a mean-variance investor would not want to allocate any of their portfolio to commodities (this would include gold, presumably). Nevertheless, many asset managers, such as PIMCO, offer funds that are marketed as \"\"real return\"\" or \"\"inflation-managed\"\" and include commodities (including gold) in their portfolios.  PIMCO has also commissioned some research, Strategic Asset Allocation and Commodities, claiming that holding some commodities offers both diversification and inflation hedging benefits.\"", "The people who share our tastes are not watching most TV channels anymore. People who have a TV and spare money are subscribed to the premium cable channels and mostly watch those shows. Young people watch TV on their computers and don't see the ads.  As a result, the rest of the TV channels have to cater to the vast population of Ghost Hunters fans and Survivor addicts.", "There are other answers here about how much you can deduct for a home office. What seems unique is the question of whether you can deduct it for both your LLC and for your employment. Unless your LLC owns the home, you cannot deduct the depreciation directly. Instead you have to charge your LLC rent for the time that you are using the space for the LLC. That rent must be declared as income on your personal tax return, and you can then offset some of it with the time you spend in that space working for your employer and depreciation for time it is being rented to your LLC. Using a strategy this complex may save you a few bucks on your return, but this is definitely an area where a tax professional is worth the expense making sure you get it right.", "Your point being? It is indeed possible that she is totally clueless about information security and the fact that her organisation got hacked big time is not promising in that respect, but to disqualify someone purely on their formal education is equally discomforting. But since I only have a bachelor degree in musicology (have worked in IT ever since) you probably don't consider my comment worth reading.", "They might be concerned with having to charge sales tax in California if they have a single employee in California, creating a nexus situation with CA. If that's the case, or even if there is some other issue, you might be able to switch from being a W2 employee to being a 1099 independent contractor. There's a host of additional issues this could cause, but it alleviate the nexus problem (if THAT is the problem). Here's a terrible solution you can bring up, but shouldn't do under any circumstances: offer to set up a mailing address in an allowed State, and give your company plausible deniability with regards to your legal residence. Obviously, this is a terrible idea, but exploring that option with your employer would help you suss out what the actual objection is. Ultimately, anything said here about the reason is just conjecture. You need to talk to the decision maker(s) about the real reason behind the denial. Then you can talk through solutions. Also - don't forget that you can get another job. If you are serious about a future with your girlfriend, you should put that relationship ahead of your current employment comfort and security. If you are willing to walk away from your position, you are in a much better situation to negotiate.", "Trauma and Post Traumatic Stress Disorder has become much more common now than it used to be, and it shakes the whole foundation of one’s life. It generally sprouts from various underlying emotional issues and makes us afraid of everything. We at Transformations Coaching &amp; Hypnotherapy, help our patients heal through many different techniques."]}
+{"query": "Postbank (Germany) - transferring money to the US - what are the best options?", "corpus": ["For those who are interested, I am answering my own question: We used Postbank and transferred 6000 Euro, we chose to Transfer in US$, and selected Shared Fees. There were three fees in total: All in all, I paid ~37$; this is about half of what I expected; and I got a perfect exchange rate. Postbank might have its downsides, but it seems they are still a good deal."], "neg": ["\"I use \"\"Money Manager Ex\"\" which is a Windows application I use on PC to log my transactions and for simple statistic. They have two versions, simple standlone application and self-hosted web app.\"", "\"What you have is usually called a pre-paid credit card.  You pay some money (Indian Rupees) to the credit card company, and then you can use the card to pay for purchases etc in foreign (non-Indian) currencies upto the remaining balance on the card. If a proposed charge exceeds the remaining balance, the transaction will be declined when you try to use the card.  There might be multiple ways that the card is set up, e.g. it might be restricted to charge purchases denominated in US dollars alone, or you might be able to use it anywhere in the world (except India).  The balance on the card might be denominated in INR, or in US$, say. In the latter case, the exchange rate at which your INR payment was converted into the $US balance is fixed and agreed to at the time of the original payment: you paid INR 70K (say) and the balance was set to US$ 1000 even though the exchange rate on the open market would have given you a few more US dollars. In the former case with the balance denominated in INR, a charge of US$ 100, say, would be converted to INR at a fixed agreed-upon rate, or at the current exchange rate that the Visa or MasterCard network is using, plus (typically) a 3% fee currency exchange fee, and your balance in INR will decrease accordingly. With all that as prologue, if you made a purchase from Walmart USA and later returned it for a credit, it should increase your credit card balance  appropriately. You may be whacked with currency conversion fees along the way depending on how your card is set up, but with a US$-denominated card, a credit of US$100 should increase your card balance by US$100. So, that $US 100 can be spent on something else instead.  In short, the card is   your \"\"bank\"\" account. You cannot spend more than the remaining balance on the card just like you cannot withdraw more money from your bank account than you have in the account, and you can recharge your card by making more INR payments into it so as to increase the available balance. But it is like a current account in that you are unlikely to earn interest on the balance the way you do with a savings account. So what if you are back in India and have no further use of this card? Can you get your balance back as cash or deposit into your regular bank account? Call the Customer Help line, or read the card agreement you signed.\"", "\"To be deductible, a business expense must be both ordinary and necessary. An ordinary expense is one that is common and accepted in your trade or business. A necessary expense is one that is helpful and appropriate for your trade or business. An expense does not have to be indispensable to be considered necessary.  (IRS, Deducting Business Expenses) It seems to me you'd have a hard time convincing an auditor that this is the case.  Since business don't commonly own cars for the sole purpose of housing $25 computers, you'd have trouble with the \"\"ordinary\"\" test.  And since there are lots of other ways to house a computer other than a car, \"\"necessary\"\" seems problematic also.\"", "\"In the US, this was the case during the 19th century. There was a system of \"\"subscriptions\"\" between banks, where larger banks backed the smaller banks to some extent. In trade, notes from distant banks were not accepted or discounted relative to known local banks, or silver/gold coinage. There were a number of problems with this system which came to a head during the Panic of 1907. During this crisis, a cascading series of banking failures was only stopped by the personal intervention of JP Morgan. Even when Morgan intervened, it was very difficult to make capital available in a way that avoided the panic. The subsequent creation of the Federal Reserve was a response to that crisis.\"", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theatlantic.com/technology/archive/2017/06/when-exactly-does-amazon-become-a-monopoly/530616/) reduced by 95%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; On Friday morning, Amazon announced it was buying Whole Foods Market for more than $13 billion.  &gt; From a straightforward standpoint, the Whole Foods acquisition means that Amazon will now participate in the $700 billion grocery-store business.  &gt; In the near term, the Whole Foods purchase worries some analysts most because it immediately gives Amazon another infrastructural advantage: more than 400 small warehouses, spread out across some of the most affluent neighborhoods in the United States.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6hvpa5/after_the_whole_foods_acquisition_is_amazon_a/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~146826 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*: **Amazon**^#1 **more**^#2 **Market**^#3 **company**^#4 **think**^#5\"", "I shopped in both in Germany... with the slightly different logos at the time (colors differed).  I would think the two cooperate very strongly together with logistics and specials, but I may be wrong.  It just seemed they were very similiar and iirc had the same specials at the same times.", "Be aware that ATM withdrawals often generate hidden fees, which are not obviously declared. Many banks operate e.g. with a currency exchange fee, giving you an exchange rate some 1-2% lower than actually applicable. If you withdraw larger amounts, such a currency exchange fee easily adds up to what you would have paid for a wire transfer, where you would get a better exchange rate. Although it's probably much hassle for you to change banks, another option may be to find a bank which operates both in France and the US. Banks with different national branches often offer cheap and fast wire transfers between same-bank accounts in different countries. E.g. Citibank used to offer such services, but I am not sure if they still serve private customers in France."]}
+{"query": "Did an additional $32 billion necessarily get invested into Amazon.com stock on October 26th, 2017?", "corpus": ["Stock A last traded at $100. Stock A has 1 million shares outstanding. No seller is willing to sell Stock A for less than $110 a share. One buyer is willing to buy 1 share for $110. The order executes. The buyer pays the seller $110. Stock A's new price is $110. An $110 investment increased the market cap by $10 million. Neat trick (for all who own Stock A)."], "neg": ["Banks consider investment mortgages (and any mortgage where you don't live in the property), as a riskier investment than an owner occupied, home collateral mortgage. The sources of increased risk range from concerns that you will screw up as a landlord, your tenants will destroy the place, you won't have tenants and can't afford to pay the bank, and/or you'll take out several other investment mortgages and over extend yourself. All of these risks are compounded by the fact that it is harder for the bank to convince you to pay when they can't put you out on the street if you default. Banks lend and invest in money, not real estate, so they would much rather have a paying loan than a foreclosed house, especially with the modern foreclosure glut. The increased risk means the bank will charge higher interest for the loan, may require a higher downpayment, and will require higher lending standards before issuing the loan. A new housing investor can get around these higher prices by living in the home for a few years before renting it out (though your lender could possibly require you to renegotiate the loan if you move out too soon).", "I don't think there's anything to worry about.  TFS doesn't really care who's paying, as long as the loan is being paid as agreed.  Of course you're helping your dad's credit history and not your own, but I doubt TFS would give back money just because it came from your bank account. A business may claim a payment wasn't made against the loan, but you'd have the records that you did in fact pay (keep those bank statements).  In theory they could sue you, in practice you'd send them the proof and they'd investigate and find the misplaced money.  THAT does happen sometimes; the wrong account is credited.  If it did end up in court, again you'd win because you have proof you sent payments.  Even if you put the wrong loan account number to pay to, you'd have proof you in fact sent the money.   If you're talking about something like a loan shark... they can do whatever they like.  They won't sue you though, because again you'd have proof.  That's why they'd use violence.  But probably a loan shark wouldn't falsely claim you didn't pay if you did, as word would get out and the loan shark would lose business.  And again, as long as they get what's agreed to, they don't care how they get it or who they get it from.", "Enough. Please God enough. The 1% is not some omniscient group meeting in some lair somewhere. They don't all wear monocles and hang around to scheme and deal in back rooms. Enough. They are just people making $800,000 or more. Surgeons, financiers, lawyers, entrepreneurs, etc.   I understand this argument and its importance, and completely agree that something isn't right here, but Jesus Christ stop personifying the 1% as some sort of scheming group of evil masterminds bent on world destruction.", "Yeah, this benefits the buyer who made an impulse purchase because they saw a celebrity wearing something similar and thought it was cool. Then a few weeks later it becomes another piece of discarded junk.   I think the free market can work, but this is not the way. There are a lot of external costs that nobody is paying for, especially all the waste associated with producing junk products like this.", "&gt; I don't understand what all the fuss is about  a LOT of people are heavily vested in extracting American money, e.g. The Musker and taxpayer subsidies for his cars and solar.  Al Gore became super wealthy trading carbon and corporations that feed the frenzy like GE and their bird killing wind turbines", "\"I am not referring to grafting... grafting does not even modify genes in any way, all it does is make a single-use plant that has two different fruits growing on it.   I am referring to human-guided pollination and human-guided hybridization to encourage selective traits, something that botanists and farmers have been doing for thousands of years, long before genes were even known to exist.   Every single apple commercially sold is a result of human-guided evolution, there are no \"\"virgin varieties\"\" anymore and haven't been for hundreds of years. The same is true of bananas and cotton and many other cash crops.   The difference between human-guided evolution thousands of years ago is not safety - any single plant hybrid created by traditional means could just as easily be the \"\"apocalypse crop\"\" as one created with modern gene manipulation methods. In fact, modern gene manipulation methods are FAR SAFER as one can computer model the expected outcome of what is going to happen, instead of simply crossing your fingers and hoping for the best.      And part of participating in organic food production is a discontinuation of petrochemical fertilizer. Yes, we use vast amounts of petroleum product to fertilize farmland. If you want to reduce our reliance on fossil fuels, organic production is part of that.   Actually studies show that the incredibly reduced yields and efficiencies resulting from organic farming INCREASE the carbon footprint of organic crops, and that organic is actually the most environmentally un-friendly way to farm... so you're dead wrong. http://appliedmythology.blogspot.ca/2013/04/six-reasons-organic-is-not-most.html\"", "If they had told me that I owe them $10,000 from 3 years ago, I   wouldn't have anything to fight back. Why? First thing you have to do is ask for a proof. Have you received treatment? Have you signed the bill when you were done? This should include all the information about what you got and how much you agreed to pay. Do they have that to show to you, with your signature on it? If they don't - you owe nothing. If they do - you can match your bank/credit card/insurance records (those are kept for 7 years at least) and see what has been paid already. Can a doctor's office do that? They can do whatever they want. The right question is whether a doctor's office is allowed to do that. Check your local laws, States regulate the medical profession. Is there a statute of limitation (I'm just guessing) that forces them   to notify me in a certain time frame? Statute of limitations limits their ability to sue you successfully. They can always sue you, but if the statute of limitations has passed, the court will throw the suite away (provided you bring this defense up on time of course). Without a judgement they cannot force you to pay them, they can only ask. Nicely, as the law quoted by MrChrister mandates. They can trash your credit report and send the bill to collections though, but if the statute of limitations has passed I doubt they'd do that. Especially if its their fault. I'm not a lawyer, and you should consult with a lawyer licensed in your jurisdiction for definitive answers and legal advice."]}
+{"query": "Sale of jointly owned stock", "corpus": ["\"It depends on when she became the shareholder of record. When your wife received the stock, was ownership clearly transferred to her?  If it was, then she should have the right to sell it if she wants.  The gross amount of the sale will be reported to the IRS, and then it will be up to you (and/or your tax advisers) to determine its tax basis so that you pay tax only on the appropriate gain. If she hasn't become the shareholder of record yet, then it can be a bit of a mess.  Your wife's father saying \"\"Merry Christmas; I'm giving you 500 shares of AAPL\"\" doesn't transfer ownership to you.  Him calling up the brokerage and transferring them into an account with her name (or her name and his name) does. Is your wife's father's estate settled yet?  If not, then sorting all of this out is part of the fun.  If it is, and this asset was left dangling out there, then that's beyond anything I know about.\""], "neg": ["Agreed. Another benefit to cold calling is that it drastically increases your ability to make prank phone calls. I do this every now and then whenever I get bored at the office and decide to mess with my friends. It's mildly entertaining.", "I recommend you two things: I like these investments because they are not high risk. I hope this helps.", "Silvrback is a blogging platform offering minimalistic writing experience without the distractions of the complex customization features. With multiple features like scheduling the blog post to using an efficient word editor, Silvrback is the best simple blogging platform that can help you make the impact you want to create with ease. With no ads features you get an uncluttered blogging platform for all your writing needs.", "Bank lending, insurance and derivatives: all dependent on Europe. Metals and shipping: tiny niche industries that have relatively few tax payers actually sitting in London.  Sorry buddy, but without Europe London is just a regional financial centre that mostly services the UK economy with a few niche international areas that don't bring in that much business.", "\"As you clarified in the comments, it is not a contract work but rather an additional temporary assignment with the same employer. You were paid for it in form of a \"\"bonus\"\" - one time irregular payment, instead of regular periodic payments. Irregular wage payments fall under the flat rate withholding rule (the 25% for Federal, some States have similar rules for State withholding). This is not taxes, this is withholding. Withholding is money the employer takes from your salary and forwards to the IRS on the account of your tax liability, but it is not in itself your tax liability. When you do your annual tax return, you'll calculate the actual tax you were supposed to pay, and the difference between what was withheld and your actual tax will be refunded to you (or owed by you, if not enough was withheld). You can control the regular pay withholding using W4 form.\"", "Nope, because Ticketmaster has many venues locked up to the point Amazon will not be able to compete with them there.   Until and unless Amazon can break into those contracts, Ticketmaster will still have a monopoly over many of the best venues.", "Except the ads before a movie are not the primary revenue source, and just because data can be gathered, doesn't mean it is worth anything. Unless they have some incredibly obtuse and far reaching method of finding all kinds interconnecting phenomena, their data isn't going to be much better than what theaters or a service like Fandango probably already offer. There's an endless web of attributes that can make or break a movie, and studios have been refining prediction, measurement, and testing for decades. I don't think a movie ticket app is going to have any game changing insights that tells them who to cast, how to write, or who to market to. It isn't that hard to work out demos and viewing habits of their audience, in fact it's probably among the easiest data they already collect."]}
+{"query": "Is there a mathematical formula to determine a stock's price at a given time?", "corpus": ["A stock market is just that, a market place where buyers and sellers come together to buy and sell shares in companies listed on that stock market. There is no global stock price, the price relates to the last price a stock was traded at on a particular stock market. However, a company can be listed on more than one stock exchange. For example, some Australian companies are listed both on the Australian Stock Exchange (ASX) and the NYSE, and they usually trade at different prices on the different exchanges. Also, there is no formula to determine a stock price. In your example where C wants to buy at 110 and B wants to sell at 120, there will be no sale until one or both of them decides to change their bid or offer to match the opposite, or until new buyers and/or sellers come into the market closing the gap between the buy and sell prices and creating more liquidity. It is all to do with supply and demand and peoples' emotions."], "neg": ["You can take a queue from any sales opportunity and position it in ways that will still appeal to someone who intends to continue working perpetually. Here are some of the points I would make: 401k matching funds are free money that you will have access to in ~20 years whether you retire or not. Long-term savings that grow in the stock market turn into residual income that will add to your standard of living whether you retire or not. There are tax advantages to deferring income if you are in a high tax bracket now. You will have flexibility to withdraw that money in future years where you might have lower earnings. (For example, in a future year, you could take a sabbatical trip to Europe for a few months without pay and draw on your savings during that time that you are not making money.) Even if you don't invest in a 401k, you and max out HSA accounts if you are eligible, and position that as money for medical expenses. If you never have medical reasons to spend that money, you can still withdraw at retirement age like a 401k or IRA. (Though it gets taxed as income if not used for qualified medical purposes at retirement time.) With an unwilling partner, it's difficult to make a lot of progress, but if you have matching funds from your employer, do make sure that you are getting at least those for yourself. Ultimately if he doesn't want to save for himself, you should for yourself. There are no guarantees in life. If he dies or leaves, you must be prepared to take care of your own needs.", "\"While that may be true,  it's a shame. Morality has to come before profit or the game is already lost. Profit without social progress is meaningless. The use of \"\"shareholder value\"\" as a justification for a lack of corporate ethics is disgusting. Our CEOs shouldn't have to be told that it's wrong to pray on their customers. It's fucked up.  It's a huge glaring flaw in society.  Have you listened to any of the interviews with Bernie Madoff or the Enron guys?  They don't feel like they did anything wrong. No shame at all.  Maybe it's because they're sociopaths,  but maybe it's because we're all still irrational animals obsessed with having more than the next guy,  even if we hurt everyone in the process /rant\"", "There are, of course, many possible financial emergencies. They range from large medical expenses to losing your job to being sued to major home or car repairs to who-knows-what. I suppose some people are in a position where the chances that they will face any sort of financial emergency are remote. If you live in a country with national health insurance and there is near-zero chance that you will have any need to go outside this system, you are living with your parents and they are equipped to handle any home repairs, you ride the bus or subway and don't own a car so that's not an issue, etc etc, maybe there just isn't any likely scenario where you'd suddenly need cash. I can think of all sorts of scenarios that might affect me. I'm trying to put my kids through college, so if I lost my job, even if unemployment benefits were adequate to live on, they wouldn't pay for college. I have terrible health insurance so big medical bills could cost me a lot. I have an old car so it could break down any time and need expensive repairs, or even have to be replaced. I might suddenly be charged with a crime that I didn't commit and need a lawyer to defend me. Etc. So in a very real sense, everyone's situation is different. On the other hand, no matter how carefully you think it out, it's always possible that you will get bitten by something that you didn't think of. By definition, you can't make a list of unforeseen problems that might affect you! So no matter how safe you think you are, it's always good to have some emergency fund, just in case. How much is very hard to say.", "\"&gt;Why do so many ventures fail? They are allegedly started by smart, capable people and funded by people with \"\"experience.\"\"  Marketing. It sucks but it is true. You can start a company as an engineer and make the greatest piece of software since sliced bread, but unless you can sell it you're fucked. This is why I avoid investing in startups. Some of the greatest startups fail and some of the horrendous ones succeed; life is unfair.\"", "You are diversified within a particular type of security. Notably the stock market. A truly diversified portfolio not only has multiple types of holdings within a single type of security (what your broad market fund does) but between different types. You have partially succeeded in doing this with the international fund - that way your risk is spread between domestic and international stocks. But there are other holdings. Cash, bonds, commodities, real estate, etc. There are broad index funds/ETFs for those as well, which may reduce your risk when the stock market as a whole tanks - which it does on occasion.", "I'm doing my part. I never eat the calorie, salt, and fat loaded crap that chain restaurants offer. Would rather go buy fresh ingredients from the store and make a meal at home that actually tastes good and won't take years off my life. Buy a nice bottle liquor and make a few cocktails cocktail or a six pack of beer and I'm having a much better meal and experience for a fraction of the price at home.", "\"BoA used to do this too (probably still do). I opened an account at BoA and got low one month, and then a friend of mine cashed a $50 check that I'd given him months prior (that he said he would never cash because \"\"your money is no good here\"\"). That freaking $50 check cost me hundreds of dollars. They charged me the overdraft fee, a bounced check fee, and then ran the fucking thing through again to see if it would cash when they knew it wouldn't, so I ended up with all the fees doubled!   I closed my account after that, and 2 months later, I got a notice that my account had a negative balance of more than $100 because they had charged me the monthly fee for the checking account after I closed it, and since the account was empty... buttfuckbybankapalooza.\""]}
+{"query": "moving family deposits away from Greece (possibly in UK)", "corpus": ["I can't comment about your tax liability in Greece. You will have to pay tax on interest in the UK. If you are earning massive amounts of interest, unlikely with the current interest policies from Merv, then you might be bumped up a tier. The receiving bank may ask for proof of the source of the funds, particularly if it is a fair chunk of change."], "neg": ["Yeah, glass toys made by companies like pipedream and gläs seem to retail for around $50 and up, so I'd expect something made of rose quartz to sell for considerably more, and that I have no qualms with. All the chakra and energy and healing talk, however, do irk me a little. But hey, if people are into it, they're into it.", "\"Do social workers need Master's degrees? It may not all be from undergrad.  Alternately, if she had her loans in forbearance while job searching or something, interest would capitalize when she took them out of forbearance. She could also have been on a plan that had lower monthly payments earlier and scales up to higher ones and now she's in a higher part.  That said, did you not come from the generation of \"\"get a degree at all costs, it doesn't matter in what, companies won't hire you without a degree?\"\"  Yeah, it's on the borrowers to repay and they could have chosen not to listen to that, but I think it's also somewhat irresponsible of us to expect 18 year olds (many of whom have never really handled their finances) to make smart choices about loans. Which is why every teacher, parent, guidance counselor, etc. isn't exactly innocent in this whole mess.\"", "\"Your are mixing multiple questions with assertions which may or may not be true. So I'll take a stab at this, comment if it doesn't make sense to you. To answer the question in the title, you invest in an IRA because you want to save money to allow you to retire. The government provides you with tax incentives that make an IRA an excellent vehicle to do this. The rules regarding IRA tax treatment provide disincentives, through tax penalties, for withdrawing money before retirement. This topic is covered dozens of times, so search around for more detail. Regarding your desire to invest in items with high \"\"intrinsic\"\" value, I would argue that gold and silver are not good vehicles for doing this. Intrinsic value doesn't mean what you want it to mean in this context -- gold and silver are commodities, whose prices fluctuate dramatically.  If you want to grow money for retirement over a long period, of time, you should be invested in diversified collection of investments, and precious metals should be a relatively small part of your portfolio.\"", "\"You can accept almost anything mutually agreeable to you and the other party as payment. That's the definition of \"\"barter\"\". If you agree to trade manufactured goods for livestock, as long as both parties agree on the terms, I'm not aware of any law that would prohibit it. I hedged with \"\"almost\"\" because of course you can't accept something that is explicitly illegal. Like you can't say you'll accept cocaine as payment. Less obviously, there are laws regulating the sale of guns, nuclear fuel, agricultural products, etc. You'd still have to pay taxes, and it can get complicated to determine the taxable value of the transaction. Sorry, but you can't avoid taxes by getting your income in something other than cash.\"", "For a real estate transaction there are multiple stages: From the sellers viewpoint: From the buyers viewpoint: If both parties are comfortable skipping some of the steps the role of the agent can be minimized. How will a fair price be determined? Some realism might be needed, to make sure that the loan appraisal will not be a problem. Will an inspection still be needed? What warranty will exist if the A/C dies this summer?  If you still want help from an agent one should be able to help for far less than the normal commission. The seller normally interviews three agents before selecting one, do the same in this situation. Ask how much they would charge for a sale between friends. They can complete their task in just a couple of hours. If the home inspection comes back relatively clean, the transaction should be very easy. The paperwork is the biggest hurdle. You should jointly identify a local settlement company. They will be the ones actually filing the paperwork. They have lawyers. They will check the county records office for existing liens, plats, mortgages and address all the issues. They can send the proper paperwork to the existing mortgage companies and arrange for mortgage insurance. The cost will be the same regardless of the presence of real estate agents and other lawyers.  When they say a lawyer is required, it is only because of the paperwork.", "\"This answer is provided mostly to answer your question \"\"what is it?\"\" A variable annuity is a contract between you and an insurance company. The insurance company takes a bunch of money up front as a lump sum, and will pay you some money yearly - like earning interest. (In this case, they will probably be paying you the money into the account itself). How much they return is, as the name suggests, variable. It can be anything, depending on what the contract says. Mostly, there will be some formula based on the stock market - frequently, the performance of the Standard & Poors 500 Index. There will typically be some minimum returns and maximum returns - if the stock market tanks, your annuity will not lose a ton of value, but if the stock market goes up a lot in one year (as it frequently does), you will not gain a lot of value either. If you are going to be in the market for a long amount of time (decades, e.g. \"\"a few years out of college\"\" and then a little), it makes a lot more sense to invest in the stock market directly. This is essentially what the insurance company is going to do, except you can cut out the middleman. You can get a lot more money that way. You are essentially paying the insurance company to take on some stock market risk for you - you are buying some safety. Buying safety like this is expensive.  Variable annuities are the right investment for a few people in a few circumstances - mostly, if you're near retirement, it's one way to have an option for a \"\"safe\"\" investment, for a portion (but not all) of your portfolio. Maybe. Depending on the specifics, a lot. If you are under, like, 50 or so? Almost certainly a terrible investment which will gradually waste your money (by not growing it as fast as it deserves to be grown). Since you want to transfer it to Vanguard, you can probably call Vanguard, ask to open a Roth IRA, and request assistance rolling it over from the place it is held now. There should be no legal restrictions or tax consequences from transferring the money from one Roth IRA account to another.\"", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://projects.propublica.org/graphics/gdp) reduced by 95%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; A recent report from the National Academies of Sciences, Engineering and Medicine found &amp;quot;Little evidence that immigration significantly affects the overall employment levels of native-born workers.&amp;quot; While not all people are affected by immigration the same way many studies have concluded the same thing: that immigrants by and large don&amp;#039;t displace native-born Americans, and in fact sometimes actually create more jobs for the people already in this country.  &gt; Even during periods of extremely high immigration such as during the late 1990&amp;#039;s and early 2000&amp;#039;s, and including estimates of unauthorized immigrants, the U.S. only took in around 2 million immigrants per year.  &gt; It&amp;#039;s Not Only About GDP. Of course, the question of how immigration impacts GDP is a small slice of a much broader question of how immigrants and immigration policies affect our economy.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6oe39h/the_immigration_effect_theres_a_way_for_president/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~171199 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*: **immigrant**^#1 **Immigration**^#2 **work**^#3 **percent**^#4 **growth**^#5\""]}
+{"query": "How do I determine if sale proceeds from an asset are taxable?", "corpus": ["\"If it's fully expensed, it has zero basis. Any sale is taxable, 100%. To the ordinary income / cap gain issue raised in comment - It's a cap gain, but I believe, as with real estate, special rates apply. This is where I am out of my area of expertise, and as they say - \"\"Consult a professional.\"\"\""], "neg": ["\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.vox.com/policy-and-politics/2017/2/28/14359140/chetty-friedman-college-mobility) reduced by 95%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; There are the highly effective schools that barely enroll any poor kids but do tons for the few they do have, and the highly ineffective schools that enroll a lot of poor kids but offer them little.  &gt; That&amp;#039;s part of what makes this research so exciting: It lets us distinguish between high-performing and low-performing schools, but it also creates an agenda for follow-up research seeking to identify what makes, say, the Technical Career Institutes in New York so much more effective than Moultrie Technical College at making poor students substantially better off.  &gt; The authors examined schools where the share of poor kids enrolled rose over time, and checked to see if they became less successful at elevating those kids economically.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6yzw3z/these_colleges_are_better_than_harvard_at_making/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~206881 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*: **school**^#1 **student**^#2 **percent**^#3 **top**^#4 **poor**^#5\"", "That's unlikely to be a good move.  After the penalties, you would have roughly $40k-$45k to apply to your debt.  But then what?  You'd still have $100k of debt, with no change in your income situation.  You would be sacrificing half of your retirement fund to reduce your debt by only a third. Two points from your question are notable.  First, you say your current job makes you eligible for loan forgiveness.  Second, you say you love what you do.  Given that, it sounds like it's likely you'll remain in your current job long enough to have your loan forgiven.  I would see this as a major reason to stick it out until that time.  It won't be painful from a work perspective, since you like the work (in contrast to someone who grinds through a job they dislike just to have their loan forgiven), but only from a budget perspective.  Also, since your income is less than $75k, you may be able to deduct the interest on a student loan payment on your taxes (see Publication 970), softening the blow somewhat. According to your numbers, your loan payment is a bit over 10% of your income.  That is not pleasant, but it doesn't seem out of the question that you could make it work through judicious budgeting.  It would depend on other aspects of your lifestyle and expenses (which you don't mention in the question, and which might go in a separate question if you start wondering how to do that budgeting).", "Yes, Lending Club is the biggest of the bunch, which to date have helped originate $1B of loans. LC just raised more money (bringing total to $100M) and Mary Meeker joined the board. There's a novelty aspect to it b/c it's new but it's just the beginning of parts of the banking industry/process/institutions being disintermediated.   Low vol is an easy sell, actually. If investors aren't being paid for risk, why assume it?", "\"VIV.PA - is Vivendi listed on a stock exchange in Paris VIVEF - is Vivendi listed on the OTC Other Exchange. VIVHY - is Listed on the OTC:Pink Sheets.  A company can be listed on multiple exchanges, they are known as a dual-listed company. It's a corporate structure in which two corporations function as a single operating business through a legal equalization agreement, but retain separate legal identities and stock exchange listings. Pretty much all DLCs are cross-border, and have tax advantages for the corporations and their stockholders. When a DLC is created, in essence two companies are created and have two separate bodies of shareholders, but they agree to share all the risks and rewards of the ownership of all their operating businesses in a fixed proportion, laid out in a contract called an \"\"equalization agreement\"\". The shares of a DLC parents have claim to the exact same underlying cash flows. So in theory the stock prices of these companies should move exactly the same. However in practice there can be differences between these prices. More info on OTC exchanges can be found here - keep in mind this info is from the company that runs these listings. Over the counter stocks are held to a FAR lesser regulation standard. I would recommend doing further interdependent research before pursuing any action.\"", "Its very silly of you to have house savings while you have these debts.  Your total (listed) debt is 1657, with a savings of 2000, and a tax refund of 985.   I'd be done with the Apple loan and CC tomorrow.  Does that accomplish the goal of making a significant difference in your debt?  Yes it does. This will leave you with 1328.  I'd keep 500 or so in an emergency fund, and put the rest to the car.  Although 828 will not help much with the car it would probably knock a month off.   Next work like crazy to pay off the car.  Get a second job or work overtime. Then save a emergency fund of 3 to 6 months of expenses as if you already owned the house.  I would tend to go on the high side as I suspect you are single. Only then does it makes sense to save for a down payment.   Although it is an American institution, the book The Millionaire Next Door might be helpful for you.  Your most powerful wealth building tool is your income.  When one handicaps that tool with payments and exorbitant lifestyle choices you greatly reduce your ability to become wealthy. These amounts are so small, you should just knock them out.", "\"While I agree with this, I also think a tiny fraction of that mentality comes from the simple notion that: you can find a desk job that pays great, so why work a hard manual job that also pays great?   Take the average worker, and tell them \"\"You can do manual labor for $xx,000/yr, or you can do a desk job for $xx,000/yr\"\". Most people will pick the desk job for obvious reasons. So it's not just the belief that certain jobs are below them (although that IS most of it), but the simple notion that we were sold over the last 30 years that desk workers in cubicle farms can make as much money as someone working a labor/manual job, so go for the desk job.\"", "Did you go to bschool? You actually do learn a lot. There are a lot of things that I do know that some of my fellow BA's in Business don't know. (business plan writing, how to properly read a financial statement, promotional strategy creation). Also, I got hooked up with a really cool internship that got me in front of some big VC's. There is value, is it worth the results? No.   But let's be honest here, neither is law school (unless you go to a T14). Have you seen the job market? Brutal."]}
+{"query": "Explain the HSI - why do markets sometimes appear in sync and other times not?", "corpus": ["Contributing factors to the diversion were that: A) China's currency does not float like other major countries' currencies  B) China's real estate market didn't have the same lending criteria leading to the level of speculation seen in USA, at the time."], "neg": ["Purchase loans tend to be more challenging to get the best possible rate, because you have to balance closing the loan and getting the contract. So there isn't as much time to shop around as when you do a refinance.  I disagree with the sentiment to go with your local bank. Nothing wrong with asking at your local bank and using their numbers as a baseline, but chances are they won't be competitive. There are many reputable online mortgage originators that will show accurate fees and rates upfront assuming you provide accurate information.  In the past there were a lot of issue with Good Faith Estimates being pretty much worthless. There were a fair number of horror stories about people showing up to closing and finding out fee or rates had increased dramatically. There was a law passed after the housing debacle that severely limits the shenanigans that lenders can do at closing and so there is less risk when going with a lesser known lender. In fact I would say the only real risk with a lender now days is choosing one that happens to be overloaded and or just has poor customer service in general. Personally I have found the most competitive rates from Zillow's mortgage service and the now defunct Google mortgage. The lenders tend to be smaller, but highly efficient. They are very much dependent on their online reputations. I have heard good things about a number of larger online lenders, but I don't have personal experience so I will leave them off. I personally wouldn't worry much about whether the loan is sold or not. Outside of refinancing I don't think I have ever talked to the bank servicing my mortgage about my mortgage. There just isn't much need to talk to them.", "\"Would not be shocking. Amazon already has massive \"\"fullfillment\"\" centers here which I know they have all over but that area is prime for something like we are talking about to happen. The land is crazy cheap and the areas around Hamilton County are technically the \"\"richer\"\" more high end areas around Indianapolis. Growing up in Indiana and seeing the amount of farm land for sale and how cheap it is seemingly going does make me a bit sad though.\"", "\"You seem to have a little confusion over terminology that should be cleared up: You are calling this \"\"day-trading\"\" Day-trading is the term for performing multiple trading actions in a single day. While it appears that the COO has performed a buy and a sell on the same day, most people would consider this a 'single trade'. In reality, it seems that the COO had 'stock options' [a contract providing the option for the holder to buy stock at a specific price, at some point in the future], provided as part of his compensation package. He decided or was required to 'exercise' those options today. This means he bought the shares using his special 'option price'. It is extremely common for employees who exercise stock options, to sell all of the resulting stock immediately. This is very different from usual day-trading, which implies that he would have bought stock in the morning at a low price, and then sold it later at a high price. You are calling this 'insider trading'. That term specifically often implies some level of unethical behavior. In general, stock options offered to executive employees are strictly limited in how they can be exercised. For example, most stock option plans require employees to wait x number of years before they can exercise them. This gives the employee incentive to stay longer, and for a high-level executive with the ability to strongly impact company performance, it gives incentive to do well. Technically you are correct, this is likely considered an 'insider trade', but given that it seems to have been a stock option exercise, it does not necessarily imply that there was any special reasoning for why he did the trade today. It could simply be that today was the first day the stock option rules allowed him to exercise. As to your final question - no, these profits are the COO's, to do with as he likes.\"", "Diversification is a good method of risk management. Different types of investments do better in different situations and economic climates. Invest all your money at the wrong time in a single product and you could lose everything. You could also technically make a great deal of money, but actions such as these are the actions of speculators, not investors.  Spreading your investments appropriately lets you maximize your growth opportunities while limiting your risk.", "Since I'm missing the shortest and simplest answer, I'll add it: A car also doesn't offer dividends, yet it's still worth money. A $100 bill doesn't offer dividends, yet people are willing to offer services, or goods, or other currencies, to own that $100 bill. It's the same with a stock. If other people are willing to buy it off you for a price X, it's worth at least close to price X to you. In theory the price X depends on the value of the assets of the company, including unknown values like expected future profits or losses. Speaking from experience as a trader, in practice it's very often really just price X because others pay price X.", "Anecdotal evidence, but my company is trying to fill four electronic assembly positions in North East Ohio. We are literally in the backyard of Delphi and GM. We are paying 18-25 dollars an hour with only minimal experience required, full benefits, full time with overtime available.  We cannot fill them, plenty of interviews, plenty of people we make contingent offers to, but they all no show or fail the pee test. Its insanity.", "\"A few years ago, there was a TV special with a celebrity chef (I think Tyler Florence) that was trying to get a small town to eat healthier. In one segment, he showed kids how processed chicken nuggets were made, which was some chicken trimmings and the leftover carcass (bones and all), mixed with bread crumbs and seasonings, pureed, strained and molded. This was supposedly supposed to be disgusting, especially to kids. Didn't work, they still wanted chicken nuggets.  In the end, there's nothing wrong with using the 'gross' parts of an animal, nor is there any thing wrong with some of the processing techniques. Mostly they're used to get the most out of the animal, which is what we should be doing. Americans especially are incredibly turned off by any meat that isn't pure white, which is ridiculous. Dark meat and offal are used around the world and are seen as delicacies. \"\"Chemicals\"\" are used to scare people, but there's nothing inherently wrong with them. Heck, modernist cooking developed as a way to find more interesting uses for chemicals and additives.  You'll find no bigger supporter of home-cooking and eating whole foods than I am, but there is way too much fear mongering and squeamishness that's based only on arbitrary perceptions of what's acceptable and what isn't. You could probable start a campaign of outrage against tortillas for using lime, or bacon for using nitrites, or fish for being frozen, all because people are gullible and ignorant on where their food comes from.\""]}
+{"query": "How much cash on hand should one have?", "corpus": ["You seem to have a grasp of the basic principles involved, but your estimation of the risk you are taking seems a bit low. Your non-investment reserves are unlikely to cover your expenses for more than a month, so the chance that you would need to sell investments to cover additional expenses is high. You mention that I am flexible with the 'cash on hand' amount. For instance, for about three months I put a very tight spending/investing freeze on my life because I knew I'd be leaving jobs and moving (I already had the other job lined up). Those savings presumably went toward moving expenses, as your usual savings were insufficient. In the event that you are laid off suddenly, you might find yourself in the same position again, with added unplanned expenses like fees for breaking a lease. Your current plan involves selling investments to cover the gap. Based on your age you have probably only invested in a predominantly positive market, so the chance that you might need to sell investments for cash seems like a reasonable trade-off for the added potential gains. Your perception might change if the markets go south and you are forced to sell into a down market, possibly at a significant loss. You also don't indicate if your investments are currently sufficient to cover an extended period of unemployment. You are taking on a lot of risk under your current plan. Essentially you are trading possible investment gains for flexibility and time. By making small changes like saving at least enough to move as you did previously, you can give yourself time to react to job loss or other unexpected financial need. Rather than give the traditional emergency funds advice, I suggest you look at the broader picture. The total amount of savings/risk is up to you, but you should consider your current savings as insufficient to rely on as a safety net."], "neg": ["Have you considered investing in real estate? Property is cheap now and you have enough money for several properties. The income from tenants could be very helpful. If you find it's not for you, you can also sell your property and recover your initial investment, assuming house prices go up in the next few years.", "Tesla is going to zero and will be bankrupt in 3-4 years.  This is just one more of their big media pronouncements to suck in investors.  Yes I know I will be downvoted for this.  Think about it:  what kind of company seeks 22 year old cult fans?  The answer:  one that loses money hand over fist with no prospect of that changing.", "You'd likely be subject to a lock-up period before you could sell the shares along with possibly having other rules about how you could sell your shares as you'd likely be seen as an insider that may have information that gives you an unfair advantage for selling the stock possibly. Depending on how far in advance you hold the shares, you may or may not have adjustments in the valuation and number of shares as some companies may do a split or reverse split when preparing for an IPO. A company I worked for in the late 1990s had an IPO and my stock options had a revised strike price because of a reverse stock split that was done prior to the IPO.", "If a high mileage car has been thoroughly maintained with a credible service history, there is no reason to discard the vehicle because of a hypothetical future expense.  Considering the low value of the vehicle, it would be prudent to also lower the cost of the repairs.  U.S. car dealerships have a well-known reputation for charging significantly higher repair rates than independent repair shops. Lower the cost of the repairs: brakes can be done at independent shops for half what the dealer quoted.  Sears can install a set of 4 tires on an '04 Accord for $331 out the door.  It makes no financial sense to purchase costly repairs for a low-cost automobile when economical alternatives are available.", "\"I agree. This article doesn't even consider the fact that we may be adding different types of jobs, and ones in different industries than those that were lost during the recession.   Instead, it seems to assume that all jobs are uniform and that when the economy adds jobs after a recession that they are replacing the old jobs that we lost. That is simply not so. Nothing is that simple.  There aren't just \"\"jobs\"\" and \"\"CEO jobs.\"\" The economy is more complex than that.  We lost a lot of high-paying jobs in the recession that just won't ever come back--especially jobs at financial institutions that were dependent on mortgage backed securities, a part of that industry that has since shrunk permanently. Losing those jobs were necessary and good for the economy. The fact that the jobs we are adding now happen to be at a lower wage are basically happenstance as I see it.  I'm just happy that we're adding jobs. The inequality thing will always be an issue and I hope it gets better, but this article is pretty elementary when it comes to economic truth.\"", "I'm aware of that. My point is that if higher skill jobs like IT are being outsourced for the sake of saving money, you can bet your ass that the lowly unskilled labor positions will be the first to go.", "I want to say those are safe beause of SSL.  However I know that isn't true because someone got caught issuing a master SSL certificate that let a company forge any other SSL certificate. It only worked within that company, but it proves that it is possible."]}
+{"query": "How to choose a good 401(k) investment option?", "corpus": ["There are not as many options here as you fear. If you have no other investments outside this 401K it is even easier. Outside accounts include IRA, Roth IRA, taxable investments (mutual funds, ETF, individual stocks), Employee stock purchase plans. Amount: make sure you put enough in to get all the company match. I assume that in your case the 9% will do so, but check your documents. The company match will be with pre-tax funds.  Roth vs Regular 401K? Most people in their lifetime will need a mix of Roth and Regular retirement accounts. You need to determine if it is better for you to pay the tax on your contributions now or later. Which accounts? If you are going to invest in a target date fund, you can ignore the rest of the options. The target date fund is a mixture of investments that will change over the decades. Calculate which one fits your expected retirement date and go with it. If you want to be able to control the mix, then you will need to pick several funds. The selection depends on what non-401K investments you have. Now here is what I considered the best advice.  Decide Roth or regular, and just put the money into the most appropriate target date fund with the Roth/regular split you want. Then after the money starts flowing into your account, research the funds involved, the fees for those funds, and how you want to invest. Then move the money into the funds you want. Don't waste another day deciding how to invest. Just get started. The best part of a 401K, besides the match, is that you can move money between funds without worrying about taxes. If you realize that you want to put extra emphasis on the foreign stocks, or Mid-cap; just move the funds and redirect future contributions."], "neg": ["This just happened to me with a Wells Fargo Bill Pay check.  WF put a stop payment on the check. The money was taken out of my account immediately yet it is going to take 3-5 days to reappear in the account.  I question these banking practices.  Georgia Bank and Trust Company of GA does not do this.  The Bill Pay check is processed just like a hand written check; when the check clears the bank your account is debited. If it is an Electronic Funds Transfer (EFT) then the money does come out of your account immediately, of course. These are acceptable banking practices to me.  I will be closing the Wells Fargo account.", "Ballmer didn't personally lose those.   Microsoft had a ridiculously talented team back in the 80s and 90s. They developed a shit ton of futuristic stuff. It was all shot down back then or executed or managed poorly.   It takes years to fuck up that royally.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://blogs.lse.ac.uk/politicsandpolicy/book-review-after-piketty/) reduced by 93%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; In After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality, editors Heather Boushey, J. Bradford DeLong and Marshall Steinbaum bring together contributors to reflect on the influence of Thomas Piketty&amp;#039;s Capital in the Twenty-First Century and to draw attention to topics less explored in Piketty&amp;#039;s analysis.  &gt; After Piketty: The Agenda for Economics and Inequality, edited by Heather Boushey, J. Bradford De Long and Marshall Steinbaum, further explores the &amp;#039;process by which wealth is accumulated&amp;#039; and the &amp;#039;powerful forces&amp;#039; that shape the divergence.  &gt; Even if, as described by Piketty, the process of accumulation and the forces of power that render wealth inequality prove correct - that is, r &amp;gt; g - even then, for Branko Milanovic, high inequality is avoidable.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/758ftg/after_piketty_the_agenda_for_economics_and/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~224779 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*: **Piketty**^#1 **Capital**^#2 **Inequality**^#3 **wealth**^#4 **work**^#5\"", "Yes, you idiots, keep clicking on those ad-filled blogs that cater to the ridiculous fear in you. There are some that have no problem making money in the fear-mongering industry and would love to see it grow--without a care of what damage it could cause.", "This is probably a good time to note that credit is not a liquid asset, and not an emergency fund. Credit can be revoked or denied at any time, and Murphy's law states that you may have issues with credit when everything else goes wrong too.", "yes.   you can take out 500,000 form your paid of house.  you pay back 500,000 at 3.5. percent.       you do get a tax break for not owning your house.  it is less then 3.5 you are paying back the back. about one forth of that, BUT you take the 500,000 in invest.   Now cd low 1 percent,  stock is risky.    You can do REIT, with are about 8 to 12  every year. so even at 8 - tax 1.5 is 6.5 - 3.5 bank loan.  that   3 percent on your 500,000 thousand, plus tax break, but that only at 8 percent.      or 500,000 and buy a apartment building, again about 7 to 10 percent,   so that 2 to 3 percent profit, but the building goes up over years.", "Both. It's a hell of a bargain. $4bn for a franchise that will run for decades, every film nigh on guaranteed to bring in $500m+ in theatrical PLUS merchandishing, plus all the other stuff they bought? (all catalogue, ILM, etc etc etc)."]}
+{"query": "Do US banks exchange info with countries abroad?", "corpus": ["Banks do not report transactions within accounts except as required by law, usually as part of anti-money-laundering efforts. Generally those involve tracking large cash transactions. As far as large payments go, there are two reasons they might be reported to the government: taxes, and criminal investigations. For tax purposes, if the payment is considered a salary or wage (that is, you are an employee of the company and the payment is for your time working there), then the company paying you is responsible for reporting the wage and withholding applicable taxes from your salary. If you are considered an independent contract employee, then you yourself will be responsible for reporting the income to the IRS and paying the applicable taxes yourself. In the second case, unless you are already under investigation, I wouldn't worry about it. Banks are very touchy about financial records being kept private, and won't release them without a subpoena. One caveat is that this is under US law. Banks which maintain branches in multiple countries must, of course, comply with all local laws in the jurisdiction where they do business. The take away from this is that Bank of America is unlikely to report a single deposit of $75,000 into your account to anyone on their own. If it is a paper check being deposited they will probably place a hold on it to make sure it clears, but that is all."], "neg": ["\"This is a bit pornographic, isn't it, in that we're looking at something we'd like to do (namely, \"\"win the big lottery!\"\") but probably won't ever have this happen to us. :) Anyway. Ignoring the fact that this is kind of a hypothetical question... Gotta go with The Straight Dope on this one, when deciding whether to take an annuity or a lump sum: What assumed interest rate is underlying the calculations? Do you think you can earn significantly more than that rate on your own? If so, take the lump sum cash value. If not, go with the annuity. What are your financial needs, both immediate and over the next twenty years? Do you need a steady flow of income? If you take the lump sum and invest it poorly or lose it, how much will it hurt you? If you give up your job to enjoy your wealth, what will happen if you're still alive when the annuity payments stop? You don't want to blow it all in a spree and then find yourself in poverty in your old age. What happens if you die before the annuity has been fully paid? As noted, there's the question of whether to ask in advance for an annuity - the tax treatment alone could overwhelm any other considerations.\"", "\"True, absolutely safe are only death and taxes.  Apparently [US treasuries](https://www.treasury.gov/resource-center/data-chart-center/interest-rates/Pages/TextView.aspx?data=yield) yield far less than 3,5-4%, but I guess that's as \"\"100% safe\"\" as it gets.  However, best I could find while talking to various banks was a reverse convertible bond that yields 3,5% per year, tax excluded. Worst case scenario: 1) I got all my money back and gained 3,5% for one year. 2) after a few years, I find myself with pretty valuable shares and still cashed in the yearly 3,5%.  I was wondering if I got lucky with that, or if there are better things out there and if yes, where I should look. Honestly, in the age of negative interests, I'm more than happy to get enough interest to counter inflation.\"", "\"How should I allocate short-term assets in a rising-interest rate   environment? Assuming that the last part is correct, there could be bear bond funds that short bonds that could work well as a way to invest. However, bear in that the the \"\"rising-interest rate environment\"\" is part of the basis that may or may not be true in the end as I'm not sure I've seen anything to tell me why rates couldn't stay where they are for another couple of years or more. Long-Term Capital Management would be a cautionary tale before about bonds that had assumptions that backfired when something that wasn't supposed to happen, happened. Thus, while you can say there is \"\"rising-interest rate environment\"\" what else are you prepared to assume and how certain are you of that happening? An alternate theory here would be that \"\"junk bonds\"\" may do well because the economy has to be heating up for rates to rise and thus the bonds that are priced down so much because of default risk may turn out to not go bust and thus could do well. Course this would carry the \"\"Your mileage may vary\"\" and without a working time machine I couldn't say which funds will be good and which would suck. As for what I would do if I was dealing with my own money: Money market funds and CDs would likely be my suggestion for the short-term where I want to prevent principal risk. This is likely what I would do if I believed the rising rate environment is here.\"", "An education. A new car. Houses are made bigger so that's not really fair. An article on here previously mentioned someone paying for a dependable car and a small apartment, along with school tuition working part time as a dishwasher.  Tuition at my closest state school (in state cost) is just under $9k per year. If you could only work 20 hours per week, amortized the school loan, payed $250 a month for an apartment with a roommate, $100 a month for utilities, $150 a month for groceries (all very difficult to achive and be healthy), you would have to make $15.35 an hour after taxes to do it without debt. This is assuming you don't have a car.", "LoL, maybe they should focus on the crappy food.  Subway is getting killed on taste and value by all the Shawarma joints where we live.  For $6 i can get a shawarma packed with actual chicken and veggies that aren't processed to oblivion.", "I wouldn't say this is a lie.  Person 2 just made themselves the offer of 38k.  If it sells then they were outbid.  If it doesn't sell then they're stuck with the asset as if they had bid themselves.  They're paying themselves, or they're representing a party that is paying themselves.  That balances out to a $0 profit/loss + ownership of the asset.   I think something like this would be unethical:   Person 1: I'll buy your car for 30k  Person 2: Okay  Person 3:That's my car!", "\"Another important commodity necessary to life is money, which is why when vast sums of it go missing or get locked into long-term investments into which one was grossly misled, it's very upsetting.  One such long-term investment is Zurich Vista, which the OP is intimately familiar with. Another type of fund into which money can strangely disappear, is the now ubiquitous \"\"off-shore fund\"\". One should also be very wary of land-banking schemes that boast of high rates of return (15%-20%) and short maturation dates (4-5 years).\""]}
+{"query": "18 year old making $60k a year; how should I invest? Traditional or Roth IRA?", "corpus": ["\"1) Usually, the choice between Traditional vs. Roth is whether you believe that your tax rate will be higher or lower in the future than it is now. Your income is probably in the 25% bracket now. It's hard to say whether that should be considered \"\"high\"\" or \"\"low\"\". Some people advocate Roth only for 15% bracket; but your income would probably go into higher brackets in the future, so Roth may be preferable from this point of view. Roth IRA also has another advantage that the principal of contributions can be taken out at any time without tax or penalty, so it can serve as an emergency fund just as well as money in taxable accounts. Given that you may not have a lot of money saved up right now, this is useful. 2) In a sense, it's nice to have a mix of Traditional and Roth when you withdraw to hedge against uncertainty in future tax rates and have the option of choosing whichever one is advantageous to withdraw when you need to withdraw. That said, you will likely have many years of access to a 401k and high income in your future working years, in which you can contribute to a Traditional 401k (or if no access to 401k, then Traditional IRA), so a mix will almost certainly happen even if you go all Roth IRA now. 3) I think that depends on you, whether you are a hands-on or hands-off kind of investor.\""], "neg": ["The private company that handles the quotes probably does know.     It's just that the government would have to do paperwork!  And those firms probably could throw way too many lawyers (not to mention government lackeys) to make them go away.  Plus, there's the whole fact that 3/4 of congress and every semi-relevant regulatory agency is captured.", "&gt;How does a median salary affect me if I'm making X?  Everything isn't about you? Do statistics only matter when they correlate directly to you?  The reason that we have statistics is to give us a better picture of the overall situation using data, rather than anecdotes. You're being very reductive, which is fine, but I'm not sure what the point is in the Economics subreddit (which is primarily about statistical measurements of ecnoomic policies)", "That's not entirely true for Oregon. It's illegal to pump your own gas in Oregon so every gas station has to employ at least one attendant. Don't think it amounts to $0.30 per gallon but it definitely raises the price of gas being forced to pay an adult to complete a task simple enough for a child.", "You're situation is actually pretty solid except for the job part. I definitely understand the existential meltdown in your 30s. Luckily you're in web design and have an in-demand job. Maybe go to a code school/design immersive to add some new skills and reinvigorate yourself. If mental health needs to be addressed above all, then definitely make that a priority.  Avoid credit card debt like the plague. If you think you're stressed now, just wait.", "Seems to have a major draw for people anyway. Though to be honest, even though I've probably been to the US 15 to 20 times, never been to NYC yet. Though might in the next 18 months, dear friend / ex has been talking about it, so thinking of taking him there.", "You had to lie because you wanted to keep more of it. As the person in the article said a good server at a good restaurant should make at least $20 an hour on top of the minimum wage. Plus I never claimed any tips besides credit card tips. All the cash tips went unreported.", "One way to think of net worth is to think if you sold everything you owned, how big of a pile of money would be standing next to you (assuming your net worth is positive). If you started with $100K and then bought a house worth $100K you would have $0 in the bank and a house.   If you sold that house for $100K you would pay the realtor 6% (typically) or $6K leaving you with $94K.    This means the act of buying your house has reduced your net worth by $6K. I asked a related question about how to value your home in your net worth."]}
+{"query": "Ghana scam and direct deposit scam?", "corpus": ["Of course, it is a scam.  Regardless of how the scam might work, you already know that the person on the other end is lying, and you also know that people in trouble don't contact perfect strangers out of the blue by e-mail for help, nor do they call up random phone numbers looking for help. Scammers prey on the gullibility, greed, and sometimes generosity of the victims. As to how this scam works, the money that the scammer would be depositing into your father's account is not real.  However, it will take the bank a few days to figure that out.  In the mean time, your father will be sending out real money back to the scammer.  When the bank figures out what is going on, they will want your father to pay back this money."], "neg": ["Not sure if serious or not, but i'll bite. First of all the service you are purchasing is the access to credit card, which runs on a network supplied by financial institutions. Secondly credit card is an optional fee, taxes are mandatory (unless you are a crook).", "\"&gt;The Port Authority operates New York City's airports, its seaports, a train system, and several bridges and tunnels.  Newark Airport and Port Elizabeth/Newark are in NJ, not NY. And the \"\"train\"\" system, the PATH is half in NJ, as are all of the bridges and tunnels. Interesting why the article is so NY-centric.\"", "\"I'm going to give a simpler answer than some of the others, although somewhat more limited: the complicated loan parameters you describe benefit the lender.  I'll focus on this part of your question: You should be able to pay back whenever; what's the point of an arbitrary timeline? Here \"\"you\"\" refers to the borrower.  Sure, yes, it would be great for the borrower to be able to do whatever they want whenever they want, increasing or decreasing the loan balance by paying or not paying arbitrary amounts at their whim.  But it doesn't benefit the lender to let the borrower do this.  Adding various kinds of restrictions and extra conditions to the loan reduces the lender's uncertainty about when they'll be receiving money, and also gives them a greater range of legal recourse to get it sooner (since they can pursue the borrower right away if they violate any of the conditions, rather than having the wait until they die without having paid their debt). Then you say: And if you want, you can set a legal deadline. But the mere deadline in the contract doesn't affect how much interest is paid—the interest is only affected by how much money is borrowed and how long has passed. I think in many cases that is in fact how it works, or at least it is more how it works than you seem to think.  For instance, you can take out a 30-year loan but pay it off in less than 30 years, and the amount you pay will be less if you pay it off sooner.  However, in some cases the lender will charge you a penalty for doing so.  The reason is the same as above: if you pay off the loan sooner, you are paying less interest, which is worse for the lender.  Again, it would be nice for the borrower if they could just pay it off sooner with no penalty, but the lender has no reason to let them do so. I think there are in fact other explanations for these more complicated loan terms that do benefit the borrower.  For instance, an amortization schedule with clearly defined monthly payments and proportions going to interest and principal also reduces the borrower's uncertainty, and makes them less likely to do risky things like skip lots of payments intending to make it up later.  It gives them a clear number to budget from.  But even aside from all that, I think the clearest answer to your question is what I said above: in general, it benefits the lender to attach conditions and parameters to loans in order to have many opportunities to penalize the borrower for making it hard for the lender to predict their cash flow.\"", "Mr. Kushagra Bajaj is vice chairman of Bajaj Hindusthan Limited. Bajaj Group are leaders in sugar, ethanol, power, co-generation, fmcg, hair oil, ayurveda, almond, kailash parbat, lalitpur, bargarh, chitrakoot, brahmi amla, bajaj, amla, shikakai, jasmine, energy, infrastructure, wood, coal, wood alternatives, csr, foundation, kamalnayan, jamnalal, realty, generation, molasses, laminated flooring, tel, hair, hair care. Kushagra Nayan Bajaj is also Joint Managing Director of Bajaj Hindusthan Ltd.", "Ditto @MichaelBorgwardt Just to get concrete: I just checked one bank in India and they say they are paying 4% on savings accounts. I don't know what you're getting or if 4% is typical in India, but it's at least an example. So if the bank pays interest based on average daily balance, and you left the money in the bank for a week, you'd get 4%/52 = .077%. So on Rs 95,000 that would be Rs 73. I live in the US where typical interest on a savings account today is about 1%. So an equivalent amount of money -- I think that would be about $1,500 -- would get 1/52 of 1%, or 29 cents.  Don't leave the lights turned on while you do the calculations -- you'll spend more on the electricity than you make on the interest. :-) ** Addendum ** This suddenly reminds me ... I read a news story a few years ago about a man who was expecting a tax refund check from the IRS of a few hundred dollars, and when the check arrived it was for several million. Well obviously it was a mistake. But he came up with the clever idea: Deposit the check in an interest-bearing account. Promptly contact the IRS, inform them of the mistake, and ask how and where to go about returning the money. Hope that it takes at least a few days for them to figure everything out. Then keep the interest accumulated on the several-million dollars for the time that he had the money. And as he contacted them immediately about the error, they can't say he was trying to hide anything. It was a nice try, but it didn't work. They demanded he send them the interest as well as the principle.", "I have worked for companies that have done this. One did have a match and the other did not. When they figured their profit at the end of the year a portion was given to the employees as a 401K deposit.  retirement-topics-401k-and-profit-sharing-plan-contribution-limits Total annual contributions (annual additions) to all of your accounts   in plans maintained by one employer (and any related employer) are   limited. The limit applies to the total of: elective deferrals employer matching contributions employer nonelective contributions allocations of forfeitures The annual additions paid to a participant’s account cannot exceed the   lesser of: 100% of the participant's compensation, or $54,000 ($60,000 including catch-up contributions) for 2017;  $53,000   ($59,000 including catch-up contributions) for 2016. So as long as everything stays below that $54,000 limit you are good. In one case the decision was made by the company for the employee, the other company gave us the option of bonus check or 401K. I heard that most of the employees wanted the money in the 401K.", "In all transitions, real people actually did suffer.  In the large view, new markets were created and new jobs appeared.  But the people who got those new jobs were not the same people who originally lost them.  When the pace of such disruption is relatively slow, those pain points are manageable.  When the disruptions start coming one after another in rapid fire, the managing of problems of that many real, suffering, jobless or under-employed people becomes a disruptive problem in and of itself."]}
+{"query": "Would it ever be a bad idea to convert a traditional IRA to a Roth IRA with the following assumptions?", "corpus": ["Taking all your assumptions: With Roth, you take $6112 from work, (let's call you tax rate 10%) pay $612 in taxes, and contribute $5500 (the max if you are younger than 50).  This $5500 will grow to $21,283 in 20 years at 7% annual growth ($5500*(1.07^20)), and you will pay no additional taxes on it. With the traditional IRA, you take $6112 from work, pay $612 in taxes, and contribute $5500.  You will receive a tax deduction at tax time of $612 for the contribution.  This money will also grow to $21,283.  This will be taxed at your ordinary income rate (which we're calling 10%), costing you $2123 at the time of withdrawal.  You will have $19,155 left over. EDIT: If you invest your tax savings from every contribution to the Traditional IRA, then the numbers wash out.  Perhaps a pivotal question is whether you believe you will have greater taxable earnings from your investments in retirement than you have in taxable earnings today -- affecting the rate at which you are taxed."], "neg": ["There is no advantage to using one type of account or the other if you are in the same tax bracket at retirement that you are in during your working years. However, for tax planning reasons, it is good to have some money in both a Roth and a traditional IRA plan.  JoeTaxpayer has often advocated a good rule of thumb to use a Roth when your tax bracket is 15% or lower, and use a traditional account when in the 25% bracket or above. The reason for this rule of thumb is that you are less likely to be in the higher tax bracket when you are living off retirement savings unless you put away an awful lot of money between now and then. If you are making enough money to be paying a 25% marginal rate on some of the money you would be putting away for retirement, then by all means, put all of that money in a traditional 401k. If after contributing that portion of your savings taxed at the higher rate, you still have money to put away for retirement, put the rest in a Roth and pay the 15% taxes on it. When you are younger, it is likely that you are making less than you will a few years hence, and it is also likely that a larger portion of your income will be paying tax deductible interest on a mortgage. If those are true for you, then by all means, use the Roth. That was true of me when I was single and just getting started. When you do finally retire, it is possible that the tax brackets will be increased to match inflation, and if so, then there is no benefit to having tax free money at retirement vs. paying taxes on deferred accounts, but there is also usually more flexibility in when to spend money. You may find that you have a year where you have to spend a lot, so it is good to be able to pull money out without it increasing your marginal rate for that year, and other years where you spend relatively smaller amounts, and you can withdraw taxable money and pay a lower rate on that money. No one knows what the tax code will look like in 40 years, but having some money in each type of account will give you flexibility to minimize your tax bill at retirement.", "In this time of relentless competition where a number of organizations are attempting to make their presence and quality felt, having an edge over your rivals is tremendously basic for survival. Business visionaries are very much aware of the cost ramifications of maintaining a business. For them who are hoping to take their new business to the market, the most extreme cost is the underlying set up. Besides this there are other running costs that can really make them insane", "I don't know why Boeing tried this for the 787. The whole Airbus A3XX was a similar fiasco, and its part production was only spread around europe! Why boeing thought they could pull off development of a large plane while spreading it around the globe, I just don't get it.", "Yep. Definitely troll.   Deregulation made it possible for anyone to start an airline and then airlines without unions kicked the snot out of unionized airlines. Same plane, same airports, and the flight costs $350 to fly on an airline with unionized employees or $300 to fly on an airline without the unions.   Guess which one the public picked?", "\"While I agree with this, I also think a tiny fraction of that mentality comes from the simple notion that: you can find a desk job that pays great, so why work a hard manual job that also pays great?   Take the average worker, and tell them \"\"You can do manual labor for $xx,000/yr, or you can do a desk job for $xx,000/yr\"\". Most people will pick the desk job for obvious reasons. So it's not just the belief that certain jobs are below them (although that IS most of it), but the simple notion that we were sold over the last 30 years that desk workers in cubicle farms can make as much money as someone working a labor/manual job, so go for the desk job.\"", "\"So your whole approach, and the attempt to scale this is flawed.  You will alienate roomates, provoke arguments, and make everyone's life more difficult.  There are too many variables and unforeseen possibilities.  For instance: \"\"Why should I have to pay for Joe to go buy the expensive organic milk when I'm fine with the cheap stuff?\"\" \"\"I planned on being here for 20 days, but was gone that long weekend, recalculate everything please.\"\" \"\"I already paid for this month, but now you're asking for more because James wanted to recalculate for a long weekend?\"\" The right way to do this is to set up loose, reasonable agreement among the participants and treat that as a contract, but with some flexibility/mercy on small dollar amount items. For instance: There are 5 of us, so everyone provides food (and shops/cooks) one night a week.  We're solo on Friday and Saturday (people eat out more then anyway), and everyone puts in $10/week (or whatever) for breakfast cereal, snacks, etc.  If you can't be here on your night, work out to trade with someone.  If you miss out on a meal... oh well. As long as people feel like they have a say in the discussion generating this and it's not dictated to them, then most of the time this is far superior.  If people need this level of detail, then perhaps those people should live alone or move in with Sheldon Cooper from \"\"The Big Bang Theory\"\".\"", "Fulfillment Services San Jose - We strive for accuracy, quality and quick turnaround time on all mail projects. With the ever changing Postal regulations, California Mailing is here to help you with your direct mail campaigns and insure that you receive all postage discounts available."]}
+{"query": "What is an effective way to convert large sums of US based investments to foreign currencies?", "corpus": ["A stock, bond or ETF is basically a commodity. Where you bought it does not really matter, and it has a value in USD only inasmuch as there is a current market price quoted at an American exchange. But nothing prevents you from turning around and selling it on a European exchange where it is also listed for an equivalent amount of EUR (arbitrage activities of investment banks ensure that the price will be equivalent in regard to the current exchange rate). In fact, this can be used as a cheap form of currency conversion. For blue chips at least this is trivial; exotic securities might not be listed in Europe. All you need is a broker who allows you to trade on European exchanges and hold an account denominated in EUR. If necessary, transfer your securities to a broker who does, which should not cost more than a nominal fee. Mutual funds are a different beast though; it might be possible to sell shares on an exchange anyway, or sell them back to the issuer for EUR. It depends. In any case, however, transferring 7 figure sums internationally can trigger all kinds of tax events and money laundering investigations. You really need to hire a financial advisor who has international investment experience for this kind of thing, not ask a web forum!"], "neg": ["\"This is called propaganda. This is a freaking bot that keeps posting anti-trump threads.   Take a look, the \"\"user\"\" has over 7,000 karma and 0 comment karma. They don't even try!  It has posted over 500 different threads in the 2 months it has been active, without making a single comment. Take a look at what all the threads are about, I'm sure you will be shocked. its probably a bot for /u/postnationalism\"", "\"LOL!!!!!   No matter what Trump will do, even if he lowers the prices of drugs, you will be against him.  Even after what Trump just said, \"\"time to LOWER RIPOFF DRUG PRICES!\"\" (the bold letters and exclamation mark are Trump's), you still think that Trump does not want lower drug prices.   Clear tribalism on your side.\"", "See, I agree with all of that!  However, I think Clinton is exactly the same personality, underneath a thin veneer. The only real difference is that she is slightly better at hiding her sociopathy. This actually makes her more dangerous.", "\"The real betrayal is that the so-called education system can't be bothered to teach people anything useful.   I had a \"\"bank book\"\" (savings account) in *fifth grade*. We learned to operate checking accounts in sixth, and compound interest the next year.   What happened?\"", "kayaks on sale  --Looking for top fishing kayaks or kayak accessories? Visit paddlerscove.com - your one stop shop featuring an exclusive selection of kayaks for sale, used ocean kayaks, and all related accessories. Get the best bargains on a comprehensive range of premium quality products.", "\"[Netflix is targeting 50% in-house content \"\"within the next few years.\"\"](http://variety.com/2016/digital/news/netflix-50-percent-content-original-programming-cfo-1201865902/)  It says right now it is about 1/3 of the way there which - to me - works out to about 16.5%.  So maybe \"\"rarely\"\" wasn't the right word, but a large majority of the content it streams is not in-house.\"", "The Sharpe ratio is, perhaps, the method you are looking for.  That said, not really sure beta is a meaningful metric, as there are plenty of safe bets to be made on volatile stocks (and, conversely, unsafe bets to be made on non-volatile ones)."]}
+{"query": "Which US market indexes (Dow/DJIA, S&P500, NASDAQ) include reinvested dividends?", "corpus": [".INX (the S&P 500 index itself) does not include reinvested dividens.  You can figure total return by going to Yahoo finance, historical data. Choose the start year, and end year. You should find that data for SPY (going back to 1993) will show an adjusted close, and takes dividends into account. This isn't perfect as SPY has a .09% expense ratio, but it's better than just the S&P index. One of the more popular Dow ETF is DIA, this will let you similarly track the Dow while accounting for dividends."], "neg": ["Tourism is down and we’re slated to lose 2 billion in the industry overall this year thanks to Trumps travel ban.  We don’t have many tourists from those countries either, but the rest of the world looks at us, sees what we’re doing and is freaked the fuck out.    Canada has universities that are hugely benefitting.  Students don’t want to go to a country where they think they will be unwelcome.  Smart people from India and China look at Trump and they make the decision that serves their interests the best.  Canada is more welcoming and it doesn’t have nearly the same level racial discomfort that Trump has brought.  We also get people from Japan and Korea and they hate Trump because of the tensions he has created in the region.  They feel like pawns.  We also get a lot of smart people from Latin America and it goes without saying that Latinos are scared of the atmosphere he has created.  He is fucking shit up big time when it comes to immigration.  He is making the U.S. a less desirable place to go, and it’s impacting our ability to recruit talent from around the world.  That doesn’t even begin to delve into his overall anti science policies.  He’s an epic disaster.", "By buying the call option, you are getting the benefit of purchasing the underlying shares (that is, if the shares go up in value, you make money), but transferring the risk of the shares reducing in value. This is more apparent when you are using the option to offset an explicit risk that you hold. For example, if you have a short position, you are at unlimited risk of the position going up in value. You could decide you only want to take the risk that it might rise to $X. In that case, you could buy a call option with $X strike price. Then you have transferred the risk that the position goes over $X to the counterpart, since, even if the shares are trading at $X+$Y you can close out the short position by purchasing the shares at $X, while the option counterpart will lose $Y.", "I think people are worried that this woman is going to become the sole scapegoat for the whole fiasco and the rest of the Equifax leadership is going to walk away scot-free. The CEO won't face any penalties for selling his shares after the incident, the board won't be held to task for waiting six weeks to reveal the hack, and any legislation that could prevent such incidents from occurring again will be nipped in the bud.", "\"There is no \"\"golden rule\"\" on how high of a credit limit an individual should have. There are 22 year olds that have $100,000 credit limits and 40 year olds that have $1000. The most important thing is to not over spend and pay your balance(s) in full every month. Seeing as you are doing that now, there is no downside to getting an increase.\"", "Having functional storage spaces in your office, including lockers, are a must, especially when you are working with many employees. Here at Prodigy Office Furniture, we have the highest quality bookcases, filing cabinets, storage cupboards and lockers Melbourne has to offer.", "quid's answer explains the settlement period well. However, it should be noted that you can avoid the settlement period by opening a margin account. Any specific broker like Schwab may or may not offer margin accounts. Margin accounts allow you to borrow money to avoid the settlement period or to buy more securities than you can actually afford. Note that if you buy more securities than you can afford using margin, you expose yourself to losses potentially larger than your initial investment. If you fund your account with $50,000 and use margin to purchase $80,000 of stock which then drops in value by 80% you will have lost $64,000 and owe the broker $14,000 plus fees.", "It's not about who would win a conflict. It's about how easy to control they are.  The entire might of the american military can't defeat a third world, sub 85 IQ militia given 15 years. Why do you think it would be easier to defeat a civil insurrection?"]}
+{"query": "what if a former employer contributes to my 401k in the year following my exit?", "corpus": ["The vast majority of individual taxpayers in the United States operate on a cash basis of accounting. This means that the assignment of deductions or income to tax year is based on the date of the paycheck.  So the money in that early January 2016 paycheck has been correctly assigned to the 2016 tax year. This is unfortunate for you because you will receive a W-2 for 2016 showing that you had a retirement account. Knowing exactly how many paychecks there are in a year can be very import to know when trying the reach or avoid some thresholds. Even quitting the previous pay period might not have helped. I have seen some companies payout unused vacation, sick and severance over several paychecks. They didn't give you it all in one lump sum, they did it 80 hours a paycheck until the balance owed to the employee was zero."], "neg": ["\"In the United States, with an S-Corp, you pay yourself a salary from company earnings.   That portion is taxed at an individual rate.  The rest of the company earnings are taxed as a corporation, which often have great tax benefits.  If you are making over $80K/year, the difference can be substantial.  A con is that there is more paperwork and you have to create a \"\"board\"\" of advisors.\"", "If I remember correctly, the Netflix settlement was rejected under similar circumstances.  The court ended up agreeing that offering free advertising was not a /punishment/ to Netflix.  The same should hold here, too.  Sooo...  Now we just need a convenient way to object...", "\"The profits that the corporation had to earn to be able to pay you \"\"eligible\"\" dividends for the dividend tax credit were already taxed, and at a somewhat high corporate rate, in the case of large public companies with big profits. The dividend tax credit, which permits an individual to earn a lot from dividends and not pay any personal income tax, essentially recognizes that the profit making up the dividend was already highly taxed to begin with via corporate income tax.  It aims to eliminate double-taxation. FWIW, if you own and run a small private business in Canada and pay yourself a dividend, such dividends are considered \"\"non-eligible\"\", i.e. you don't get as much a benefit from the dividend tax credit, since small business corporate income tax rates are much lower.\"", "I first must commend you for finding the article considering it was 2004.  (Nice find!).  Also, I'm guessing you are going to be dead right with the feelings towards Facebook.  The success or failure will be pretty polarizing because I either see them having a $150 billion market cap at the end of 8 years or we will have conversation about Facebook as we do with Myspace.  Thanks again for posting the article!", "Whoever told you to make major purchases in physical cash should probably be audited because the only real reason someone would be doing something so goofy would be to avoid digital records or maybe taxes somehow.  ... or worse, they listen to Dave Ramsey.", "Some Canadian banks (RBC for instance), will accept the format  No spaces, no slashes. Transit number must be five digits, if it's not add a 0 to the front. Just had a situation where the European-based system would not accept anything but an IBAN, so I called my bank and that's what they confirmed.  I know this is super late, but thought I would leave it here for future generations to discover. Edit: See comments for an example.", "It really is confusing.  Buffalo Wild Wings is shitty food for too much money in a setting that's uncomfortable to be in (loud open space with too many TV screens) with horrible service.  Are you supposed to be stupid and want that or are you stupid for not wanting that?"]}
+{"query": "Do US mutual funds and ETFs pay taxes on dividends?", "corpus": ["\"Mutual funds don't pay taxes themselves, they distribute any dividends or capital gains to the shareholders. Thus, if you hold a mutual fund in a tax-advantaged account like a 401k or IRA then the distribution isn't a taxable event while in a regular taxable account you would have to pay taxes on the distributions. From Forbes: There can be foreign companies on US stock exchanges that would still work the same way. Unilever for example is an Anglo-Dutch multinational listed on the NYSE as \"\"UN.\"\"\""], "neg": ["\"What in the world to shareholders have to do with it?  Nowadays, the vast majority of the shares in most big corporations are \"\"owned\"\" via intermediaries (i.e. mutual funds and 401K's, IRA's and Pension Funds) that do not ALLOW the actual end owners to have any say whatsoever.  All those investment vehicles *allow* people to care about ... is the share price.\"", "Putting the money in a bank savings account is a reasonably safe investment. Anything other than that will come with additional risk of various kinds. (That's right; not even a bank account is completely free of risk. Neither is withdrawing cash and storing it somewhere yourself.) And I don't know which country you are from, but you will certainly have access to your country's government bonds and the likes. You may also have access to mutual funds which invest in other countries' government bonds (bond or money-market funds). The question you need to ask yourself really is twofold. One, for how long do you intend to keep the money invested? (Shorter term investing should involve lower risk.) Two, what amount of risk (specifically, price volatility) are you willing to accept? The answers to those questions will determine which asset class(es) are appropriate in your particular case. Beyond that, you need to make a personal call: which asset class(es) do you believe are likely to do better or less bad than others? Low risk usually comes at the price of a lower return. Higher return usually involves taking more risk (specifically price volatility in the investment vehicle) but more risk does not necessarily guarantee a higher return - you may also lose a large fraction of or even the entire capital amount. In extreme cases (leveraged investments) you might even lose more than the capital amount. Gold may be a component of a well-diversified portfolio but I certainly would not recommend putting all of one's money in it. (The same goes for any asset class; a portfolio composed exclusively of stocks is no more well-diversified than a portfolio composed exclusively of precious metals, or government bonds.) For some specifics about investing in precious metals, you may want to see Pros & cons of investing in gold vs. platinum?.", "This post has been wrote in 2014, so if you read this text be aware. At the time, and since France does tax a lot investment, I'd suggest you start a PEA and filling in using the lazy investment portfolio. That means buying European and/or French ETFs & index, and hold them as long as you can. You can fill your PEA (Plan d'Epargne en Action) up to 150.000€ for a period of at least 8 years as long as you fill it with European and French stocks. After the period of 8 years your profit is taxed at only mere 15%, instead of the 33% you see in a raw broker account. Since you are young, I think a 100% stocks is something you can hold on. If you can't sleep at night with 100% stocks, take some bonds up to 25%, even more. Anyway, the younger you start investing, the more ahead you may eventually go.", "We Are Leading Landscape Design Consultancy In Mumbai.  The directors and staff of Designer Artz to provide a specialist design consultancy and project management service for clients with grounds or gardens both large and small.  Whatever your requirements, Designer Artz &amp; Co strive to exceed expectations. We specialise in creating bespoke garden designs and landscapes and have built our reputation by providing a high level of customer service and aftercare  We specialises in landscape and urban design, assessment work, restoration of heritage parks and urban environments, the water environment, leisure and tourism attractions and landscape planning matters. We have been identified in leading the way with the use of Autodesk Revit and Civils 3D bringing our BIM capabilities up to speed and allows us to work integrated within multi-disciplinary teams and contractors.  For More Details About Landscape Designing Visit At Our Office Or Call us +91 9820 050 673 / 022-289-211-24", "Who would lose their jobs?  Sure some jobs that can only exist at $7 an hour would disappear, but when the lower and middle class hav emore disposable income, consumer spending would go up, creating jobs in other areas.    Basically you would take money from the rich to put it in the hands of people who spend the money, stimulating the economy.  This increases the prosperity of the nation.", "If you're under audit - you should get a proper representation. I.e.: EA or CPA licensed in California and experienced with the FTB audit representation. There's a penalty on failure to file form 1099, but it is with the IRS, not the FTB. If I remember correctly, it's something like $50 or $100 per instance. Technically they can disqualify deductions claiming you paid under the table and no taxes were paid on the other side, however I doubt they'd do it in a case of simple omission of filing 1099 forms. Check with your licensed tax adviser. Keep in mind that for the IRS 2011 is now closed, since the 3-year statute of limitations has passed. For California the statute is 4 years, and you're almost at the end of it. However since you're already under audit they may ask you to agree to extend it.", "You need to look at all your investment as a whole. The 401K, IRA, and any taxable account need to be a part of the diversification and re-balancing. The fact you have regular deposits into the 401K needs to also be a part of your strategy.  Regardless of how much specific investments have gone up this year, you need to first determine how you want to be invested in large cap stock, small cap stock, bond, international, emerging markets... Then you need to see where you are today compared to those investment percentages. You then move the money in the retirement accounts to get to your desired percentage. And set the 401K deposits to be consistent with your goals. Many times the deposits are allocated the same way the balances are, but that is more complex if one of the sectors you are investing in exists completely outside the 401K.  When you re-balance in the future you will be selling sectors that grew the most and buying those that grew the least compared to their planned percentages. If all the moves are within the 401K and IRA then capital gains are not a concern. Don't think of the different accounts as separate baskets, but think of them as a whole investment strategy."]}
+{"query": "What is the psychology behind the Dead Cat Bounce Pattern and how can it be traded?", "corpus": ["You are correct, a possible Dead Cat Bounce is forming on the stock markets. If it does form it will mean that prices have not reached their bottom, as this pattern is a bearish continuation pattern. For a Dead Cat Bounce to form prices will need to break through support formed by the lows last week. If prices bounce off the support and go back up it could become a double bottom pattern, which is a reversal pattern. The double bottom would be confirmed if prices break above the recent high a couple of days ago. Regarding the psychology of the dead cat bounce pattern, is that after a distinct and quick reversal of prices from recent highs you have 2 groups of market participants who create demand in the market. Firstly you have those who were short covering their short positions to take profits, and secondly you have those who are looking for a bargain buying at what they think is the low. So for a few days you have the bulls taking over the bears.  Then as more less positive news comes in, the bears hit the market again. These are more participants opening short positions, but more so those who missed out in selling previously because prices fell too quickly, seeing another opportunity to sell at a better price. So the bears take over again.  Unless there is very good news around the corner it is likely that the bears will stay in control and prices will fall further. How to trade a dead cat bounce (assuming you have been stopped out of your long possistions already)? If you are aggressive you can go short as prices start reversing from the top of the bounce (with your stop loss just above the top of the bounce). If you are more conservative you would place your entry for a short position just below the support at the start of the bounce (with your stop above the top of the bounce). You could also place an order for a long position above the top of the bounce if a double bottom eventuated. A One Cancels the Other (OCO) would be an appropriate order for such a situation."], "neg": ["Yes, this is a scam. Tell your dad not to pay any money.  There will likely be a large deposit in his account, but if he withdraws the money from his account, the bank will come after him looking for the money when the transfer to his account is reversed.", "\"The muni bond business .  Are you really too dumb to understand that's how he's referencing it in the article? He's not talking about a specific company or companies numbnuts he's talking about \"\"The business of muni bonds...i.e the total outstanding municipal bond market.\"\". Try some reading comprehension on for size.        To walk you through it there are multiple uses of the word 'business'.  Among them are the two you're having a real problem with in your reading comprehension.    1.  Business = Company:  I run a dry cleaning business.   2.  Business = Industry:  I am in the dry cleaning business.          What he is (clearly) referring to when he says \"\"a business worth $3.7 trillion\"\"  is \"\"business = industry\"\" in the second manner listed above. You're interpreting it as if he's claiming the first manner.  That's incorrect. Factually and grammatically incorrect.   Yours is the type of ignorance that morons on Reddit rely on to make their arguments work.  I'm done here with you since you don't seem to be able to parse out rudimentary information from an article.\"", "The word bespoke means made to order. Bespoke insurance means non-cookie cutter. That mean the thing your are trying to protect, or the risk to that item is not normally covered; so you need a non-standard type of policy. Your neighborhood insurance company doesn't handle a bespoke policy. There are companies that do.  Reinsurance is insurance on insurance. Company X has a risk they want to insure, so they go to insurance company A. After a while insurance company A realizes that they have sold a few of these policies and they have a risk if they guessed wrong. So they take out a policy with insurance company B to protect themselves if more than some percentage of their policies go bad. That policy takes bespoke reinsurance.", "\"Contribute as much as you can.  When do you want to retire and how much income do you think you'll need? A $1M portfolio yielding 5% will yield $50,000/year. Do some research about how to build a portfolio... this site is a good start, but check out books on retirement planning and magazines like Money and Kiplinger. If you don't speak \"\"money\"\" or are intimidated by investing, look for a fee-based financial advisor whom you are comfortable with.\"", "&gt;Can't be that much more sustainable, isn't China also building ghost cities at break neck speeds here?  Most ghost cities fill up eventually. There are some major fuckups, but that's always been the case with urbanization, and China still has a shitton of peasants tied to the land its trying to slowly get into the cities. Cf many other urbanization processes which resulted in huge numbers of people living in hastily built structures unsuitable for human health, and then dying in a fire / plague.", "Age old rules about money scams: If a person A wants to send money to person B, they do the following: Person A sends money to person B. Neither of them sends money to you, and you don't send money to either of them. It doesn't make sense! If you give someone money, be prepared that you might not receive that money back. If someone gives you money, be prepared that they can get that money back. Illegal money laundering can put you in jail, even if you pretend to be a blameless victim of a scammer.", "How to start is pretty simple.   With your next pay check set aside an amount and open a separate savings account.  Since this is an emergency fund - you want it someplace where you can get to the money quickly (so a CD or mutual fund is not good), but you want it in a separate account so that you don't accidentally use it.    Once the account is opened I'd recommend setting up an automatic transfer, or make it part of the direct deposit if you do that, so that you put in some money regularly (every pay check).  By adding to it regularly and not using it, you'll more quickly achieve your goal.   I'd recommend stopping, or slowing any retirement savings or other investing, until you get the emergency fund in place.  If you have an emergency, the money in the retirement fund isn't going to do you much good as it costs too much to do an early withdrawal.  The whole point of the emergency fund is to have liquidity when you need it so that you don't incur the costs of unplugging your longer term investments. Also don't worry overly much about making money on this money.  This isn't an investment it is there for emergencies."]}
+{"query": "Is there a simple strategy of selling stock over a period of time?", "corpus": ["\"The best strategy for RSU's, specifically, is to sell them as they vest. Usually, vesting is not all in one day, but rather spread over a period of time, which assures that you won't sell in one extremely unfortunate day when the stock dipped. For regular investments, there are two strategies I personally would follow: Sell when you need. If you need to cash out - cash out. Rebalance - if you need to rebalance your portfolio (i.e.: not cash out, but reallocate investments or move investment from one company to another) - do it periodically on schedule. For example, every 13 months (in the US, where the long term cap. gains tax rates kick in after 1 year of holding) - rebalance. You wouldn't care about specific price drops on that day, because they also affect the new investments. Speculative strategies trying to \"\"sell high buy low\"\" usually bring to the opposite results: you end up selling low and buying high. But if you want to try and do that - you'll have to get way more technical than just \"\"dollar cost averaging\"\" or similar strategies. Most people don't have neither time nor the knowledge for that, and even those who do rarely can beat the market (and never can, in the long run).\""], "neg": ["Real estate investment is a proven creator of wealth.  Check into the history of the rich and you will find real estate investment. Starting your investment in multi-family is a great idea.  It is a good way to gain experience in real estate while exponentially increasing cash flow. If you turn the properties over to a reputable property management company, your cash flow will be a little less but so will your headaches. (Expect to pay 8 - 10% of gross income.) You could start investing now by looking into discounted real estate such as foreclosures, tax sales, short sales etc while the market is still depressed.  This way your return on investment should be higher. From there you could expand into land development (i.e. subdivision) or commercial investments. Commercial properties with triple net leases can be a great low-stress investment opportunity (but they take more cash upfront). Attending some local real estate investment classes would be a great idea for starters.", "&gt;Now a crucial thing here is that while the 20-24 cohort is the largest now, in a few years, the largest group will be those of prime-age workers: 25-29, the age when people really begin to earn better money and buy homes and cars.  Unless-   1) Those jobs are still being done by baby boomers, or have sent offshore/ eliminated by robots, google, etc   2) That extra money goes to paying down student loans instead of consumer purchases.    3) Interest rates rise. At all. Pushing monthly costs for homeownership from unjustifyable to truly unaffordable.", "\"New York State is one of a few states that will go after telecommuter taxes (such that some people may end up paying double tax even if they don't live in NY).  There are a few ways that you can avoid this. If you NEVER come to NY for work, and your employer can stipulate that your position is only available to be filled remotely, you will likely be covered. But there are a myriad of factors relating to this such as whether the employer reimburses you for your home office and whether you keep \"\"business records\"\" at your office.  Provided you can easily document the the factors in TSB-M-06(5)I, you shouldn't have to pay NYS taxes.  (source: I've worked with a NYS tax attorney as an employer to deal with this exact scenario).\"", "Here you go, as promised - http://www.nytimes.com/2012/10/23/sports/cycling/armstrong-stripped-of-his-7-tour-de-france-titles.html?hp  Of course, we can side with one man who has refused to provide any proof, other than his word. Or we can look at all the evidence provided by his teammates, spouses and others in the retinue.", "\"Yes and no, go look up how much AT&amp;T (didn't) spend on infrastructure right about the time they locked in the (then) exclusive iPhone deal. They were making money hand over fist due to the deal and spending at a record low on building out infrastructure to support the new users, and the new demand for mobile data. They went to far as to get the app review team to look for apps that used \"\"too much\"\" (but they would never say how much was too much) data over the cell network and reject them.\"", "\"As a former regional airline pilot, I don't know of any commerical airliners that takeoff automatically.  Although, it's something that I'm sure could be implemented pretty easily.  However, autoland is a feature used very frequently on many commercial aircraft.  As the top-voted comment said, \"\"not in your lifetime.\"\"\"", "\"Yeah, I'm actually working on such a web server... And you're right, it's really an entire platform more than it is a web server (though you can certainly use it as \"\"just a web server\"\").  Also, I did loads of testing to see what it takes to prevent adblock from working properly. Avoid the obvious stuff like using standard banner sizes and serving images from a directory called \"\"ads\"\" (hehe).  I don't want to give away my secrets just yet but if you too make it your goal to work around adblock you'll find nearly impenetrable solutions in no time :)\""]}
+{"query": "Will my Indian debit card work in the U.S.?", "corpus": ["Debit cards with the Visa or Mastercard symbol on them work technically everywhere where credit cards work. There are some limitations where the respective business does not accept them, for example car rentals want a credit card for potential extra charges; but most of the time, for day-to-day shopping and dining, debit cards work fine. However, you should read up the potential risks. A credit card gives you some security by buffering incorrect/fraudulent charges from your account, and credit card companies also help you reverse incorrect charges, before you ever have to pay for it. If you use a debit card, it is your money on the line immediately - any incorrect charge, even accidential, takes your money from your account, and it is gone while you work on reversing the charge. Any theft, and your account can be cleaned out, and you will be without money while you go after the thief. Many people consider the debit card risk too high, and don't use them for this reason. However, many people do use them - it is up to you."], "neg": ["\"Yes I agree, I remember the British Airways flight I took to Florida when I was 13 for the family holiday and idiots were rushing the gate when they weren't called. Eventually the gate agent got so pissed off he made an example of this stupid middle aged man who was trying to act all entitled in the style of \"\"LADIES AND GENTLEMEN, THIS MAN HERE IS A PERFECT EXAMPLE OF SOMEONE WHO ARRIVES AT THE GATE WHEN THEIR ZONE IS **NOT** CALLED, AS A RESULT OF THIS YOU WILL BE BOARDING THE AIRCRAFT LAST SIR\"\" or words to that effect. He tried arguing against a piece of paper, you can't really win...  Also usually gate agents and checkin desks are staffed by airline services companies like Menzies Aviation as far as I know, I'm not sure if that's relevant however.\"", "I'm not sure that you're considering all the options.   So you may not subtract $X from B, but you do compare NPV(B) to $Y.   Also, remember that we're not trying to figure out the return on B.  We're trying to figure out what to do next.  In terms of planning, the sunk cost is irrelevant.  But in terms of calculating return, A was a turkey.  And to calculate the return, we would include $X in our costs for B.  And for the second option, we'd subtract $X from $Y (may be negative).   Sunk costs are irrelevant to planning, but they are very relevant to retrospective analysis.  Please don't confuse the two.  When looking back, part of the cost for B will be that $X.  But in the middle, after paying $X and before starting B, the $X is gone.  You only have the building and have to make your decision based on the options you have at that moment.   You will sometimes hear $Y called the opportunity cost of B.  You could sell out for $Y or you could do B.  You should only do B if it is worth more than $Y.   The sunk cost fallacy would be comparing B to $X.  Assuming $Y is less than $X, this would make you not do B when it is your best path forward from that moment.  I.e. $Y < NPV(B) < $X means that you should do the project.  You will lose money (apparently that's a foregone conclusion), but you will lose less money than if you just sold out.   You should also do B if $Y < $X < NPV(B) or $X < $Y < NPV(B).  In general, you should do B any time $Y < NPV(B).  The only time you should not do B is if NPV(B) < $Y.  If they are exactly equal, then it doesn't matter financially whether you do B or not.", "She massively raised wages of a bunch of people in management and wasted a lot of money on acquisitions that she later [shut down](http://gizmodo.com/heres-what-happened-to-all-of-marissa-mayers-yahoo-acqu-1781980352). Her job was to be the turnaround CEO, which she completely failed at. She did lengthen the amount of time it took until they threw in the towel, but in that time frame, she wasted a lot of shareholders' money.", "When it comes to apps, ideas have little value compared to the ability to execute on an idea. If you are not a developer, ask yourself what value you bring to the business besides having an idea. Can you test the value of this idea before it's an app? Is there a market for it? Do you have capital to invest in development, marketing, and production?", "Are there any laws against doing this?  so long as you are truthful in your application for the loan, none that I know of - technically you could use the loan to pay for school and the cash that you would have used instead to invest.   Are there other reasons why this is a very bad idea? I think you've already identified the biggest one, but here are my reasons: Will you go broke or go to jail? Likely not, but there is significant risk in investing with borrowed money. You might come out ahead, but you might also lose a bundle.  If you're willing to take that risk, that's your right, but I would not call it a good idea under any circumstances.", "\"You should seriously just stop talking. The term legacy employees refers to legacy cost structures. Costs that linger from a time when the competitive environment was different than it is today are referred to as legacy costs. It is not derogatory.   Take airlines, for example. Airlines used to have incredible legacy costs from unionized employees incurred at a time when the airline industry was regulated. Regulation kept new airlines from starting up, so airlines could very easily afford to pay for pensions, huge benefits, massive salaries, etc. The few airlines in existence then had control over the industry.  Then the airlines were deregulated and anyone could start one up. Suddenly, the airlines that could afford massive pensions in the days where they effectively controlled pricing could no longer afford these pensions and benefits when competitors did not offer the same benefits to their employees. Hence, every single \"\"legacy\"\" airline went bankrupt over the next few decades.\"", "If your parents can spare it, take the money from your parents and return it to them with interest. It is always better to pay interest to family than to a bank."]}
+{"query": "Are there any caveats to withdrawing funds from brokerage?", "corpus": ["Assuming a USA taxable account: Withdrawing funds from a brokerage account has nothing to do with taxes. Taxes are owed on the profit when you sell a stock, no matter what you do with the funds. Taxes are owed on any dividends the stock produces, no matter what you do with the dividend. The brokerage sends you a form 1099 each year that shows the amounts of dividends and profits. You have to figure out the taxes from that."], "neg": ["\"I worked for a company a few years back that insisted all of us were \"\"non-supervised exempt technical workers,\"\" and they wanted 45 hours out of each person.  No matter to them that that was a 12.5% cut in hourly pay.  Unfortunately, they did no research and didn't bother to actually apply for any exemptions.  One of the analysts got sick of it, found another job, then turned over his timecards to the labor department.  Said company had to write him a check for $10k, as well as write smaller checks for every other person working there.\"", "I am surprised no one has mentioned the two biggest things (in my opinion).  Or I should say, the two biggest things to me.  First, 1099 have to file quarterly self employment taxes.  I do not know for certain but I have heard that often times you will end up paying more this way then even a W-2 employees.  Second, an LLC allows you to deduct business expenses off the top prior to determining what you pay in taxes as pass-through income.  With 1099 you pay the same taxes regardless of your business expenses unless they are specifically allowed as a 1099 contractor (which most are not I believe).  So what you should really do is figure out the expense you incur as a result of doing your business and check with an accountant to see if those expenses would be deductible in an LLC and if it offsets a decent amount of your income to see if it would be worth it.  But I have read a lot of books and listened to a lot of interviews about wealthy people and most deal in companies not contracts.  Most would open a new business and add clients rather than dealing in 1099 contracts.  Just my two cents... Good luck and much prosperity.", "Yeah, it can be a scam.  Lots of unscrupulous companies try to generate commissions by encouraging frequent trading - I can't recall the term they use right now, but I don't like to use these people for advice.  My bank has 100 free trades per year for each account, which is more than enough for me to never pay a commission.", "\"Most people are aware of the existence of merchant processing fees. If this really bothers anyone:  * Get a rewards credit card * Pay the bill off in full every month * Redeem your points for cash back   You've now recovered a good portion of the fees back and have still had the convenience of not carrying cash and all of the other random \"\"benefits\"\" (extended warranty, travel protection, etc) cards carry these days.   Some of the programs with 5% cash back will put more back in your pocket than what the fees are since they generally run around 2-4%.\"", "Many services charge prices that do not scale linearly with usage.  This is because the service provider has fixed costs that they must recoup by charging a rate with a fixed component.  A 5-mile taxi ride is unlikely to cost half what a 10-mile taxi ride costs.  Even a half sandwich at a sandwich place usually costs more than half of what a full sandwich costs.  In this respect, insurance is no different from many other items you may purchase.", "The company that sold of the debt, does write off the loan [and books loss on balance sheet]. Depending on the Company's policy the amount written of as loss varies. Some Companies only show loss on Principal for the outstanding period [The interest income and charges is not booked]. Some companies would show loss on Principal and the accrued unpaid interest ... So if the total outstanding is say 10,000 and it was sold to collector at say 3,000/- the balance 7,000 is written off as loss. There are multiple reasons, one they don't have time or there are only few cases. But most of the times when on initial delay in payment, it goes to a collection agency for follow-up [and the loan is not actually sold]. The agency gets a commission [around 10-15%] for every successful payment they recover.... its only after some period it actually gets sold completely to the agency for a heavy discount price. Often at 10% the actual value. The collection agency works on threat technique, if they get 50% of face value, they may loss that threat perception and everyone would not pay even if they can ... so it makes more sense for them to get 200% of face value [added interest, charges and other stuff] from one customer rather than get 50% from 4 customers ...", "OK, at least there is still an answer that doesn't seek to troll or be sarcastic.  I was thinking that it has to do with the fact that wealthy consumers in non-Western countries often desire to emulate Western lifestyles and consumer trends."]}
+{"query": "Option on an option possible? (Have a LEAP, put to me?)", "corpus": ["I understand what you're asking for (you want to write options ON call options... essentially the second derivative of the underlying security), and I've never heard of it. That's not to say it doesn't exist (I'm sure some investment banker has cooked something like this up at some point), but if it does exist, you wouldn't be able to trade it as easily as you can a put or a LEAP. I'm also not sure you'd actually want to buy such a thing - the amount of leverage would be enormous, and you'd need a massive amount of margin/collateral.  Additionally, a small downward movement in the stock price could wipe out the entire value of your option."], "neg": ["I'm in Estonia, so a while back I did some coding for a US company, who figured it would be cheaper to outsource to Estonia. Since I had too much on my plate at that time, I outsourced the task to a guy in the US, who was having a hard time finding a job, because of all the outsourcing.", "I think the issue would be that Wachovia/Wells Fargo who converted the Traditional IRA to a Roth IRA has told the IRS that you did the conversion, and so the IRS will want taxes on  the money that came out of the Traditional IRA. You need to get Wells Fargo to issue a corrected 1099-R saying that it was a Roth to Roth roll-over, and possibly get a corrected 5498 for 2011 showing that the Wachovia Roth was converted to a Wells Fargo Roth. Else, the IRS might want an excise tax for a premature withdrawal from your Wachovia Roth, and assess penalties for excess contributions to a Traditional IRA in 2011 when the erroneous conversion was made, because to them it might look like you withdrew money from a Roth IRA, and made an excessive contribution to a Traditional IRA.", "Dude you're literally trying to insult me by saying I have a job I don't have, but I guess there's not much you can actually say about my dope ass life. Go back to asking Reddit about which bars in NYC you can go to to make friends you awkward neckbeard lmaoo, talk about pathetic.", "\"Besides your credit score, there are other smart reasons to have a second line of credit.  (Your credit score doesn't affect you the majority of your life, but when it does whoooooo boy does it.) Should the first bank you have credit with create or find a clerical error, a second line of credit can provide a cushion while you sort it out with the first Should physically damage a card, or have it stolen, having a second backup at home will be helpful as you wait for a replacement. Getting a second line of credit with a different institution than your first allows you the flexibility to cancel one and move your business should the deal become unfavorable to you. Multiple lines of credit in of itself is a plus to your credit score (albeit a small one) You can organize your finances.  One card handles the recurring payments in your life, the second incidentals.  The expected activity type might make it easier to detect fraud. When you get your second line of credit, get it from a different institution than where you have any other business now.  (A credit union if you can, or a small local bank).  Make sure there is no annual fee, and if there is a reward, be certain it is worth it.  Cash back is my favorite because I can spend cash where I like, whereas \"\"points\"\" have to come out of product in their catalogs.  Lower interest rate is best of all.  Even though you always plan on paying it off every month like clockwork, you might one day run into an issue where you cannot.  Lower interest rate becomes very important in that plannings scenario.\"", "Taylor Swift is popular precisely because she projects a fundamental decency and likeability that is mostly absent among the other poptarts.  The axis-of-strippers that is Beyonce', Madonna, and the rest of the rotting culture may be titilating, but everyone pretty much knows that all they're doing is selling softcore porn.  No one serious about music is listening to these popstar yowlings.  The London Symphony won't be accompanying the vocal stylings of Katie Perry anytime soon.  But, at least Swift is a likeable and apparently very nice young woman.  Beyonce et al should get some lessons in civility and adult behavior from her ...", "&gt;how could they possibly do that from a meaningful methodological point of view?  By years of experience, training, and hard work.  &gt; Do you really think that have any real practical understanding of the situation,   Economically, yes  &gt; would that make any difference at all to the travesty that is going on in Washington at the moment?  I doubt it. Thats not what I'm arguing.", "Couple of ways they save money which doesn't seem significant but actually makes a big difference    * debit and cash only    * shoppers get and put away their own carts    * low shop size    * private label and high number of product turnover    * Low employee counts    * Low technology costs &amp; decoration costs    * Cash on order (from shop to distributor)    * Just in time supply chain     * German efficiency"]}
+{"query": "How much house can a retired person afford", "corpus": ["\"Consider property taxes (school, municipal, county, etc.) summing to 10% of the property value.  So each year, another .02N is removed.  Assume the property value rises with inflation.  Allow for a 5% after inflation return on a 70/30 stock bond mix for N.   After inflation return.   Let's assume a 20% rate.  And let's bump the .05N after inflation to .07N before inflation.  Inflation is still taxable.   Result  Drop in value of investment funds due to purchase.   Return after inflation.   After-inflation return minus property taxes.   Taxes are on the return including inflation, so we'll assume .06N and a 20% rate (may be lower than that, but better safe than sorry).   Amount left.   If no property, you would have .036N to live on after taxes.  But with the property, that drops to .008N.  Given the constraints of the problem, .008N could be anywhere from $8k to $80k.   So if we ignore housing, can you live on $8k a year?  If so, then no problem.  If not, then you need to constrain N more or make do with less house.   On the bright side, you don't have to pay rent out of the .008N.  You still need housing out of the .036N without the house.   These formulas should be considered examples.  I don't know how much your property taxes might be.  Nor do I know how much you'll pay in taxes.  Heck, I don't know that you'll average a 5% return after inflation.  You may have to put some of the money into cash equivalents with negligible return.  But this should allow you to research more what your situation really is.   If we set returns to 3.5% after inflation and 2.4% after inflation and taxes, that changes the numbers slightly but importantly.  The \"\"no house\"\" number becomes .024N.  The \"\"with house\"\" number becomes  So that's $24,000 (which needs to include rent) versus -$800 (no rent needed).  There is not enough money in that plan to have any remainder to live on in the \"\"with house\"\" option.  Given the constraints for N and these assumptions about returns, you would be $800 to $8000 short every year.   This continues to assume that property taxes are 10% of the property value annually.  Lower property taxes would of course make this better.  Higher property taxes would be even less feasible.   When comparing to people with homes, remember the option of selling the home.  If you sell your .2N home for .2N and buy a .08N condo instead, that's not just .12N more that is invested.  You'll also have less tied up with property taxes.  It's a lot easier to live on $20k than $8k.   Or do a reverse mortgage where the lender pays the property taxes.  You'll get some more savings up front, have a place to live while you're alive, and save money annually.   There are options with a house that you don't have without one.\""], "neg": ["Highest possible is meaningless.  Ex: Use 17x Leverage on E-mini S&P 500 Futures, perfectly long before an uptick and short before a downtick every minute. Goes to the moon in a day of 1,440 minutes.  You are supposed to use a Buy-and-Hold SPY, with leverage that makes the Standard Deviation of SPY same as your Portfolio/Algorithm, as benchmark.", "\"You have a good thing going. One of the luxuries of being invested in an index fund for the long term is that you don't have to sweat the inevitable short term dips in the market. Instead, look at the opportunity that presents itself on market dips: now your monthly investment is getting in at a lower price. \"\"Buy low, sell high.\"\" \"\"Don't lose money.\"\" These are common mantras for long term investment mentality. 5-8 years is plenty of time -- I'd call it \"\"medium-term\"\". As you get closer to your goals (~2-3 years out) you should start slowly moving money out of your index fund and start dollar cost averaging out into cash or short-term bonds (but that's another question). Keep putting money in, wait, and sell high. If it's not high, wait another year or two to buy the house. A lot of people do the opposite for their entire lives: buying high, panic selling on the dips, then buying again when it goes up. That's bad! I recommend a search on \"\"dollar cost averaging\"\", which is exactly what you are doing right now with your monthly investments.\"", "It would make sense to refuse a raise when it pushes your effective marginal 'tax' (including reduced benefits) above 100%.  The working poor (family of 4, 20K-40K in the US) often face marginal rates above 100% when you consider the phase out of various government benefits (EITC, insurance, housing,etc.)  You can see the research here and here.", "\"The only thing that makes a stock worthless is when the company goes out of business. Note that bankruptcy, by itself, does not mean the company is closing. It could successfully restructure its affairs and come out of bankruptcy with a better outlook. Being a small or unprofitable business may cause a company's to trade in the \"\"penny stock\"\" range, but there is still some value there. Since most dying companies will pass through the penny stock phase, you may be able to track down what you're looking for by finding companies who have been (or are about to be) delisted. Delisting is not death, it's just the point at which the company's shares no longer meet the qualifications to be traded on a particular exchange. If you find old stock certificates in your grandmother's sock drawer, they may be a treasure, or they may be worthless pieces of paper if the company changed its ownership and Grandma didn't know about it.\"", "It is also not helped that governments globally are pressing banks to improve capital ratios; i.e. hold more in reserve. While this will reduce the likelihood of a bailout in the near future, it severely reduces the access to money and damages the economy.", "CDR Group uses a Career Analysis Profile Questionnaire in order to determine the strengths of the job seeker and figure out how best to market those positive attributes. The questionnaire can be completed manually and mailed in, or electronically over the Internet.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-global-markets/feds-great-unwinding-lifts-dollar-china-rating-gets-the-chop-idUSKCN1BW03Z?il=0) reduced by 83%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; NEW YORK - The U.S. Treasury yield curve flattened to a two-and-a half month low and key world stock markets fell on Thursday, as investors assessed indications from the U.S. Federal Reserve that it may raise interest rates a third time this year.  &gt; U.S. stocks pulled back from their all-time highs, though bank stocks cheered the prospect of higher interest rates which should help their profits.  &gt; China&amp;#039;s markets were already closed by the time it came but it kept the pressure on emerging markets stocks.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/71lga0/feds_great_unwinding_lifts_dollar_china_rating/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~214093 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*: **percent**^#1 **market**^#2 **rate**^#3 **U.S.**^#4 **more**^#5\""]}
+{"query": "Recovering over-contribution to Social Security between two employers?", "corpus": ["This is a common occurrence when somebody has multiple jobs in one year. The employer can't know if you have reached the annual limit. They know to stop when you have hit the maximum for their company, but don't have information on the other jobs. In fact the IRS doesn't let them factor in the other jobs. They have to keep making their payment until you hit the max for their company. When you fill out the 1040 there will be a line that checks that the total social security amount for each person was not over the annual limit. The extra will be refunded when you file your taxes. In the future if this happens again you can adjust your withholding to minimize the overage. For the example given in the question to get the 4K extra sooner, increase the number of allowances on the W-4.  You can under withhold federal income tax because you will over withhold social security tax."], "neg": ["\"Definitions are in order: These definitions are important. Someone making 1,000,000 a year who spends all of it is poor. Someone who makes 500K, spends 450K a year and has three million in stocks and a paid-for million dollar home may be rich but they can't retire. They need another seven to eight million to retire. Someone with a million dollars in assets who makes 40K a year through their job, can be Financially Independent and retire.  This last example is important. In The Millionaire Next Door the authors share their discovery that the average millionaire accumulated their wealth with just a working income of around 50K (the book is a bit dated so the number should be elevated if you adjust for inflation). Finance Independent is a strange thing to wrap your head around and people with high incomes often fall victim to misunderstanding it. When figuring out how much a person needs to accumulate for their \"\"nest egg\"\", their working income is not a direct variable. Their spending and savings rate are. A doctor making 500K, who spends 450K needs to work for 51 years if they are planning to keep spending 450K/year (adjusted for inflation) forever. Someone making 60K starting at age 21 who saves 18K (30%), could retire at 49. Someone with a truly low income and poor, say 30K and under and living in a old developed nation, investing will help them a bit. Say they save 10% of their income, by the time they reach 65 (the typical age federal retirement pensions begin), they'll have enough money to live off of in perpetuity and in comfort.  They'll actually have a higher retirement income than income while they were working. But, it is challenging at those levels to save 10% of your net income. Events like your car randomly deciding to break down one day can destroy an entire year's saving.\"", "I'm not mad at anyone, I am aware of what a business large and small have always done and will always do.  This is why we need to make some changes to the law.  If your company turns a profit at some level, you must be required to spend X dollars on your peoples benefits be it through direct compensation or healthcare/whatever.  I don't see a problem with a private company picking up the tab for their employees if they have the means to do so.  Why should you and I pay for Walmarts employees?", "So like any market, the housing market will *on average* trend upward. But the extreme prices we're seeing in Toronto or San Francisco are not part of the normal market growth. There's a lot of factors that can affect housing outside of just increased demand. Here's a few of the big ones.  1) Low-Interest Rates: Since (2008? I think) interests rates have been really low, meaning mortgages are really low. If you can borrow money at 4% and the inflation rate is 8%, you've borrowed expensive dollars and are paying back in cheap dollars.  2)NIMBY (Not in my back yard): If you have enough land to build 10 houses or one 100 apartment building, what do you build? Theoretically the apartment building, but in reality, the people that already paid for their million dollar house, don't want a giant apartment complex bringing down the value of the neighborhood and ruining their views. So they pass laws preventing new and bigger buildings, meaning higher prices for the homes that already exist. And as a bonus, it's easier on the city to have 10 people who make a million dollars a year than a 100 people who make 100,000 a year.  Foreign investment: So there's a lot of places where people have money, but because of corruption or shaky economies, it's not safe to hold it there. So you buy properties in the U.S. or Canada because you know no one's going to seize it and it's (generally) not going to lose value. So you end up with foreign dollars competing with the local markets for housing, driving the price up.", "\"Here I thought I would not ever answer a question on this site and boom first ten minutes.  First and foremost I am in the automotive industry, specifically one of our core competencies is finance department management consulting and the sales process both for the sale of the care as well  as  the financial transaction. First and foremost new vehicle gross profits are nowhere near 20% for the dealership.  In an entry level vehicle like say a Toyota Corolla there is only a  few hundreds of dollars in markup from invoice to M.S.R.P.  There is also something called holdback that dealers get for achieving certain goals such as sales volume. These are usually pretty easy to hit. As a matter of fact I have never heard of a dealer not getting the hold back on a deal.  This hold back is there to cover overhead for the car, the cost of getting it ready to sell, having a lot to park it on, making it ready for delivery, offset some of the cost of sales labor  etc.  Most dealerships consider the holdback portion of the invoice to not be part of the deal when it comes to  negotiations.  Certain brands such as KIA and Chrysler have something called \"\"Dealer Cash\"\" these payouts are usually stair stepped according to volume and vary by dealer, location, past history, how the guys at the factory feel that day and any number of combinations.  Then there is CSI or Customer Service Index payments, these payments are usually made every 1/4 are on the Parts Statement not the Sales Doc and while they effect the dealers bottom line they almost never affect the sales managers or sales persons payroll so they are not considered a part of the cost of the car.  They are however extremely important to  the dealer and this is  why after you have your new car they want you to bring in your survey for a free oil change or something.  IF you are going to give a bad survey they want to throw it away and not send it in, if you are going to give a good survey they want to  make sure you fill it out correctly.  This is because lets say they ask you on a scale of 1-10 how was your sales person and you put a 9 that is a failing score. Dumb I know but that is how every factory CSI score system I have seen worked.  According to NADA the average New Vehicle gross profit including hold back and dealer cash is around $1000.00.  No where near 20%.  Dealerships would love it if they made 20% on your new F250 Supercrew Diesel at around $50,000.00.  One last thing there is something on the invoice called Wholesale Finance Reserve.  This is the amount of money the factory forwards to the Dealership to offset the cost of financing vehicle on the floor plan so they can have it for you to look at before you buy.  This is usually equal to around 3 months of interest and while you might buy a vehicle that has been on the lot for 2 days they have plenty that have been there much longer so this equals out in a fair to middling run store. General Mangers that know what they are doing can make this really pad their net profit to statement. On to incentives, there are basically 3 kinds.  Cash to customer in the form of rebates, Dealer Cash in the form of incentives to dealerships based on volume or the undesirability of a vehicle, and incentive rates or Subvented leases.  The rates are pretty self explanatory as they advertised as such (example 0% for 60 Months).  Subvented Leased are harder to figure out and usually not disclosed as they are hard to explain and also a source of increased profit.  Subvented leases are usually powered by lower cost of money called a money factor (think of it as an interest rate) that is discounted from the lease company or a subsidized residual.  Subsidized residuals are virtually verboten on domestic vehicles due to their poor resell values.  A subsidized residual works like this, you buy a Toyota Camry and the ALG (automotive lease guide) says it has a residual at 36 months of 48%.  Well Toyota Motor Credit says we will give you a subvented residual of 60% basically subsidizing a 2% increase in residual.  Since they do not expect to be able to sell the car at auction for that amount they have to set aside the 2% as a future expense.  What does this mean to you, it means a lower payment.  Also a good rule of thumb if you are told a money factor by your salesperson to figure out what the interest rate is just multiply it by 2400.  So if a money factor is give of .00345 you know your actual interest rate is a little bit lower than 8.28% (illustration purposes only money factors are much lower than that right now). So how does this save you money well a lease is basically calculated by multiplying the MSRP by the residual and then subtracting that amount from the \"\"Capitalized Cost\"\" which is the Price paid for the car - trade in + payoff + TT&L-Rebate-Down Payment.  That is the depreciation.  Then you divide that number by the term of the loan and you have the depreciation amount.  So if you have 20K CC and 10K R your D = 10K / 36 = 277 monthly payment.  For the rest of the monthly payment you add (I think been a long time since I did this with out a computer) the Residual plus the CC for $30,000 * MF of .00345 = 107 for a total payment of 404 ish.  This is not completely accurate but you can use it to  make sure a salesperson/finance person is not trying to do one thing and  say another as so often happens on leases. 0% how the  heck do  they make money at that, well its simple.  First in 2008 the Fed made all the \"\"Captive\"\" lenders into actual banks instead of whatever they were before.  So now they have access to the Fed's discounting window which with todays monetary policies make it almost free money.  In the past these lenders had to go through all kinds of hoops to raise funds and  securitize loans even for super prime credit.  Those days are essentially over.  Now they get their short term money just like Bank of America does.  Eventually they still bundle these loans and sell them.  So in the short term YOU pay for the 0% by giving up part or all of your rebate.  This is really important DO NOT GIVE up your rebate for 0% unless it makes sense to do so.  When you can get the money at 2.5% and get a $7000.00 rebate (customer cash) on that F250 or 0% take the cash.  First of all make the finance guy/gal show you the the difference in total cost they can do do this using the federal truth in lending disclosures on a finance contract.  Secondly how long will you keep the vehicle?  If you come out ahead by say $1500 by taking the lower rate but you usually trade out every three years this is not going to work.  Also and this is important if you are involved in a situation with a total loss like a stolen car or even worse a bad wreck before the breakeven point you lose that price break.  Finally on judging what is right for you, just know that future value of the vehicle on for resell or trade-in will take into effect all of these past rebates and value the car accordingly.  So if a vehicle depreciates 20% a year for the first 3 years the starting point will essentially be $7000.00 less than you actually paid,  using rough numbers. How does this help the dealers and car companies?  Well while a dealer struggles to make money on new cars the factory makes all of their money on the  new cars and the new car financing.  While your individual loan might lose money that money is offset by the loss of rebate and I think Ford does actually pay Ford Motor Credit Company the difference in the rate.  The most important thing is what happens later FMCC now has 2500 loans with people with perfect credit.  They can now use those loans to budle with people with not so perfect credit that they financed at 12%-18% and buy that money with interest rates in the 2%-3% range.  Well that is a hell of a lot of profit.  'How does it help the dealership, well the more super prime credit they have in their portfolio the more subprime credit the banks will buy for them.  This means they have more loans originated that are more profitable for them.  Say you come in for the 0% but have 590 credit score, they get FMCC to buy the deal because they have a good portfolio and you win because the dealer gets to buy the money at say 9% and sell it to you at say 12% making the spread.  You win there because you actually qualified for a rate of around 18% with a subprime company like Santander or Capital One (yes that capital one) so  you save a ton on your overall cost of the car. Any dealership that is half way well run makes as much or money in the finance and insurance office than the rest of the dealership.  When you factor in what a good F&I Director can do to get deals done with favorable terms that really goes up.  Think about that the guys sitting a desk drinking coffee making more than the  service department guys all put together. Well that was long winded but there I broke down the car business for whoever read this far.\"", "The short answer is you are not required to.  The longer answer depends on whether you are referring to your organization as a sole proprietorship in your state, or for federal taxation.  For federal tax purposes, I would suggest filing each side job as a separate Sch C though.  The IRS uses the information you provide about your sole proprietorship to determine whether or not your categorization of expenses makes sense for the type of business you are.  This information is used by the IRS to help them determine who to audit.  So, if you are a service based business, but you are reporting cost of goods sold, you are likely to be audited.", "Well, Lowes has always had a domestic, friendly, home-grown marketing appeal to them. Being based in Winston-Salem NC makes their brand a have small-American-city, friendly, non-threatening, community vibe. With this move, some of that could leave a lasting impression on some people. Certainly the 120 people and their friends and family who were laid off. And maybe some people will perceive their brand differently after reading this article/headline.", "This isn't the case with everyone.  Now if you want to talk about BMW and Mercedes hybrids, the prices are so much higher it doesn't make sense financially, even if you consider the amount of money you'll save on gas."]}
+{"query": "How to open a Mega Money Market account without an ssn?", "corpus": ["According to the IRS:  Aliens who are not eligible to apply for a U.S. social security   number, or who do not meet the Social Security Administration's   evidence requirements for an SSN, may apply for an Individual Taxpayer   Identification Numbers (ITIN) from the Internal Revenue Service if   they have a valid tax reason for needing an ITIN, as explained in the   Form W-7 instructions. Seeing as you don't have a valid tax reason for an ITIN, your request will probably be denied by the IRS."], "neg": ["There is a measure of protection for investors. It is not the level of protection provided by FDIC or NCUA but it does exist: Securities Investor Protection Corporation What SIPC Protects SIPC protects against the loss of cash and securities – such as stocks   and bonds – held by a customer at a financially-troubled SIPC-member   brokerage firm. The limit of SIPC protection is $500,000, which   includes a $250,000 limit for cash. Most customers of failed brokerage   firms when assets are missing from customer accounts are protected.   There is no requirement that a customer reside in or be a citizen of   the United States. A non-U.S. citizen with an account at a brokerage   firm that is a member of SIPC is treated the same as a resident or   citizen of the United States with an account at a brokerage firm that   is a member of SIPC. SIPC protection is limited. SIPC only protects the custody function of   the broker dealer, which means that SIPC works to restore to customers   their securities and cash that are in their accounts when the   brokerage firm liquidation begins. SIPC does not protect against the decline in value of your securities.   SIPC does not protect individuals who are sold worthless stocks and   other securities. SIPC does not protect claims against a broker for   bad investment advice, or for recommending inappropriate investments. It is important to recognize that SIPC protection is not the same as   protection for your cash at a Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation   (FDIC) insured banking institution because SIPC does not protect the   value of any security. Investments in the stock market are subject to fluctuations in market   value. SIPC was not created to protect these risks. That is why SIPC   does not bail out investors when the value of their stocks, bonds and   other investment falls for any reason. Instead, in a liquidation, SIPC   replaces the missing stocks and other securities when it is possible   to do so.", "There are peer to peer services these days which work by trying to match someone who wants to convert currency X to currency Y with other people who want to convert Y to X. Obviously this works better with major currencies. They tend to give you the midmarket interbank rate banks use to trade with each  less their commission of 1-2%. Banks can charge up to 5% and use different rates for buying and selling. Transfers may take a day or two, although you may be able to do it faster if you pay extra. Transferwise, CurrencyFair and MidPoint are examples of such services though there are many others. Here's a link to a newspaper article with more details.", "\"Joke warning: These days, it seems that rogue trading programs are the big market makers (this concludes the joke) Historically, exchange members were market makers. One or more members guaranteed a market in a particular stock, and would buy whatever you wanted to sell (or vice-versa). In a balanced market -- one where there were an equal number of buyers and sellers -- the spread was indeed profit for them. To make this work, market makers need an enormous amount of liquidity (ability to hold an inventory of stocks) to deal with temporary imbalances. And a day like October 29, 1929, can make that liquidity evaporate. I say \"\"historically,\"\" because I don't think that any stock market works this way today (I was discussing this very topic with a colleague last week, went to Wikipedia to look at the structure of the NYSE, and saw no mention of exchange members as market makers -- in fact, it appears that the NYSE is no longer a member-based exchange). Instead, today most (all?) trading happens on \"\"electronic crossing networks,\"\" where the spread is simply the difference between the highest bid and lowest ask. In a liquid stock, there will be hundreds if not thousands of orders clustered around the \"\"current\"\" price, usually diverging by fractions of a cent. In an illiquid stock, there may be a spread, but eventually one bid will move up or one ask will move down (or new bids will come in). You could claim that an entity with a large block of stock to move takes the role of market maker, but it doesn't have the same meaning as an exchange market maker. Since there's no entity between the bidder and asker, there's no profit in the spread, just a fee taken  by the ECN. Edit: I think you have a misconception of what the \"\"spread\"\" is. It's simply the difference between the highest bid and the lowest offer. At the instant a trade takes place, the spread is 0: the highest bid equals the lowest offer, and the bidder and seller exchange shares for money. As soon as that trade is completed, the spread re-appears. The only way that a trade happens is if buyer and seller agree on price. The traditional market maker is simply an entity that has the ability to buy or sell an effectively unlimited number of shares. However, if the market maker sets a price and there are no buyers, then no trade takes place. And if there's another entity willing to sell shares below the market maker's price, then the buyers will go to that entity unless the market's rules forbid it.\"", "\"This answer is applicable to the US.  Similar rules may hold in some other countries as well.   The shares in an open-ended (non-exchange-traded) mutual fund are not traded on stock exchanges and the \"\"market\"\" does not determine the share price the way it does for shares in companies as brokers make offers to buy and sell stock shares. The price of one share of  the mutual fund (usually called Net Asset Value (NAV) per share) is usually calculated at the close of business, and is, as the name implies, the net worth of all the shares in companies that the fund owns plus cash on hand etc divided by the number of mutual fund shares outstanding. The NAV per share of a mutual fund might or might not increase in anticipation of the distribution to occur, but the NAV per share very definitely falls on  the day that the distribution is declared. If you choose to re-invest your distribution in the same fund, then you will own more shares at a lower NAV per share but the total value of your investment will not change at all.  If you had 100 shares currently priced at $10 and  the fund declares a distribution of $2 per share, you will  be reinvesting $200 to buy more shares but the fund will be selling you additional shares at $8 per share (and of course, the 100 shares you hold will be priced at $8 per share too.  So, you will have 100 previous shares worth only $800 now + 25 new shares worth $200 for a total of 125 shares at $8 = $1000 total investment, just as before. If you take the distribution in cash, then you still hold the 100 shares but they are worth only $800 now, and the fund will send you the $200 as cash. Either way, there is no change in your net worth. However, (assuming that the fund is is not in a tax-advantaged account), that $200 is taxable income to you regardless of whether you reinvest it or take it as cash. The fund will tell you what part of that $200 is dividend income (as well as what part is Qualified Dividend income),  what part is short-term capital gains, and what part is long-term capital gains; you declare the income in the appropriate categories on your tax return, and are taxed accordingly. So, what advantage is there in re-investing? Well, your basis in those shares has increased and so if and when you sell the shares, you will owe less tax. If you had bought the original 100 shares at $10 and sell the 125 shares a few years later at $11 and collect $1375, you owe (long-term capital gains) tax on  just $1375-$1200 =$175  (which can also be calculated as $1 gain on each of the original 100 shares = $100 plus $3 gain on the 25 new shares = $175). In the past, some people would forget the intermediate transactions and think that they had invested $1000 initially and gotten $1375 back for a gain of $375 and pay taxes on $375 instead. This is less likely to occur now since mutual funds are now required to report more information on the sale to the shareseller than they used to in the past. So, should you buy shares in a mutual fund right now? Most mutual fund companies publish preliminary estimates in November and December of what distributions each fund will be making by the end of the year. They also usually advise against purchasing new shares during this period because one ends up \"\"buying a dividend\"\".  If, for example, you bought those 100 shares at $10 on the Friday after Thanksgiving and the fund distributes that $2 per share  on December 15, you still have $1000 on December 15, but now owe taxes on $200 that you would not have had to pay if you had postponed buying those shares till after the distribution was paid. Nitpickers: for simplicity of exposition, I have not gone into the detailed chronology of when the fund goes ex-dividend, when the distribution is recorded,  and when cash is paid out, etc., but merely treated all these events as happening simultaneously.\"", "\"Except the list of exceptions seems to be growing and growing.   You can only go bankrupt once, and certain loans are exempt from bankruptcy anyway.  Want to level the playing field?  Make CEO's responsible too for \"\"certain debts\"\" like payroll.\"", "\"At no point is it ever a good idea to \"\"stop making payments to show them [you] mean business\"\". When you signed up for the credit card account, you agreed to pay what you charged, and any applicable interested accrued on the accounts. You are legally responsible for that debt, and you can be sued, if they are so inclined. Many times, settlement agencies are employed because a risk assessment operator (or whatever they're called at your cc company) calculated that they are currently financially better off settling for a reduced balance than attempting to chase you for the full amount. As soon as the terms of your refinance hits your credit history, that changes. To reiterate and make it clear: This is a very dangerous approach to breaking credit card debt, and I would not advise that anybody proceed with it. EDIT: If you offer 50% of the balance in a lump sum payment, they decline, and you continue with non-payment, they have reason to believe that you are financially capable of making payments, and are much more likely to seek legal action.\"", "Its a good question but the answer is not at all obvious if one considers and understands the media.  The fact that the electronic media of which the 'internet' makes up less than than a single percentage has thus far allowed morons like the RIAA play with it is nothing more than a tolerance.    Governmental overview as a side note is amusing in that it illustrates the degree of ignorance displayed by our policy makers.  They dont seem to understand that communication is a philosophy and the port 80 web sphere is one path upon thousands.   They can't control what even they think they understand... and they understand nothing.  We control the routers. We control the tables. We control the traffic. We control all the black magic that these morons don't understand and that's all of it.  We can't be stopped."]}
+{"query": "What is the fastest way to retire, using passive income on real estate", "corpus": ["It is worth noting first that Real Estate is by no means passive income.  The amount of effort and cost involved (maintenance, legal, advertising, insurance, finding the properties, ect.) can be staggering and require a good amount of specialized knowledge to do well. The amount you would have to pay a management company to do the work for you especially with only a few properties can wipe out much of the income while you keep the risk. However, keshlam's answer still applies pretty well in this case but with a lot more variability.  One million dollars worth of property should get you there on average less if you do much of the work yourself.  However, real estate because it is so local and done in ~100k chunks is a lot more variable than passive stocks and bonds, for instance, as you can get really lucky or really unlucky with location, the local economy, natural disasters, tenants... Taking out loans to get you to the million worth of property faster but can add a lot more risk to the process.   Including the risk you wouldn't have any money on retirement.  Investing in Real Estate can be a faster way to retirement than some, but it is more risky than many and definitely not passive."], "neg": ["On most proxy statements (all I have ever received) you have the ability to abstain from voting.  Just go down the list and check Abstain then return the form.  You will effectively be forfeiting your right to vote. EDIT: According to this, after January 1, 2010 abstaining and trashing the voting materials are the same thing.  Prior to January 1, 2010 your broker could vote however they wanted on your behalf if you chose not to vote yourself.  The one caveat is this seems to only apply to the NYSE (unless I am reading it wrong).  So not sure about stocks listed on the NASDAQ.", "Check with Lawyer and CA who deals with international laws. It maybe illegal in Saudi Arabia. From India tax point of view, any credits into NRE account is not taxable. However credits to friends/family will be treated as GIFT and friends/family will be liable to pay a gift tax if such transfer are more than Rs 50,000/- per year. Although FEMA does not prohibit explicitly such arrangement, these look like round about way of moving money and can be investigated.", "heh well your aging faster than I, im not even 40 and this shit is making me feel old.  the world is being blinded by bankers and elitists and all people can think about is cats.  We have the opportunity to be in contact and perform great things, and some of us do, but then theres the front page of reddit in October of 2012 which is full of cats and meme's.  I dont watch tv, im very selective in viewing.  And i do understand the internet mentality, i have been a part of it since it began.  From 0day to lolcats.  I will laugh when some of these kids today dont get the jobs they want because they are online forever drunk, half naked, throwing up, giving the finger to people, lying in gutters, etc.    The internet will be real funny in another ten years, when all the people today have internet hangover like it was a bad party that wont go away.", "Some folks are speculating that they did this to propagate the Amazon Go technology, which I don't think WFM customers would like very much (shopping at Whole Foods is a social experience). Others have even speculated it's a deal to acquire more real estate. Seems to me like they just took over the grocery-delivery space. And they'll probably crush it. There's a Whole Foods about five blocks from my house, but when I'm drunk and having a party I'd rather not get in the car to pick up more charcuterie or wine. Would be dope if I could get a quick delivery whose extra costs were covered by my prime membership.", "Volume and prices are affected together by how folks feel about the stock; there is no direct relationship between them. There are no simple analysis techniques that work.  Some would argue strongly that there are few complex analysis techniques that work either, and that for anyone but full-time professionals. And there isn't clear evidence that the full-time professionals do sufficiently better than index funds to justify their fees. For most folks, the best bet is to diversify, using low-overhead index funds, and simply ride with the market rather than trying to beat it.", "If it became a choice of reading books versus finding internships in the industry I would choose the latter.   If it is supplemental material to the internship I think that the ones you have listed are fine. Reading a book about an ever changing industry really isn't going to get you ahead. Experience is. That being said topics related to liquidity, repo transactions, and risk management to be key if you are entering the financial industry.  For prop trading there aren't going to be too many people writing about a how to manual on the industry because then they have more competition with their experience. IMO That is why you need to work with these people and acquire the knowledge firsthand.  Trading is not something you can read about you need to do it. Especially when you are competing with people who have done it their whole lives.", "But an axiomatic approach only works in a deterministic environment, it does not work in a probabilistic environment. By your own arguments, because humans have free will so economics cannot be equated with a deterministic branch like physics. At this point now you are just contradicting yourself over and over.   And it depends entirely on how accurate the axioms are. If observations do not match equation outcomes, then while the mathematics of the equation might be sound, the obvious conclusion is that the axioms themselves are faulty."]}
+{"query": "How to calculate car insurance quote", "corpus": ["First you should understand the basics of how insurance companies make money: In a simple scenario, assume 1,000 have car insurance. Assume that on average, 100 people have accidents per year, and that each accident costs $10,000. So, we can expect total costs to be $1,000,000 per year. Some of those costs will be paid by the drivers, who have some sort of 'deductible'. That is - the insurance company will only cover costs after the driver has themself paid some initial amount [something like, the first $1,000 of repairs is paid by the driver]. So now the insurance company expects to have to pay out $900,000 in total claims this year. If they want to pay those claims (and also pay their administrative costs, and earn a profit), they might want to have $1,250,000 in revenue. Across 1,000 people, that would be $1,250 / year in insurance premiums. Of course, the big question for the insurance company is: how much will they really need to pay out in insurance claims each year? The better they can predict that number, the more profitable they can be [because they can charge a much more accurate amount, which can earn them new customers and gives them insurance {pun} that each new customer is actually profitable to them on average]. So the insurance company spends a lot of time and money trying to predict your likelihood of a car accident. They use a lot of metrics to do this. Some might be statistical hogwash that they charge you because they feel they can [if every insurance company charges you extra for driving a 2-door instead of a 4-door, then they all will], and some might be based in reality. So they attempt to correlate all of the items in your list, to see if any of those items indicates that you should be charged more (or less) for your insurance. This is equal parts art and science, and a lot of it comes down to how they market themselves. ie: if an insurance company gives a discount for being in college, is that because college drivers are better drivers, or is it because they want to increase the number of young customers they have, so they can keep those customers for life? Therefore how each metric factors into your calculation will be based on the company using it. It would basically be impossible to 'come up with' the same answer as the insurance company by having the information you provided, because of how heavily dependant that answer is on statistics + marketing. As for how your state matters - some states may have different accident rates, and different payout systems. For example - is Hawaii driving more dangerous because of all the tourists driving rented cars faster than they should? Is New York less expensive to insure because better public health care means less cost is borne by the insurance company in the event of an accident [I have no idea if either of these things are the case, they are purely for hypothetical discussion purposes].  In short, make sure you get quotes from multiple providers, and understand that it isn't just the cost that changes. Check changes in coverage and deductibles as well [ie: if one company charges you $100 / month when everyone else charges $200 / month - make sure that the cheaper company doesn't limit its coverage in ways that matter to you]."], "neg": ["This sounds like a TV ad. Many, many people were not as lucky as you. Do you think the millions of Americans who want to see Ocare trashed are morons and making it up because of muh politics?? Honestly, answer me that", "Sorry to call you out on this, but your numbers are definitely off. If someone takes you seriously you'll be misleading them and I'd like to avoid that. Maybe you had this conversation with your friends many years ago when salaries were lower?  The big consulting firms all have set base salary and signing bonus for all entry level positions in the US. Everyone in the starting class out of undergrand has the same starting salary (across all geographic regions). Depending on the firm and your performance, you then receive a year end bonus (or no bonus at all). For MBB, you can expect close to a 6 figure salary in your first year. With an MBA, you're closer to $200k with bonus.  Source: I work for a top consulting firm, but here are some hard figures: http://managementconsulted.com/consulting-jobs/2012-management-consulting-salaries-undergraduate-post-mba/#", "\"There are likely to be two approaches: An autodialer of any description would be more than capable of sending an SMS or initiating a direct telephone call with any set of telephone numbers.  Such autodialiers can run off a personal computer via VoIP or some such third-party.  As to getting the numbers, it can be either from a purchased list (if they're serious about this and are obeying any call opt-out lists) or simply a number range dialed sequentially, whether they work or not. In a more serious operation, any returns are fed directly to a call centre where real human beings then initiate direct contact.  Otherwise it is simply a fishing expedition and any valid numbers can then be sold to other agencies as a screened list (and, therefore, more valuable). From an SMS perspective, anyone can purchase a vendor-level SMS Gateway subscription (of which there are loads of vendors - and note the number that allow \"\"web-to-SMS\"\") which permits you to receive and respond to any SMS received. This is always about the \"\"law of large numbers\"\".  If they can get in the hundreds of thousands of valid numbers and a small number respond then they can make money.  Like any spam, because a few are gullible, the rest of us are targets too. Update: A few searches for \"\"software auto sms\"\" and similar results in a fair number of prospects.  As I don't wish this to become too much of a \"\"how-to\"\" I'm not going to link.\"", "Want to know why your cable bill is so high? Blame the four letter sports network. About $20 of your non tax/fee cable charges go straight to those assholes and then by way to the three letter professional sports outfits and by way of them your local bling wearing pro athlete who promptly blow it.  Ditch the coaxial.", "First let's define some terms. Your accrued benefit is a monthly benefit payable at your normal retirement age (usually 65). It is usually a life-only benefit but may have a number of years guaranteed or may have a survivor piece. It is defined by a plan formula (ie, it is a defined benefit). A lump sum is how much that accrued benefit is worth right now. Lump sums are based on applicable interest rates and mortality tables specified by the IRS (interest rates are released monthly, mortality annually). Your plan can either use the same interest rates for a whole year, or they can use new ones each month. Affecting your lump sum is whether your accrued benefit is payable now (immediately, you are age 65), or later (deferred, you are now age 30). For example, instead of being paid an annuity assume you are paid just one payment of $1,000 on your 65th birthday. The lump sum of that for a 65 year old would be $1,000 since there would be no interest discount, and no chance of dying before payment. For a 30 year old, at 4% interest the lump sum would be about $237 (including mortality discount). At age 36 the lump sum is $246. So the lump sum will get bigger just because you get older. Very important is the interest discount. At age 30 in the example, 2% interest would produce a $467 lump sum. And at 6% $122. The bigger the rate, the smaller the lump sum because interest helps an amount now grow bigger in the future. To complicate things, since 2008 the IRS bases lump sums on 3 different interest rates. The monthy annuity payments made within 5 years of the lump sum date use the 1st rate, past 5 and within 20 years use the 2nd rate, and past that use the 3rd rate. Since you are age 30, all of your monthly annuity payments would be made after 20 years, so that makes it simple since we'll only have to look at the 3rd rate. When you reach age 45 the 2nd rate will kick in. Here is the table of interest rates published by the IRS: http://www.irs.gov/Retirement-Plans/Minimum-Present-Value-Segment-Rates You'll find your rates above on the 2013 line for Aug-12. That means your lump sum is being made in 2013 and it is being based on the month August 2012. Most likely your plan will use the same rates for its entire plan year. But what is your plan year? If it is the calendar year, then you would have a 5 month lookback for the rates. But if is a September to August plan year with a 1 month lookback, the rates would have changed between August and September. Your August lump sum would be based on 4.52%, your September on would be based on 5.58% (see the All line for Aug-13). For comparison, a 30 year old with a $100 annuity payable at age 65 would have a lump sum value of $3,011 at 4.52%, but a lump sum value of $1,931 at 5.58%. The change in your accrued benefit by month will obviously have some impact on the lump sum value, but not as much as the change in interest rates if there is one. The amount they actually contribute to the plan has nothing to do with the value of the lump sum though.", "\"Yes. The US Mint has a deal where you can buy dollar coins for face value, free shipping and can charge them to your card. They come in small boxes of 10 x $25 rolls of coins. I'm sure your landlord will be happy to accept cash for the rent.  Upon further reflection you spelled it \"\"cheque\"\" which means these coins are not legal tender for you. You might want to add your country to the tags.  Note: This 'deal' is no longer available. It was (mis)used to get points/miles on credit cards, and the coins deposited at the bank. There's now a premium to buy the coins on line.\"", "So you're expecting people to go in debt getting a degree for jobs that don't require an advanced education and will not likely pay enough for them to pay off their student loan debt. That in the words of the author of this article is just plain dumb."]}
+{"query": "How to protect myself against unauthorized recurring CC charges?", "corpus": ["\"The bank SHOULD be able to issue you a new card without letting vendors roll over the recurring payments. In fact, I've never had a bank move recurring payments to a new card automatically, or even upon request; they've always told me to contact the vendor and give them my new card number. So go back to the bank, tell them specifically that you have a security issue and you want the new card issued WITHOUT carrying over any recurring charges, and see if they can do it properly. If not: 1) Issue a \"\"charge back\"\" every time a bogus charge comes in. This costs the vendor money, and should convince them to stop trying to access your card. It's a hassle because you have to keep contacting the bank about the bad charges, but it won't cost you more than time and a phone call or letter.  (The bank can tell you what their preferred process is for this.) 2) Consider moving to a bank that isn't stupidly over-helpful.\""], "neg": ["\"You are not smart.   The average person works more than 25 years. And because it's an average earnings increase, OF COURSE EVERYONE DOESN'T REACH IT. By the way, the greatest predictor of a person not reaching it is that person getting a liberal arts degree. And since you seem to want to do baseless math, I'll let you go ahead and decide how much the other 10% has to make in order for it to be true.   The point is that if you go to college, particularly to get a more valuable degree, you are making an astoundingly good investment. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. There are always exceptions. That doesn't disprove the facts.   Go look at the actual statistics by major or career. Don't bring this, \"\"I'll bet\"\" nonsense into the argument as if it proves anything.\"", "\"I believe money market \"\"funds\"\" (ie a mutual fund) would pay dividends, and you would get a 1099-DIV. A money market \"\"account\"\" however is probably actually a bank account, and you would get a 1099-INT for that. It depends how the broker has set it up. I have one of each with different brokers.  If your \"\"money market\"\" statements mention anything about FDIC coverage, it is likely an \"\"account\"\" (ie a bank account) and will pay interest, not dividends.\"", "Im not gonna get into the rabit hole about the direction of this country dont have nearly enough time for that lol but i acrually agree with u on alot of what u said actually.     &gt;I have an issue with people using any drug everyday. But most people don't drink and get drunk daily.    Do u find issue with a person having a beer or a couple glasses of wine every other day? Same applies to mj most users arent getting completely blasted everyday and i have sources to prove it if youre interested.   &gt;But to reply to what you said, things like alcohol have rules. You can't drink everywhere, you can't drink and drive, etc... There needs to be some rules for MJ.  Not trying to be rude but you havent even  done your research on mj laws in your own state. Prop 64 is almost identical to drinking laws so you're absolutely incorrect here   &gt;I'm completely okay with medicinal use, but most people don't use it in that way.   Youre right but my point was alcohol is perfectly legal and offers no medicinal value isn't that a bit ridiculous?   With all due respect man you dont seem like an unintelligent person but you are greatly misinformed about alot of this stuff. I think youre a bit hung up politcal divides conservative vs liberal. You'd greatly benefit from educating yourself on the matter of mj. There's a reason why many conservatives also support mj legalzation including myself. Id be willing to send u some credible information if you're interested.", "This is called an in-plan Roth conversion and is discussed by the IRS here. If your 401(k) has a Roth option then it likely also has a provision to convert pre-tax dollars, but you'll have to check with the administrator to be sure. They could also potentially limit the type of money that can be converted. But most likely you should be able to convert any amount you want, and since it's all pre-tax (your contributions, employer matching, and earnings), it doesn't really matter which money is converted because it's all equivalent. One caveat is you won't able to convert any employer matching that hasn't fully vested.", "\"SOS is Secretary of State. SOS number is the number the Secretary of State office assigned to your entity. You can find it on the LLC application form that you submitted (assuming you kept the copy of your application returned to you), or by searching for your entity on the SOS site here (the first column, \"\"entity number\"\", is what you're looking for).\"", "“For example,” says the report, “75-year solvency could be achieved by raising taxes or reducing benefits for new recipients by about one-fifth if we started today. However, if policy makers wait until 2034, payroll taxes would have to be increased by nearly one third and it would be impossible to achieve solvency solely from reducing benefits for new beneficiaries.”    Social Security was enacted in 1935. Medicare was enacted in 1965. Life expectancy at those times was 61 and 70, respectively. Today, average life expectancy is 80.   Pushing the receipt age for these benefits makes the most sense and results in a two-fold savings, 1) benefits put into the system through additional payroll deduction and, 2) benefits are not taken out of the system.", "\"&gt;I'm curious to know if you or any of your relatives have ever been declared as being mentally ill or having a psychological disorder.   There ARE (but only a handful) some valid \"\"mental illnesses\"\" -- but by and large the DSM is filled with little more than \"\"social scams\"\".  And as far as anecdotes, I have known quite a few people who have been \"\"diagnosed\"\" with a wide variety of so called \"\"disorders\"\" -- most of them are quite happy to accept the label, as it can then be used as a justification for their behavior and/or for claiming benefits and malingering. (No one ever said that psychology wasn't a \"\"useful\"\" fraud -- a lot of people believe and think it to be quite \"\"useful\"\" -- just as a lot of other people think astrology is.)  &gt;If most of psychology is all BS, then that just makes everyone else stupid for spending all of their money to get \"\"treated.\"\" And, really if we are that stupid (stupid enough to believe such a huge lie) I would then agree with the (25% of americans suffer from mental illness) statement because you have to be pretty stupid to be told such a huge lie and not figure it out.   And... whoever claimed that the majority of the human population were anything *but* easily duped idiots?  I certainly never have.  &gt;Another thing: if it is so easy to tell that psychology is a scam, then why is there (in general) cross-field(scholars from physics, biology, history, language, medicine, etc) acceptance of psychology as a science?   Chiefly because the majority of people in those other sciences (even the hard sciences) are rather dumb and easily duped themselves (most are mediocrities who have only \"\"rote\"\" knowledge of their own fields) -- and just as with religions, psychology/psychiatry offers a eclectic mixture of theoretical bases that they accept or reject on an ad hoc anecdotal basis, mostly without even any superficial investigation much less anything more thorough. (And in the cases where someone HAS investigated the claims/theories, the are often very easily debunked -- Cf John Ioannidis' work.)  Add in that many drugs &amp; substances (which pre-existed psychology &amp; psychiatry) ARE in fact effective in changing thoughts and behaviors (duh! that's like saying water is \"\"wet\"\") -- and which have become the main \"\"tool\"\" (and then via a pragmatic extrapolation used to create a \"\"causal\"\" theoretical basis -- the whole \"\"brain chemical imbalance\"\" malarkey -- even though there is no objective evidence to validate the theory {beyond the affect of the drugs which cannot be independent evidence, since that would be tautological -- like saying the reason water is \"\"wet\"\" is because of it's \"\"wetness properties\"\"}).\""]}
+{"query": "Am I exposed to currency risk when I invest in shares of a foreign company that are listed domestically?", "corpus": ["\"Yes, you're still exposed to currency risk when you purchase the stock on company B's exchange. I'm assuming you're buying the shares on B's stock exchange through an ADR, GDR, or similar instrument. The risk occurs as a result of the process through which the ADR is created. In its simplest form, the process works like this: I'll illustrate this with an example. I've separated the conversion rate into the exchange rate and a generic \"\"ADR conversion rate\"\" which includes all other factors the bank takes into account when deciding how many ADR shares to sell. The fact that the units line up is a nice check to make sure the calculation is logically correct. My example starts with these assumptions: I made up the generic ADR conversion rate; it will remain constant throughout this example. This is the simplified version of the calculation of the ADR share price from the European share price:  Let's assume that the euro appreciates against the US dollar, and is now worth 1.4 USD (this is a major appreciation, but it makes a good example):  The currency appreciation alone raised the share price of the ADR, even though the price of the share on the European exchange was unchanged. Now let's look at what happens if the euro appreciates further to 1.5 USD/EUR, but the company's share price on the European exchange falls:  Even though the euro appreciated, the decline in the share price on the European exchange offset the currency risk in this case, leaving the ADR's share price on the US exchange unchanged. Finally, what happens if the euro experiences a major depreciation and the company's share price decreases significantly in the European market? This is a realistic situation that has occurred several times during the European sovereign debt crisis.   Assuming this occurred immediately after the first example, European shareholders in the company experienced a (43.50 - 50) / 50 = -13% return, but American holders of the ADR experienced a (15.95 - 21.5093) / 21.5093 = -25.9% return. The currency shock was the primary cause of this magnified loss.  Another point to keep in mind is that the foreign company itself may be exposed to currency risk if it conducts a lot of business in market with different currencies. Ideally the company has hedged against this, but if you invest in a foreign company through an ADR (or a GDR or another similar instrument), you may take on whatever risk the company hasn't hedged in addition to the currency risk that's present in the ADR/GDR conversion process. Here are a few articles that discuss currency risk specifically in the context of ADR's: (1), (2). Nestle, a Swiss company that is traded on US exchanges through an ADR, even addresses this issue in their FAQ for investors. There are other risks associated with instruments like ADR's and cross-listed companies, but normally arbitrageurs will remove these discontinuities quickly. Especially for cross-listed companies, this should keep the prices of highly liquid securities relatively synchronized.\""], "neg": ["What's crazy is that you hear a lot (comparatively so) about energy buyers and sellers, but not about the actual distributors. Its like being the stooge for the middle man. You think you are going to make good money, but its nothing compared to the big guy.", "\"People just don't think about the dangers of Direct Debit- just Internet search to easily find out about the huge amount of people that have had problems, companies taking too much, the wrong time etc, making them go overdrawn and into fees (£30 for every bounced DD)& interest etc. Yes the DD guarantee IS useless, if you complain to your bank they almost invariably tell you to take it up with the company issuing the DD. Or if the bank even DOES (after much begging) get the money restored for you, did you know that the company can simply REINSTATE the DD amount and you'll have to go to your bank to get it reversed AGAIN. Banks have even admitted to distressed customers \"\"DD originators have every right to reinstate DD amounts if they believe they have an outstanding unpaid debt!!!!\"\" (And there was me thinking the money in my account was mine and what gets paid out is under my control- no longer true once you sign a DD mandate!) The astounding thing is that once anyone has got your sort code & AC no they can put it on eg any charity donation newspaper form and set up a DD- the bank doesn't check the signature or anything at all once the details are transmitted electronically to them by the charity's bank. (I learned this from someone who used to write DD software for banks). Please check out this very telling article http://news.bbc.co.uk/1/hi/7174760.stm The onus is on YOU to notice the payment you didn't authorise! That's how wide open the system is that the all powerful commercial banks have unleished on us permitted by our supplicant and negligent governments.  Moral of the story: Don't EVER give your AC details on DD mandates to ANY company you need to pay, use standing orders (which YOU have total control over) to pay them or electronic banking (where you ring your bank every time you get a bill) to transfer the money, or pay by cheque the bill at your bank branch or at a PO or by post. Carefully guard your AC numbers and watch your statements like a hawk every month.  One final point how do I manage to avoid DD (where I live in the UK) without being penalised? Answer: 1) My UK gas & elec ACs are with Scottish & Southern energy EQUIPOWER tariff which charges everyone the same low tariff HOWEVER they pay. 2) My landline phone- I ditched BT as soon as they started penalising and changed to Post Office homephone exactly the same service, copper telephone line & exchange equipment & IN ALL ASPECTS (line rental & free periods) CHEAPER than BT & no extra charge at all for paying by cheque at any post office- EVERY bill.3) Council Tax & Inland Revenue charge nothing extra for paying by cheue either at your bank, the PO or by post. 4) I don't bother with Gym membership- I just WALK a lot!, 4) I take the risk and don't bother with AA or home insurance as I am an engineer and able to forecast and carry out all my own home repairs and build in stiff burglary prevention measures, locks alarms etc.  Stop doing what you're told people- think about the possible downsides later when the commercial companies suggest to you ways of doing things that benefit them. Telling you the upsides but not the less obvious serious downsides.\"", "DeFuniak Springs Bradshaw`s Painting are very professional and efficient and did a great job making sure every detail of the paint job was done to our satisfaction. I would recommend them to anyone who needs some painting work done on their home or business.", "From a slightly different perspective, in my experience of buying a house you will find some unexpected costs due repairs that need to be made which were overlooked during the home inspection etc. You will need some financial cushion to fall back onto for these unexpected costs so for that reason alone I'd try to pay off as much of the credit card debt as I can.", "\"If you and your family have decided to stay in the home while the project is \"\"on\"\", the first thing that you should arrange is the privacy.However, if you have decided to relocate to some other house for this renovation process, it is important that you pay attention towards the security aspect of your home.\"", "I don't think that you'll notice a difference in the NAV in a fund with fees that are low as the Vanguard Total Stock Market Fund. Their management fees are incorporated into the NAV, but keep in mind that the fund has a total of $144 billion in assets, with $66 billion in the investor class. The actual fees represent a tiny fraction of the NAV, and may only show up at all on the day they assess the fees. With Vanguard total stock market, you notice the fee difference in the distributions. In the example of Vanguard Total Stock Market, there are institutional-class shares (like VITPX with a minimum investment of $200M) with still lower costs -- as low as 0.0250% vs. 0.18% for the investor class. You will notice a different NAV and distributions for that fund, but there may be other reasons for the variation that I'm not familar with, as I'm not an institutional investor.", "David Schechtmann provide the best services are set this week for a US soldier from Tennessee who was unaccounted for after being killed by German troops during World War II.Media outlets reports a funeral for Pfc. Reece Gass will be held Saturday at Doughty-Stevens Funeral Home in Greeneville. He’ll be buried with full military honors at a cemetery in Cross Anchor."]}
+{"query": "Can't the account information on my checks be easily used for fraud?", "corpus": ["Yes, and there are almost no checks (no pun intended) on people pulling money from your account using a routing number. It is an EXTREMELY insecure system. If you want a real Halloween scare, read this article: Easy Check Fraud Technique Draws Scrutiny. Unfortunately you just have to live with it. If you are curious why this loophole is allowed to continue, consider how hard it is to close it without undermining the convenience of checks. Short of you going to the bank with each person you write a check to and showing ID to validate the transaction, I don't see how you could continue to use a negotiable instrument like this without such a security hole.  The ultimate answer is going to have to be replacing checks with other means of payment."], "neg": ["No one put regulations in place before they were needed. Let's not be a fucking moron. Corporations were abusing shit and when the government got sick Of their shit they put regulations in place. They didn't just decide to say 'stop building a house if you see a turtle so we can move it' if contractors were not killing endangered turtles. You're just ignorant as fuck. And by the way, were already going to hit below 2005 emission levels in the next few years due to free market.", "Yes I know, thats why I actually used google.   &gt;&gt; In the United States, the overall cancer death rate has declined since the early 1990s. The most recent SEER Cancer Statistics Review, updated in September 2016, shows that cancer death rates decreased by:  &gt;&gt;1.8% per year among men from 2004 to 2013 &gt;&gt;1.4% per year among women from 2004 to 2013 &gt;&gt;1.4% per year among children ages 0–19 from 2009 to 2013 &gt;&gt;Although death rates for many individual cancer types have also declined, rates for a few cancers have stabilized or even increased.  &gt;&gt;As the overall cancer death rate has declined, the number of cancer survivors has increased. These trends show that progress is being made against the disease, but much work remains. Although rates of smoking, a major cause of cancer, have declined, the U.S. population is aging, and cancer rates increase with age. Obesity, another risk factor for cancer, is also increasing.  https://www.cancer.gov/about-cancer/understanding/statistics", "Read the article, the Tesla model S 60 has a 75kwh battery the same as a 75, they were sold as a cheaper car with an upgrade option at any time, this only upgraded all 60s to 75s temporarily to escape from the hurricane, any owner of a 60 knows they can activate this at any time by paying up to the 75 price. They are not extending into the higher and lower charge capacity than the recommended ban", "It has got to do with the irrationality of humans.  The so called long term investor is in it for the long term, they are not worried about market fluctuations nor timing the market. But yet they will aim to try to get a bargain when they buy in.  It is contradictory in a way. Think about it; if I buy a stock and it drops by 30% I am not worried because I am in it for the long term, but I am worried about getting 1% off when I buy it.  They usually tend to buy when the stock starts falling. However, what they don’t realise is when a stock starts falling there is no telling when it will stop. So even if they get a bargain for that day, it is usually quickly wiped out a few days later. Instead, of waiting for the price to find support and start recovering, they are eager to buy what they think is a bargain. I think this type of long term investing is very risky, and the main reason is because the investor has no plan. They just try to buy so called bargain stocks and hold them until they need the money (usually in retirement). But what happens if the stock price is lower when they want to retire than when they bought it? I hope no long term investor was trying to retire in 2008. If they simply had a plan to indicate when they would buy and under what conditions they would sell, and have a risk management plan in place, then maybe they could reduce their risk somewhat and conserve their capital. A good article to read on this is What's Wrong With Long-Term Investing.", "Bill’s Lemonade was first sold at county fairs and festivals by a guy named Bill and his wife. From the very start they used a unique process which they perfected, combining select ingredients and a handmade touch to create the best fresh lemonade.", "A couple of points.", "\"**2017 Shayrat missile strike**  The 2017 Shayrat missile strike took place on the morning of 7 April 2017, and involved the launch of 59 Tomahawk cruise missiles by the United States from the Mediterranean Sea into Syria, aimed at the Shayrat Airbase controlled by the Syrian government. The strike was executed under responsibility of U.S. President Donald Trump, as a direct response to the Khan Shaykhun chemical attack that occurred on 4 April.  The strike was the first unilateral military action by the United States targeting Ba'athist Syrian government forces during the Syrian Civil War. Trump stated shortly thereafter, \"\"It is in this vital national security interest of the United States to prevent and deter the spread and use of deadly chemical weapons.\"\"  The Syrian Air Force launched airstrikes against the rebels from the base only hours after the American attack.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&amp;message=Excludeme&amp;subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/finance/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot) ^| [^Donate](https://www.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/donate)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.28\""]}
+{"query": "Definition of gross income (Arizona state tax filing requirements)", "corpus": ["Disclaimer: I am not a tax professional. Please don't rely on this answer in lieu of professional advice. If your sole source of Arizona income is your commercial property, use the number on line 17 of your federal form 1040. This number is derived from your federal Schedule E. If you have multiple properties (or other business income from S corporations or LLCs), use only the Schedule E amount pertaining to the AZ property."], "neg": ["&gt; At $31 billion, GE’s pension shortfall is the biggest among S&amp;P 500 companies and 50 percent greater than any other corporation in the U.S. It’s a deficit that has swelled in recent years as Immelt spent more than $45 billion on share buybacks to win over Wall Street and pacify activists like Nelson Peltz. &gt;  &gt; Part of it has to do with the paltry returns that have plagued pensions across corporate America as ultralow interest rates prevailed in the aftermath of the financial crisis. But perhaps more importantly, GE’s dilemma underscores deeper concerns about modern capitalism’s all-consuming focus on immediate results, which some suggest is short-sighted and could ultimately leave everyone -- including shareholders themselves -- worse off.", "For academic stuff, SAS and Stata are amazingly better at cleaning and processing huge amounts of data. I love excel and it can certainly do some very amazing things, but at some point you just need a full on statistical software totally driven by its own programming language.    That software is pretty cheap for academics, but corporate licenses are usually insanely more expensive.   Otherwise I program everything in Python.", "Assignment risk. In your example, if someone exercises OTM call, your account could be assigned. In that case, if you do nothing, you could lose more money than there is in the account. The broker won't do it for you because there is more than one way to handle the assignment. For example, you might choose to exercise the long call, or buy a different call and exercise that. Selling the long call may be enough to satisfy any resulting margin call.", "Layman with a question: the financial world is commonly depicted and regarded as being incsanely hard-driving. High pressure with very challenging work, and absolutely life-consuming. IRL, I've ever heard a few stories second-hand about things like fairly regular 18 hour work days and such. Finance is certainly a broad field with many facets; but generally how true is this? I have to assume it at the least doesn't quite meet popular perception, because people would have nervous breakdowns...", "You can check your score through your discover card account (only credit card)  2 month difference   Nothing has changed. Have gone about regular business with no dramatic increase in spending  I'm 21 and I'm almost exactly a year into my first card", "They are already indirectly paying these expenses.  They should be built into your rates. The amount per job or per hour needs to cover what would have been your salary, plus the what would have been sick, vacation, holidays, health insurance, life insurance, disability, education, overhead for office expenses, cost of accountants...and all taxes. In many companies the general rule of thumb is that they need to charge a customer 2x the employees salary to cover all this plus make a profit. If this is a side job some of these benefits will come from your main job. Some self employed get some of these benefits from their spouse.  The company has said we give you money for the work you perform, but you need to cover everything else including paying all taxes. Depending on where you live you might have to send money in more often then once a year. They are also telling you that they will be reporting the money they give you to the government so they can claim it as a business expense. So you better make sure you report it as income.", "No, don't bother.  You need to decide what you are saving for, and how much risk you are prepared to take. It would make sense if you wanted the money only in x years, and couldn't afford to lose say 20% or more if the stock market crashed the day before you needed the cash.  Typically if you are about to retire and buy an annuity, you want to protect your capital.  This isn't you. At 28, you might be saving for a wedding, a deposit on a house, possibly for school fees, or for eventual retirement.  It doesn't sound like you need to get back exactly 24k in July 2022. Keep the 6 months expenses in accounts that you can withdraw from at short notice.  Some of this in a current account, some might be in a savings account that doesn't pay interest if you make withdrawals. After that, I'd stick most of the rest in stock market tracker funds, but you might go for actively managed funds instead (ask another question and take professional advice, there will presumably be local tax considerations too), and add in most of your monthly savings too.  These should beat the 2.3% over the 5 years, and you can liquidate them easily if you want to buy a house. If there is a recession and a stock market dip, you presumably have the flexibility to hold on to them longer for the economy to recover.  And if you are intending to buy a house, then a recession will probably also involve a fall in house prices, so the loss in your savings will be somewhat balanced by the drop in the purchase price of your house. Of course, the worst case scenario is a severe downturn where you lose your job, are unemployed for a considerable period of time, burn through your emergency fund, and need to sell shares at a considerable loss to meet your expenses.   You might have family or dependents that you can borrow from or would need to support, which would change your tolerance for risk.  Having money locked away for 5 years in this scenario is even worse.  So if you don't want to put all your non-emergency savings into the stock market, you still want to choose something that is accessible at a slightly lower interest rate. But ultimately it sounds like you can afford to lose some of your savings, and the probability is that you will be rewarded with much better returns than 2.3% over 5 years."]}
+{"query": "How often do typical investors really lose money?", "corpus": ["So how often do investors really lose money? The short answer is, every day. Let's first examine your assumptions: If the price of the share gets lower, the investor can just wait until   it gets higher. What are the chances that it won't forever, or for   years? There are many stocks whose price goes down and then down further and then to zero. The most apparent example is, of course, Enron. The stock went from about $90 per share to zero in about 18 months. For it to have been sold at $90, obviously, someone had to buy it. Almost no matter where they sold it, they lost money. If they didn't sell it, when the stock was worthless, they lost money. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Enron#/media/File:EnronStockPriceAugust2000toJanuary2001.svg There are more modern examples of companies that are declining in a rapidly changing market. For example, Sears Holdings is getting beat down by Amazon and many other on-line retailers. I suspect that if you buy it today and wait for it to go higher, you will be disappointed. https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ%3ASHLD&ei=E8_fWIjWGsSGmAGx7b_IAw The more common way to lose money is to either not have a plan or not stick to the plan. Disciplined investors typically plan to buy quality stocks at a fair price and hold them long enough for increasing sales and profits to bring the stock price up. If, later, he hears a bit of bad news about his stock and decides to sell out of panic or fear and become a trader instead of keeping to the plan to remain a disciplined investor, he is likely to lose money. He will lose because no-one can predict accurately that a stock is going down and will never recover; nor can he predict accurately when a stock is going up and will never falter. The chance of bankruptcy (especially for huge companies like Apple) is   really low, as I see it, but I may be wrong. Thousands of people lost billions of dollars thinking that about Enron, too. I too believe Apple is a fine stock with excellent prospects, but technology changes and markets change. Twenty or thirty years from now, it may be a different case."], "neg": ["I am using the same logic as the two answers above. I got almost the same result ($46.60 instead of $46.59 per share) using the sold fractional share basis. However, the JCI Qualified Dividend (on the 1099-DIV, not the 1099-B) divided by the number of shares spun off yields a basis per share of only $40.97 That compares to $45.349 in answer two above. It seems that we should get the approximately same basis per share using the same arithmetic, and I do not know why we don't. For my tax files, I plan to use the Adient basis equal to the dividend from the 2016 1099-DIV of JCI (the PLC after the merger). My reasoning is that I cannot use an amount for the Adient basis that is greater than the dividend I paid taxes on. [In case this part of the question comes up again, you can get historical quotes at various websites such as https://finance.yahoo.com/quote, which does show $45.51 as the Adient closing price on 10/31/16.]", "So I'm confused  - reading dhando investor - he says  Odds of receiving a $1 in 2009 and 30+ percent intrestest from 2002-2009 is -&gt; 50%  Odds of getting .19 back ( a loss of .11) -&gt; 45%  Odds of a loss of .24 is 2%  Odds of a total loss is 3%   He states Kelly criterion suggests 86% betting how!!!!! Bought the converts at .30 cents please explain no idea how he did this.", "The best thing about online dating sites is that you can easily meet your match online without much difficulty. Getting to know people online is easy and fun! There are many ways you can search: from age, religion, personality, character, online preferences, various fetishes, adult requirements and much more. With localtemptation, anything is possible.", "Ok, so here's the strategy I decided to go with in the meantime: Allocate E1 to A_corp and E3 to A_ira. Here are my considerations which I assume at this stage to be right:", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://americanaffairsjournal.org/2017/08/ricardos-vice-virtues-industrial-diversity/) reduced by 97%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; On the issue of the relocation of production from high-wage First World to low-wage Third World countries, modern economists have pushed Ricardo&amp;#039;s Vice past even Ricardo&amp;#039;s limits.  &gt; The theory of comparative advantage would lead you to expect that in a world with very low trade barriers-basically the modern globalized world-most countries would have specialized trade profiles, so that they would score low in both ubiquity and diversity.  &gt; The success of this index in predicting which countries are likely to outperform growth expectations in the future was related to the role of product diversity within a country, which enable new products to be invented.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6uuv95/ricardos_vice_and_the_virtues_of_industrial/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~194929 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*: **country**^#1 **trade**^#2 **industry**^#3 **product**^#4 **Ricardo**^#5\"", "The missing information is at the end of the first line: the price is from NASDAQ (most specifically Nasdaq Global Select), which is a stock exchange in the USA, so the price is in US Dollars.", "No, just as the profits from the bank do not go to their personal accounts and instead go to the banks coffers, where they are paid out as a dividend.   If your company makes a mistake and loses money, do they draw it from your account?"]}
+{"query": "Side work and managing finances?", "corpus": ["\"I have done similar software work. You do not need an LLC to write off business expenses. The income and expenses go on Schedule C of your tax return. It is easy to write off even small expenses such as travel - if you keep records. The income should be reported to you on a 1099 form, filled out by your client, not yourself.  For a financial advisor you should find one you can visit with personally and who operates as a \"\"fee-only\"\" advisor. That means they will not try to sell you something that they get a commission on. You might pay a few $hundred per visit. There are taxes that you have to pay (around 15%) due to self-employment income. These taxes are due 4 times a year and paid with an \"\"estimated tax\"\" form. See the IRS web site, and in particular schedule SE. Get yourself educated about this fast and make the estimated tax payments on time so you won't run into penalties at the end of the year.\""], "neg": ["\"Regardless of the source of the software (though certainly good to know), there are practical limits to the IRS 1040EZ form.  This simplified tax form is not appropriate for use once you reach a certain level of income because it only allows for the \"\"standard\"\" deduction - no itemization.   The first year I passed that level, I was panicked because I thought I suddenly owed thousands.  Switching to 1040A (aka the short form) and using even the basic itemized deductions showed that the IRS owed me a refund instead. I don't know where that level is for tax year 2015 but as you approach $62k, the simplified form is less-and-less appropriate.  It would make sense, given some of the great information in the other answers, that the free offering is only for 1040EZ.  That's certainly been true for other \"\"free\"\" software in the past.\"", "\"I have an account with ETrade. Earlier this week I got an offer to participate in the IPO proper (at the IPO price). If Charles Schwab doesn't give you the opportunity, that's a shortcoming of them as a brokerage firm; there are definitely ways for retail investors to invest in it, wise investment or no. (Okay, technically it wasn't an offer to participate, it was a notice that participation was possibly available, various securities-law disclaimers etc withstanding. \"\"This Web site is neither an offer to sell nor a solicitation to buy these securities. The offer is by prospectus only. This Web site contains a preliminary prospectus for each offering.\"\" etc etc).\"", "\"&gt; A severe outbreak of inflation would be great for debtors and homeowners - a large percentage of the population.   Not necessarily.  You presume that wages would rise along with prices.  In fact prices have been rising, but wages haven't followed suit.  &gt;It would also be great for equity owners.  Do you understand the definition of \"\"bubble\"\"?\"", "\"For Brian Nowak an Analyst at Morgan Stanley who just downgraded SNAP.  &gt;\"\"SNAP's ad product is not evolving/improving as quickly as we expected and Instagram competition is increasing,\"\" Nowak said in a note to investors.  I wonder why a highly respected stock market analyst would confuse Snapchat with Instagram?\"", "No, it doesn't.  It's been at play in a very strong way for the last century - and, even on smaller time scales you can easily see where there are differences in nations that grow / shrink.  My statement isn't over the course of thousands of years, it can affect things on the span of just a few decades even.", "If you are a non resident Indian, the income you earn and transfer to India is tax free in India. You can hold the funds in USD or convert then into INR, there is no tax implication.", "CTRs are made all the time, and yes, the banks do need to consider one-off transactions that aren't $10,000 per se but amount effectively to $10,000 or more. But if you're doing nothing improper, just pay your bill and be done with it.  No need to split it up just for this reason."]}
+{"query": "After Hours S&P 500", "corpus": ["The futures market trades 24 hours a day, 5.5 days a week. S&P 500 futures market continues trading, and this gives pricing exposure and influences the individual stocks when they resume trading in US session."], "neg": ["Get a wide range of services for cylinder heads by reaching out to a competent company. From reconditioned cylinder heads to crack testing, chemical cleaning, grinding, manifold repairs, injector tube fitting, wet blasting and valve guide repairs you will get all these services at such companies.", "I know that there are a lot service on the internet helping to form an LLC online with a fee around $49. Is it neccessarry to pay them to have an LLC or I can do that myself? No, you can do it yourself. The $49 is for your convenience, but there's nothing they can do that you wouldn't be able to do on your own. What I need to know and what I need to do before forming an LLC? You need to know that LLC is a legal structure that is designed to provide legal protections. As such, it is prudent to talk to a legal adviser, i.e.: a Virginia-licensed attorney. Is it possible if I hire some employees who living in India? Is the salary for my employees a expense? Do I need to claim this expense? This, I guess, is entirely unrelated to your questions about LLC. Yes, it is possible. The salary you pay your employees is your expense. You need to claim it, otherwise you'd be inflating your earnings which in certain circumstances may constitute fraud. What I need to do to protect my company? For physical protection, you'd probably hire a security guard. If you're talking about legal protections, then again - talk to a lawyer. What can I do to reduce taxes? Vote for a politician that promises to reduce taxes. Most of them never deliver though. Otherwise you can do what everyone else is doing - tax planning. That is - plan ahead your expenses, time your invoices and utilize tax deferral programs etc. Talk to your tax adviser, who should be a EA or a CPA licensed in Virginia. What I need to know after forming an LLC? You'll need to learn what are the filing requirements in your State (annual reports, tax reports, business taxes, sales taxes, payroll taxes, etc). Most are the same for same proprietors and LLCs, so you probably will not be adding to much extra red-tape. Your attorney and tax adviser will help you with this, but you can also research yourself on the Virginia department of corporations/State department (whichever deals with LLCs).", "\"Most people advocate a passively managed, low fee mutual fund that simply aims to track a given benchmark (say S&P 500). Few funds can beat the S&P consistently, so investors are often better served finding a no load passive fund. First thing I would do is ask your benefits rep why you don't have an option to invest in a Fidelity passive index fund like Spartan 500. Ideally young people would be heavy in equities and slowly divest for less risky stuff as retirement comes closer, and rebalance the portfolio regularly when market swings put you off risk targets. Few people know how to do this and actually do so. So there are mutual funds that do it for you, for a fee. These in are called \"\"lifecycle\"\" funds (The Freedom funds here).  I hesitate to recommend them because they're still fairly new. If you take a look at underlying assets, these things generally just reinvest in the broker's other funds, which themselves have expenses & fees. And there's all kinds personal situations that might lead to you place a portion with a different investment.\"", "I think with your background you would be well suited to Equity Research in Oil, Biotech, or Pharma.  Not an area I know well but people who have greater understanding of the company's business are valuable in that field when combined with finance knowledge.  By your questions I would definitely advise some more investigation into finance and your motivations for getting into it.  What do you want out of finance?  How does the field match up with your life goals and your personal values?  Read some primers on Wall Street Oasis and some of Mergers and Inquisitions if you haven't already.  Sorry for the unwanted advice rant.  Just see lots of people attracted to money, prestige, or perceived glamour of finance without thinking about whether it's really what they want.", "\"You're circling around the answer...  The only real difference between a loddar and a privately-issued promissory note is that the loddar is issued by a recognized third party with better credit/credibility (the whole merchant/priest/farmer cartel-thing).   Private entities absolutely can and do issue their own promises to pay, and accept them, and in turn rely on those promises to make other promises. It's what you do when you charge something to a credit-card on the basis of your employer's promise to pay. You charge new tires, the tire store promises to pay its employees based on your CC company's promise to pay the tire-store, which is based on your promise to pay the credit-card company, which is based on your employer's promise to pay you, which is based on your employer's contracts with its customers, and so on...  In fact, often as not, the whole chain *never actually gets reconciled with printed cash.* The central bank never has to print or even know about these transactions. It's just checks and electronic transfers: promises all the way down, maybe with occasional cash withdrawals for popcorn at the movies or to tip the stripper or something...   That doesn't mean it's not \"\"real money\"\", it absolutely is: those promises are buying groceries and tires and making mortgage-payments and paying dentist bills and getting people to dig up stuff out of mines that will be fashioned into iPads, and all kinds of stuff.  Where this hurts most people in the brain is that they kind of accept dollar bills as axiomatically and intrinsically valuable. So trying to explain in reverse how they are the same as promissory notes or credit-certificates is like trying to convince them that a plane ticket is the same as an airplane (which is obviously not true).   That's why I started with this imaginary world without money. If you let go of any preconceptions, and stop trying to think through the analogies and don't read it trying to predictively look for the outcome conclusions, if you just read it and follow the story through, it is obvious that the *only* intrinsic difference (in that imaginary world) between apple-certificates, loddars, and privately-issued IOUs is the *credibility of the issuer*.  Trying to understand this stuff via analogy will make your head spin: Taking it all the way back to the thread-topic and the question at the top of the page, what makes it so difficult is the tendency and mental impulse to analogize money as a \"\"thing\"\" that \"\"is\"\" somewhere, and therefore has to \"\"go\"\" somewhere.   But that's an intrinsically and substantially imperfect analogy, which is what makes it hard to explain to a five-year-old. And you can't make the reality fit that analogy and stay sane. Even if you refuse to accept all this maddening abstraction and insist on only doing transactions with physical cash, or gold pieces, *the value of those markers is still 100% contingent on everyone accepting that everyone else will continue to believe that everyone else will continue to accept that currency...*  Money is essentially a promise that other people will keep. Instead of giving you food, your employer gives you a \"\"universal gift certificate\"\" that you can redeem anywhere, and everyone else will accept it, because they can in turn redeem it anywhere else. The only difference between using a bank-draft or printed dollar bill, versus writing a promise to make good yourself, is the credibility of the issuer.   That's a really difficult premise for most people to accept, because it's invisible and abstract, and seems to conflict with tangible interactions you've been doing all your life. So we have this sort of tendency to try and force the reality to fit preconceived conceptual analogies, like someone who keeps rejecting explanations of how airplanes can fly because \"\"that still doesn't explain how metal can be lighter than air\"\"... it's demanding that the reality must fit a hypothesis that doesn't apply.   Hope that helps.\"", "\"The question is asking for a European equivalent of the so-called \"\"Couch Potato\"\" portfolio. \"\"Couch Potato\"\" portfolio is defined by the two URLs provided in question as, Criteria for fund composition Fixed-income: Regardless of country or supra-national market, the fixed-income fund should have holdings throughout the entire length of the yield curve (most available maturities), as well as being a mix of government, municipal (general obligation), corporate and high-yield bonds.  Equity: The common equity position should be in one equity market index fund. It shouldn't be a DAX-30 or CAC-40 or DJIA type fund. Instead, you want a combination of growth and value companies. The fund should have as many holdings as possible, while avoiding too much expense due to transaction costs. You can determine how much is too much by comparing candidate funds with those that are only investing in highly liquid, large company stocks. Why it is easier for U.S. and Canadian couch potatoes It will be easier to find two good funds, at lower cost, if one is investing in a country with sizable markets and its own currency. That's why the Couch Potato strategy lends itself most naturally to the U.S.A, Canada, Japan and probably Australia, Brazil, South Korea and possibly Mexico too. In Europe, pre-EU, any of Germany, France, Spain, Italy or the Scandinavian countries would probably have worked well. The only concern would be (possibly) higher equity transactions costs and certainly larger fixed-income buy-sell spreads, due to smaller and less liquid markets other than Germany. These costs would be experienced by the portfolio manager, and passed on to you, as the investor. For the EU couch potato Remember the criteria, especially part 2, and the intent as described by the Couch Potato name, implying extremely passive investing. You want to choose two funds offered by very stable, reputable fund management companies. You will be re-balancing every six months or a year, only. That is four transactions per year, maximum. You don't need a lot of interaction with anyone, but you DO need to have the means to quickly exit both sides of the trade, should you decide, for any reason, that you need the money or that the strategy isn't right for you.  I would not choose an ETF from iShares just because it is easy to do online transactions. For many investors, that is important! Here, you don't need that convenience. Instead, you need stability and an index fund with a good reputation. You should try to choose an EU based fund manager, or one in your home country, as you'll be more likely to know who is good and who isn't. Don't use Vanguard's FTSE ETF or the equivalent, as there will probably be currency and foreign tax concerns, and possibly forex risk. The couch potato strategy requires an emphasis on low fees with high quality funds and brokers (if not buying directly from the fund). As for type of fund, it would be best to choose a fund that is invested in mostly or only EU or EEU (European Economic Union) stocks, and the same for bonds. That will help minimize your transaction costs and tax liability, while allowing for the sort of broad diversity that helps buy and hold index fund investors.\"", "\"From the comments, it sounds like you have a technical background. So I'm going to suggest you think of this as a technical problem: it's an optimization problem, where the variable you're trying to optimize for is total interest paid over the lifetime of the loans. Step 1 is making sure you're using the credit available to you most efficiently. If there's room in the credit limit for card #1 to move more of your debt there, then definitely move your balances from the higher-interest cards. However, be careful; some cards will have different interest rates for balance transfers or cash advances. And definitely don't move any principal from Card #3 until the 0% interest rate expires. Pursuing a bank loan as part of step 1 is valid as well. You could start with the bank you use for your checking account today. Credit unions can be a good source of lower-interest loans as well. Ensure that you fully understand the terms and interest rates, particularly if they change. Just be careful about applying for them; too many rejections can affect your credit rating negatively. You also mention in the comments that you're paying \"\"her\"\" mortgage. I don't know how the ownership is set up there, but either refinancing or taking out a home equity loan can be a way to consolidate debt. The interest rate on a home loan will almost assuredly be less than on your higher rate cards, especially taking the tax deduction into account. Step 2 is paying down the debt efficiently. The rule here is simple: Pay the minimum payment on all cards except for the one with the highest interest rate; any money you have above the minimum payments should go into paying down the principal on that one. In your case, that's Card #2.  Good luck!\""]}
+{"query": "Canada: New mortgage qualification rules, 2010: Why, what, & when in effect?", "corpus": ["The new mortgage qualification rules were introduced to cool a hot Canadian housing real estate market. The rules are a pre-emptive measure intended to avoid a bubble (and later crash) in real estate. The government wants to make sure anybody buying a house can handle higher interest rates. Those rates, currently at record lows, are expected to go up later this year and into the future. The tighter mortgage rules include: Borrowers will need to qualify against a minimum standard 5-year fixed rate mortgage, even if they'll contract their mortgage at a lower or variable rate.  Previously, the 3-year fixed rate mortgage was used as the minimum qualification standard. The amount a homeowner can borrow in a refinanced mortgage drops to 90% of the home value, down from 95% of the home value.  A home is not meant to be an ATM machine. Anybody wanting to borrow to buy an investment property – i.e. a property that won't be their principal residence – will need a 20% downpayment instead of a 5% downpayment. The new rules go into effect April 19th, 2010.  However, according to the backgrounder (see below): Exceptions would be allowed after   April 19 where they are needed to   satisfy a binding purchase and sale,   financing, or refinancing agreement   entered into before April 19, 2010. Definitive information about the new rules can be found at the Department of Finance of Canada.  Specifically, refer to: Some additional news media sources:"], "neg": ["\"Sounds like you only have a vague idea of '08. JPM has always had one of the best balance sheets on the Street.  Personally I thought most of what he said was on point. I think a lot of people are also sick of \"\"listening to all the shit\"\" from DC. On both sides\"", "\"My wife currently works for a Bain-backed company.  I've seen it more times than I can count: Bain buys US-based companies, keeps a fraction of the skilled-labor in the US, and ships mostly everything else to China/Mexico (more China at this point).  I understand why they do this (keeps costs down, increases profits, etc), but it still angers me to no end.  IMHO: Just because \"\"it works\"\", it doesn't make it right.  Greedy fucks.\"", "The capital gain is counted as part of your income. So with a million capital gain you will be in a high tax bracket, and have to pay the corresponding capital gains tax rate on the million.", "\"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.\"", "You can also consider getting GICs which offer early redemption - ING has pretty decent ones. Early redemption offers poorer interest than savings account, but if you go the full term the interest rates are better than savings account.", "Yes brokers will act as a counter party in most cases, matching buyers and sellers or taking a position themselves if the hedge matches their needs.   Not sure if individuals can buy swaps through a broker.   One other point, depending on the credit worthiness of the out of the money party, collateral must be posted. This means if the value of the swap is $1000 to A (-$1000 to B), B must give A some safe asset (cash or treasuries) in case B cannot fulfill his obligation to oay $1.25.", "It appears all you have to do is submit a form. It might be better if she submitted it herself instead of you doing it on her behalf.  All natural persons (individuals) and non-natural persons (businesses)   are entitled to access and inspect the data held on record about them   in the Central Credit Information System (KHR)."]}
+{"query": "why the currency data(such as USD/JPY) is different from different source", "corpus": ["A day is a long time and the rate is not the same all day. Some sources will report a close price that averages the bid and ask. Some sources will report a volume-weighted average. Some will report the last transaction price. Some will report a time-weighted average. Some will average the highest and lowest prices for the interval. Different marketplaces will also have slightly different prices because different traders are present at each marketplace. Usually, the documentation will explain what method they use and you can choose the source whose method makes the most sense for your application."], "neg": ["&gt;  I occasionally drive through a rough part of town and see the dumbest people just walking in the street. There is a sidewalk, but let's walk in the busy road instead.  They get used to walking in the street because of the poor conditions of the sidewalk.  Debris, broken-glass, overgrown.     While it is an extreme example, [this is a sidewalk I was trying to clear two weeks ago](http://i.imgur.com/KH2GuoG.jpg) in an urban area.", "I don't know much about the convertible debt space, but it seems like this regulation may be a positive sign that the government is being proactive in preventing financial institutions from developing overly complex debt structures (at least on an on-going basis) that get the global economy back into trouble.  Does anyone with a more informed opinion than my own have something to share?", "That is why you would *want* to apply for a patent right away, to protect yourself. Once you are in the system, someone cannot take your idea and patent it themselves.  If you do not think your idea is original or distinct enough to be granted a patent, then why would you even be exploring this avenue? Have you spoken with a patent attorney to determine whether your idea is worth going through the process?", "The largest problem and source of anxiety / ruin for homeowners during the housing market collapse was caused by the inability to refinance. Many people had bought homes which they were stretched to afford, by using variable-rate mortgages.  These would typically offer a very attractive initial rate, with an annual cap on the potential increase of rate.  Many of these people intended to refinance their variable-rate to a fixed rate once terms were more favorable.  If their house won't appraise for the value needed to obtain a new loan, they are stuck in their current contract with potentially unfavorable rates in the later years (9.9% above prime was not unheard of.) Also, many people, especially those in areas of high inflation in the housing market, used a financial device known as a Balloon Mortgage, which essentially forced you to get a new loan after some number of years (2, 5, 10) when the entire note became due.  Some of those loans offered payments less than Principal + Interest! So, say you move near Los Angeles and can't afford the $1.2M for the 3-bedroom ranch in which you wish to live.  You might work out a deal with your mortgage broker/banker in which you agree contractually to only pay $500/month, with a balloon payment of $1.4M due in 5 years, which seemed like a good deal since you (and everyone else,) actually expect the house to be 'worth' $1.5M in 5 years. This type of thing was done all the time back in the day.  Now, imagine the housing bubble bursts and your $1.2M home is suddenly only valued at, perhaps, $750k.  You still owe $1.4M sometime in the next several years (maybe very soon, depending on timing,) and can only get approved financing for the current $750k value -- so you're basically anticipating becoming homeless and bankrupt within the same year. That is a source of much anxiety about being upside-down on a loan. See this question for an unfortunate example.", "If you hold this money in USD and spend it in the US as USD, then there is no tax liability or reporting requirement at all.  You are not subject to any tax on foreign exchange gains and losses because you have not performed any foreign exchange.  CRA says a foreign exchange gain or loss happens when the fx transaction occurs—not as the currency’s value fluctuates while on deposit - and since you are never performing an fx transaction, no such issues will arise.  The CRA is not interested in how you spend your money, only the money that you earn.   The only possible tax liability that would arise in the circumstances that you describe would be the tax liability arising from interest earned while the cash in on deposit.  If this interest exceeds the threshold of reportability, then your bank will issue you with a T-slip to be included in your tax return.", "The RDFI (Receiving Depository Institution) is the place where you keep your money and where the Debit is going to be made. Unfortunately the Debit did not go through for some kind of regulatory reason that I don't understand. You could ask them why people are not allowed to make ACH Debits there or you can try to pay through a different bank.", "I didn't mean to discount her contribution to the company. On the contrary, I think what she does is great. She got into acting acting at a young age and made it big; she then leveraged her success to be a businesswoman. She won't be an actress forever, even attractive actresses like her will hit their expiration date sometime in their 30s. Being part of this start-up makes financial sense and is a great learning opportunity."]}
+{"query": "How do UK Gilts interest rates and repayments work?", "corpus": ["\"A title such as \"\"5% Treasury Gilt 2020\"\" expresses the nominal yield.  In other words, 5% is the yield you will receive if you are able to buy the Gilt at the nominal (issue) price of GBP100. Of course, you will not be able to buy such a Gilt in today's market for the nominal price of GBP100.  It will be trading at a considerable premium and therefore, if you hold it until maturity you will realise a capital loss to offset the relatively high income you have received. Here is an example.  The \"\"8% June 2021 Gilt\"\" has a coupon of 8%.  To purchase a GBP100 nominal Gilt in today's market will cost you GBP135.89.  Thus, you will pay 135.89 to receive GBP8.00 income annually.  This represents a 5.88% yield (8/135.89 = 5.88%).  That sounds pretty good.  However, if you hold the Gilt until maturity you will only receive GBP100 on redemption and therefore you will experience a capital loss GBP35.89 on each Gilt purchased.  When this capital loss is taken into account it means that the 5.88% yield you are receiving as income will be offset by the capital loss so that you have earned the equivalent of 0.757% annually.  You can of course sell the Gilt before its 2021 maturity date, however as the maturity date gets closer the market price will get closer to the GBP100 nominal value and you will again face a capital loss.  There's no free ride in the markets.  5 year Gilts currently have a redemption yield of about 0.75%, while 10 year Gilts currently have a redemption yield of about 1.15%. You may also wish to note that buying Gilts in the open market requires a minimum purchase of GBP10,000 nominal value.  However, you can purchase small Gilt holdings through the post office.\""], "neg": ["&gt; Hoarding more wealth is the solution?  To protect yourself from the coming financial apocalypse, yes.   &gt; Deregulation?  Absolutely deregulate. These regulators keep bailing out banks with taxpayer money... not a very smart move, and not good for the average Joes.  &gt; Starve people till the market corrects itself?  No, bro. The regulators are doing that. Hoarding wealth prevents one from starving, because they have enough funds saved up to buy food.", "Darn. It sounds like Whole Foods is a store sent from heaven...  [The Lies that Whole Foods Tells](http://www.realclearscience.com/blog/2014/06/the_lies_that_whole_foods_tells_108701.html)  [Whole Foods sued over false 'all natural' claim on baked goods](http://www.naturalnews.com/045617_all_natural_Whole_Foods_lawsuit.html)  [Whole Foods sued over false advertising of sugar in goods](http://www.foxnews.com/food-drink/2015/07/14/whole-foods-sued-over-false-advertising-sugar-in-goods.html)   [Whole Foods caught in GMO marketing deception](http://www.naturalnews.com/037467_Whole_Foods_marketing_fraud_GMO.html#)  [Organic foods in Aldi are much lower than Whole Foods](http://www.dontwasteyourmoney.com/aldi-vs-whole-foods-stores-organic-options-better-wallet/)  [Is Whole Foods Wholesome?](http://www.slate.com/articles/arts/culturebox/2006/03/is_whole_foods_wholesome.html)", "&gt; However, the linked studies are essentially irrelevant to your bombastic claims; they still fail to backup your idea that literally everybody who consumes cannabis is a degenerate who lives with his/her parents and works a minimum wage job and is a danger to society. That remains an unproven (and unprovable) assertion  First of all, I never said all. But it seems to be a pattern among redditors. There is a correlation, just not proof.  You also can't prove its not true either.   &gt;  My point was simply that your generalizations of marijuana consumers are spurious, close-minded and not based on any real research. You've yet to provide any counterfactual to that.  Do you think escaping reality by doing drugs all day everyday is a good way of dealing with your problems?", "\"I would strongly recommend the following: How to Win Friends &amp; Influence People, 10x Rule, Built to Last, Good To Great, &amp; The Innovators Dilemma  How to Win Friends &amp; Influence People completely reshaped how I approach interactions with people both in &amp; out of the work place - its worth picking up your own copy so you can refresh yourself every now &amp; then.   The Innovators Dilemma by Clayton Christensen is one of those classic MBA starter kit books about product ideation &amp; distruptive technologies in the market.   10x Rule is a solid \"\"beat your chest &amp; take on the world\"\" type of self improvement books. I'd suggest the audio book as the guy's energy is quite compelling.   Built To Last &amp; Good To Great are all about organizational leadership &amp; are just all around great books if you're into team building.   I'd also suggest googling \"\"Pragmatic Marketing\"\" &amp; picking up whatever they're plugging as the next latest &amp; greatest book on product leadership. It's very much geared towards SaaS product management &amp; agile development but there's good lessons to be learned for all professions. Also a Random Walk Down Wall Street is a go-to as well as pretty much anything by Warren Buffet.\"", "\"It's a front; a farce.  It's nearly suicide for a corporation (which relies on voluntary customers) to say they're \"\"against\"\" climate change - interpret that statement how you will.  So they say \"\"*oh yeah, environment, great stuff, we love it, pollution bad, green good - we'll reduce our CO2*\"\".  So they find some stupid project, reduce their emissions by whatever-% - ya know, throw a couple spare bucks at it, greenwash the shit out of it.  And probably get half those dollars back as a green tax credit anyway.  Meanwhile, their bottom line and day-to-day operations are largely unaffected.  And the costly stuff - MACT compliance, legislation, taxes - the things that make  environmental responsibility *really*  happen - they want no part of that.  So they pay of their politicians to promote that as \"\"*job killing*\"\" and quietly let them haggle over details.  Or better yet - stall indefinitely.  So everybody wins.  Kind of.\"", "Yeah, she is a control freak... she sold the rights of pictures of her to some agency, who licensed them out.... she lost control.   So to this end, I think it's only fitting that we the people of the internet seek justice &amp; irony.... we must go forth and photoshop actual dicks in place of the 7 inch burger.  Go now.... make it happen.", "It depends on your situation. Situations may change. There are also other factors: Being free and clear is nice, but there is an opportunity cost."]}
+{"query": "What could be the best tax saving option before a month of financial year end", "corpus": ["I was thinking to do mix of ELSS and Tax Saving FDs. But is my choice correct? Also what other options I am left with? This depends on individual's choice and risk appetite. Generally at younger age, investment in ELSS / PPF is advisable. Other options are Life Insurance, Retirement Plans by Mutual Funds, NSC, etc"], "neg": ["\"After we fired a whole slew of higher paid employees with good benefits we waited. Then we re-hired a whole bunch more again at lower pay and bad benefits.   See! We made 800 jobs by \"\"restructuring\"\" and that's big news!  Seriously though, they've done this a few times over in Michigan already. Not sure why it's news now.\"", "No. Income inside an RRSP is sheltered from income tax until you withdraw it. That is, indeed, the major benefit of RRSPs. Note that you will eventually declare this as income. Consider the following case: - in 2015, you make $1000 in income. - in 2015, you contribute $100 to your RRSPs. You store this in an account that pays interest, rather than investing it in stocks, bonds, or mutual funds. - between 2015 and 2025, your money makes an additional $100 in interest. - in 2025, you are retired and pull out the entire amount in your RRSP, i.e. $200. Now, between 2015 and 2025, you did not declare the income from interest. You'd have had to do this if the money was in a regular bank account (instead of an RRSP or a TFSA). Indeed, your bank would have issued tax forms in that case. But you don't report income sheltered in an RRSP. This is good, as it increases the power of compounding. In 2015, you pay tax on only $900 rather than the full $1000. In 2025, you pull out the entire $200. You report all $200 as income (or, actually, as a withdrawal from your RRSP, but it's the same thing). You pay tax on the initial $100 investment (which you did not do in 2015), and you also pay tax on the $100 that your investment has made (and which you are now pulling out). The hope is that your income is now lower, as you are retired. So you'll end up paying less income tax. Plus, your investment has had many years of opportunity to compound, tax-free. TL;DNR: You don't pay tax on, or report gains in, an RRSP account. The bank or investment house won't even issue tax forms, not until you withdraw the money.", "My preferred method of doing this is to get a bank draft from the US in Euros and then pay it into the French bank (my countries are Canada and UK, but the principle is the same). The cost of the bank draft is about $8, so very little more than the ATM method. If you use bigger amounts it can be less overall cost. The disadvantage is that a bank draft takes a week or so to write and a few days to clear. So you would have to plan ahead. I would keep enough money in the French account for one visit, and top it up with a new bank draft every visit or two.", "Here's one option:  Telephone is a lower-tech yet relatively more secure means for transmitting your payment information when a secure web site isn't available. And yet another option:  You could send them an encrypted email, but this would require tools (e.g. GPG), setup (public keys), and expertise on their end which they are unlikely to already have. However, ChrisInEdmonton raised a good point in his comment.  How can you consider them to be a reputable seller when they don't take basic precautions to protect customers' payment information online? The seller may with good faith charge your card the correct amount and deliver the goods that you expect, but how will they protect your credit card information once in their hands?  Would you trust their internal systems if they can't even set up an HTTPS web site?", "\"Don't compare investing with a roll of the dice, compare it with blackjack and the decision to stand or hit, or put more money on the table (double down or increase bet size) , based on an assessment of the state of the table and history.  A naive strategy of say \"\"always hitting to 16\"\" isn't as awful as randomly hitting and standing (which, from time to to time will draw to 21 fair and square) , but there's a basic strategy that gets close to 50% and by increasing or decreasing bet based on counting face cards can get into positive expectations. Randomly buying and selling stock is randomly hitting.  Buying a market index fund is like always hitting to 16.  Determining an asset allocation strategy and periodically rebalancing is basic strategy.  Adjusting allocations based on business cycle and economic indicators is turning skill into advantage.\"", "Just general advice but you should pay off your credit cards and car loans before buying a house. Or you may be able to add some extra on to the mortgage to pay off your credit card and car debt right away. Credit card interest rates can be ten times the interest rates on mortgages and car loans are not far behind. The sooner you get them paid off completely the sooner you will have enough money for mortgage payments.", "There are a few methods you can use to estimate your taxes. On the results screen, the app will show you your estimated tax burden, your estimated withholding for the year, and your estimated overpayment/refund or shortfall/tax due.  It may also have recommendations for you on how to adjust your W-4 (although, this late in the year, I think it only tells you to come back next year to reevaluate).   Your state might also have income tax, and if you are curious about that, you can find the state tax form and estimate your state income tax as well. My guess is that you will be getting a refund this year, as you have only worked half of the year.  But that is only a guess."]}
+{"query": "Living in my own rental property", "corpus": ["If it is a separate unit from the rest of the property,  you can use that portion as an investment property.  the part, or unit, you are living in is your primary residence. The remainder is your investment. You are eligible to not pay capital gains on the portion you live in After two years. As always consult a tax accountant For advice...  Also, if this is less then 4 unit, you may he able to finance the sale of the home with an FHA loan."], "neg": ["Pretrace Technology is dedicated to provide the professional wireless machine-to-machine (M2M) devices and solutions in the field of GPS tracking and Internet of Things(IoT), adds value to the vertical market applications that generate revenue and market share especially for solution providers. We provide GPS Tracking Devices for Phones to locate at their real-time location. If you want to buy tracking device, please visit www.pretrace.com", "\"I hope I'm misunderstanding your plan... you want to invest in a way that will make SO MUCH that you pay back all of the loan payments with investment gains? Like the answer I gave on the preceding question, and like @littleadv's comment/mhoran's answers... don't do this. No good will come of it.  This strategy requires higher returns, but does not necessarily give you a better return.   But because you asked the question again, let me specify what you're missing... I do think that learning is a good thing. It boils down to two very significant problems that you haven't addressed:  (1) Where are you getting your monthly \"\"income\"\" from?  (2) Realistic vs. Daydreaming--How big do any gains have to be and does that exist in the real world in a way that you can capture?  In a nutshell, if my answer to the last question showed that it's crazy to invest and pay back out of your capital and income... since you're trying to keep your capital and only pay back with monthly gains, this one will require even higher and thus more unrealistic gains.  The model you're implying:  If that's what you mean with this model, (which I think you do), then here are my two very key questions again: How are you getting your monthly income? Financial investments (i.e. stocks or bonds) will have two components of value. One component of value is the stream of payments, such as a monthly dividend from stocks that pay those, or the interest payment from a bond. The other is the ability to resell a security to another investor, receiving back your capital.  So... you either have to find Bonds//Dividend stocks that pay >52% returns tax-free each year, and pay this loan off with the payments. (Or higher returns to cover taxes, but these kinds of investments do not exist for you.)  OR you can try to invest in something, pray that it goes up ≥4.323% per month and so that you can sell it, pay back your loan payment with the proceeds, and use the capital to buy your next investment... that will go up 4.323% per month, to turn and sell it again.  The pros that do model this type of speculation go into much more depth than you are capable of. They build models that incorporate probabilities for rates of return based on historical data. They have better information, and have specialized in calculating this all out. They even have access to better investment opportunities (like pre-IPO Twitter or private notes). You just won't find the opportunities to make this happen, each month, for 24 months. (Again, you won't find them. They do not exist for you in as an investor in securities) Realistic vs. Daydreaming So... clearly I hope that by now I have convinced you that these would be the required returns. They simply aren't available to you. If they were, you would still run into obstacles with converting 'book' returns into physical money that you could repay the loans with, and then continuing that growth.  And while I appreciate the notion that 'if I could just make the payments each month, I'd have $10,000 after 24 months!' I guarantee you that you'll be better off finding another way to target that same investment.  Along the lines of what mhoran said, if you aim for a basic 401K or other similar investment account and target it into the S&P500, you might see returns of anywhere from -25% to +25% over the next 24 months... but if things went like they tend to average for the S&P500, it's more like ~7% annually. Check out a \"\"savings target calculator\"\" like this one from Bankrate.com and put in the numbers... if you can save about $390 a month you'll be at $10K in 24 months. It's not as fun as the other, but you can actually expect to achieve that.  You will not find consistent >50% returns on your money annually.\"", "Unlimited everything. I'm on my parents line so that's kinda a bummer but I'm never giving this up. I just got my girlfriend on it because it's so cheap. Also I never do the monthly payment plan. I always pay for for my phone's outright because it just makes more sense to me.", "And therein lies the solution to 'studios charge per ticket.' If studios got a cut of food and drink instead, ticket prices could plummet back to barely covering A/C and janitorial services, and more butts would hit more seats holding more already-overpriced snacks.", "http://www.glassdoor.com/ shows salaries collected over the past 5 years (I think thats when they launched the site?)  So $86k for a Bachelors degree with zero real world experience. If you've got some post-college experience, or a post-graduate degree you'll be starting in six figures.", "\"I see this as a silly question.  Neither country will become \"\"dominant\"\".  They're both mid-sized resource-based economies, and that won't change any time soon.  Australia has more copper, cattle, and gold, but Canada has more oil, wheat, potash, and timber.  The resource sectors in both economies will continue to thrive, unless the world economy tanks.\"", "Amazon just delayed my entrance into e-books for a few years. First off, the prices are still crazy, and secondly, now you dont even own the shit you pay the same price as a paperback for.  They are managing to remove all of the benefits of going digital. I think they may be screwing themselves long term with these moves, publishers with integrity are going to start going around them..distributing e-books is very easy.."]}
+{"query": "Odds of early assignment for a short in the money call", "corpus": ["It depends how deep in the money it is, compared to the dividend.  Even an in the money call has some time premium. As the call holder, if I exercise instead of selling the call, I am trading the potential for a dividend, which I won't receive, for getting that time premium back by selling.  Given the above, you'll notice a slight distortion in options pricing as a dividend date approaches, as the option will reflect not just the time premium, but the fact that exercising with grab the dividend.  Edit to address your comment - $10 stock, $9 strike, 50 cent div. If the option price is high, say $2, because there's a year till expiration, exercising makes no sense. If it's just $1.10, I gain 40 cents by exercising and selling after the dividend."], "neg": ["sure, and I'm happy they're getting paid more... this is important work. people shouldn't have to scrape by just because it's not the most desirable career.   but saying that increase in cost won't affect an increase in price and that average people will be better able to afford higher construction costs is misleading.   just because construction workers have more money in their pockets, doesn't mean the average person will have more as well.", "The sense of entitlement absolutely horrors me. Suck it up, do whatever work they need you to do for the time being. You're an intern. AND you're getting paid.  Believe you me, there are a million others that would kill for a position like that and are in much worse circumstances. Don't take it for granted.", "I would speak to your employer about direct deposit into one of your local casinos.  Its a simple matter of then arranging to purchase said lottery tickets with the casino's chips.  For a small convenience fee, I would imagine you could also arrange to have the casino automatically convert the chips to lottery tickets, redeem the winning tickets for you and give you a weekly report of your winnings.  Hope this helps.", "\"True, I'm studying for my second one now. I know that the exams are terrible, but that's kind of a draw-in for me. I don't go to Harvard or anything so I feel this could be my thing- an even better thing. As Tom Hanks said, \"\"The hard... is what makes it great.\"\"  Why waste my one opportunity?\"", "\"There are more than a few different ways to consider why someone may have a transaction in the stock market: Employee stock options - If part of my compensation comes from having options that vest over time, I may well sell shares at various points because I don't want so much of my new worth tied up in one company stock. Thus, some transactions may happen from people cashing out stock options. Shorting stocks - This is where one would sell borrowed stock that then gets replaced later. Thus, one could reverse the traditional buy and sell order in which case the buy is done to close the position rather than open one. Convertible debt - Some companies may have debt that come with warrants or options that allow the holder to acquire shares at a specific price. This would be similar to 1 in some ways though the holder may be a mutual fund or company in some cases. There is also some people that may seek high-yield stocks and want an income stream from the stock while others may just want capital appreciation and like stocks that may not pay dividends(Berkshire Hathaway being the classic example here). Others may be traders believing the stock will move one way or another in the short-term and want to profit from that. So, thus the stock market isn't necessarily as simple as you state initially. A terrorist attack may impact stocks in a couple ways to consider: Liquidity - In the case of the attacks of 9/11, the stock market was closed for a number of days which meant people couldn't trade to convert shares to cash or cash to shares. Thus, some people may pull out of the market out of fear of their money being \"\"locked up\"\" when they need to access it. If someone is retired and expects to get $x/quarter from their stocks and it appears that that may be in jeopardy, it could cause one to shift their asset allocation. Future profits - Some companies may have costs to rebuild offices and other losses that could put a temporary dent in profits. If there is a company that makes widgets and the factory is attacked, the company may have to stop making widgets for a while which would impact earnings, no? There can also be the perception that an attack is \"\"just the beginning\"\" and one could extrapolate out more attacks that may affect broader areas. Sometimes what recently happens with the stock market is expected to continue that can be dangerous as some people may believe the market has to continue like the recent past as that is how they think the future will be.\"", "As mentioned in several other answers, the main reason for high rates is to maximize profit. However, here is another, smaller effect: The typical flow of getting money from an ATM: Suppose you have a minute to consider the offer, then in that time the currency may drop or rise (which you can see from an external source of information). Therefore this opens a window for abuse. For real major currencies these huge switches are rare, but they do happen. And when 1 or 2 minor currencies are involved these switches are more common. Just looking at a random pair for today (Botswana Pula to Haitian Gourde) I immediately spotted a moment where the exchange rate jumped by more than 2 %. This may not be the best example, but it shows why a large margin is desirable. Note that this argument only holds for when the customer knows in advance what the exchange rate would be, for cases where it is calculated afterwards I have not found any valid excuse for such large margins (except that it allows them to offer other services at a lower price because these transaction).", "Most drugs addicted will begin the process of determining which program is best for their needs by deciding addiction treatment. If you are looking Drug and alcohol detox programs in Florida. The World Recovery Centers provide the best recovery program. An individual will develop the problem, and zero family history of addiction does not guarantee that someone will not develop an addiction to have attempted addiction treatment in the past, to struggle with suicidal thoughts or behaviors."]}
+{"query": "Sell your home and invest in growth stock mutual fund", "corpus": ["It wouldn't surprise me to see a country's return to show Inflation + 2-4%, on average. The members of this board are from all over the world, but those in a low inflation country, as the US,Canada, and Australia are right now, would be used to a long term return of 8-10%, with sub 2% inflation.  In your case, the 20% return is looking backwards, hindsight, and not a guarantee. Your country's 10 year bonds are just under 10%. The difference between the 10% gov bond and the 20% market return reflects the difference between a 'guaranteed' return vs a risky one.  Stocks and homes have different return profiles over the decades. A home tends to cost what some hour's pay per month can afford to finance.  (To explain - In the US, the median home cost will center around what the median earner can finance with about a week's pay per month. This is my own observation, and it tends to be correct in the long term. When median homes are too high or low compared to this, they must tend back toward equilibrium.)  Your home will grow in value according to my thesis, but an investment home has both value that can rise or fall, as well as the monthly rent. This provides total return as a stock had growth and dividends.  Regardless of country, I can't predict the future, only point out a potential flaw in your plan."], "neg": ["\"Usually the new broker will take care of this for you. It can take a couple of weeks. If you are planning to go with Vanguard, you probably want to actually get an account at Vanguard, as Vanguard funds usually aren't \"\"No Transaction Fee\"\" funds with many brokers. If you are planning to invest in ETFs, you'll get more flexibility with a broker.\"", "You own the stock at $29.42 At $40, the stocks is called at $26. You can't add the call premium, as it's already accounted for. The trade is biased towards being bearish on the stock. (I edited and added the graph the evening I answered)  Not the pretiest graph, but you get the idea. With that $29.42 cost, you are in the money till about $30, then go negative until the most you lose is $3.42.", "I was nervous when they bought Marvel... but then they gambled on Whedon with *The Avengers*, and made the third-highest-grossing movie of all time *and* a genuinely good film that was liked by critics and audiences... so I think they'll do better than Lucas.", "If you want to use the original material then you will, essentially, need to negotiate for it.  You are in ugly, muddy territory.  Don't expect a simple, easy legal solution to exist; civil courts exist partly to help navigate these kinds of quagmires.  A negotiated solution would, on the other hand, clean everything up nicely.  Do you have your copyright ducks in a row?  If the contract does not stipulate otherwise, the creator will still maintain reproduction and moral copyright to the work; i.e., the creator will continue to own the copyrights to the work and you'll be unable to license or sell them to a third party.", "\"Hard pulls you give your explicit permission to run do affect your credit.  Soft pulls do not. While hard pulls affect your score, they don't affect it much.  Maybe a couple few point for a little while.  In your daily activities, it is inconsequential.  If you are prepping to get a mortgage, you should be mindful. Similar type hard pulls in a certain time window will only count once, because it is assume you are shopping.  For example, mortgage shopping will result in a lot of hard pulls, but if they are all done in a fortnight, they only count against once.  (I believe the time window is actually a month, but I have always had two weeks in my head as the safe window.) The reason soft pulls don't matter is because businesses typically won't make credit decisions based on them.  A soft pull is so a business can find a list of people to make offers to, but that doesn't mean they ACTUALLY qualify.  Only the information in a hard pull will tell them that.  I don't know, but I suspect it is more along the lines of \"\"give me everybody who is between 600 and 800 and lives in zip code 12344\"\" not \"\"what is series0ne's credit score?\"\" A hard pull will lower your score because of a scenario where you open up many many lines of credit in a short period of time.  The credit scoring models assume (I am guessing) that you are going to implode.  You are either attempting to cover obligations you can't handle, or you are about to create a bunch of obligations you can't handle. Credit should be used as a convenient method of payment, not a source of wealth.  As such, each credit line you open in a short time lowers the score.  You are disincentivized to continue opening lines, and lenders at the end of your credit line opening spree will see you as riskier than the first.\"", "You're going to want to work with a collection agency or law firm that specializes in collections. They'll buy the debt from you for something like 10-25% depending on the state and whether they are interested in something this small. People who don't pay rent and get wages garnished for $6k are a bad risk. They'll discount the judgement significantly since the risk of bankruptcy is probably pretty high.", "You ever think it's Americans and not the workers? Hard to give up your 1gb speed to go to 2mb and no signal on your phone in bumpkinville for $5 over min wage breaking your back outside. To top it off not many people have the money to uproot their life and move out to the country for shit wages."]}
+{"query": "Is there a good rule of thumb for how much I should have set aside as emergency cash?", "corpus": ["If you are still paying off debt, then you should have about $1000 in savings and put all you can towards non-mortgage debt. If you don't have any debt besides your mortgage, then add up all of your monthly expenses including food, gas, utilities and keep 3-6 months in liquid savings. Whether you keep 3 or 6 months depends on how safe your income is. If you have a steady safe job, you might be safe with 3 months. But, if your employer is cutting back or you are in a commission based job or self employed - then lean more towards 6 months expenses. Congrats on your new home!"], "neg": ["Email marketing has numerous advantages to the business.  It's is very growable for any business. You can send marketing messages at once to thousands of clients, which helps you to save time. If you want to Email marketing gainesville fl for your small business, then you can visit our website. We will provide you many internet marketing campaigns. Our service packeges are  less expensive compared to other marketing company.", "PayPal does charge a premium, both for sending and receiving. Here's how you find their rates:", "I don't see how it contrasts with any other the other advise here.  I even gave the advice to hold people accountable.  If anything my advise was more hard-line then most that's been given here.  I think you either misread what I wrote or you're completely off base.", "If you find a particular stock to be overvalued at $200 for example and a reasonable value at $175, you can place a limit order at the price you want to pay. If/when the stock price falls to your desired purchase price, the transaction takes place. Your broker can explain how long a limit order can stay open. This method allows you to take advantage of flash crashes when some savvy stock trader decides to game the market. This tactic works better with more volatile or low-volume stocks. If it works for an S&P500 tracking ETF, you have bigger problems. :) Another tactic is to put money into your brokerage cash account on a regular basis and buy those expensive stocks & funds when you have accumulated enough money to do so. This money won't earn you any interest while it sits in the cash account, but it's there, ready to be deployed at a moment's notice when you have enough to purchase those expensive assets.", "When did it become a verb? Early 19th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping  You can keep on repeating yourself -- wow, that Amway comparison sure is powerful, don't wanna overuse it now -- but it's no use, really.   Oh, and the income stated is for 2011. I don't know if you realized this, but 2011 is basically over. Thanks.", "And then there's Washington, DC, which subsidized fiber throughout the city but cannot lease it commercially due to red tape.  EDIT:  I hate making statements like this without support:  &gt;  But it’s unlikely that we’ll see last-mile service directly from the District. That’s because the city’s franchise agreements with Internet service providers like Verizon and Comcast prohibit the District from competing with these companies by offering its own service.  [washingtoncitypaper.com](http://www.washingtoncitypaper.com/blogs/housingcomplex/2013/05/01/fiber-optical-illusion/)", "Something you may want to consider if you are still choosing a bill-paying service is the contingency policies of the service.   I just suffered an extended stay in a hospital and my officially (in writing) designated Power of Attorney was NOT granted access to my PAYTRUST account.  Thus they could NOT take care of my finances easily.  After my discharge, I contacted PAYTRUST and they had canceled my account and would not reactivate it.  This is after over fifteen years of loyalty.  Needless to say there was much financial chaos in my life due to their negligence.  They were staunch in their policy and said officially that if they need to acknowledge a Power of Attorney, the ONLY thing they will allow the POA to do is close the PAYTRUST account.  How's that for customer service?!  Caveat Emptor. I am now seeking another service and will be asking about their POA policies."]}
+{"query": "Interaction between health exchange and under-65 Medicare coverage", "corpus": ["First off, you should contact your health plan administrator as soon as possible.  Different plans may interact differently with Medicare; any advice we could provide here would be tentative at best.  Some of the issues you may face: A person with both Medicare and a QHP would potentially have primary coverage from 2 sources: Medicare and the QHP. No federal law addresses this situation. Under state insurance law an individual generally cannot collect full benefits from each of 2 policies that together pay more than an insured event costs. State law usually specifies how insurance companies will coordinate health benefits when a person has primary coverage from more than one source. In that situation, insurance companies determine which coverage is primary and which is secondary. It’s important to understand that a QHP is not structured to pay secondary benefits, nor are the premiums calculated or adjusted for secondary payment. In addition, a person with Medicare would no longer receive any premium assistance or subsidies under the federal law. While previous federal law makes it illegal for insurance companies to knowingly sell coverage that duplicates Medicare’s coverage when someone is entitled to or enrolled in Medicare Part A or Part B, there has been no guidance on the issue of someone who already has individual health insurance and then also enrolls in Medicare. We and other consumer organizations have asked state and federal officials for clarification on this complicated situation. As such, it likely is up to the plan how they choose to pay - and I wouldn't expect them to pay much if they think they can avoid it.  You may also want to talk to someone at your local Medicare branch office - they may know more about your state specifically; or someone in your state's department of health/human services, or whomever administers the Exchanges (if it's not federal) in your state. Secondly, as far as enrolling for Part B, you should be aware that if she opts not to enroll in Part B at this time, if your wife later chooses to enroll before she turns 65 she will be required to pay a penalty of 10% per 12 month period she was not enrolled.  This will revert to 0 when she turns 65 and is then eligible under normal rules, but it will apply every year until then.  If she's enrolling during the normal General Enrollment period (Jan-March) then if she fails to enroll then she'll be required to pay that penalty if she later enrolls; if this is a Special Enrollment Period and extends beyond March, she may have the choice of enrolling next year without penalty."], "neg": ["1. High-resolution photos taken on 12 June 2009 from the International Space Station of Sarychev Peak volcano erupting on Matua Island, Kuril Islands, Russian Federation: http://chamorrobible.org/gpw/gpw-200906.htm  2. The eruption plume of Russia's Kliuchevskoi Volcano photographed on 16 November 2013 from the International Space Station: [4048 x 2698 pixels](http://chamorrobible.org/images/photos/gpw-201404-NASA-ISS038-E-5513-Kliuchevskoi-volcano-plume-Russian-Federation-20131116-large.jpg), [6048 x 4032 pixels](http://chamorrobible.org/images/photos/gpw-201404-NASA-ISS038-E-5513-Kliuchevskoi-volcano-plume-Russian-Federation-20131116-huge.jpg)      Source: http://chamorrobible.org/gpw/gpw-201404.htm", "I have just established a limited company (three directors spread around the UK) and I am in the process of setting up a business account. We will be able to arrange everything over the phone and each of us will have to appear in one of the branches with original documents: passport, bank statement. We are EU citizens and have UK bank accounts for over 5 years. That would probably be a problem for you. But still, you can try to call around and see if you can find a company to help you. You can also setup an account on one of the online currency exchange websites and then provide your customers with the website's bank account details with appropriate reference. You would have to check the legal side of this solution.", "I would definitely pay down the debt first.  If it is going to take 15 years to do so, you probably need to allocate more money to paying down debt. Cut expenses by going out to eat less, and keeping spending to the bare necessities.  You might even consider getting a second job, just for paying down the debt.  If that isn't enough, consider selling off some assets.  You should be able to come up with a plan to be debt free (excluding maybe a regular mortgage) within 3-5 years. Once the only debt you have is a home mortgage, then its time to look at putting money towards retirement again. Note, you should not take money out of a 401k or IRA to pay off debt.  The costs for doing so are nearly always too great.", "Seconded, just passed my 7 with a 91 and never scored better than the mid 80s on the practice tests.  Also don't bother with reading the book much.  Just use the practice tests and answers for most of your study.  Do consult the book to see what chapters are weighted heavily on the exam to know where to focus.", "In day trading, you're trying to predict the immediate fluctuations of an essentially random system.  In long-term investing, you're trying to assess the strength of a company over a period of time. You also have frequent opportunities to assess your position and either add to it or get out.", "The CPA's mention of $2,500 is probably referring to the recently increased de minimis safe harbor under the final tangible property regulations (used to be $500) without an applicable financial statement. The IRS will not challenge your choice of expense or capitalization on amounts on or below $2500 if you elect the de minimis safe harbor election on your return. However, you must follow whatever you're doing for your books. (So if you are capitalizing your laptops for book purposes, you would also need to capitalize for tax purposes). Section 179 allows you to expense property that you would have otherwise have had to capitalize and depreciate. Section 179 can be annoying, especially if your LLC is treated as a passthrough, because there are recapture provisions when you dispose of the asset too early. For the tax return preparer, it makes the return preparation much more simple if there are no fixed assets to account for in the first place, which is quite possible if you are expensive all items/invoices less than $2,500.", "Not only are they high volume but also most finish materials are very basic. For example lighting fixtures, most builders put ceiling fans in all bedrooms ($75) where Rausch coleman uses a flush mount ($15) in the spare bedrooms.  Same with flooring they use a vinyl plank where most builders use wood. This can be $1sqft or more cheaper. Cabinets, carpet, tile, countertops, faucets, all they same. These are all cosmetics and you can save a ton of money while building by doing this and still build a quality home. Rausch Coleman builds a quality home at an affordable price by keeping the cosmetics basic."]}
+{"query": "Is Bitcoin a commodity or a currency [duplicate]", "corpus": ["It has properties of both.  Tax authorities will eventually give their opinion on this.  Through its properties of finite quantity, fungibility, and resistance to forgery/duplication, it acts as a commodity.  It can be sent directly between any two parties anywhere on Earth, without regard for the quantity transacted or physical distance, to act as a currency. By the way, establishing trust in a trust-free environment through cryptographic proof-of-work is a remarkable invention.  Sending economic value, cheaply and securely, around the world in minutes, not days/weeks, is a remarkable invention.  This is where the value comes from."], "neg": ["Your logic is not wrong.  But the risk is more significant than you seem to assume.  Essentially you are proposing taking a 2.6% loan to buy stocks. Is that a good strategy?  On average, probably.  But if your stocks crash you might have significant liabilities. In 1929, the Dow Jones dropped 89%.  In 1989, >30%.  In 2008-9, 54%.  This is a huge risk if this is money that you owe in taxes.  If you operate the same system year after year the chance of it going horribly wrong increases.", "I litigated several of these cases to settlement back in 2011-2013 (the cases that followed on the Wells Fargo settlement out in NDCA).  Many many banks were using the same few consultants who were pitching the same few computer programs to re-order transactions in order to maximize fee revenue.  It was becoming standard industry practice until Judge Alsup entered the $200mm+ judgment against Wells Fargo for their California customers.  After that, lawyers did what we do and descended on any other bank doing the same thing.  As part of the settlements, the banks agreed to stop reordering transactions to maximize fee revenue (typically agreeing to order deposits first, then debits as they were presented to the bank).   Class action attorneys get a bad rap (sometimes justifiably so), but there are many more instances like this where we catch bad actors actually hurting people.", "Unprintable, yes, it's a scam. Nobody will ever have any legitimate reason to run money through your account. Period.", "A January 2000 study from McGill University in Montreal ranked Milwaukee 6th in a list of U.S. and Canadian cities with the highest number of college students per 100 residents. A list of college within 1 hour from Milwaukee: university of Milwaukee, university of Wisconsin, Marquette university, Northwestern University, Alverno College, Cardinal Stritch University, Medical College of Wisconsin, Milwaukee Area Technical College, Milwaukee Institute of Art and Design, Milwaukee School of Engineering, Mount Mary College, Wisconsin Lutheran College, Concordia University Wisconsin, Lakeland College, University Wisconsin Whitewater, Northern Illinois University.", "I took the BAT after my first semester of my freshman year. At the time I was winding up my microeconomics class. While I lacked the classical schooling, I've been investing for the past 3 years, so I'm pretty familiar with stocks, bonds, derivatives, and the like. I ended up scoring in the 50th percentile, which I was pleasantly surprised by.  The test is a mile wide and an inch deep. The math is incredibly easy, and it's all very straight forward. What got me was the accounting. I had no accounting experience beyond just examining a very basic balance sheet from time to time.", "New Zeeland is quite prone to earthquakes, that is why low buildings are popular.  Also, it is the foreigners that are the problem. They do drive the price up. Especially some 'lucky' house numbers are really wanted by Chinese immigrants.  But there's nothing you can do about it. Instead of foreigners buying houses, it will be companies registered in New Zealand that will buy them. Those measures will only hit middle class immigrants, not richer people who are driving prices up.", "First you need to distinguish between short-term and long-term capital gains. In an IRA you can use investment strategies that incur short-term capital gains without being taxed as ordinary income. As mentioned in a comment above, with a Roth IRA, you can invest now at your low income tax rates and withdraw all gains without incurring any taxes at retirement time. You can also pull out your contributions penalty free before retirement age (59 1/2) if you've had the account for more than 5 years. You only pay taxes and penalties on the earnings. You can also make withdrawals for education expenses and you have one lifetime exclusion of $10,000 for a down-payment on a house."]}
+{"query": "What significant negative factors affect Yahoo's valuation?", "corpus": ["There are two very large negative factors that affect Yahoo's valuation.   The first is that their search business is in decline and continues to lose ground to Google and even Bing.  There's no sign that they have any plan or product in the works to offset this decline, so there's tremendous uncertainty about the company's forward-looking revenues. The second is that the company can't seem to decide what to do with its stake in Alibaba, clearly the company's most valuable asset.  It they sell it, the question then becomes what they plan to do with the proceeds.  Will they do share buybacks or offer a special dividend to reward investors?  Will they use some or all of the money to make strategic acquisitions that are revenue-enhancing?  Will they use it to develop new products/services?   Keep in mind one other thing here, too.  There's a world of difference between what something is valued at and what someone's willing to actually pay for it.  A patent portfolio is great and perhaps holds good value, assuming the buyer can find a way to monetize it.  How exactly was the valuation of the patents arrived at, and are they worthwhile enough for someone to pay anywhere close to that valuation?   There's more to this than meets the eye by using a first-blush look at asset valuation, and that's where the professionals come in.  My bet is that they have it right and there's something the rest of the market doesn't see or understand about it, hence questions like yours. I hope this helps. Good luck!"], "neg": ["Heh I'm more baffled by the sheer size of the collection I shared with my siblings. It must have seriously reached about 75k to 100k pieces. My parents were not well off at the time, but they never bought us cheap crap. Instead they just kept feeding more LEGO into the collection. I never fully appreciated them for it at the time. Looking back now I'm almost ashamed of how spoiled I was.", "Although I do agree in many cases that is very convenient, I also think people still like to see in person and touch the products their buying when it comes to food. But thats just my opinion I may be wrong.", "And they get paid like everyone else. Is the worker more important than anyone else? Or are they equal? And as equals should they not pay the same rate for the same services as anyone else? Walmart doesn't treat you any different based on account status, neither does any other voluntary service provider. Why does an involuntary service provider get the right to discriminate based on success? McDonald's doesn't do a survey of the in store customers and make a segment pay more than another so they can eat for free. Im not sure how people can fight inequality by treating people unequally.", "Here's how the CBO says the top 1% get their income:     Source|% from source :--------|---------: Cash Wages and Salaries|33.4% Business Income|23.2% Capital Gains|19.1% Capital Income|11.2% Corporate Tax Borne by Capital|7.3% Other Income|3.2% Employer's Share of Payroll Taxes|0.9% Employee's Contributions to Deferred Compensation Plans|0.7% Employer's Contributions to Health Insurance|0.5%", "Summarized article: With declining sales over the last 6 years, Sears is now testing new store designs in Chicago, New York, Los Angeles and Dallas locations.   The revamping initiative is part of new Merchandising Chief Ron Boire's efforts to recapture customers lost to Wal-Mart and Target.   The store redesign will include placing best selling products, such as the Kardashian family clothing line, prominently near the entrance to the mall and cashier stations will be smaller and located throughout. Stores will also be less packed with merchandise so products will be easier for customers to find.    Additionally, Sears' website and social media sites will be revamped to make them more personalized with local ads as well as offer a customer loyalty program.  *For more summarized news, subscribe to the [/r/SkimThat](http://www.reddit.com/r/SkimThat) subreddit*", "A Certified Financial Planner has passed a licensing exam and will advise you and help you reach your financial goals. A good CFP can help you a lot, especially if you are unsure how to set up your insurance, investment, savings, and financial plans on your own. You do not need a CFP to get a life insurance policy. If you do get a CFP, he or she should help you above and beyond life insurance -- i.e. retirement planning, investment advice, education planning, etc. It's advantageous to you to pay a fixed price for services instead of a percentage or commission. Negotiate fees up front. For life insurance, in most cases a term policy will fit your needs. Whole life, universal life, etc., combine investments and life insurance into a single product and are big commission makers for the salesman. They make it sound like the best thing ever, so be aware. One of my rules of thumb is that, generally speaking, the larger the commission is for the salesperson, the worse the product is for the consumer. Welcome to life insurance pitches. Term life is far less expensive and provides a death benefit and nothing else. If you just had a baby and need to protect your family, for example, term life is often a good solution, easy to buy, and inexpensive. As you stated, any of the major providers will do just fine.", "As has been pointed out, one isn't cheaper than the other. One may have a lower price per share than the other, but that's not the same thing. Let's pretend that the total market valuation of all the stocks within the index was $10,000,000. (Look, I said let's pretend.) You want to invest $1,000. For the time being, let's also pretend that your purchasing 0.01% of all the stock won't affect prices anywhere. One company splits the index into 10,000 parts worth $1,000 each. The other splits the same index into 10,000,000 parts worth $1 each. Both track the underlying index perfectly. If you invest $1,000 with the first company, you get one part; if you invest $1,000 with the second, you get 1,000 parts. Ignoring spreads, transaction fees and the like, immediately after the purchase, both are worth exactly $1,000 to you. Now, suppose the index goes up 2%. The first company's shares of the index (of which you would have exactly one) are now worth $1,020 each, and the second company's shares of the index (of which you would have exactly 1,000) are worth $1.02 each. In each case, you now have index shares valued at $1,020 for a 2% increase ($1,020 / $1,000 = 1.02 = 102% of your original investment). As you can see, there is no reason to look at the price per share unless you have to buy in terms of whole shares, which is common in the stock market but not necessarily common at all in mutual funds. Because in this case, both funds track the same underlying index, there is no real reason to purchase one rather than the other because you believe they will perform differently. In an ideal world, the two will perform exactly equally. The way to compare the price of mutual funds is to look at the expense ratio. The lower the expense ratio is, the cheaper the fund is, and the less of your money is being eroded every day in fees. Unless you have some very good reason to do differently, that is how you should compare the price of any investment vehicles that track the same underlying commodity (in this case, the S&P 500)."]}
+{"query": "Overnight charges for brokers holding stocks?", "corpus": ["If you are trading CFDs, which are usually traded on margin, you will usually be charged an overnight financing fee for long positions held overnight and you will receive an overnight financing credit for short positions held overnight. Most CFD brokers will have their overnight financing rates set at + or - 2.5% or 3% from the country's official interest rates. So if your country's official interest rate is 5% and your broker uses + or - 2.5%, you will get a 2.5% credit for any short positions held overnight and pay 7.5% fee for any long positions held overnight. In Australia the official interest rate is 2.5%, so I get 0% for short positions and pay 5% for long positions held overnight. If you are looking to hold positions open long term (especially long positions) you might think twice before using CFDs to trade as you may end up paying quite a bit in interest over a long period of time. These financing fees are charged because you are borrowing the funds to open your positions, If you buy shares directly you would not be charged such overnight financing fees."], "neg": ["Well if that looks like a pain in the neck, just look at the things we've engineered before (ocean floor drilling, mountaintop removal, the International Space Station, etc.) Even coal fired power plants are an engineering nightmare. These gravity batteries would be pieces of cake compared to what I just mentioned.  Also, certain labs (I can't name them off the top of my head) are developing carbon fiber power lines that would have virtually no electrical resistance and wouldn't lose any power to heat. In light of that, do you think renewables would be feasible?", "There are so many free websites that it's really hard to get customers to pay for your service. On the other hand, quality news apps are rarer, which is why I think subscription-based content on mobile has a wider future than it's online variant.", "As has already been mentioned, measure, change, measure.  Stopping vampiric power drain in the items you mentioned is going to save you very little electricity or money. There are much larger power users in your home that can be tackled first. If you have a fridge, freezer, and electric water heater on Time-Of-Use billing, shifting their energy usage to off-peak hours can yield significant monetary savings. I have put my water heater on a timer that turns the thing on 3 hours before I get up and shower, and turns off just before shower time. I get more than enough hot water for showers, and the heater isn't maintaining a tank of hot water during the day or night when I don't need it. Same can be done with your fridge and freezer. Set the fridge a little colder and run it off-peak and your food will stay cold/frozen during the day.  Note that while putting the water heater on a timer may get you both money and electricity, doing the same for the fridge and freezer will only get you financial savings as you time-shift your electric usage. I was able to get a 20% saving on my electric bill by time-shifting my water heater and fridge. Your mileage may vary.", "any business selling for only 1,000 will not be worth getting into. marketing alone should cost you more than that if you have any genuine hope of turning a profit. buy some books instead. work for someone, learn the ropes, read books, practice what you read at work, then start something with your savings in 5 years.", "Rent deposit returned to you is not an income. Its your money to begin with. The homeowner is taxed on taking it and can expense the refund, but for you - there's no taxable event. ATM rebate is what it is - rebate. A cash discount over the money paid. Basically - the bank refunded you a fee you paid (ATM rebate is a refund of the ATM fee you paid to a third-party ATM operator). Again - your money. The ATM operator and the bank both have taxable income/deduction, but its not your problem. You - just got your money back. No income, no taxable event. Neither should appear on your tax forms, and similarly nor should credit card points, cash rebates, frequent flyer miles, etc. All are in fact either a refund of your money paid or a merchant discount to you, not an income.", "\"Lots of people make poor decisions in crises.  Some panic, and don't make any decision at all. Insurance for affordable things can provide emotional security:  If something goes wrong, the purchaser will not have to make a painful financial decision in a crisis.  Many people do not want to have the burden of arguing about money, or having to spend precious cash, or borrow money, or raid savings accounts, just at the time they are already reeling from another loss.  Having insurance \"\"just take care of it\"\" can save them an emotional double-whammy.   Several kinds of insurance fill this perceived need:\"", "Foreign stocks have two extra sources of risk attached to them; exchange rate and political.  Exchange rate risk is obvious; if I buy a stock in a foreign currency and there is a currency movement that makes that investment worth less I lose money no matter what the stock does. This can be offset using exchange rate swaps. (This is ceteris paribus, of course; changes in exchange rate can give a comparative advantage to international and exporting companies that will improve the fundamentals and so increase the price of the stock relative to a local firm. The economics of the firms in particular are not explored in this answer as it would get too complicated and long if I did.) Political risk relates not only to the problems surrounding international politics such as a country deciding that foreign nationals may no longer own shares in their national industries or deciding to seize foreign nationals' assets as happens in some areas. Your home country may also decide to apply sanctions to the country in which you are invested thus making it impossible to get your money back even though the foreign country will allow you to redeem them or sell. Diplomatic relations and trade agreements tend to be difficult. There are further problems in lack of understanding of foreign countries' laws, tax code, customs etc. relating to investments and the necessity to find legal representation in a country you may never have visited if there are issues. There is also a hidden risk in that, as an individual investor, you are not likely to be reading the local financial news for that country regularly enough to spot company specific issues arising. By the time these issues get into international media its far too late as all of the local investors have sold out of their positions already. The risks are probably no different if you have the time to monitor international relations and the foreign country's news, and have FX swaps in place to counteract FX risk as the funds and investment banks do but as an individual investor the time required is not feasible."]}
+{"query": "How does remittance work? How does it differ from direct money transfer?", "corpus": ["\"The Option 2 in your answer is how most of the money is moved cross border. It is called International Transfer, most of it carried out using the SWIFT network. This is expensive, at a minimum it costs in the range of USD 30 to USD 50. This becomes a expensive mechanism to transfer small sums of money that individuals are typically looking at.   Over a period of years, the low value payments by individuals between certain pair of countries is quite high, example US-India, US-China, Middle-East-India, US-Mexico etc ... With the intention to reduce cost, Banks have built a different work-flow, this is the Option 1. This essentially works on getting money from multiple individuals in EUR. The aggregated sum is converted into INR, then transferred to partner Bank in India via Single SWIFT. Alongside the partner bank is also sent a file of instructions having the credit account. The Partner Bank in India will use the local clearing network [these days NEFT] to credit the funds to the Indian account.   Option 3: Other methods include you writing a check in EUR and sending it over to a friend/relative in India to deposit this into Indian Account. Typically very nominal costs. Typically one month of timelines. Option 4: Another method would be to visit an Indian Bank and ask them to issue a \"\"Rupee Draft/Bankers Check\"\" payable in India. The charges for this would be higher than Option 3, less than Option 1. Mail this to friend/relative in India to deposit this into Indian Account. Typically couple of days timelines for transfer to happen.\""], "neg": ["\"This is a legal business concept, as long as you don't misrepresent the source material.  If you want to rebrand the items, you'll  need a contract with the manufacturer.  I would contact the sales dept at the manufacturer, and see if you can become a reseller/partner (many companies have \"\"certification\"\" programs, where you will gain cheaper prices for  products if you undergo training on them) or even sign a rebranding deal.  Ask for a reselling discount on the trains/accessories (20% isn't unreasonable in software- I'm not sure about the model industry), then buy from the manufacturer instead of the store.  Hope it works out for you!\"", "Freehold is simple - it's when you own the building and the land it's on.  There's no rent to pay (but you will still have to pay taxes!). Leasehold is when the property is leased - rented out for a fixed period that could be anything from 6 months to 199 years.  There will be a rent to pay.  The person who owns the property is still the freeholder. There may be some confusion caused by what is being sold.  You can buy out a lease from the current leaseholder.  It's also possible to buy the freehold of a property that is currently leased to someone else. It is also possible to have a freehold building on leasehold land.", "in 20 yrs your generation will vote itself into office and be in control. like gay rights....climate change...healthcare...abortion etc are promises now. so will be your  school debts and kids education. You will  vote and argue for or against forgiving your own debts and make higher education a right. You will  just keep digging the hole you complain other people made for you like the generations before you. problem will be solved. have a beer and relax..", "You should talk to a lawyer who's familiar with the matter. I'm not such a lawyer. For the best of my understanding, at least with regards to the US, the answer to all three of your questions is no. Legally, a US company cannot employ Iranian residents and transfer money to Iran. However, I know of Iranians working in the US. So if you manage to secure a H1b visa and move to the US - you can work and earn money here. What you do with it after you earned it - is your business.", "\"&gt;Make sense, those willing to pay a large price premium on a lap top would probably be willing to spend more on a hotel.  And just as likely they would not be WANTING to reserve a room at the Motel 6, much less Ma &amp; Pa Kettle's \"\"rooms 4 rent\"\" fleabag motel.  If you're a \"\"brand name &amp; image\"\" consumer when it comes to consumers (the days when the Mac OS/GUI was pragmatically/functionally \"\"better\"\" than other products is long past), then you are probably into buying brand names and \"\"image\"\" in other products/services as well.\"", "Ultimately the bank will have first call on the house and you will be the only one on the hook directly to the bank if you don't make the mortgage payments. There's nothing you can do to avoid that if you can't get a joint mortgage. What you could do is make a side agreement that your girlfriend would be entitled to half the equity in the house, and would be required to make half the payments (via you). You could perhaps also add that she would be part responsible for helping you clear any arrears. But in the end it'd just be a deal between you and her. She wouldn't have any direct rights over the house and she wouldn't be at risk of the bank pursuing her if you don't pay the mortgage. You'd probably also need legal advice to make it watertight, but you could also not worry about that too much and just write it all down as formally as possible. It really depends if you're just trying to improve your feelings about the process or whether you really want something that you could both rely on in the event of a later split. I don't think getting married would make any make any real difference day-to-day. In law, with rare exceptions, the finances of spouses are independent from each other. However in the longer term, being married would mean your now-wife would have a stronger legal claim on half the equity in the house in the event of you splitting up.", "Not being able to keep up with demand--for at least a foreseeable 5 years, as you just said--is a pretty huge failure in itself, and I don't see them being able to last. They underestimated the market and I expect some of the big established automakers like Toyota, Ford, and Nissan to swoop down and meet the demand with their own offerings as well as with new models. Tesla, as you just noted, still has yet to be PROFITABLE, whereas Amazon has been around for some 20 years now, and HAS actually turned a profit, and they've had the huge ups and downs of just about any 20-year-old business, so your comparison of Amazon's last-quarter losses to Tesla's last-quarter losses is pretty absurd."]}
+{"query": "How do rich people guarantee the safety of their money, when savings exceed the FDIC limit?", "corpus": ["They might not have to open accounts at 12 bank because the coverage does allow multiple accounts at one institution if the accounts are joint accounts. It also treats retirement accounts a separate account. The bigger issue is that most millionaires don't have all their money siting in the bank. They invest in stocks, bonds, government bonds, international funds, and their own companies. Most of these carry risk, but they are diversified. They also can afford advisers to help them manage and protect their assets."], "neg": ["You could also look at your growth in online subscribers as a metric for valuing your company. A progressive increase in subscribers is one of the signs of a healthy online business, and vice versa. Your subscriber growth, site visitations, returning customer percentages and other subscriber based metrics should not be ignored when valuing your company.", "\"You aren't playing devils advocate, you aren't thinking at all.  If it's skilled or not is not isn't relevant to the discussion at all.  Walmart makes more than enough money to pay their employees a living wage.   The fact is that every single walmart exists today beause their employees can be subsidized by the state and federal government which means your tax dollars that you work for every single day literally is being used to pad the profit margins of walmart executives and their shareholders.  Do you understand that?  Your tax dollars are paying for the benefits of Walmarts workers, Walmart is NOT paying the benefits of their employees out of the profit they make.    What's the argument here, that because it's \"\"unskilled labor\"\" these people don't deserve to be paid enough to not be on state aid?  is that really the argument here?  If \"\"unskilled labor\"\" is so worthless how is Walmart generating some of the largest profits of any company around when most of their work force is \"\"unskilled labor?\"\"\"", "There's no limitation on what you can invest in, including trading stocks (as long as trading is not a business activity, like day-trading or investing for others). You just need to make sure you have a tax ID (either ITIN or SSN) and pay taxes on all the gains and dividends. Also, consider your home country tax laws, since you're still tax resident in your home country (most likely).", "At my farm our turkeys live their entire lives outdoors on pasture (except for the first three weeks when they need artificial heat to survive); they don't receive any medications or antibiotics; and we slaughter them ourselves without pumping their carcasses full of... whatever butterball pumps into their turkeys.  We charge $3.75 a pound, so our birds range from about $45 to $75.  What ends up being really expensive are heritage turkeys.  These are old-fashioned breeds that gain weight very slowly and have a huge feed-to-weight ratio.  They take much more feed and labor for the same amount of weight, and so are often upwards of $6.00 a pound.  We don't raise them because one of our goals is raising good food that normal folks can afford.  Also they can fly, which throws our whole raise-them-outdoors system into logistical chaos.  Naturally raised turkeys are there to be had, but you have to look for them.  Check out [Eat Wild](http://eatwild.com/) to find a pasture-based farm in your area that raises turkeys.  Good luck!", "$10k isn't really enough to make enough money to offset the extremely high risks in investing in options in this area. Taking risks is great, but a sure losing proposition isn't a risk -- it's a gamble. You're likely to get wiped out with leveraged options, since you don't have enough money to hedge your bets. Timing is critical... look at the swings in valuation in the stock market between the Bear Sterns and Lehman collapses in 2009. If you were highly leveraged in QQQQ that you bought in June 2009, you would have $0 in November. With $10k, I'd diversify into a mixture of foreign cash (maybe ETFs like FXF, FXC, FXY), emerging markets equities and commodities. Your goal should be to preserve investment value until buying opportunities for depressed assets come around.  Higher interest rates that come with inflation will be devastating to the US economy, so if I'm betting on high inflation, I want to wait for a 2009-like buying opportunity. Then you buy depressed non-cyclical equities with easy to predict cash flows like utilities (ConEd), food manufacturers (General Mills), consumer non-durables (P&G) and alcohol/tobacco. If they look solvent, buying commodity ETFs like the new Copper ETFs or interests in physical commodities like copper, timber, oil or other raw materials with intrinsic value are good too.  I personally don't like gold for this purpose because it doesn't have alot of industrial utility. Silver is a little better, but copper and oil are things with high intrinsic value that are always needed. As far as leverage goes, proceed with caution. What happens when you get high inflation? High cost of capital.", "The market is not stupid. It realises that a company is worth less after paying out dividends than before paying them. (It's obvious, since that company has just given out part of its earnings.) So after a company pays out dividends, its stock price normally drops approximately by the amount paid. Therefore if you buy, get the dividend, and immediately sell, under normal conditions you won't make any profit.", "\"TARP was ~$475 billion of loans to institutions.  Loans that are to be paid back, with interest (albeit very low interest).  A significant percentage of the TARP loans have been (or will be) paid back.  So, the final price tag of the TARP was only a few $billion (pretty low considering the scale of the program). There is ~$10 trillion in mortgage debt outstanding.  That's a much higher price tag than TARP.  Secondly, paying off the mortgages = no repayment to the government as there was with TARP.  The initial price tag of your plan would be ~$10 trillion, instead of a few $billion. Furthermore how does a government with >$15 trillion in debt already come up with an extra ~$10 trillion to pay off people's mortgages?  Should the government go deeper into debt?  Print more money and trigger inflation? (Note:  Some people like to talk about a \"\"secret bailout\"\" by the Fed, implying that the true cost of TARP was much higher than claimed by the government.  The \"\"secret bailout\"\" was a series of short-term low/no interest loans to banks.  Because they were loans, which were paid back, my point still stands.)  Some other issues to consider: Remember that the principal balance of your mortgage is only a small portion of your payments to the bank.  Over 30 years, you pay a lot of $$$ in interest to the bank (that's how banks make a profit).  Banks are expecting that revenue, and it is factored into their financial projections.  If those revenue streams suddenly disappeared, I expect it would majorly screw the up the financial industry. Many people bought houses during the real estate boom, when housing prices were inflated far beyond the \"\"real\"\" value of the house.  Is it right to overpay for these houses?  This rewards the banks for accepting the inflated value during the appraisal process.  (Loan modification forces banks to accept the \"\"real\"\" value of the house.) The financial crisis was triggered by people buying houses they could not afford.  Should they be rewarded with a free house for making poor financial decisions?\""]}
+{"query": "Who Can I Hire To Calculate the Value of An Estate?", "corpus": ["\"Generally, it would be an accountant. Specifically in the case of very \"\"private\"\" (or unorganized, which is even worse) person - forensic accountant. Since there's no will - it will probably require a lawyer as well to gain access to all the accounts the accountant discovers. I would start with a good estate attorney, who in turn will hire a forensic accountant to trace the accounts.\""], "neg": ["Aside from the market implications Victor and JB King mention, another possible reason is the dividends they pay. Usually, the dividends a company pays are dependent on the profit the company made. if a company makes less profit, the dividends turn out smaller. This might incite unrest among the shareholders, because this means that they get paid less dividends, which makes that share more likely to be sold, and thus for the price to fall.", "\"When I first started working in finance I was given a rule of thumb to decide which price you will get in the market: \"\"You will always get the worst price for your deal, so when buying you get the higher ask price and when selling you get the lower bid price.\"\" I like to think of it in terms of the market as a participant who always buys at the lowest price they can (i.e. buys from you) and sells at the highest price they can. If that weren't true there would be an arbitrage opportunity and free money never exists for long.\"", "I've had a BofA ATM screw up a deposit too. They will get it right. Call BofA or go to the same branch in the morning, explain the problem and submit a dispute. In my case, they credited my account immediately for the disputed amount.  They'll get the cash from the ATM and reconcile the amounts in the machine with your claim. It'll take a few days to sort out. It all worked out fine for me, try not to stress. They'll make it right and you should be able to get the immediate credit.", "Ignore sunk costs and look to future returns.  Although it feels like a loss to exit an investment from a loss position, from a financial standpoint you should ignore the purchase price.  If your money could be better invested somewhere else, then move it there. You shouldn't look at it as though you'll be more financially secure because you waited longer for the stock to reach the purchase price.  That's psychological, not financial. Some portion of your invested wealth is stuck in this particular stock.  If it would take three months for the stock to get back to purchase price but only two months for an alternate investment to reach that same level, then obviously faster growth is better.  Your goal is greater wealth, not arbitrarily returning certain investments to their purchase price. Investments are just instrumental.  You want more wealth.  If an investment is not performing, then ignore purchase price and sunken costs.  Look at the reasonable expectations about an investment going forward.", "\"&gt; I knew exactly what I wanted to do going into college. Now, I also did not end up doing what my first major was, but that was because an opportunity in finance presented itself surreptitiously.  Phrased alternatively, \"\"I knew *exactly* what I wanted to do, and I was *exactly* wrong about it.  Essentially, a post in support of the /u/wolfmans-brother.\"", "no u dont need to go to a top college and there's always hope. hell you'll even be able to break in even if your grades suck. find an area of finance that you're interested in, become as specific as possible, and get really, really good in that area. it isn't enough to say you're into finance. won't even be sufficient to say you're interested in trading. be as specific as possible - macro currency trading, emerging market rates volatility arbitrage, european credit - and then be the best young guy around in that area. then its just a matter of getting in front of people and getting noticed by the right people. good luck.", "I second all of this. It’s worth noting that not all estates require wealth advice. Unless it’s in the millions of dollars and you have no prior experience, I wouldn’t waste time with wealth advisors.   ML is a broker dealer, not a fiduciary."]}
+{"query": "Why not just invest in the market?", "corpus": ["\"Let me start by giving you a snippet of a report that will floor you. Beat the market? Investors lag the market by so much that many call the industry a scam.   This is the 2015 year end data from a report titled Quantitive Analysis of Investor Behavior by a firm, Dalbar. It boggles the mind that the disparity could be this bad. A mix of stocks and bonds over 30 years should average 8.5% or so. Take out fees, and even 7.5% would be the result I expect. The average investor return was less than half of this. Jack Bogle, founder of Vanguard, and considered the father of the index fund, was ridiculed. A pamphlet I got from Vanguard decades ago quoted fund managers as saying that \"\"indexing is a path to mediocrity.\"\" Fortunately, I was a numbers guy, read all I could that Jack wrote and got most of that 10.35%, less .05, down to .02% over the years. To answer the question: psychology. People are easily scammed as they want to believe they can beat the market. Or that they'll somehow find a fund that does it for them. I'm tempted to say ignorance or some other hint at lack of intelligence, but that would be unfair to the professionals, all of which were scammed by Madoff. Individual funds may not be scams, but investors are partly to blame, buy high, sell low, and you get the results above, I dare say, an investor claiming to use index funds might not fare much better than the 3.66% 30 year return above, if they follow that path, buying high, selling low. Edit - I am adding this line to be clear - My conclusion, if any, is that the huge disparity cannot be attributed to management, a 6.7% lag from the S&P return to what the average investor sees likely comes from bad trading. To the comments by Dave, we have a manager that consistently beats the market over any 2-3 year period. You have been with him 30 years and are clearly smiling about your relationship and investing decision. Yet, he still has flows in and out. People buy at the top when reading how good he is, and selling right after a 30% drop even when he actually beat by dropping just 22%. By getting in and out, he has a set of clients with a 30 year record of 6% returns, while you have just over 11%. This paragraph speaks to the behavior of the investor, not managed vs indexed.\""], "neg": ["&gt; pay in your own country is probably better  Totally untrue. Depends on your country, obviously, but I personally know several dozen H1Bs who wanted to stay here because they can make way, way more.  Agreed that the system is busted and needs significant reform to bring in a lot more qualified workers. But our situation is very, very different from that of any European country, so you can't make a direct comparison.", "What's with the price confusion in BB store and website.  Bought an $80 heart rate monitor and at checkout went on BB website.  It was $40.  Tell cashier and they change an $80 item to $40.  Told another person I saw in that area to check online.  They saved also. The next visit was to look at a turntable around $400.  They push so hard and bring this sales pitchy vibe to a $2000 turntable.  I've had numerous negative experiences.  Wish them well since competition is good but stop with the games.", "This may not be entirely scientific, but as a landlord my usual approach is just to do a search for rental properties on Craigslist for comparable homes in the neighborhood. There are all kinds of formulas professional property managers use, but in the end these listings are the ones you are going to be competing with for tenants. Also, it isn't super accurate, but online services like Zillow.com can give you some numbers for rental houses that include those that aren't currently advertising.", "You put your Michigan address. The incorporation address is of no concern for the IRS, they couldn't care less where you're incorporated - it has no effect on your tax liability. The address is used when audited, and the IRS expects you to give the address where the records are (i.e.: where the business, aka you, is physically located).", "In other words, price increases in the US are exceeding wage increases while overseas in BRIC - wage increases are exceeding price increases.   Hmm, I can't possibly figure out which one creates a more sustainable and growing economy /sarcasm. When price increases exceed wage increases, you're going to have stagnant economy.", "He's seriously blaming a memo for Nokia's problems? As if Symbian would still be selling if Elop hadn't admitted it was pathetically out of date.  Want to guess what else was going on while Nokia's market share collapsed? Android. This was the period Android went mass-market with a slew of 2.1 and 2.2 handset releases. That market share came almost exclusively at the expense of Nokia and RIM.", "20k a year for in-state university is a lot more believable (and let's leave out 'good' because then we would have to account for USNWR rankings and tuitions would definitely be higher). I'm pretty sure the private college tuition average is closer to 40k/yr, maybe even over it."]}
+{"query": "Is it a good idea to get a mortgage when buying a house, for credit reasons?", "corpus": ["It may or may not be a good idea to borrow money from your family; there are many factors to consider here, not the least of which is what you would do if you got in serious financial trouble and couldn't make your scheduled payments on the loan. Would you arrange with them to sell the property ASAP? Or could they easily manage for a few months without your scheduled payments if it were necessary? A good rule of thumb that some people follow when lending to family is this: don't do it unless you're 100% OK with the possibility that they might not pay you back at all. That said, your question was about credit scores specifically. Having a mortgage and making on-time payments would factor into your score, but not significantly more heavily than having revolving credit (eg a credit card) and making on time payments, or having a car loan or installment loan and making on time payments. I bought my house in 2011, and after years of paying the mortgage on time my credit score hasn't changed at all. MyFico has a breakdown of factors affecting your credit score here: http://www.myfico.com/crediteducation/whatsinyourscore.aspx. The most significant are a history of on-time payments, low revolving credit utilization (carrying a $4900 balance on a card with a $5000 limit is bad, carrying a $10 balance on the same card is good), and overall length of your credit history. As to credit mix, they have this to say: Types of credit in use Credit mix determines 10% of my FICO Score The FICO® Score will consider your mix of credit cards, retail accounts, installment loans, finance company accounts and mortgage loans. It's not necessary to have one of each, and it's not a good idea to open credit accounts you don’t intend to use. The credit mix usually won’t be a key factor in determining your FICO Score—but it will be more important if your credit report does not have a lot of other information on which to base a score. Have credit cards – but manage them responsibly Having credit cards and installment loans with a good payment history will raise your FICO Score. People with no credit cards tend to be viewed as a higher risk than people who have managed credit cards responsibly."], "neg": ["The era ended a long time ago.  Sears effectively carried less and less quality merchandise and consistently more garbage year over year for nearly 15 years.  The local Sears here was a constant clearance sale of lousy brand clothing and a hodge lodge of things typically done far better elsewhere.  Their television department had a selection of 6 TVs to Best Buy's 80; their lingerie department was a few random shelves mixed into heaps of their low quality house brand Jessica products and a bizarre amount of real estate committed to Vanity Fair nylon briefs that haven't been in style since '53; their tools were a random mix of shop, yard and household standards available in more orderly arrangement from any genuine home or hardware outlet; and their men's suits were 8 racks with one brand name offering and a sprinkling of hideously ugly, ill-conceived, and off-trend coloured garbage in fabrics akin to cardboard.  In short, Sears had turned into a dump.", "Absolutely, I agree with Musk that anyone should be allowed to email anyone else in their company with the goal of fixing a problem and improving the business.   That doesn't mean anyone can issue an order or decision to anyone else.  That would be complete chaos.", "\"Economic hardship is just as misleading as \"\"economic slavery\"\".  If you are working two jobs and can't afford rent... How can you better yourself?  Sure, if you are exceptionally intelligent and/or charismatic and/or exceptionally great in some other way, you could find a way out of the hole.  But if you are working two full-time jobs and are trying your best - that should be enough.  I personally am against a $15 minimum wage - even on a local level, much less a state or federal level, but I very much support legislation that ensures someone who works 85 (or 60) hours a week (that's 12 hours a day for 85 hours per week) can get by.  By \"\"getting by\"\" I mean can rent modest housing, can afford nutritious food, can afford decent health insurance, can buy clothes (maybe second-hand), can put a bit into savings, etc.  Minimum wage jobs are done by young people just entering the job market and older people with few skills.  Better to have legislation that takes that into account.  High school and college kids won't be working 60-85+ hours a week.  Save the subsidies for the people that really need them.\"", "\"Most electric vehicles effectively run on coal.  When I make my fortune and get my *LUDICROUS MODE* Tesla, my plate will be \"\"BRN COAL\"\".  Saw an article on this site recently that claimed the production of Tesla's batteries far exceeded the emissions of a regular car.\"", "\"&gt;&gt; Did President Trump...then come out saying he now opposed Medicare doing so?  &gt; Yes. So he said that.  Great, I wasn't sure we could find agreement there.  &gt; Did he ACT to make it so? Maybe, as usual, he's playing business chess...  That argument cuts both ways.  Maybe this is part of his master plan to get Medicare Part-D to negotiate drug prices, but maybe this is part of his master plan to maximize pharmaceutical company profit.  At the end of the day you have to judge a person on what he says and what he appears to do.  &gt;&gt; Has President Trump...prepare for the upcoming problems caused by global warming?  &gt; Absolutely not! Absolutely not!  I agree.  &gt; President Trump is not against any method or measure to reduce pollution or emission.  [Global warming is a serious risk to this country](https://www.americansecurityproject.org/climate-security/).  Given that it is President Trump's job to protect the country, a position of bring \"\"not against emission reductions\"\" doesn't cut it.   Thanks for answering my questions.  From your earlier replies I wasn't sure you understood how someone might see my issues as reflective of a president who is not working in the best interests of his people.  Of course you can disagree but you're not going to change my mind by dismissing what I see as tests of character and asking me to provide another.  &gt; I am not happy with everything he said or do before and after the elections.  That's great.  Like and dislike him for your own reasons and challenge both perspectives.\"", "It's good, it's more important that you are at a top school.   The industry is pretty competitive, but I go to a very much non - target school,and I landed a killer internship in sales and trading due to networking my balls off and failing a bunch of times.  My major is Finance, with a Stats minor that I'll be dropping.", "I'd prefer having it (more or less) fluent at any time, if possible... And the Swiss National Bank (SNB) will do their darndest to make this a costly option. That's exactly the point of negative interest rates. They don't want to help you saving money. So you will have to choose what to give up: liquidity, or profitability.  But for now, you still have alternatives. The way you described it one could think that all banks will soon start to charge all their clients. That's just a distortion of facts.  If you are happy with a (close to) 0 income, you might consider opening multiple bank accounts. Many banks charge the negative interest only from certain thresholds (i.e. CHF 100k). Since you're clearly a Swiss resident, that's easy to do for you.  If you don't want to give up making an income, then you have to sacrifice liquidity. There simply aren't any short term (less than 2-3 years) instruments in Swiss Franc that are both safe and yielding a positive income. Which means that you will have to take much more risk then you had with a savings account. Ask your advisor for an investment proposal, but also consider bank independent advisors."]}
+{"query": "Do bond interest rate risk premiums only compensate for the amount investors might lose?", "corpus": ["In answer to your last formulation, no. In a perfectly efficient market, different investors still have different risk tolerances (or utility functions). They're maximizing expected utility, not expected value.  The portfolios that maximize expected utility for different risk preferences are different, and thus generally have different expected values. (Look up mean-variance utility for a simple-ish example.)  Suppose you have log utility for money, u(x) = log(x), and your choice is to invest all of your money in either the risk-free bond or in the risky bond. In the risky bond, you have a positive probability of losing everything, achieving utility u(0) = -\\infty. Your expected utility after purchase of the risky bond is:  Pr(default)*u(default) + (1-Pr(default))*u(nominalValue).  Since u(default)= -\\infty, your expected utility is also negative infinity, and you would never make this investment. Instead you would purchase the risk-free bond.  But another person might have linear utility, u(x) = x, and he would be indifferent between the risk-free and risky bonds at the prices you mention above and might therefore purchase some. (In fact you probably would have bid up the price of the risk-free bond, so that the other investor strictly prefers the risky one.) So two different investors' portfolios will have different expected returns, in general, because of their different risk preferences. Risk-averse investors get lower expected value. This should be very intuitive from portfolio theory in general: stocks have higher expected returns, but more variance. Risk-tolerant people can accept more stocks and more variance, risk-averse people purchase less stocks and more bonds. The more general question about risk premia requires an equilibrium price analysis, which requires assumptions about the distribution of risk preferences among other things. Maybe John Cochrane's book would help with that---I don't know anything about financial economics. I would think that in the setup above, if you have positive quantities of these two investor types, the risk-free bond will become more expensive, so that the risky one offers a higher expected return. This is the general thing that happens in portfolio theory. Anyway. I'm not a financial economist or anything.  Here's a standard introduction to expected utility theory: http://web.stanford.edu/~jdlevin/Econ%20202/Uncertainty.pdf"], "neg": ["&gt; ive read that consumer spending stimulates an economy more than investment somewhere  Investment is necessary for an economy to grow, as is consumer spending. Neither is more important. If you lack one of those, stimulating it will do more than stimulating the other.  It's like a racing team saying the driver is more important than the car. In situations where everyone's cars are as good as they'll get, improving the driver is more important. In situations where the quality of cars differs, improving the car becomes more important.  &gt;Also, youhave the theory that decreasing the income gap helps society in many other ways  There is strong speculation that that is the case. However, it's _100% fact_ that increasing everyone's wealth helps society much more. It's why you'd rather live today than in any more egalitarian point in our past. If tinkering with income inequality gets in the way of overall wealth creation, it will do more harm than good.", "You can defer RRSP deductions to future years. So, if you purchase $20,000 in RRSPs this year but had no income, you could use this to offset your income next year when you are making, say, $100,000. For more details, see Deferring claim of significant purchase of RRSPs Note that I strongly advise you ensure you have sufficient emergency funds prior to purchasing RRSPs.", "\"They're certainly a factor.  Am I misunderstanding your comment?  The only way it seems to parse is if you're saying that a person who is \"\"earning 15K a year, no healthcare, little education, and living in poor neighborhoods ridden with theft and violence \"\" is not overweight, presumably for reasons at least related to the factors you gave as reasons.  But I don't see any obvious negative correlation between those things and obesity, which you appeared to be trying to claim.\"", "No, there is no special leniency given to first time tax payers. In general, this shouldn't be an issue. The IRS collects your taxes out of every one of your paychecks throughout the entire year in what is called a Withholding Tax. The amount that the IRS withholds is calculated on your W-4 Form that you file with your employer whenever you take a new job. The form helps you calculate the right number of allowances to claim (usually this is the number of personal exemptions, but depending upon if you work a second job, are married and your spouse works, or if you itemize, the number of allowances can be increased. WITHHOLDING TAX Withholding tax (also known as “payroll withholding”) is essentially income tax that is withheld from your wages and sent directly to the IRS by your employer. In other words, it’s like a credit against the income taxes that you must pay for the year. By subtracting this money from each paycheck that you receive, the IRS is basically withholding your anticipated tax payment as you earn it. In general, most people overestimate their tax liability. This is bad for them, because they have essentially given the IRS an interest free loan (and weren't able to use the money to earn interest themselves.) I haven't heard of any program targeted at first time tax payers to tell them to file a return, but considering that most tax payers overpay they should or they are giving the government a free grant.", "\"Last week I dropped and shattered the screen on my Nexus 4. For a quick replacement I bought a brand new unlocked Moto E from amazon for $129. I forgot that Google bought Motorola, until my new phone came and had a screen protector that had \"\"Motorola, a Google company\"\" printed on it. The phone is damn nice for a budget model, as it's unlocked, doesn't have any carrier crapware preinstalled, and is running android 4.4 vanilla. It even has gorilla glass. What it's missing is a front facing camera, or a flash for the rear one. But one thing I like better than my nexus is that it has a micro SD card slot so I was able to add 32gb to the built in 4gb. Overall it's a really nice phone, and for only $129 compares to the $400 I paid for the nexus 4 a year and a half ago, I'm quite pleased with it.\"", "Okays, so the prices we pay for goods and services aren't set by our income levels. Why should taxes be any different?  Surely they should be set by the benefits we receive from the community as measured by the market? That's what LVT is and does.", "yea, and the other half is owned by Berkshire, didn't see op mention that at all.  Also, There is something to be said about zero based budgeting, if the military used it, they wouldn't be buying $30k toilets before their fiscal year ends.  Although, Kraft was spending hundreds of millions with my company when they were bought, and I was working on the Kraft team.  Pretty much anybody over the age of 40 was let go and replaced by the next in line.  I was actually the lowest ranking member on the team and at one point I was put in a meeting to explain 100k worth of spend to the new honcho... that was pretty scary."]}
+{"query": "Why can't poor countries just print more money?", "corpus": ["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:"], "neg": ["If you believe it yourself, you could start with the fact that you look forward to only having to wait on one person instead of the dozen or so you normally wait on. It'll make him feel important and make him feel like you have your shit together.", "\"You want to be an analyst? Do you mean.. Equity research analyst? Investment banking analyst? Financial analyst? Etc...  The CFA alone isn't going to help you. I don't know why people on this board are obsessed with it. It's something you do while you are in school or once you get a job and looking to move to VP/MD level, not while you're job searching. Relevant experience &gt; CFA, all day every day  There's always some guy who says \"\"*BECAUSE* of my CFA candidacy....\"\", well you're in the minority.\"", "All Bank fees were included in the service tax ambit [For example Check bounce, issue of duplicate statement, fees charged for remittance etc]. However as quite a few Banks structured the Remittance Business to show less charges and cover the difference in the Fx rate involved, the Govt has redone the service tax and one needs to pay Rs 120 for an amount of Rs 100,000.  There is no way to avoid service tax on remittance if you are using a remittance service.", "Harvesting fresh produce is labor intensive and that costs money. As it is fresh produce is harvested using quasi-slave labor in North America, China and other parts of the world to keep prices down. Wanna know why a watermelon costs $40 in Japan and $3 in the USA? Guess which country pays legal citizens living wages to harvest produce...", "\"Can a company say \"\"StackExchange\"\" donate to a non-profit company say $5,000 in agreement that they will spend that on paying a designer for a new website? And most importantly is this donation still tax deductible? A non-profit would have to typically create a bucket for IT Services or Website design. As long as \"\"StackExchange\"\" specify they employ a profession service to get it done, there would be no issue. If \"\"StackExchange\"\" were to specify an individula/company it would be an issue.\"", "\"It's somewhat addicting - their \"\"Picture Yourself In This Job\"\" feature that shows your picture as it would appear at the top of your profile, yet with a different company/title. Always makes you wonder, and has had me look into the advertised position a few times.\"", "You're basically correct, but this may help:"]}
+{"query": "How can someone with a new job but no credit history get a loan to settle another debt?", "corpus": ["\"The more I think about this the more I think you are actually better off letting it go to collections. At least then you would be able to agree an affordable repayment schedule based on your real budget, and having a big dent in your credit score because it's gone to collections doesn't actually put you in any worse position (in terms of acquiring credit in the future) than you are now.  Whoever is the creditor on your original loan is (IMO) quite unreasonable demanding a payment in full on a given date, especially given that you say you've only been made aware of this debt recently. The courts are usually much more reasonable about this sort of thing and recognise that a payment plan over several years with an affordable monthly payment is MUCH more likely to actually get the creditor their money back than any other strategy. They will also recognise and appreciate that you have made significant efforts to obtain the money. I'm also worried about your statement about how panicked and \"\"ready to give up\"\" you are. Is there someone you can talk to? Around here (UK) we have debt counselling bureaus - they can't help with money for the actual debt itself, but they can help you with strategies for dealing with debt and will explain all parts of the process to you, what your rights and responsibilities are if it does go to court, etc. If you have something similar I suggest you contact them, even just to speak to someone and find out that this isn't the end of the world. It's a sucky situation but in a few years you'll be able to look back and at least laugh wryly at it.\""], "neg": ["Personally, I keep two regular checking accounts at different banks.  One gets a direct deposit totaling the sum of my regular monthly bills and a prorated provision for longer term regular bills like semi-annual car insurance premiums.  I leave a buffer in the account to account for the odd expensive electrical bill or rate increase or whatever.  One gets a direct deposit of the rest which I then allocate to savings and spending. It makes sense to me to separate off regular planned expenses (rent/mortgage, utility bills, insurance premiums) from spending money because it lets me put the basics of my life on autopilot.  An added benefit is I have a failover checking account in the event something happens to one of them.  I don't keep significant amounts of money in either account and don't give transfer access to the savings accounts that store the bulk of my money.  I wear a tinfoil hat when it comes to automatic bank transfers and account access... It doesn't make sense to me to keep deposits separate from spending, it makes less sense to me to spend off of a savings account.", "I took the BAT after my first semester of my freshman year. At the time I was winding up my microeconomics class. While I lacked the classical schooling, I've been investing for the past 3 years, so I'm pretty familiar with stocks, bonds, derivatives, and the like. I ended up scoring in the 50th percentile, which I was pleasantly surprised by.  The test is a mile wide and an inch deep. The math is incredibly easy, and it's all very straight forward. What got me was the accounting. I had no accounting experience beyond just examining a very basic balance sheet from time to time.", "US government bonds and bonds issued by companies with a safe track record and consistently high ratings, for the past years, by credit agencies. But the time line of your investment, which is quite short, maybe a factor of choosing the right bonds. If you are not going to touch the money then CD maybe an option or an interest bearing savings account.", "I've heard higher end jobs suck too.  It's the polar opposite of what a lot of silicon valley strives for: you get no stake in anything, you are only as good as your last project, and you have hella rough deadlines.  A lot of young devs go in with a romanticized view of Bezos and what he's done.", "Electrical engineer here, of my friends and colleagues their success in business has been directly correlated with the work they put into becomming skilled at what they do.  I will admit the super-success of becomming a billionaire depends on a great deal of luck in addition to all that hard work, but even the unlucky, hard working ones are living comfortable lives.", "\"It's impossibly difficult to time the market. Generally speaking, you should buy low and sell high. Picking 25% as an arbitrary ceiling on your gains seems incorrect to me because sometimes you'll want to hold a stock for longer or sell it sooner, and those decisions should be based on your research (or if you need the money), not an arbitrary number. To answer your questions: If the reasons you still bought a stock in the first place are still valid, then you should hold and/or buy more. If something has changed and you can't find a reason to buy more, then consider selling. Keep in mind you'll pay capital gains taxes on anything you sell that is not in a tax-deferred (e.g. retirement) account. No, it does not make sense to do a wash sale where you sell and buy the same stock. Capital gains taxes are one reason. I'm not sure why you would ever want to do this -- what reasons were you considering? You can always sell just some of the shares. See above (and link) regarding wash sales. Buying more of a stock you already own is called \"\"dollar cost averaging\"\". It's an effective method when the reasons are right. DCA minimizes variance due to buying or selling a large amount of shares at an arbitrary single-day price and instead spreads the cost or sale basis out over time. All that said, there's nothing wrong with locking in a gain by selling all or some shares of a winner. Buy low, sell high!\"", "This isn't an article discussing the business aspects of bitcoin.  It's a comment on the price movement of bitcoin.  Do we regularly comment about the gyrations of commodities and currencies on this thread?  I tend to find talk of those things on subs like /r/finance and /r/investing."]}
+{"query": "Where to find detailed information about stock?", "corpus": ["\"1. Most of the information you want can be found in the annual report of the company. Go to their official website, look for shareholders information and then download the annual report. This will answer: \"\"number of issued stock, voting rights, if there is more than one kind of stock, etc. In summary all the legal and formal details of a given stock. 2. After reading the annual report, check on investors websites to see if you can find analyst reports written on this company. You can sometimes find them in some free newsletters. These reports will complete the information you have found in the annual report like \"\"if the dividends are always paid, etc.\"\"\""], "neg": ["And that's fine, it's THEIR network that may or may not provide Internet access, they can do what they want with your data (redirect requests or block certain access) while you're using it just as landowners can tell you where you can go and what you can do on their land. Sure, it's shitty, but it's their right to be shitty about it.  If you don't want to be subject to that, don't connect to their WiFi network.", "\"I use online banking as much as possible and I think it may help you get closer to your goal.  I see you want to know where the money goes and save time so it should work for you like it did for me. I used to charge everything or write checks and then pay a big visa bill.  My problem was I never knew exactly how much I spent because neither Visa or check writing are record systems. They just generate transactions records.  I made it a goal use online banking to match my spending to the available cash and ended up ok usually 9-10 months out of the year. I started with direct deposit of my paycheck.  Each Saturday, I sit down and within a half hour, I've paid the bills for the week and know where I stand for the following week.  Any new bill that comes in, I add it to online banking even if it's not a recurring expense.  I also pull down cash from the ATM but just enough to allow me to do what I have to do.  If it's more than $30 or $40 bucks, I use the debit card so that expense goes right to the online bank statement. My monthly bank statement gives me a single report with everything listed.  Mortgage, utilities, car payment, cable bill, phone bill, insurance, newspaper, etc...  It does not record these transactions in generic categories; they actually say Verizon or Comcast or Shop Rite.  I found this serves as the only report I need to see what's happening with my budget.   It may take a while to change to a plan like this one. but you'll now have a system that shows you in a single place where the money goes.  Move all bills that are \"\"auto-pay\"\" to the online system and watch your Visa bill go down.  The invested time is likely what you're doing now writing checks.  Hope this helps.\"", "Outsourcing/offshoring.  The idea is that you give away all work that is not core to cheaper staff who do not work for you. Sure, they are cheaper but it means that the basic knowhow is sitting outside your company making it much more difficult to build up the expertise and management background for tomorrow.  I work as an independent consultant in trading systems. Companies use me because they do not want to build and retain in-house knowhow. Some of the bigger consultancies will be pleased to take the juniors that you trained and to sell them back to you at 5x the price when they become senior.", "\"You have 60 days from the time it came out to deposit the money into an IRA. Tell the IRA custodian it's not a 2012 deposit, but a rollover from a 401(k).  Last - it's practice for these withdrawals to have 20% withheld. Be sure to deposit the full amount (i.e. add back in the 20% withheld) and also be sure it's all reconciled on your 2012 tax return.  Edit - to answer your comment/question. \"\"Most\"\" likely, if the account was worth, say $10,000, you would have only received $8000, as 20% is withheld for taxes. So, you have $8000 in your hands, but to roll over the full amount, you come up with an extra $2000, and give the new IRA custodian $10000. Now, in April, 2013, you need to remember the old 401(k) custodian sent the IRS that $2000. It's tax you paid, and all other things being equal, you'll get it back then.\"", "So, if we can't trust people to know what they want, who makes the decisions about what they should have, and what gives them that right?  I'm not suggesting environments don't play a role in human development, I'm suggesting that people need to learn to deal with the realities of their environments as part of their character growth. When you say that not being able to resist buying skittles is a serious problem, while there are still people living on the streets, I think you need some perspective.  I'd wager that what you're seeing as you get older is the poverty trap, which is a real problem, but which is caused by barriers to expanding earnings much more than by irrational spending (though it is a factor).  As for the insult, that's the impression your arguments gave, and I'd still like to know whether you believe you yourself need to be protected from these marketing practices, or you only feel that this is only necessary for others (implying they are somehow your inferiors in their ability to self-manage).", "In the United States taxes on the sale of a principal residence are based on the difference between the sale price and the cost of the home. Assuming you meet the requirements you can shelter 250,000 or 500,000 of gains from the sale of your principal residence.  This calculation is not related to the loan balance. The basic equation is sales price minus purchase price. It get a little more complex because some costs to purchase and sell the home are included in the calculation, or if you made renovations to the house that will increase your costs and decrease your gains. Trying to decrease the loan balance just before selling the house would just be paying yourself that money at the settlement table. It could save you some money on interest between now and settlement but emptying your bank account to save a few bucks doesn't seem worth it. I would also prefer to have the money in the bank to pay for some expenses that will popup getting the house sold, you moving, and the settlement date.", "\"&gt;From what I've read, all the testimony has been roundly discredited.  Then you read wrong. It hasn't been discredited. The evidence is right fucking there. Read the 200 page report, read even a part of it. [Here is the evidence, maybe this will finally shut you up?](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10000872396390444799904578048673157864186.html)  &gt;I'm just looking for actual evidence while you keep saying he needs to prove himself innocent instead of the accusers proving him guilty.  ITS RIGHT FUCKING THERE!!!  Do you not see why it's so frustrating to argue with people like you? You're basically a creationist saying \"\"Where is the evidence for evolution?\"\" Again, you don't have to look very fucking far to find it. Instead you're burying your head in the sand and saying \"\"Where is the evidence?\"\"\""]}
+{"query": "Wash Sales and Day Trading", "corpus": ["Great question! It can be a confusing for sure -- but here's a great example I've adapted to your scenario: As a Day Trader, you buy 100 shares of LMNO at $100, then after a large drop the same day, you sell all 10 shares at $90 for a loss of $1,000. Later in the afternoon, you bought another 100 shares at $92 and resold them an hour later at $97 (a $500 profit), closing out your position for the day. The second trade had a profit of $500, so you had a net loss of $500 (the $1,000 loss plus the $500 profit).  Here’s how this works out tax-wise: The IRS first disallows the $1,000 loss and lets you show only a profit of $500 for the first trade (since it was a wash). But it lets you add the $1,000 loss to the basis of your replacement shares. So instead of spending $9,200 (100 shares times $92), for tax purposes, you spent $10,200 ($9,200 plus $1,000), which means that the second trade is what caused you to lose the $500 that you added back (100 x $97 = $9,700 minus the 100 x $102 = $10,200, netting $500 loss). On a net basis, you get to record your loss, it just gets recorded on the second trade. The basis addition lets you work off your wash-sale losses eventually, and in your case, on Day 3 you would recognize a $500 final net loss for tax purposes since you EXITED your position. Caveat: UNLESS you re-enter LMNO within 30 days later (at which point it would be another wash and the basis would shift again). Source: http://www.dummies.com/personal-finance/investing/day-trading/understand-the-irs-wash-sale-rule-when-day-trading/"], "neg": ["\"I was a school board member and district negotiator for the teacher contract.  I came off the board in the last couple years.  In this case, it doesn't seem like tenure is the issue.  This is a seniority issue.  Teacher unions, like most unions are strict seniority shops.  That is basically the only thing that matters.  Tenured teachers can be let go without cause essentially only for budget reasons.  Districts/schools will identify which grade level (for elementary) or what program/subject the reduction in staffing will occur.  The lowest senior person is let go first regardless of skill or past performance.  Interestingly, if a teacher is certified to teach in more than 1 subject area, this can also cause chaos.  If that same teacher is the one who is reduced from a given department and they have higher seniority than the department where they also have certification, they will bump that other teacher thus taking their job.  Let's say you have a teacher who is certified in science and math in the high school setting.  They are number 90 out of 200 on the seniority list.  This teacher may have been teaching science for 10 years, but the other teachers in that department are all higher on the seniority list.  The lowest senior teacher in the math department is number 100 out of 200.  If the district identifies that a reduction of 1 science teacher is necessary, that teacher gets to bump the math teacher out of the job (thus getting laid off) so that they can fill the math slot even though they haven't taught math in over 10 years.    While not in all cases, often the teachers union negotiators set the stage for these type of layoffs.  Usually districts have only so many resources to go around.  Their funding is set for them by the state and any local operating levy needs to be voted into place - which can be difficult.  Also recognize that the teachers at the table in the negotiating session are the more senior teachers in the district (since they have been around longer) and are much less likely to lose their jobs due to staff reductions.  If the teachers union negotiates a raise that is higher than the district can support with the same number of teachers, the number of teachers must be reduced.  If you think the negotiators are there for all the teachers you are wrong.  One of the teachers I negotiated with once said the following, \"\"We would rather a higher compensation package at the expense of teacher reductions.\"\"  The system is designed to defend teacher compensation and provide job security as the first priority...not to provide the best education for our kids.  As with this teacher, they are losing a great asset because an outdated and terrible system was being upheld.\"", "From personal experience: Loan Impact It does impact your ability to take out other loans (to an extent) Your first investment property is going to go against your debt to income levels, so if you take out a loan, you've essentially decreased the amount you can borrow before you hit a lender's debt to income ceiling.   Two things about that: 1) I'm assuming you have a primary mortgage - if that's the case they will factor what you are already paying for your primary house + any car loans + any student loans, etc.  Once you've successfully taken out a mortgage for your investment property, you're probably close to your debt to income ceiling for any other loans.  2) There is usually a 2 year time period where this will matter the most.  Once you've rented out this property for 2 years, most financial institutions will consider a percentage of the rent as income.  At this point you can then take on more debt if you choose. Other (Possibly Negative) Impacts and Considerations Maintenance Costs Renovations Turnovers Taxes and Insurance Downpayments and interest Income tax Advertising costs Property Management costs Closing costs and Legal fees Vacancies HOA fees Other (Possibly Positive) Impacts and Considerations Passive Income as long as the numbers are right and you have a good property manager Tax deductions (And depreciation) Rent has low correlation to the market Other investment alternatives: Stocks Reits (not directly comparable to investment properties) Long story short- can be a hassle but if the numbers are right, it can be a good investment. There's a series of articles further explaining these above listed components in detail.", "\"The other answers demonstrate that you'll receive a paltry amount of money in two days, by comparing to things like wages, the cost of electricity, etc. But the real point is you're incurring risk by paying late, in particular, the realistic risk of the post office messing up. That's not worth it, and it's this kind of overhead that people usually mess up when trying to optimize their finances. (More commonly, it's \"\"I can save 5 cents by doing this, but there's about a 400% chance I'm going to mess everything else up since I don't have infinite mental bandwidth). You asked a good and important question, but for your actual situation I must emphasize it's terrible personal finance to risk dropping your books for a superficial optimization.\"", "\"All very good answers for the most part, but I have a definition for Good and Bad debt which is a little bit different from those mentioned here so far. The definitions come from Robert Kiyosaki in his book \"\"Rich Dad Poor Dad\"\", which I have applied to all my debts. Good Debt - Good Debt is debt used to fund a money making asset, an asset which puts money into your pockets (or bank account) each month. In other words the income produced by that asset is more than all the expenses (including the interest repayments on the debt) associated with the asset. Bad Debt - Bad Debt is debt used to fund both money losing assets and non-assets, where the interest repayments on the debt are more than any income (if any at all) produced by the goods or services the debt was used to purchase, so that you need to take money out of your pockets (or bank account) each month to sustain the debt. Based on this definition a mortgage used to purchase the house you live in would be classed as bad debt. Why? Because you are making interest repayments on the mortgage and you have other expenses related to the house like rates and maintenance, but you have no income being produced by the house. Even a mortgage on an investment (or rental) property where the rent is not enough to cover all the expenses is considered to be bad debt. For the debt on an investment property to be considered as good debt, the rent would have to cover the full interest payments and all other expenses. In other words it would need to be a positively geared (or a cashflow positive) asset. Why is this definition important in distinguishing between good and bad debt? Because it looks at the cashflow associated with the debt and not the profit. The main reason why most investors and businesses end up selling up or closing down is due to insufficient cashflow. It may be a profitable business, or the value of the property may have increased since you bought it, but if you don't have enough cash every month to pay the bills associated with the asset you will need to sell it. If the asset produces enough cashflow to pay for all the expenses associated with the asset, then you don't have to fund the asset through other sources of income or savings. This is important in two ways. Firstly, if you are working and suddenly lose your job you don't have to worry about paying for the asset as it is more than paying for itself. Secondly, if you don't have to dig into your other source/s of income or savings to sustain the asset, then theoretically you can buy an unlimited number of similar type assets. Just a note regarding the mortgage to buy a house you live in being classed as bad debt. Even though in this definition it is considered as bad debt, there are usually other factors which still can make this kind of debt worthwhile. Firstly, you have to live somehere, and the fact that you have to live somwhere means that if you did not buy the house you would probably be renting instead, and still be stuck with a similar monthly payment. Secondly, the house will still appreciate over the long term so in the end you will end up with an asset compared to nothing if you were renting. Just another note to mention the definition provided by John Stern \"\"...debt is a technology that allows borrower to bring forward their spending; it's a financial time machine...\"\", that's a clever way to think of it, especially when it comes to good debt.\"", "I wrote about this a while back: http://blog.investraction.com/2006/10/mutual-funds-dividend-option-or-growth.html In short: Growth options of a mutual fund scheme don't pay out any money, they reinvest the dividend they receive. Dividend options pay out some money, at different intervals, based on the surplus they accumulate. In India, the options have very similar underlying portfolios, so HDFC Equity Fund (Growth) and HDFC Equity Fund (dividend) will have the same percentage allocation to each stock. Update: I also have a video you might want to see on the subject: http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Bx8QtnccfZk", "1.) The majority of credit and loans do not go to publicly traded companies.   2.) Companies can and do trade commodities with paper.   3.) Can't keep up with all the crazy you are spouting.   Smart people lose their shirt in commodities all the time, it's not a fun place to play. If you really believe the majority of publicly traded companies are going to lose their value, then invest in them when they do. Money always has to go somewhere. Insurance, pensions, governments, businesses, don't like to just have cash sit there because nothing happens (you can point to Apple, etc but they're making acquisitions) anyways, they need to buy and sell and will always have to do it.   My last piece of advice, look up the Hunt brothers.", "I'm a libertarian and I just want him to present a coherent message occasionally so I know what we are in for. He can't!   The buck used to stop at the President of the United States. This ADHD afflicted child will not own anything but his own fake news. Sad!"]}
+{"query": "How to shop for mortgage rates ?", "corpus": ["I asked my realtor, but she recommends to go with just one banker   (her friend), and not to do any rate shopping. You need a new realtor. Anyone who would offer such advice is explicitly stating they are not advocating on your behalf.  I'd do the rate shopping first. When you make an offer, once it's accepted, time becomes critical. The seller expects you to go to closing in so many days after signing the P&S. The realtor is specifically prohibited from pushing a particular lender on you. She should know better.  In response to comment - Rate Shopping can be as simple as making a phone call, and having a detailed conversation. Jasper's list can be conveyed verbally. Prequalification is the next step, where a bank actually writes a letter indicating they have a high confidence you will qualify for the loan."], "neg": ["The companies which define the major indexes do not derive profit directly from the indexes. They are typically brokerages, which use the indexes as a tool for discussing investment options with their clients and as a publicity tool to remind the public that they are long-standing, respected firms whom we might want to consider working with. Can't mention the Dow without being reminded of Dow Jones, for example. Likewise the Standard & Poor's 500 reminds us that S&P is still going strong. There may also be some slight market manipulation opportunities in choosing which specific stocks are included in each index, but since investors rarely follow an index exactly as originally defined I'm not convinced that's significant. And the mix included in each index changes relatively rarely and has to be justified by what the index claims to be representing.", "Amazon uses their AWS profits to subsidize all their other businesses. They can afford to sell groceries at a loss until most of the competition goes out of business. It's good for consumers in the short term, but I wouldn't say it's capitalism working as intended. Unprofitable businesses are supposed to fold, not be propped up indefinitely by deep pocketed investors. It's monopolistic behavior without the monopoly, which I don't think we've ever seen on this scale before, so we aren't sure what, if anything, to do about it.", "The main reason I'm aware of that very few individuals do this sort of trading is that you're not taking into account the transaction costs, which can and will be considerable for a small-time investor. Say your transaction costs you $12, that means in order to come out ahead you'll have to have a fairly large position in a given instrument to make that fee back and some money. Most smaller investors wouldn't really want to tie up 5-6 figures for a day on the chance that you'll get $100 back. The economics change for investment firms, especially market makers that get special low fees for being a market maker (ie, offering liquidity by quoting all the time).", "This is something you are going to have to work out with the leasing company because your goal is to get them to make an exception to their normal rules. I'm a little surprised they wouldn't take 6 months pre-payment, plus documentation of your savings. One option might be to cash in the bonds (since you said they are mature), deposit them in a savings account, and show them your account balance. That documentation of enough to pay for the year, plus an offer to pay 6 months in advance would be pretty compelling. Ask the property manage if that's sufficient. And if the lease is for one year and you're willing to pay the entire year in advance, I can't see how they would possibly object. If your employment prospects are good (show them your resume and explain why you are moving and what jobs you are seeking) a smart property manager would realize you'll be an excellent, low-risk tenant and will make an effort to convince the parent company that you should live there.", "\"Fundamentals:  Then remember that you want to put 20% or more down in cash, to avoid PMI, and recalculate with thatmajor chunk taken out of your savings.  Many banks offer calculators on their websites that can help you run these numbers and figure out how much house a given mortgage can pay for. Remember that the old advice that you should buy the largest house you can afford, or the newer advice about \"\"starter homes\"\", are both questionable in the current market. =========================== Added:  If you're willing to settle for a rule-of-thumb first-approximation ballpark estimate: Maximum mortgage payment: Rule of 28. Your monthly mortgage payment should not exceed 28 percent of your gross monthly income (your income before taxes are taken out).  Maximum housing cost: Rule of 32. Your total housing payments (including the mortgage, homeowner’s insurance, and private mortgage insurance [PMI], association fees, and property taxes) should not exceed 32 percent of your gross monthly income. Maximum Total Debt Service: Rule of 40. Your total debt payments, including your housing payment, your auto loan or student loan payments, and minimum credit card payments should not exceed 40 percent of your gross monthly income. As I said, many banks offer web-based tools that will run these numbers for you. These are rules that the lending industy uses for a quick initial screen of an application. They do not guarantee that you in particular can afford that large a loan, just that it isn't so bad that they won't even look at it. Note that this is all in terms of mortgage paymennts, which means it's also affected by what interest rate you can get, how long a mortgage you're willing to take, and how much you can afford to pull out of your savings. Also, as noted, if you can't put 20% down from savings the bank will hit you for PMI. Standard reminder: Unless you explect to live in the same place for five years or more, buying a house is questionable financially. There is nothing wrong with renting; depending on local housing stock it may be cheaper. Houses come with ongoung costs and hassles rental -- even renting a house -- doesn't. Buy a house only when it makes sense both financially and in terms of what you actually need to make your life pleasant. Do not buy a house only because you think it's an investment; real estate can be a profitable business, but thinking of a house as simultaneously both your home and an investment is a good way to get yourself into trouble.\"", "\"&gt; \"\"With a well-established brand, differentiated from other casual dining restaurants by its Garden Bar, we see significant opportunities to drive value for Ruby Tuesday,\"\" Aziz Hashim, the founder of NRD, said in a statement.  This gives me hope that they aren't going to get rid of the salad bar (even if he did call it the wrong name...). That was the best part about Ruby Tuesdays. The burgers and other food may have been mediocre, but there was always something enjoyable about having a beer with a great salad bar.\"", "\"Wrong. Business lending has boomed under QE.. does the term \"\"cov-lite\"\" sound familiar? That's because there's so much liquidity, that they're willing to lend to companies with little to no restrictions. There is so much credit to go around, that a \"\"High Yield Bond\"\" can price at L+800 bps.   When you're taking all the risk of a HY issuer, and maxing your return at 8.5%-9%, it's not too appealing. Instead, you could take a bit more risk, but also get all of the potential upside of equities.   1.  Fed buys assets, injects money into banks.   2.  Banks, flush with liquidity, need to put their balance sheet to use and begin lending to everyone.   2.  Bond market flooded with supply, causes bond yields to drop to historic lows.     3.  Investors don't enjoy limiting upside for incredibly low returns, and begin flooding equity markets to get some sort of yield.    Business lending is booming, making equities the only place to get larger returns.\""]}
+{"query": "Equity As Part of Compensation", "corpus": ["With LLCs, the operation agreement can define different shares for different kinds of income or equity, and different partners may be treated differently. In essence, you can end up with a different stock class for each partner/member. So you need to read the grant document and the OA really carefully to know what you're getting. You may want to have a lawyer read through it for you. This may be way more complicated than classes of shares in a corporation."], "neg": ["Mr. Raphael Lilla is a business enthusiast, a philanthropist and an honoured member of the International Society of Business Leaders. He comes with over 20 years of experience working in the Swiss and International financial markets and is currently operating as the Executive Director of SBC Group AG, Switzerland, and as Managing Director of Swiss Bullion Company International LLC, Dubai.", "\"I worked on a competing app a few yeas back. The primary use case isn't high-rollers wanting to save some money by selling off unused seats, it's the charter company wanting to recoup costs on completely empty planes. If they fly someone from NYC to Seattle and that person isn't returning to NYC for a week, they aren't just going to leave the plane there for the duration. So they need to reroute the plane to the next pickup point—and usually, they're doing that with no one on the plane, which is a \"\"dead leg\"\" in industry parlance.   The selection is pretty limited (compared to commercial airlines), and due to FAA regulations, they have limits on how far in advance they can advertise, so it's limited to basically 24 hours notice. You'll almost never be able to use any of these services to fly both ways on a trip. All the existing services I'm aware of also require chartering the entire plane, not just getting a seat, which leaves you to try to find a large group of people to share the cost.\"", "\"Like most other things, this is \"\"sometimes,\"\" but not always true. Sometimes banks will be willing to sell at a discount, sometimes they will hold out for \"\"full price.\"\" But if you want a discount, this is a good place to \"\"look.\"\"\"", "Jew sponsorship is the way forward in politics, show business, and the media, why would mercantile operations be any different .. high profile acts Andy Warhol, Martin Luther King, and William F Buckley, were hands on in the 1963 killing, in Dallas Tx. of President John F Kennedy! [JFK Assassination Nutshell](http://www.dockersunion.net/vb/showthread.php?632-JFK-Assassination-Nutshell)  Branson's silence on the same issues, indicates his operations are similarly at the discretion of Jews .. he operates airlines, whence the entire world's airport security infrastructure, is in the hands of Mossad, the Israeli intelligence service!   The TSA screenings in the US, with groping, X Rays and full body scanners, came into being after a series of transparent hoaxes, involving an underwear bomb in one instance, and an alleged shoe bomb in another, and it don't need a loser to explain, that can not be good for business!  If ppl are driven away from air transport, because of the same invasive airport security measures, and because it is by now common knowledge, the entire world's air fleets civil and military,  are compromised by computer software, that enables planes to be taken over in flight,   And to be flown by ground operators .. witness numerous otherwise unexplained air crashes, and the hijacking and rerouting of planes, September 11, 2001, by Zionist terrorists, aided and abetted by American traitors in politics and the media!", "There's a few options you may want to look into. First, I'm writing from an US point of view, I do not know if these are available in Russia.  First look into DRIPS (Dividend Reinvestment Plans). These seem tailor made for your request. They are plans set up by companies that pay dividends. If you own at least one share (costing no more than say $100 often less), then these companies will take the dividends paid on these shares and automatically buy more shares as the income from the dividends pile up. This is a low cost of entry way of getting in on many high quality stocks. Stalwart stocks such as GE and many utility and real estate stocks (REITs) offer this.  Check out these links: Secondly you can look at brokerages that specialize in buying smaller amount of stocks on a regular basis to simulate a DRIP, ShareBuilder will allow you to invest say $50 or $100 a month into one or more stocks. However, at smaller amounts, their commission fees can eat in to your returns.  Folio investing does the same thing as Sharebuilder. It's worth looking at them both and comparing their commissions and other features", "In the case of HP, in the early to mid 1990's they had done really well, but by the late 90's the board and shareholders wanted to see even more profits thanks to the internet boom. They ousted their CEO Platt, who rose through the HP ranks, brought in Fiorina who was from AT&amp;T (old Long Distance AT&amp;T not the SBC/Cingular one we have now), who over-promised and never delivered and basically forced HP in buying Compaq which nearly destroyed HP.  The only reason why HP is still around today is thanks to its business line of workstations and printers. The company made many bad decisions during Fiorini tenure which was amazing that anyone trusted her, but I'm guessing she was great at hissy fits. Somehow she has made a name for herself and is now trying politics and her type of leadership fits perfectly with the current republican party.", "A lot of these schemes fail to take into account the time/effort you have to spend in order to extract the small amount of profit you would get.  If there were easy money to be made, people would start making it and the company that was allowing themselves to be swindled would put an end to that deal.  So these things usually don't last. You used to be able to order dollar coins from the mint via credit card, with no shipping.  This was risk free and allowed you to earn credit card points.  But the mint has effectively plugged this hole."]}
+{"query": "Is it possible to borrow money to accrue interest, and then use that interest to pay back the borrower + fees?", "corpus": ["No.  The WSJ prime rate is 4.25%, even the Fed prime rate is 1.75%, way above the 1.20% you'll be making from your savings account. If you are high worth individual with great credit history, the bank might give you a personal loan at 4.25%. They won't care what you do with it as long as they get their payments. If you are not that creditworthy, they'll ask for a collateral, you can mortgage your house for example. It ends up being the sames thing, you get your money and do what you want with it. If you can make more than the interest rate the bank gave you, great, you made profit. The bank however won't agree to lend you money at 0.6% (1/2 of the 1.2% APY your savings account will bring). Why would they when they can loan that at prime rate of 4.25%?? The closest you can get to something like this is if you are a hot-shot wall street money manager with track record of making big profits. In that case the bank might put some money in your fund for you to manage, but that's not something a regular person can do."], "neg": ["I have never seen any of my mobile phone providers report any data to any credit agency. They tend to only do that if you don't pay on time. Maybe sometimes it helps, but from my experience over the last decade - it must be some very rare times.", "\"All things being equal, a defined benefit pension is far better than an IRA or a 401(k).  Think about it this way - let's say you can have a guaranteed $100 a month*, or the chance at $100 a month.  Which is better?   Now, obviously, your tolerance for risk is the difference - but this is the beauty of a defined benefit plan. Your employer is picking up the risk.  Assuming that the pool of investments is about the same (which unless if their funds are tremendously under performing they are), the question is, who takes the risk - you or them? Especially if you are moving into a new position, having a defined benefit plan is like having a risk-free asset in your portfolio.  It increases your safety.  The only reason to roll this over into a 401(k) or IRA is if your expected value (risk * payout) is better.  A worked example. If half the time you would earn more than $100 and half the time less, then you could imagine the two as being equally good. Only if you really love risk would you take that chance.  In reality, only half the investments out there will \"\"beat\"\" the average, and as such, you actually have less than a 50/50 shot of beating a DB - unless if there are really low returns to it.  More likely, I suspect you are over-estimating your ability to get a higher return.\"", "In the case of HP, in the early to mid 1990's they had done really well, but by the late 90's the board and shareholders wanted to see even more profits thanks to the internet boom. They ousted their CEO Platt, who rose through the HP ranks, brought in Fiorina who was from AT&amp;T (old Long Distance AT&amp;T not the SBC/Cingular one we have now), who over-promised and never delivered and basically forced HP in buying Compaq which nearly destroyed HP.  The only reason why HP is still around today is thanks to its business line of workstations and printers. The company made many bad decisions during Fiorini tenure which was amazing that anyone trusted her, but I'm guessing she was great at hissy fits. Somehow she has made a name for herself and is now trying politics and her type of leadership fits perfectly with the current republican party.", "US Bank just introduced this feature, but they want $.50 per deposit!  No way man. Schwab has an Android App I have used a dozen times.   Very easy and pretty consistent.  It worked on folded checks, pictures on a reflective background (kitchen table top), big company issued checks and of course personal checks. Very positive feeling from this app and the ability to deposit.", "Online you can find better than average free psychic chat room. Psychic readings exactness can change contingent on your association with a specific otherworldly peruser. It doesn't make a difference whether one is ensured or a world acclaimed psychic, nobody can offer flawlessness with regards to precise free psychic chat room expectations constantly. There are numerous approaches to look for direction yet a talk perusing can furnish you with and encounter that most nearly takes after an in person session since you can see one another up close and personal.", "It's definitely broken window fallacy. The entire premise is that vehicle accidents cost money and productivity. If they can be avoided, we will be more productive. If we had technology that made car insurance obsolete, everyone in that industry could do another productive activity.  Textbook broken window fallacy.", "Stop government subsidies of student loans which leads to artificially inflated college prices.  Encourage colleges to be more upfront about employment prospects and ROI for specific degrees.  Or just eliminate 4 year degrees all together and go with nano-degrees.  Let the market decide whats in demand and valuable.  Next question."]}
+{"query": "Rental Application Fees", "corpus": ["Slightly abbreviated version of the guidance from NOLO.com California state law limits credit check or application screening fees landlords  can charge prospective tenants and specifies what landlords must do when accepting these types of fees. (Cal. Civ. Code § 1950.6.)  Here are key provisions: I am not a lawyer, but it would seem you have two options if you catch a landlord violating these rules. An idea to avoid the whole problem in the first place: Get a copy of your credit report yourself and take a copy with you to meet the landlord. If they want an application fee, ask why they need it making it clear you know the above law. If they say for a credit report offer to give them a copy in lieu of the fee."], "neg": ["\"Have the stock certificate in with a letter from the previous owner of the company from what I can tell in the letter these stocks were distributed from the owner himself stating \"\"after evaluation we have determined that your investment in this company is worth 10,000 shares at $1.00 a piece\"\" as well as I believe these shares were also acquired when the company was going through name changes or their company was bought\"", "A CFD is like a bet. Bookies don't own horses or racetracks but you still pay them and they pay you if the horses win. If you buy a CFD the money goes to the firm you bought it from and if the stock price changes in your favour, they will pay you. However, if it goes against you they may ask you for more money than you originally invested to cover your losses. Constacts for difference are derivatives, i.e. you gain on the change in the price or delta of something rather than on its absolute value. Someone bets one way and is matched with someone (or perhaps more than one) betting the other way. Both parties are bound by the contract to pay or be payed on the outcome. One will win and the other will necessarily lose.  It's similar in concept to a spread bet, although spread bets often have a fixed timescale whereas CFDs do not and CFDs generally operate via the payment of a commission rather than via charges included in the spread. There's more information on both CFDs and spread betting here If somone has a lot of CFDs that might affect the stock price if it's known about as others may buy/sell real stock to either make the CFD pay or may it not pay depending on whether they think they can make money on it. Otherwise CFDs don't have much of an effect on stock prices.", "I have a few recommendations/comments: The trick here is to make it clear to the dealer that you will not be getting a new car from them and their only hope of making some money is to sell you your own car. You need to be prepared to walk away and follow through. DON'T buy a new car from them even if you end up turning it in! They could still come back a day later and offer a deal. Leasing a new car every 3 years is not the best use of money. You have to really, really like that new car feeling every three years and be willing to pay a premium for it. If you're a car nut (like me) and want to spend money on a luxury car, it's far wiser to purchase a slightly used luxury vehicle, keep it for 8+ years, and that way you won't have a car payment half the time!", "Emergency Data Recovery by a SSAE 16 / Class 10 ISO 4 Cleanroom Certified Company in Indianapolis. Secure Data Recovery Services was the first data recovery company to earn an SSAE 16 certification and one of the only firms with an SAS 70 Type II certification. We use third-party consultants to audit and test our facilities several times per year in order to meet the requirements of these certifications.", "Look at [Nike's 10K Annual Report From 2016](http://s1.q4cdn.com/806093406/files/doc_financials/2016/ar/docs/nike-2016-form-10K.pdf).  It is bull.  About 50% of their main business comes from North America.    Big businesses suck for this reason.  Small business owners get taxed more than you.  (Their effective tax rate in 2016 was 18.7%)", "Stay out of the big four banks and pick an online bank.  Most online banks don't have fees for incoming wire.  Ally and Capital One 360 to name a few. You can also try credit unions.  DCU doesn't charge any fees for incoming wire.  Alliant Credit Union doesn't charge fees for incoming wires. USAA too doesn't charge a fee.", "Can someone please explain the following in more detail please. I'm not exactly sure how and why synthetics work. &gt; Instead of having credit default swap reference a single company like Exxon, J.P Morgan bundled together a large, diversified basket of credit derivatives that referenced hundreds of corporate credits... those who invested in J.P Morgan's invention didn't own a piece of the actual corporate loan. Instead, they owned credit default swaps - the performance of which was determined by the performance of the underlying corporate credits.  This is from *All the Devils are Here* by Bethany Mclean and Joe Nocera"]}
+{"query": "Why do I see multiple trades of very small quantities?", "corpus": ["\"Or it could be a Robinhood user just messing around with their free commissions. I've seen \"\"people that work for organizations\"\" and other analysts go crazy over some completely benign activity. It is like playing poker with a newbie, unpredictable.\""], "neg": ["&gt;You know how your cell phone battery gets shittier and shittier over time until you either get a new phone or buy a new battery? Well the same thing will happen to your car.  Uh, a lot has changed since the 90s, buddy. Batteries last many times longer than they used to.   &gt;And what will we do with the old one that's full of toxic chemicals?  Like we do with all batteries? Recycle? Since they're something like +90% recyclable?", "Wow 35% I never realized that the American corporate tax rate was so high.  In my province in Saskatchewan Canada I pay 13%(as the owner of a small corporate business).  It's no wonder American corporations want to move.   Does it not make more sense to lower the corporate tax rate while reducing loop holes etc... to make the American corporation more competitive.  Just my 2c", "There is nothing wrong with self directed IRA's the problem is that most of the assets they specialize in are better done in other ways. Real estate is already extremely tax advantaged in the US. Buying inside a Traditional IRA would turn longterm capital gains (currently 15%) into ordinary income taxed at your tax rate when you withdraw this may be a plus or minus, but it is more likely than not that your ordinary income tax rate is higher. You also can't do the live in each house for 2 years before selling plan to eliminate capital gains taxes (250k individual 500k married couple). The final problem is that you are going to have problems getting a mortgage (it won't be a conforming loan) and will likely have to pay cash for any real estate purchased inside your IRA. Foreign real estate is similar to above except you have additional tax complexities. The key to the ownership in a business is that there are limits on who can control the business (you and maybe your family can't control the business). If you are experienced doing angel investing this might be a viable option (assuming you have a really big IRA you want to gamble with). If you want to speculate on precious metals you will probably be better offer using ETF's in a more traditional brokerage account (lower transactions costs more liquidity).", "FedEx, at least, makes it a viable profit center.  We ship a lot, so we get around a 50% discount on freight.  Coupled with using our own freight insurance, we can charge a customer $100 to ship something that would cost them $300 if they used their own account, and still make money.", "Supplier of talc powder in India http://quartzpowdermanufacturers.com/supplier-of-talc-powder-in-india.php Shri Vinayak Industries-Though we manufacture our talc product and other mineral products in India, we supply and export our Talc products chiefly to Vietnam, South Korea, UAE, Malaysia, Taiwan, Thailand, Saudi Arabia, and Indonesia. We Inquire and place order immediately hence always complete delivery on time. We have well packaged Talcum Powder ready stock for sale.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://edition.cnn.com/2017/09/25/politics/north-korea-fm-us-bombers/index.html) reduced by 70%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; &amp;quot;Last weekend Trump claimed that our leadership wouldn&amp;#039;t be around much longer and declared a war on our country,&amp;quot; Ri said, according to an official translation of his remarks to reporters in New York.  &gt; Speaking at the UN on Saturday, Ri said that Trump had made a missile attack on the US mainland inevitable by insulting the dignity of North Korea.  &gt; &amp;quot;Just heard Foreign Minister of North Korea speak at UN If he echoes thoughts of Little Rocket Man, they won&amp;#039;t be around much longer!&amp;quot; Trump wrote.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/72dj3v/north_korea_accuses_trump_of_declaring_war/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~216271 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*: **Trump**^#1 **right**^#2 **bombers**^#3 **country**^#4 **war**^#5\"", "Yeah, after watching his stream it did change my opinion of him. Went from hating him like most people in this thread to liking him. He's a very reasonable person just likes to troll lol.    You can watch one of his presentations where he makes a valid argument when confronted by a Harvard professor:  https://youtu.be/NE9PEpy-JI4"]}
+{"query": "Why do I get a much better price for options with a limit order than the ask price?", "corpus": ["Sounds to me like you're describing just how it should work.  Ask is at 30, Bid is at 20; you offer a new bid at 25.  Either: Depending on liquidity, one or the other may be more likely. This Investorplace article on the subject describes what you're seeing, and recommends the strategy you're describing precisely. Instead of a market order, take advantage of the fact that the options world truly is a marketplace — one where you can possibly get a better price just by asking. How does that work? If you use a limit order (instead of a market order) when opening a position, you can tell your broker how much you are willing to pay to enter a trade. For example, if you enter a limit price of $1.15, you can see whether the market-maker will bite. You will be surprised at how many times you will get your price (i.e., $1.15) instead of the ask price of $1.30. If your order at $1.15 is not filled after a few minutes, you can modify your order and pay the ask price by entering a market order or limit order at the ask price (that is, you can tell your broker to pay no more than $1.30)."], "neg": ["Q Coast Homes is a family owned and operated business on the Gold Coast with over 35 years comprehensive experience and knowledge within the building industry nationally. We sell House and Land Packages in South East QLD. Deal direct with the owner/builder of the company. We are flexible with our designs and also do custom builds. We build quality homes for sale in South East Queensland to the residential and investment markets and pride ourselves on our attention to detail together with the ability to provide individual personalised service to our clients.", "Holy shit that can't be USA unless you're talking about commercial lending, even then sky high rates.  For the 97% LTV we sell at 3.58 last Saturday.  We're a large bank too, so none of that credit unions selling themselves short nonsense.  Mind you that's a special program through Fanny, but our normal rates are something like 4.4-4.55 depending on the day for 80/20  How can you be conservative but loan to credit score of over 500?  We don't even look at under 640 and we're considered somewhat conservative.", "Isn't it a bit more like job recruiters?  I get an offer letter that a recruiter neither I nor the seller hired steps in, negotiates a lower pay for me, a higher pay from them and scoops the money inbetween?  This isn't adding value anywhere, that value was taken from my home and the business that now have less to work with, when everyone would be better off if the business and I came to a deal in the middle.  There is no added value, nothing is produced at all. Just skimming off the top.", "Thank you for the informed post. CAT was planning on opening a new plant before the earthquake. They needed more capacity, and were formerly exporting some excavators from Japan to the North American market. They were considering expanding that plant, and they also looked at sites in Canada, the US, and Mexico. I guess they decided to keep that plant open, but just focus it on other markets. [Here](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970204880404577229252169260694.html) is an article, but it is short on details.  [Here](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052970203889904577200953014575964.html) is an example of CAT closing a plant in Canada after the labor union locked themselves out. They are moving jobs to the US for roughly half price. In this case the plant in Canada was paying an average wage of $35 ($73,000 annually without overtime) and they locked themselves out requesting more. Corporations try to maximize profit, so by definition they are greedy, but this is a perfect example of unions being overly greedy as well. That is well over a good middle class wage (assuming they are in a somewhat rural or sparse suburban area, where most manufacturing is located). They had capacity elsewhere, so they moved.   Ignoring the greed of the unions wont make things better for workers, it will only end in more situations like the one in Canada.", "People did go to jail for crimes ranging from mortgage fraud to traders cheating customers when selling MBS products. Two, it wasn't a little bit of regulation, Dodd frank put massive capital handcuffs on wall st. The bill being voted on now is to decrease some of the harshest parts of DF, not to remove the whole thing. And three, the only thing that compares to 2008 is 1929 to 1941, the Great Depression. Something like that won't be seen again for 100 years. The best thing to do when the economy goes through a recession is to hold on to what you have, ride it out, and if you have the capital, buy when stocks are cheap.", "It depends on how they go about it.  If they simply go out and acquire all their competition, then yes they'd be labeled a monopoly.  If, however, they create their own service and everyone just likes it more then there's not much the US Government can do.", "They all basically mean the same thing - a type of debt than can be exchanged for (converted into) equity at some point. It's only the mechanics that can be different. A convertible bond is structured just like a regular bond - it (usually) pays periodic interest and has a face value that's due at maturity. The difference is that the bond holder has the option to exchange the debt for equity at some point during the life of the bond.  There can be restrictions on when that conversion is possible, and they typically define a quantity of equity (number of shares) that the bond can be converted into.  If the market price of the shares goes above a price that would make the shares more valuable than the bond, it's in the best interest of the bond holder to convert. A convertible note is typically used to describe a kind of startup financing that does not pay interest or have a face value that's redeemed, but instead is redeemed for equity as part of a later financing round.  Rather than specifying a specific number of shares, the bond holder receives equity at a certain discount to the rest of the market. So they both are debt instruments that can turn into equity investments, just through different mechanisms. A debenture is a fancy word for unsecured debt, and convertible debt could be used to described either structure above, so those terms could mean either type of structure."]}
+{"query": "Do algorithmic trading platforms typically have live-data access to stock data?", "corpus": ["\"Algorithmic trading doesn't necessarily require live feeds. It is a very generic term describing trading based on the decisions made by a machine and not a person. One very prominent type of algo-trading is \"\"high frequency trading\"\". For HFT to be effective, not only do you need live feeds (which are provided by the exchanges electronically), you need them before others get them. That's why HFT traders put their machines as close as possible (physically) to the exchange data centers, sometimes even renting racks at the same datacenters from the exchanges themselves.\""], "neg": ["Voip for mobile Voip mobile Hello dear, i have good quality Mobile  dialer. Just install dialer software and give login and password then make call.,We have Nine Canadian &amp; UK dialer with highest voice. you can use all dialer in same account. if you like good quality service, please contact with us. Looking for Reseller. India mobile——–2200 mins Bangladesh Mobile–800 mins Pakistan Mobile—- 800/1450 mins Price=29$/107AED/ 11.1348 Omr/ 109 SAR/1380 Rupee/2100 taka If you don’t like that packages then We will create card as your demand. Or we will give to you reseller panel then you can create card as you like.   Thanks and Regards Masum salestalkdialer@gmail.com mobiledialer788@yahoo.com Mobile: 8801711062213, 8801673706969", "\"The debt ceiling doesn't give the president permission to spend more money.  The debt ceiling gives the treasury permission to pay our bills.  Also, they shut down the government once, and tried to shut it down 2-3 times over the course of Obama's presidency.  So to say that everything was \"\"smooth\"\" is either forgetting what happened or choosing to ignore it.\"", "There are two building blocks you need:  - Knowledge - Connections (and usually more this than the prior)  You're on the right track with your CFA, but make sure you get to know people within the industry you're trying to enter.", "It isn't illegal to hold money in overseas accounts.  It is illegal if you don't report it.  If the money is outside the US, it is hard for IRS to know about it.  That's the reason people who have money to hide take their chances with overseas accounts. Hope this simple explanation helps.", "&gt;  Did you tell your wireless router to stay only on channel 11 or did Apple finally fix that?  Had to tie down the router to channel 11.  My only hesitation is that I'll miss the Del key, and I'm scared about all the emacs shortcuts, but others have done it, so I'll live.", "I think the biggest thing you need in this situation is a budget/spending plan that you both agree on.  Look at what your income is going to be and what expenses you'll have, and make cuts where needed.  If it's important to you that she be able to spend some money on herself, then make sure there's a budget for it.  Often, knowing that there's a plan that will work will help put someone's mind at ease. Also, make sure you're communicating, especially in the subtle non-verbal ways, that you're in this together, and that you don't think it is unfair that you're bringing in most of the income during this time.  In general, make sure you're talking with each other a lot and being honest about your feelings about this major life change.", "Let Go App...good way to find awesome deals on furniture. Depending on climate find a nice bike, pretty easy way to get around &amp; low maintenance costs compared to a car ( i.e. insurance, gas, repairs). Then depending on whether your work offers matching 401k programs, max that out or find a good index fund &amp; consistently build that emergency fund. Chill for 10-15 years &amp; enjoy the benefits of compounding interest my friend."]}
+{"query": "I am moving to a new city. How do I plan and prepare - financially - for the move?", "corpus": ["Some of the costs you might incur include:"], "neg": ["For such a short timeframe, I'd have it in the currency (euros) you need, and in a savings account. The 5 months is not a time to 'invest' this money. Even 2-4 years would suggest just a CD or short term Government bond.", "\"How is it rhetorical? Of course it can be answered, it's based on an actual concern and actual research done by other economists and it invokes discussion.  Being called a \"\"Debbie Downer\"\" is just an ad hominem that translates to: I don't like the way question you're making cause it's sad, so I'm just not going to answer it\"", "What is the formula for calculating the total cost of a loan with extra payments towards the principal? The formula you require is the standard one for calculating the time to repay.  With larger repayments the time to completely repay the loan is reduced. Where The total cost of the loan is then n * d. Explanation & Calculation The formula for a loan is derived from the sum of the cash flows discounted to present value being equal to the principal.  For further info see the section here titled: Calculating the Present Value of an Ordinary Annuity The summation can be reduced to a closed form by induction:  Rearranging for d and n With the OP's figures The original monthly repayment is $1,006.96 Adding $200 each month ... With the higher repayment the loan is repaid in 257.36 months instead of 360.  (Of course a bank would simply take a reduced payment in month 258, but the amounts work out the same.) The saving is $51,882.37 Addendum If the repayments increase was made part-way through the term of the loan the summation and formula would be  Where Then For example, if for the first ten years the payments are $1,006.96 and for the remaining time the repayments are $1,206.96 The loan is completely repaid in 302.528 months. The saving is Plotting over a range of m months:", "\"No money is gone.  The movement of the existing currency has slowed down.  Currency moves through the economy through deposits or loans to banks, and withdrawal from banks as proceeds from loans or return of deposits.  When a bank makes a loan they provide a balance in a bank account, which isn't converted to hard currency until withdrawn.  So those bank loans essentially count as currency, and thus effectively multiply the stock of currency available.  Deposits into money market funds, and those funds loans into the commercial paper markets, have the same effect.  Banks and money funds are now making fewer loans.  In particular they are not funding \"\"companies\"\" that invested in securitizations of home mortgages and credit card receivables, but they are also lending less to businesses and consumers.  Because they are lending less they are \"\"effectively multiplying\"\" the currency less.   Think of deposited and lent currency as spare cycles on a desktop computer.  You let your computer help decipher the genome when you aren't using it yourself.  If you somehow feared that you would lose those cycles, slowing down your own computing, you would be less likely to lend those cycles out.  There would still be the same number of computing cycles in the world, but the stock of those available for actual computing would appear to be diminished.  The technical term for this concept is \"\"monetary velocity\"\" and it is a crucial factor in determing the level of overall economic activity, banking stability, and inflation.\"", "gimme a break. There is always shit storm. Other country experience recession and deep recession (under US economic attack even) but none drop that kind of money.  I still want to know what China is doing to even up Obama's attempt to crash their market and currency.", "LC WebPros is the top most digital marketing and SEO company in the United States. For any business, digital marketing may be a sure top-strategic tool in business growth for years to come! Our company is the best Digital marketing Agency in the world. We provide the best digital marketing service. Knowing when and how to communicate to your potential customers in the email messages you write to them is a requirement to the success of your marketing plans.", "TLDR summary: Automation helps drive the economy rather than cause unemployment. Just look at the last 10 centuries (forgetting that the combination of information technology with automation started with the generation of milinials and has never been seen before in history.) And milinials are happy with their jobs even though they are replaceable because they have no kids, friends, or family to enjoy. Their low paying jobs and occasional vacations are all they have to enjoy."]}
+{"query": "Are online mortgage lenders as good as local brick-and-mortar ones?", "corpus": ["I had a pretty good experience with Lending Tree, although they are a mortgage broker, not a lender themselves."], "neg": ["&gt;I'm going to disagree with vodkaspeed on getting a BB suit tho.   Doesn't BB also sell like 300 dollar suits?   First time I've heard of AE (allen edmonds based on your last response?) but there's a location near here so i'll check it out. Does any kind of black shoe work?", "Very grey area. You can't pay them to run errands, mow the lawn, etc. I'd suggest that you would have to have self employment income (i.e. your own business) for you to justify the deduction. And then the work itself needs to be applicable to the business. I've commented here and elsewhere that I jumped on this when my daughter at age 12 started to have income from babysitting. I told her that in exchange for her taking the time to keep a notebook, listing the family paying her, the date, and amount paid, I'd make a deposit to a Roth IRA for her.  I've approaches taxes each year in a way that would be audit-compliant, i.e. a paper trail that covers any and all deductions, donations, etc. In the real world, the IRS isn't likely to audit someone for that Roth deposit, as there's little for them to recover.", "Banks want to be paid back, and if you don't, then want to be able to sell your property for enough money to cover what you didn't pay back. Your credit rating will determine the interest rate you pay, and this affects how much you can borrow because a higher interest rate means that you can borrow less on the same terms than you could with a lower interest rate. Paying 50% down will bring your payment way down, of course, and will improve everything about your loan (debt to income ratio, debt to equity) but you'll likely still be charged the higher interest rate based on your credit rating. This, of course, is contingent on the property's value appraising properly.", "\"Aside from the fundamental points brought up in other answers (which is important), there are a number of choices when it comes to budgeting software. Software like this can help you organize fixed reoccurring costs (rent and phone) as well as variable costs (food and events). Mint is probably the most popular, but just search \"\"budgeting software\"\" to get an idea of what's out there. Some can also help you visualize your spending with reports and dashboards. Some help out with paying bills on a schedule (this may help avoiding late payments). Some even link up with your bank/credit card accounts.\"", "By definition, this is a payroll deduction. There's no mechanism for you to tell the 401(k) administrator that a Jan-15 deposit is to be credited for 2016 instead of 2017. (As is common for IRAs where you do have the 'until tax time' option) If you are paid weekly, semi-monthly, or monthly, 12/31 is a Saturday this year and should leave no ambiguity about the date of your last check.  The only unknown for me if if one is paid bi-weekly, and has a check covering 12/25 - 1/7. Payroll/HR will need to answer whether that check is considered all in 2016, all in 2017 or split between the two.", "\"These people are pretty off. Insider trading cases, outside of a tender offer context, require some sort of a breach of duty. It's not simply \"\"non-public material information\"\". You have to trade securities in interstate, based on or while in possession of the material non-public information, and in doing so is a breach of duty owed to the company or to the information source.  Now simply saying \"\"personal info\"\" about an executive does not tell me much about its materiality. So assuming it passes the materiality test, and assuming you yourself aren't a corporate insider, then the only thing left to discuss is whether or not it is misappropriation. To be misappropriation you need to be breaching some duty owed to your information source. Now this isn't just principal-agent duty, this can extend to friends and family if there is a pattern of keeping confidences. So unless you're this guys brother or doctor there really isn't a strong claim against you.\"", "\"&gt; Despite the fact that this correlation between immigration and wages is well-documented  Link does not go to proper documentation. Link goes to another article on the same site, with the title \"\"3 Reasons Why Mass Immigration Is Bad For The Economy\"\" and subtitle \"\"Is Immigration Good for the Economy?  No, Not Always\"\". Please make up your minds.  &gt; The evidence suggests otherwise, including new data reported by Fox.  It looks like this bit is the closest thing there to proper data:  &gt; Just how bad is it? According to the National Association of Home Builders, more than 56 percent of developers nationwide are reporting labor shortages.   &gt; NAHB says the problems started when the recession hit and domestic construction workers dropped out of the market to find other jobs. At the same time, immigrant workers went back to their home countries. But as the economy has picked up and the construction industry has heated up, those workers have remained missing.   Yeah, that's not even close to as clear as they're making it out to be.  &gt; In fact, according to Ted Wilson of Residential Strategies Inc. construction costs have risen by 30% this year—the majority of which is due to higher wages and increased overtime pay.  Heh. That Fox article says wages are about 60% of costs. A bit of math says that a 30% increase in costs that was due *entirely* to wage increases would mean wages had gone up by 50%. That's a missed opportunity by the article writers -- the headline really should say that wage-growth is \"\"up to 50%\"\". ;)  (Math: given $100 costs, $60 would be labor. A 30% increase is +$30. If that's all from labor, it would have gone from $60 to $90, and 90 / 60 == 1.5, or a 50% increase.)  .  Also, back to the leading paragraph:  &gt; There is a strong correlation between immigration—particularly illegal immigration—and wages.  This should be obvious to anyone familiar with the fundamental principle of supply and demand: more supply (workers) means lower prices (wages), and vice versa.  There's an example of how it's nowhere near that simple at http://voxeu.org/article/impact-immigration-barriers-native-workers :  &gt; Many claim that immigrants negatively affect the labour market prospects of native workers in advanced countries. This column studies a large change in immigration restrictions in the US – the 1965 exclusion of almost half a million Mexican seasonal farm workers (braceros) from the US labour market. The bracero exclusion did not increase the employment or wages of native workers, and technology adoption was one of the adjustment channels.   (Note I'm not saying *wrong* this time -- the VoxEU article is specifically about a case where there was existing technology available to replace the lost workers.)\""]}
+{"query": "How to invest 100k", "corpus": ["\"How to spend the money is up to you. That includes spending money on your house. (This is a safer way to look at it than an \"\"investment\"\". Not that it can't ever be treated as such, but that doing so often makes it easy to justify bad decisions and overspending on the house.) So with regards to the mortgage: So if it's not a monstrously huge deal, you might prefer to avoid default. Now,  how to invest the rest while waiting to spend it, now...\""], "neg": ["\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-08/irma-s-wreckage-to-depress-u-s-economy-further-following-harvey) reduced by 80%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Hurricane Irma&amp;#039;s expected collision with Florida will probably deepen and prolong the slowdown in a U.S. economy already digesting the impact of another storm that smashed ashore in Texas two weeks ago.  &gt; The September timing of Irma threatens economic damage that will spill over into the final three months of the year, extending the volatility the U.S. was set to experience in the third quarter from Hurricane Harvey.  &gt; Irma will &amp;quot;Create further weakness in indicators that are already softening as the result of the hurricane,&amp;quot; said Michelle Meyer, head of U.S. economics at Bank of America Corp. in New York, who trimmed the tracking estimate for this quarter by 0.4 percentage point to 2.5 percent.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6ywf1w/irmas_wreckage_to_depress_us_economy_further/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~206607 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*: **Irma**^#1 **inflation**^#2 **U.S.**^#3 **quarter**^#4 **time**^#5\"", "I think that you could probably structure a trust like this.  The terms would be that the money is in trust for Person A if they claim it by some deadline.  After that it will go to Person B.  This won't be a cheap option though, since you'll probably need an attorney to structure it properly.", "&gt;This being said, before the outsourcing failure, it was not obvious that it would be.  Which would suggest that the qaulity of any risk management applied to the whole program at the outset was piss poor. These things tend to be way more political than they are achievable. Add to this the need to go for the lowest bidder in any specialisation and you don't need an MBA to work out what the most likely outcome is going to be..", "There was a huge amount of creativity in the 70's . This lasted well into the early 80's . There were many good dramas and series produced . Whilst there are a few produced these days there are not as many as then . There are some good British programmes , some German , the odd French programme . But there is , with a few exceptions , a huge amount of crap that comes out of the USA . There are a lot of repeats of good old programs - these are what I watch - not anything new . I usually watch programs that are 15 to 25 years old . Trouble is that I have often already seen them .", "Dude, I said pink slime is gross. Is, and should be, legal. Still gross.   Stop deciding who I am. You have no idea what you're talking about and are just coming to a conclusion you feel is right. That's totally unreasonable.", "Krijg verschillende soorten Openhaardhout onder één dak , zijn er verschillende brandende personages zoals berken verbrandt snel en gemakkelijk , die het uitstekend voor speksteenkachel maakt . Andere open brandhout zoals eik brandt langzaam maar maakt goed open haard hout. Al het hout is kunstmatig gedroogd om u perfect verwarming ervaring in de late winter 's avonds evenals het behoud van milieu veilig en gezond . Krijg gedroogd brandhout in grootte blokken om gemakkelijk een voorraad op uw haard .", "Because once those enhancements take off, I think it will rather quickly (in historical time) reach a point where it's simply not worth it, for the same reason we no longer bother dominating horses except as a hobby."]}
+{"query": "How to avoid maintenance fee when balance drops below minimum?", "corpus": ["Looks like you have three options: Outside of this you might need to look for a different type of account. Hope that helps."], "neg": ["I don't think Xero Personal does. I have my bank account in there, but since there's no automatic feed for the bank I use I imported it manually. I entered the bank by hand, so I think you could use it without listing a bank account at all.", "\"Great, I wonder how I the customer will be paying for this. I don't know exactly when it happened or the specifics but BOA lost 500 million in some bad loan or something a while back and a month later started taking on fees to what used to be free services. They started charging 5 dollars for a replacement debit card and other stuff like that. Their explantation for it was \"\"we have the right to make a profit\"\" when really it just seems they were covering their asses. Instead of cutting costs internally like an ethical/responsible company would, they make their customers pay for it. As soon as my credit card account goes up for renewal I am done with that bank.\"", "You had excellent point how **costs of production** can affect price. Final_J explained already how value differs from this. It's good to remember that cost, price and value are separate things. Usually cost &lt; price &lt; value for trade to happen. Money is the best metrics we have, but it doesn't give really good picture of neither, costs or value.  I really kept myself as a smart dude about a year ago, for understanding what you just told us here. I like the way you think.", "It is because 17th was Friday, 18th-19th were weekends and 20th was a holiday on the Toronto Stock Exchange (Family Day). Just to confirm you could have picked up another stock trading on TMX and observed the price movements.", "I didn't have a a problem with BWW last time I went with a bunch of people. However that's was a while ago, their locations are sparse and inconvenient, and every pizza place serves wings. I don't remember their prices but I do know that attacking their target audience is a bad move.", "Yeah, but they have a price match policy; have them price match themselves or go home and order it online.  Or hell, use your smart phone on their free wifi to place the order so the sales person doesn't get credit for the sale and can't harass you for a warranty.", "Why does everything have to be low margin and low cost? Why can't it be decent healthy products and jobs, and consumers paying the cost because your average consumer is getting paid more.   As far as an agenda, what better agenda than supporting people getting paid a livable wage, and both the employees and company thriving!"]}
+{"query": "How does start-up equity end up paying off?", "corpus": ["The details of how you can convert your 5% equity share to cash or stocks will be detailed in writing in the legal agreement you have already signed. If you do not have any signed written agreement, there is no 5%. Since 0% of anything is zero, you can expect to get $0 some time within the next few years. Lastly, if the person running the business, tells you that there is 5% equity for you, even though it is not in writing, that is extremely unlikely to be the case. This is because the Seller of the equity has no obligation whatsoever to pay you. In fact, they are obligated by their other agreements with actual shareholders not to dilute their equity without good cause. So, odds are, if your agreement is not in writing, not only will it not be honored, but it probably can't be honored."], "neg": ["Everyone always rants on how big of a problem this is.  Just a quick note, I don't care how much they get paid, but it's important to understand why.  It isn't because they set their own salaries, or that they are all super greedy.  Their pay is meant to solve an agency problem. The CEO doesn't own the company, the public does. Because of that the CEO has little incentive to act in the best interests of the owners, rather than his own interest.  So their pay is structured in a way that solves this problem. They are paid based on how well their company does, and how much shareholder value they create. This aligns their interests with the shareholders.  Is this the best solution? Probably not.  Is there a better one? Probably.  Do I know it? No.  But mindlessly complaining about the result doesn't solve the issue. The issue is we need a good solution for the agency problem in an economic system that is built on public ownership and private management.", "\"They borrowed it from the people, and typically to finance wars and military spending. For example, Wikipedia suggests that the Bank of England \"\"was set up to supply money to the King. £1.2m was raised in 12 days; half of this was used to rebuild the Navy.\"\" It's a game that everyone has to play once started; if Napoleon buys an army on credit, you'll have to raise an equal amount or face quite a problem. As for why they've grown so large, it's because governments are quite skilled at owing large sums of money. Only a small portion of the debt comes due in full at a given moment, and they constantly reissue new debt via auction to keep it rolling. So as long as they can make coupon (interest) and the lump sum at maturity, it's not difficult to keep up. Imagine how much credit card debt you could rack up if you only ever had to pay interest. This game will continue for as long as people lend. And there are plenty of lenders. There's pensions, mutual funds and endowments, which find public debt typically safer than stocks. And money market funds, which target 1 dollar NAV and only invest in the \"\"safest\"\" AAA-rated bonds to protect it. There's central banks, which can buy and sell public debt to manipulate inflation and exchange rates.  Absent some kind of UN resolution to ban lending, or perhaps a EU mandated balanced budget, these debts will likely continue to grow. You think they \"\"collectively owe more money than can exist\"\", but there's a lot of wealth in the world. Most nations owe less than a year's GDP. For example, the US's total wealth is in the neighborhood of 50 trillion.\"", "There's a primer on valuing community banks by oddball Stocks, an investor who specializes in that kind of stuff. I can't link it cause I'm on my phone, but just search it up on Google and I'm sure you'll find it.", "Let's suppose your friend gave your $100 and you invested all of it (plus your own money, $500) into one stock. Therefore, the total investment becomes $100 + $500 = $600. After few months, when you want to sell the stock or give back the money to your friend, check the percentage of profit/loss. So, let's assume you get 10% return on total investment of $600.  Now, you have two choices. Either you exit the stock entirely, OR you just sell his portion. If you want to exit, sell everything and go home with $600 + 10% of 600 = $660. Out of $660, give you friend his initial capital + 10% of initial capital. Therefore, your friend will get $100 + 10% of $100 = $110. If you choose the later, to sell his portion, then you'll need to work everything opposite. Take his initial capital and add 10% of initial capital to it; which is $100 + 10% of $100 = $110. Sell the stocks that would be worth equivalent to that money and that's it. Similarly, you can apply the same logic if you broke his $100 into parts. Do the maths.", "So, if we can't trust people to know what they want, who makes the decisions about what they should have, and what gives them that right?  I'm not suggesting environments don't play a role in human development, I'm suggesting that people need to learn to deal with the realities of their environments as part of their character growth. When you say that not being able to resist buying skittles is a serious problem, while there are still people living on the streets, I think you need some perspective.  I'd wager that what you're seeing as you get older is the poverty trap, which is a real problem, but which is caused by barriers to expanding earnings much more than by irrational spending (though it is a factor).  As for the insult, that's the impression your arguments gave, and I'd still like to know whether you believe you yourself need to be protected from these marketing practices, or you only feel that this is only necessary for others (implying they are somehow your inferiors in their ability to self-manage).", "If this goes through and the company is punished sufficiently this breach with ultimately be good news.  Security as been too easily neglected because fixing it provides no obvious immediate benefit to the customer as opposed to other features.  So the only way this gets addressed is when CEO's and stockholders feel significant pain.", "You can buy out of the money put options that could minimize your losses (or even make you money)  in the event of a huge crash. Put options are good in that you dont have to worry about not getting filled, or not knowing what price you might get filled with a stop-loss order, however, put options cost money and their value decays over time. It's just like buying insurance, you always have to pay up for it."]}
+{"query": "Buying my first car: why financing is cheaper than paying cash here and now?", "corpus": ["The dealership is getting a kickback for having you use a particular bank to finance through. The bank assumes you will take the full term of the loan to pay back, and will hopefully be a repeat customer. This tactic isn't new, and although it maybe doesn't make sense to you, the consumer, in the long run it benefits the bank and the dealership. (They wouldn't do it otherwise. These guys have a lot of smart people running #s for them). Be sure to read the specifics of the loan contract. There may be a penalty for paying it off early. Most customers won't be able to pay that much in cash, so the bank makes a deal with the dealership to send clients their way. They will lose money on a small percentage of clients, but make more off of the rest of the clients. If there's no penalty for paying it off early, you may just want to take the financing offer and pay it off ASAP. If you truly can only finance $2500 for 6 mos, and get the full discount, then that might work as well. The bank had to set a minimum for the dealership in order to qualify as a loan that earns the discount. Sounds like that's it. Bonus Info: Here's a screenshot of Kelley Blue Book for that car. Car dealers get me riled up, always have, always will, so I like doing this kind of research for people to make sure they get the right price. Fair price range is $27,578 - $28,551. First time car buyers are a dealers dream come true. Don't let them beat you down!  And here's more specific data about the Florida area relating to recent purchases:"], "neg": ["Inflation is low because middle class salaries/wages have stagnated (in addition to the fact their their measures of inflation aren't relevant to the thinning middle who are seeing their real earnings decrease).  I mean it's not that difficult to understand and all their data points to this reality.  If they can't explain why, it's because they don't want to have to explain it.", "Several things may be the cause.   The person who clicked with you may be side lined in the hierarchy.   You missed something basic in the entire presentation, maybe you should have picked up or said something about this being similar to X industry or what not. (Not saying you didn't, but pointing out that there is a lot of different reasons as to why it could have happened)   The interviewer could have been a tool   There was another better candidate.   The usual admonitions apply, this is the same advice I give close family members when they get dinged -   1) You are doing the right thing in analyzing it  2) If you can't figure out something to improve on soonish, stop chewing on it. Its quite possibly that the answer will pop into your head once you've had time to distance yourself. Or the answer could be pointless to obtain.  3) Getting in is usually a numbers game - keep at it.   The fact that you are focusing is a good thing. You could always try the good old:   - Thank you for taking the time out to interview me. I respect the decision taken and regret not being able to join a firm that I greatly respect and admire. If possible, would I be able to talk/meet with you at your convenience.  I usually frame these things better, but right now, personally not feeling that confident about sending such a mail so its reflecting in the language.  The reason I am suspicious that such a mail won't work is because it sounds you came through the generic recruitment barrage for undergrads - and lee way there is few and far between.  All the same, you said you managed to connect positively witht he first interviewer, so adapt and target this at that conversation, put it into your voice and send it to him/her.   Thank them for their time, appreciate the effort, and ask politely and with confidence if you could have some time to understand their thought process.   You wont get into that firm , but you will make a contact if all goes well. And thats worth a lot.", "You could buy a money order with your cash, then mail the money order to Deutsche Bank Germany for deposit into your account. You could also buy a prepaid debit card (like a Visa/AMEX giftcard) with your cash. Then, open a new Paypal account and add this prepaid card. Finally, send money to yourself using the prepaid card as the funding source. You could use a money transfer service, like Western Union, to transfer the cash to a friend/family in Germany. Then ask them to deposit it for you at Deutsche Bank Germany.", "\"I really don't understand. Yes, facebook overpriced their IPO. I suppose they may have to renegotiate some of their retention deals. On the other hand, they brought in significantly more capital than if they had priced the deal \"\"correctly\"\". If anything, Ebersman did a great job of getting facebook the maximum amount of capital while at the same time giving up the minimum amount of equity.\"", "It's important because it shows that the amount you owe does not decrease linearly with each payment, and you gain equity as a correspondingly slower rate at the beginning of the loan and faster at the end. This has to be figured in when considering refinancing, or when you sell the place and pay off the mortgage. It also shows why making extra payments toward principal (if your loan permits doing so) is so advantageous -- unlike a normal payment that lowers the whole curve by a notch, reducing the length of time over which interest is due and thus saving you money in the long run. (Modulo possible lost-opportnity costs, of course.)", "In the style of the Bank of England's Inflation Calculator, you can do the calculation like so. The third column is an index made from the inflation figures and the forth column shows the inflation-adjusted values.  Using the index to calculate the difference in costs, for example: The formulas used to produce the table above are shown below.", "Requiring providers to post costs for their 50 most common procedures in a standardized way, along with requiring standardized pricing regardless of payer would go a long way to actually addressing the market problems of American healthcare.   Which parties are in favor of this?  Not a fucking one."]}
+{"query": "Which technical analysis indicators are considered leading stock market indicators?", "corpus": ["Relative Strength Indicators are also trailing indicators.  They are based on the number of recent upticks or downticks in an investment's price.  (The size of a tick is quantized, and related to the investment's price.)  By the time enough upticks have accumulated to generate a buy signal, the investment has already increased in price significantly.  Similarly, by the time enough downticks have accumulated a to generate a sell signal, the investment has already dropped in price significantly. The theory of Relative Strength Indicators is based on the hope that moves found by these indicators are likely to continue after the signal is generated.  But even if this is the case, someone who relies on these indicators will miss out on the first part of the move. Dorsey-Wright offers investment research based on the theory of Relative Strength Indicators.  They offer investment vehicles based on this research.  They also work with local investment advisors to develop custom back-tested strategies.  They have published a white-paper, with references to others' research."], "neg": ["I wouldn't really call it a counterpoint. A counterpoint to this would be to argue that tasks won't be automated just because they can.  That being said there are tremendous risks in taking humans out of the picture in many cases. Unfortunately as this video proves these tasks are still automated despite the risks. Automation can work just fine when it's been thought out well, tested in a sandbox environment, and monitored to prevent mistakes that are made from reoccurring.  Edit: When I wrote this I hadn't finished the article and gotten to the point where he pretty much says all automation is good, period.", "\"Nothing necessarily has to \"\"benefit.\"\" Right now, what primarily drives demand for gold is its perceived use as a hedge against the inflation of fiat currency. I.e. when inflation strikes, the price of gold goes up rapidly. Thus, for a given currency, gold decreasing in price is almost always a signal that the currency is increasing in value. However, it may be that at some point in time people everywhere just decide that gold is no longer worth using as an inflation hedge, and thus the price collapses simply because demand collapsed. No corresponding \"\"benefit\"\".\"", "This is best online cartridge service provider in UK. We provide you easy and efficient service. We have all the brand name like epson inks, hp ink, hp cartridges,  epson cartridges and many more. Further, we available for you 24x7 and provide you best service in the world.", "I'd probably off myself if I had to drive a Camry or Corolla though. Unreliable as they may be, I'd much rather drive a Challenger or a charger. At least they have character. Camrys are appliances. Bulletproof and a great value, yes, but soulless as well.", "If it were me, I would create a website for him.  Take a look at all the other local plumber websites and identify the things they get right and wrong and then do or don't do those things, as appropriate.  My feeling is that when someone wants a plumber, they are often anxious and may be in a hurry, so the first thing you need to say on that site is something that is brief and reassuring. The text needs to be clear and easy to read - no white text on a black background, or text placed over a picture.  You also need to answer all the key questions they are likely to ask - how much, how soon, can I trust you to do the right thing, how much experience do you have?  Basically, you need to put yourself in the shoes of that anxious customer and say the things that will strike a chord with them - obviously, any promises he makes on the site he then has to deliver.", "Wells Fargo has a good free product that you can sign up for on their website. Google Wells Fargo Economics. I think that will get you there. If you have a friend on a trading desk you can get the JPM morning note which is really good too.", "It doesn't rely in the first item. A legal tender law certainly makes it easier for the banker to find goods with his dollars, but you can have the exact same scenario I described above in a competing currency system.  Typically the Cantillion Effect has bankers disadvantaged because they get their interest payment after the inflation effects prices. It is the primary loan receiver who gets the best value."]}
+{"query": "Calculating pay off for credit card with multiple APRs", "corpus": ["\"@Joe's original answer and the  example with proportionate application of the payment to the two balances is not quite what will happen with US credit cards. By US law (CARD Act of 2009), if you make only the minimum  required payment (or less), the credit-card company can choose which part of the balance that sum is applied to. I am not aware of any company that chooses to apply such payments to anything other than that part of the balance which carries the least interest rate  (including the 0% rate that \"\"results\"\" from acceptance of balance transfer  offers). If you make more than the minimum required payment, then the excess must, by law, be applied to paying off the highest rate balance. If the highest rate balance gets paid off completely, any remaining amount must be applied to second-highest rate balance, and so on.  Thus, it is not the case that that $600 payment (in Joe's example) is applied proportionately to the $5000 and $1000 balances owed. It depends on what the required minimum payment is. So, what would be the minimum required payment? The minimum payment is the total of (i) all finance charges incurred during that month, (ii) all service fees and penalties (e.g. fee for exceeding credit limit, fee for taking a cash advance, late payment penalty) and other charges (e.g. annual card fee) and (iii) a fraction of the outstanding balance that (by law) must be large enough to allow the customer to pay off the entire balance in a reasonable length of time. The law is silent on what is reasonable, but most companies use 1% (which would pay off the balance over 8.33 years).  Consider the numbers in Joe's example together with the following assumptions: $5000 and $1000 are the balances owed at the beginning of the month, no new charges or service fees during that month, and the previous month's minimum monthly payment was made on the day that the statement paid so that the finance charge for the current month is on the balances stated). The finance charge on the $5000 balance is $56.25, while the finance charge on the $1000 balance is $18.33, giving a minimum required payment of $56.25+18.33+60 = $134.58. Of the $600 payment, $134.58 would be applied to the lower-rate balance ($5000 + $56.25 = $5056.25) and reduce it to $4921.67. The excess $465.42 would be applied to the high-rate balance of $1000+18.33 = $1018.33 and reduce it to $552.91. In general, it is a bad idea to take a cash advance from a credit card. Don't do it unless you absolutely must have cash then and there to buy something from a merchant who does not accept credit cards, only cash, and don't be tempted to use the \"\"convenience checks\"\" that credit-card companies send you from time to time. All such cash advances not only carry larger rates of interest (there may also be upfront fees for taking an advance) but any purchases made during the rest of the month also become subject to finance charge. In other words, there is no \"\"grace period\"\" for new charges, and this state of affairs will last for one month beyond the first credit-card statement whose statement is paid off in full in timely fashion. Finally, turning to the question asked, viz. \"\" I am trying to determine how much I need to pay monthly to zero the balance, ....\"\", as per the above calculations, if the OP makes the minimum required payment of $134.58 plus $1018.33, that $134.58 will be applied to the low-rate balance and the rest $1018.33 will pay off the high-rate balance in full if the payment is made on the day the statement is issued. If payment is made later, but before the due date, that $1018.33 will be accruing finance charges until the date the payment is made, and these will appear as 22% rate balance on next month's statement. Similarly for the low-rate balance. What if several monthly payments will be required? The best calculator known to me is at https://powerpay.org (free but it is necessary to set up a username and password).  Enter in all the credit card balances and the different interest rates, and the total amount of  money that can be used to pay off the balances, and the site will lay out a payment plan.  (Basically, pay off the highest-interest rate balance as much as possible while making minimum required payments on the rest). Most people are surprised at how much can be saved (and how much shorter the time to be debt-free is) if one is willing to pay just a little bit more each month.\""], "neg": ["\"When using a debit card in a \"\"credit\"\" way, you don't need to enter your PIN, which protects you from skimmers and similar nastiness. Also, assuming it's a Visa or Mastercard debit card, you now have access to all of the fraud protection and other things that you would get with a credit card. The downside for the merchant is that credit card transaction fees are typically higher than debit card transaction fees. I'm less familiar with using a credit card in a \"\"debit\"\" way, so don't have anything to offer on that part of your question.\"", "Mods of /r/finance how many times are we going to see this advertisement? /u/sciencegames [won't even explain the program](https://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/6rhha4/upenn_research_finance_challenge_earn_up_to_20/dl7mn55/). This is just an ad for some grad student's project. This is the third time i've seen this thread reposted in two months. What's it going to be, 2 more times? 5 more times? Do you have some limit in mind?", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/25/upshot/maybe-weve-been-thinking-about-the-productivity-slump-all-wrong.html?smid=re-share) reduced by 82%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Just maybe, if the labor market tightens and good workers are harder to find - and wages rise - that will be the impetus to get companies to consider more of those big-ticket innovations that generate productivity growth.  &gt; You could imagine the same thing happening if wages rose because of market forces; that same fast food restaurant might invest in kiosks and robots if the labor market were so tight that no workers were willing to take the job for $10. If you look at long-term patterns of productivity growth, they roughly fit this idea, that a booming job market tends to be followed by a productivity boom, and that deep recessions are followed by productivity slumps.  &gt; In this way of thinking about productivity, inventors and business innovators are always cooking up better ways to do things, but it takes a labor shortage and high wages to coax firms to deploy the investment it takes to actually put those innovations into widespread use.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6s3yzv/maybe_we\\u00e2ve_been_thinking_about_the_productivity/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~185009 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*: **productivity**^#1 **wage**^#2 **worker**^#3 **growth**^#4 **market**^#5\"", "Annualize quarterly returns:      AR = (1+QR)^4  Where *QR* is a decimal return, e.g. 0.05.  Standard deviations are similar:      Annual SD = SD * sqrt(T)  If you have quarterly deviations, *T=4*, if you have daily, *T=252*, etc.  As an aside, for work with money riding on it, it is *not* okay to aggregate standard deviations if there's autocorrelation amongst observations at a smaller time scale. Volatility is often quoted this way and that's fine, but it is dangerous to do any sort of risk management with this and you'll require more due diligence. It's a good enough approximation for napkin math, though.", "Couldn't have asked for a better response. As for my courses, yes I had various group projects in different classes, with my capstone finance course being entirely group project based, so that would definitely put a dent in the required hours. But still the whole thing seems a bit arbitrary doesn't it? There's no real way of keeping track of hours, then again I haven't done much research on the program yet and if it comes down to the wording I can probably make it work as it is.  Regardless thanks for pointing me in the right direction, I am for sure interested in the PMP and in the mean time ill check out what you suggested. Appreciate it.", "\"&gt; And you get this Medicare \"\"issue\"\" from Vox whom you, yourself, say \"\"Vox does spin things left\"\".  Allowing Medicare Part-D negotiate drug prices has long been my litmus test of swamp politics.  It puts the free market and lower drug prices against corporate profits and it is disturbing how many politicians choose the latter.  When President Trump brought up the issue I applauded and thought he could be serious about draining the swamp.  When he reversed his position it showed me he embodied the swamp.  I chose the Vox article when deciding how to present this issue to you because I thought it did a good job explaining how big of a backstab this reversal was to the American people.  The articles of this meeting from conservative media ignored the flip-flop and painted more money going to the pharmaceutical companies as a win.  I do not agree this is a very gray topic.  I think this clearly shows President Trump will choose to help the rich despite claiming to do the opposite.  &gt; And Medicare Part-D issue was not dealt at all by Obama in 8 years, am I right?  And there you go again thinking you can point to Obama and be proven right.  I know you think Obama was terrible.  Pointing out that President Trump is better than terrible isn't high praise.  &gt; Ok!!!! Please find me something significant that Trump did that you don't like.  All right, another one of my pet issues is global warming.  I worked for the National Center for Atmospheric Research for seven years and decided to use the time to research both sides of the issue.  There was no comparison.  What I found was the scientists had multiple studies using different approaches with solid science and similar conclusions backed by decades of data.  The skeptics had cherry-picked data, specious reasoning, misrepresentation of the work of others, and often had direct financial ties to big oil.  Today I know of no valid evidence that the planet is not warming or that humans are not responsible.  This makes this issue into another litmus test for me.  If you seek the truth then you will learn that global warming is a real and a serious threat.  If someone claims its a hoax, unsettled science, not human caused, or not much danger then either that person misleading you to push an agenda or is listening to people who are.  Citizen Trump called global warming a Chinese hoax several years ago but I was willing to give him a chance to surround himself with people who actually knew the science.  Since becoming president he has appointed a climate change denier to head the EPA and much of his cabinet, doubled down on coal, oil, and gas mining and pipelines, pulled out of the Paris Accords, cut funding for climate studies, banned government scientists from speaking about the issue publicly, and rolled back regulations that would require or encourage reductions in greenhouse gas emissions.  Once again this issue shows me that President Trump is ignoring what the scientists are saying and what is best for our country long term and embracing policies that will make more money for the wealthy.\"", "Everyone has failures. Failures are how we learn as humans. We literally have to fail over and over again in order to learn how to walk. Yes Steve Jobs had failures in business, and those failures ultimately led to him forever changing the world.  I don't know him personally, so I can't say how he was with other people or his family. However, I did read in Ed Catmull's book Creativity that he developed into a great leader with compassion for others as the years went on.  Other than that, I totally agree with you about what true leadership means."]}
+{"query": "What is the US tax owed when gifting India Shares to my brother?", "corpus": ["Here's an excerpt from the Charles Schwab website which I think will help evaluate your position: The simple answer to your question is no, the value of a gift of stock   for gift tax liability is NOT the donor's cost basis, but rather the   fair market value of the stock at the time the gift is given. So let's   say you purchased 100 shares of XYZ stock at $50 a share. Your cost   basis is $5,000. Now the stock is $80 a share and you give it as a   gift. The value of your gift for gift tax purposes is $8,000. In 2015, you can give up to $14,000 to an unlimited number of   individuals each year without paying a gift tax or even reporting the   gifts. If you give over that amount to any individual, however, you   must report the gift on your tax return, but you don't have to pay   taxes until you give away more than the current lifetime limit of   $5,430,000—for the amount above and beyond $14,000 per person per   year. So in the example above, there would be no gift tax liability.   However, if the stock happened to be $150 a share, the value of the   gift would be $15,000. You'd then have to report it and $1,000 would   be applied toward your $5,430,000 lifetime exclusion. You will need to pay a gift tax on the current value of the stock. I'm not familiar with the tax laws in India, but if your brother was in the US, he wouldn't pay taxes on that gift until he sells the stock. The recipient doesn’t have to worry about gift taxes. It's when the   recipient decides to sell the stock that the issue of valuation comes   up—for income taxes. And this is where things can get a bit more   complicated. In general, when valuing a gift of stock for capital gains tax   liability, it's the donor's cost basis and holding period that rules.   As an example, let's say you receive a gift of stock from your   grandfather. He bought it for $10 a share and it's worth $15 a share   on the day you receive it. If you then sell the stock, whether for a   gain or a loss, your cost basis will be the same as your   grandfather’s: $10 per share. Sell it at $25 and you'll pay tax (at   the short- or long-term rate, depending on how long he owned the   stock) on a gain of $15 a share; sell it at $8 and your capital loss   will be $2 a share. Ultimately, with a gift this large that also crosses international borders, you really should hire a professional who is experienced with these types of transactions. Their fees/commission will be completely offset by the savings in risk and paperwork.  http://www.schwab.com/public/schwab/nn/articles/How-Do-You-Value-a-Gift-of-Stock-It-Depends-on-Whether-You-re-the-Giver-or-the-Receiver"], "neg": ["I have a car loan paid in full and even paid off early, and 2 personal loans paid in full from my credit union that don't seem to reflect in a positive way and all 3 were in good standing. But you also  My credit card utilization is 95%. I have a total of 4 store credit cards, a car loan, 2 personal loans. So assuming no overlap, you've paid off three of your ten loans (30%).  And you still have 95% utilization.   What would you do if you were laid off for six months?  Regardless of payment history, you would most likely stop making payments on your loans.  This is why your credit score is bad.  You are in fact a credit risk.  Not due to payment history.  If your payment history was bad, you'd likely rank worse.  But simple fiscal reality is that you are an adverse event away from serious fiscal problems.   For that matter, the very point that you are considering bankruptcy says that they are right to give you a poor score.  Bankruptcy has adverse effects on you, but for your creditors it means that many of them will never get paid or get paid less than what they loaned.   The hard advice that we can give is to reduce your expenses.  Stop going to restaurants.  Prepare breakfast and supper from scratch and bag your lunch.  Don't put new expenses on your credit cards unless you can pay them this month.  Cut up your store cards and don't shop for anything but necessities.  Whatever durables (furniture, appliances, clothes, shoes, etc.) you have now should be enough for the next year or so.   Cut your expenses.  Have premium channels on your cable or the extra fast internet?  Drop back to the minimum instead.  Turn the heat down and the A/C temperature up (so it cools less).  Turn off the lights if you aren't using them.  If you move, move to a cheaper apartment.  Nothing to do?  Get a second job.  That will not only keep you from being bored, it will help with your financial issues.   Bankruptcy will not itself fix the problems you describe.  You are living beyond your means.  Bankruptcy might make you stop living beyond your means.  But it won't fix the problem that you make less money than you want to spend.  Only you can do that.  Better to stop the spending now rather than waiting until bankruptcy makes your credit even worse and forces you to cut spending.   If you have extra money at the end of the month, pick the worst loan and pay as much of it as you can.  By worst, I mean the one with the worst terms going forward.  Highest interest rate, etc.  If two loans have the same rate, pay the smaller one first.  Once you pay off that loan, it will increase the amount of money you have left to pay off your other loans.  This is called the debt snowball (snowball effect).   After you finish paying off your debt, save up six months worth of expenses or income.  These will be your emergency savings.   Once you have your emergency fund, write out a budget and stick to it.  You can buy anything you want, so long as it fits in your budget.  Avoid borrowing unless absolutely necessary.  Instead, save your money for bigger purchases.  With savings, you not only avoid paying interest, you may actually get paid interest.  Even if it's a low rate, paid to you is better than paying someone else.   One of the largest effects of bankruptcy is that it forces you to act like this.  They offer you even less credit at worse terms.  You won't be able to shop on credit anymore.  No new car loan.  No mortgage.  No nice clothes on credit.  So why declare bankruptcy?  Take charge of your spending now rather than waiting until you can't do anything else.", "As far as I know, it has the same price, and effects on the market, as any other transaction...", "I know that both Lowes and Home Depot (in Canada at least) will offer a 6 month deferred interest payment on all purchases over a certain dollar amount (IIRC, $500+), and sometimes run product specific 1 year deferred interest specials. This is a very effective way of financing renovations. Details: You've probably seen deferred interest -- It's very commonly used in furniture sales (No money down!!! No interest!!! Do not pay for 1 full year!!!)  (Personally, I think it's a plot by the exclamation point manufacturers) It works like this: Typically, I manage these types of purchases by dividing the principal by 6, and then adding 5%, and paying that amount each month.  Pay close attention to the end date, because you do not want to pay 22% interest on the entire amount.   This also requires that you watch your card balance carefully.  All payments are usually put to current purchases (i.e. those not under a plan) first, before they are applied to the plan balance.  So if you are paying 250 a month on the new floor, and run up another $150 on paint, You need to pay the entire new balance, and then the $250 floor payment in order for it to be applied correctly.  Also <shameless plug> http://diy.stackexchange.com </shameless plug>  Consider doing it yourself.", "\"This is a really interesting question and something a lot of work is being done to understand.  I'm going to look at the closely related question \"\"Do non market-cap etf weighting methods consistently outperform once you take into account their investment biases?\"\" Let's use revenue weighting as a reason why investment biases are so important.  In revenue weighting, you would own almost no fast-growing tech companies as they generally have little revenue.   This sounds great if we are talking about say Pets.com in the late 90s but you also would miss most of the rise of Google. To believe in these ETFs consistently outperform (adjusted for risk) you would have to have a strong reason to believe that earnings, sales, or dividends are a better predictor of company value than market value.  Market analysts include the above three metrics and many more when pricing stocks so out-performance using only one of the above metrics seems unlikely. There is one caveat to this and that is value and small cap stocks have been shown to give slightly better risk-adjusted returns in the very long run (see Fama/French) and many of these alternative weighting methods will have a value or small cap bias.  First, it is unclear if this out-performance will continue now that it is more widely known.  Second, even if you believe this will continue you can more easily and cheaply get this bias though value/small-cap etfs than these weighting schemes. In the end, the only thing that is perfectly clear is that higher fee investments will generally under-perform.\"", "You mention that you would quit right after getting approved. But in the United States there would be one last check as a part of closing. Therefore it would be best to wait until after closing to quit your job. Waiting until after closing would also protect you from some hiccup that causes a delay in closing, thus requiring the need to reapply for the loan.", "\"If one takes a slightly more expansive view of the word \"\"saving\"\" to include most forms of durable asset accumulation, I think the reason some do and most don't is a matter of a few factors, I will include the three that seem obvious to me: Education Most schools in the US where I live do not offer personal finance courses, and even when they do, there is no opportunity for a student to practice good financial habits in that classroom setting. I think a simple assignment that required students to track every penny that they spend over the period of a few months would help them open their eyes to how much money is spent on trivial things that they don't need. Perhaps this would be more effective in a university setting where the students are usually away from home and therefore more responsible for the spending that occurs on their own behalf. Beyond simple education about personal finances, most people have no clue how the various financial markets work. If they understood, they would not allow inflation to eat away at their savings, but that's a separate topic from why people do not save. Culture Since much of the education above isn't happening, children get their primary financial education from their parents. This means that those who are wealthy teach their children how to be wealthy, and those who are poor pass on their habits to children who often also end up poor. Erroneous ideas about consumption vs. investment and its economic effects also causes some bad policy encouraging people to live beyond their means and use credit unwisely, but if you live in a country where the average person expects to eat out regularly and trade in their automobiles as soon as they experienced their highest rate of depreciation, it can be hard to recognize bad financial behavior for what it is. Collective savings rates reflect a lot of individuals who are emulating each other's bad behavior. Discipline Even when someone is educated about finances, they may not establish good habits of budgeting regularly, tracking spending, and setting financial goals. For me, it helps to be married to someone who has similar financial goals, because we budget monthly and any major purchases (over $100 or so) must be agreed upon at the beginning of the month (with obvious exceptions for emergencies). This eliminates any impulsive spending, which is probably 90% of the battle for me. Some people do not need to account to someone else in order to spend wisely, but everyone should find a system that works for them and helps them to maintain some financial discipline.\"", "Let's assume you have total year income I. The inflation rate is R and the growth rate is E every year. The contributed rate deducting 1.8% will be C = 0.982. So, for your account you'll have every year Let's assume you have annual income in 1000, then for years So, you'll deposit 40 000 and got at the end 129 023.60. But be careful, economic calculation for so long period could be very incaccurate because of the variation of the inflation rate, growth rate and various risks. The spreadsheet could be very useful. More accurate formula which assume that annual deposit grows only the half of the year. Thus, the result for 40 years will be 124 576.91."]}
+{"query": "How do I interpret this analysis from Second Opinion?", "corpus": ["\"In Second Opinion's opinion, they say \"\"Do not initiate new position.\"\"  This means do not buy the stock if you do not already own it.   Since they also say to hold if you do own it, this is a very \"\"who knows what it will do\"\" neutral position (IMO).\""], "neg": ["&gt; What exactly does Russia get from us, if anything, that they can't get somewhere else?  Food, capital and human capital.  &gt; And if they get something I guarantee Putin has found a substitute source  E.U. and the US produces some of the worlds best produce in terms of quality and quantity. Russia has no problem feeding their population. If they're cool with eating nothing but wheat and corn.  &gt; IMHO this is not as bad as the media wants you to believe.  Actually it's gonna be pretty fucking bad for the Russian people. They are already suffering from inflation and GDP stagnation from the previous years sanctions.", "Credit card, without a doubt. The reason is dispute resolution. If you dispute a charge on debit card - the money has left your account already, and if the dispute was accepted - you'll get it back. If. Eventually. In the mean time your overdraft will be missing $$$. For credit cards, you can catch a fraud action before the money actually leaves your pocket and dispute it then. In this case the charge is set aside, and you will only be required to actually pay if the dispute is rejected. I.e.: The money stays in your pocket, until the business proves that the charge is legit. In both cases, if the dispute is justified (i.e.: there was indeed a fraud) neither you nor the bank will lose money at the bottom line, it's just who's got the money during the dispute resolution process (which may be lengthy) that matters.", "Given your timeframe, risk tolerance, and the fact that you don't need this money, I would suggest a balanced approach. Something like: If you want to have fun investing, you could look into things like lendingclub, or bonds, or stocks, etc. But an allocation like I've outlined above is a pretty good balance of risk and reward over that timeframe.", "**Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco**  Barbarians at the Gate: The Fall of RJR Nabisco is a book about the leveraged buyout (LBO) of RJR Nabisco, written by investigative journalists Bryan Burrough and John Helyar. The book is based upon a series of articles written by the authors for The Wall Street Journal. The book was later made into a made-for-TV movie by HBO, also called Barbarians at the Gate. The book centers on F. Ross Johnson, the CEO of RJR Nabisco, who planned to buy out the rest of the Nabisco shareholders.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&amp;message=Excludeme&amp;subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/finance/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.23", "Remember that unless you participate in the actual fund that these individuals offer to the public, you will not get the same returns they will. If you instead do something like, look at what Warren Buffet's fund bought/sold yesterday (or even 60 minutes ago), and buy/sell it yourself, you will face 2 obstacles to achieving their returns: 1) The timing difference will mean that the value of the stock purchased by Warren Buffet will be different for your purchase and for his purchase. Because these investors often buy large swathes of stock at once, this may create large variances for 2 reasons: (a) simply buying a large volume of a stock will naturally increase the price, as the lowest sell orders are taken up, and fewer willing sellers remain; and (b) many people (including institutional investors) may be watching what someone like Warren Buffet does, and will want to follow suit, chasing the same pricing problem. 2) You cannot buy multiple stocks as efficiently as a fund can. If Warren Buffet's fund holds, say, 50 stocks, and he trades 1 stock per day [I have absolutely no idea about what diversification exists within his fund], his per-share transaction costs will be quite low, due to share volume. Whereas for you to follow him, you would need 50 transactions upfront, + 1 per day. This may appear to be a small cost, but it could be substantial. Imagine if you wanted to invest 50k using this method - that's $1k for each of 50 companies. A $5 transaction fee would equal 1% of the value of each company invested [$5 to buy, and $5 to sell]. How does that 1% compare to the management fee charged by the actual fund available to you? In short, if you feel that a particular investor has a sound strategy, I suggest that you consider investing with them directly, instead of attempting to recreate their portfolio.", "My initial thoughts were Slack is amazing, why would they quit? I read the article and found that their challenges are aligned to challenges that most companies now face with the direct instant communication tool. Besides the obvious lack of personal connection slack can be very divisive if not used the right way.", "\"As a Brit, I try to avoid just saying \"\"no\"\" outright at work. Rather, I would question why they needed something if I didn't see the need for it (it may well be that I'm just not seeing something that they are, because they have more experience). I also try to phrase questions in a way that is respectful and doesn't back my superiors into a corner. Of course ultimately it just comes down to social skills which you'd use in daily life outside work anyway.\""]}
+{"query": "Doctor's office won't submit claim to insurance after 5 months", "corpus": ["I'm a business law student, so medical stuff isn't really my specialty. I'll share with you what I know though. First, as to the legality, I'm not aware of anything making it illegal for them to consider their business with you concluded. Absent any contract between you and the doctor, it seems to me that you agreed to pay them in cash. If I was the business, I'd assume our business had been concluded as well. As for any contracts between the insurance company and the doctor's office, as far as I know, that's between them. That wouldn't give you standing to sue the doctor. I'm unfamiliar with a patient submitting insurance claims, but if that's something you are allowed to do with your insurance company and all you need is more information, submit a request for your medical records to the doctor. Under United States law, your medical records are yours. You have a right to receive a copy of them. Keep in mind though that the doctor's office may charge you a small copying fee to cover expenses they incur while making a copy for you. As far as complaining, I would suggest your local Better Business Bureau. Each state generally has a medical board which oversees doctors. You might lodge a complaint with them as well. I hope this helps. Keep in mind that I'm not an attorney. This is not legal advice. This is only what I personally would do if I were in your situation. You can and should consult an attorney who is licensed to practice law in your particular jurisdiction."], "neg": ["\"It seems like you don't understand much about what you have a strong opinion about.  Most public employees who fly do fly coach. Senior leadership and executive class employees - the kind responsible for tens of thousands of employees and/or manage federal budgets worth hundreds of millions or more - you put them in business class so they can be productive. It's not about comfort; it's about productivity.  Secondly, neither you (as an owner) nor the public pay the costs for union reps. So no one needs to or should care what uninformed opinion you have. That would be like me disctating how you or some other business owner should be able to spend their operating budget.  It's statements from ignorance like this that really undermine the argument that \"\"business owners\"\" are the backbone of the economy or that they would have any advantage managing public affairs.\"", "\"This is the biggest blunder I see in money handling.  \"\"Oh I'm a good person and everyone knows my intentions are good.  And they're really happy with me right now, so it'll stay that way forever, right?  So I can just do anything and they'll trust me.\"\"  And then in hindsight 10 years later, the person realizes \"\"wow, I was really stubborn and selfish to just assume that.  No wonder it blew up.\"\"  Anyway, to that end, your requirement that all the money be in one account and \"\"this will simplify taxes\"\" is horsepuckey.  No one will believe a legitimate financial advisor needs that, but it's exactly what a swindler would do. And that's the problem.  If anything goes wrong, their trust in you will be forgotten, some will say you intended to scam all along, and the structure will be the first thing to convict you.   Money makes everyone mistrusting.  Ironically, the concept is called a \"\"trust\"\", and there's a wide body of law and practice for Person X responsibly handling the money of Person Y.  The classic example is Person Y is a corporation (say, a charity) and Person X is on the Board of Directors.  It's the same basic thing.   The doctrine is:\"", "That has nothing to do with what I said. Undoubtedly the USPS does many things that make them money. They also seem to do things that don't make them money, as evidenced by them cutting those non-money-making things to balance their budget.  And due to congressional interference, the USPS often does irrational things, unfortunately.", "\"He thinks he can \"\"get a deal\"\" now that SK really needs NK in the wake of the hostilities lately. Also, government disruptions cause predictable market responses, so the deals he's making help himself and the rest of the 1%. Imagine as a business leader you know this, and now imagine you have the power to do it at will.   I don't think that's cynical. Some who's lived their entire adult life finding ways to turn every situation into personal profit isn't going to stop when he's the president.\"", "Yes but it's more important to look at the longer term trends, which Schiff would actually probably support.   He is not anyone you should take very seriously for intelligent economic debate. His glory comes from calling the real estate bubble, which deserves some credit, but all of his predictions of what would occur during the fall out have been wrong and almost the exact opposite. He doesn't understand modern economics.", "You may have meant r/the_donald instead of R/the_donald.    ---------------------------------------    Remember, *I can't do anything against ninja-edits.*    **What is my purpose?** I correct subreddit and user links that have a capital R or U, which are **unusable on some browsers.**     **by Srikar**", "Given that hedge funds and trading firms employ scores of highly   intelligent analysts, programmers, and managers to game the market,   what shot does the average person have at successful investing in the   stock market? Good question and the existing answers provide valuable insight.  I will add one major ingredient to successful investing: emotion.  The analysts and experts that Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley or the best hedge funds employ may have some of the most advanced analytical skills in the world, but knowing and doing still greatly differ.  Consider how many of these same companies and funds thought real estate was a great buy before the housing bubble.  Why?  FOMO (fear of missing out; what some people call greed). One of my friends purchased Macy's and Las Vegas Sands in 2009 at around $5 for M and $2 for LVS.  He never graduated high school, so we might (foolishly) refer to him as below average because he's not as educated as those individuals at Goldman Sachs, Morgan Stanley, etc.  Today M sits around $40 a share and LVS at around $70. Those returns in five years. The difference?  Emotion.  He holds little attachment to money (lives on very little) and thus had the freedom to take a chance, which to him didn't feel like a chance.  In a nutshell, his emotions were in the right place and he studied a little bit about investing (read two article) and took action.  Most of the people who I know, which easily had quintuple his wealth and made significantly more than he did, didn't take a chance (even on an index fund) because of their fear of loss. I mean everyone knows to buy low, right?  But how many actually do?  So knowing what to do is great; just be sure you have the courage to act on what you know."]}
+{"query": "Can a self-employed person have a Health Savings Account?", "corpus": ["\"Whether you can establish an HSA has nothing to do with your employment status or your retirement plan. It has to do with the type of medical insurance you have.  The insurance company should be able to tell you if your plan is \"\"HSA compatible\"\". To be HSA compatible, a plan must have a \"\"high deductible\"\" -- in 2014, $1250 for an individual plan or $2500 for a family plan. It must not cover any expenses before the deductible, that is, you cannot have any \"\"first dollar\"\" coverage for doctor's visits, prescription drug coverage, etc. (There are some exceptions for services considered \"\"preventive care\"\".) There are also limits on the out-of-pocket max. I think that's it, but the insurance company should know if their plans qualify or not. If you have a plan that is HSA compatible, but also have another plan that is not HSA compatible, then you don't qualify. And all that said ... If you are covered under your husband's medical insurance, and your husband already has an HSA, why do you want to open a second one? There's no gain. There is a family limit on contributions to an HSA -- $6,550 in 2014. You don't get double the limit by each opening your own HSA. If you have two HSA's, the combined total of your contributions to both accounts must be within the limit. If you have some administrative reason for wanting to keep separate accounts, yes, you can open your own, and in that case, you and your husband are each allowed to contribute half the limit, or you can agree to some other division.  I suppose you might want to have an account in your own name so that you control it, especially if you and your husband have different ideas about managing finances. (Though how to resolve such problems would be an entirely different question. Personally, I don't think the solution is to get into power struggles over who controls what, but whatever.) Maybe there's some advantage to having assets in your own name if you and your husband were to divorce. (Probably not, though. I think a divorce court pretty much ignores whose name assets are in when dividing up property.)  See IRS publication 969, http://www.irs.gov/publications/p969/index.html for lots and lots of details.\""], "neg": ["Getbidon.com is the ultimate resource for growing businesses of all sizes. The fact is, in a free market economy, if you’re not moving forward, you’re moving backward. That means YOU are under pressure to perform and produce business growth.", "The real problem is everyone thinks they need a degree. A lifelong of crippling student debt is an indicator you had no business being in college. Its hard for people in America to accept that their time just isnt worth all that much.", "So their programmers don't have to deal with floating point arithmetic. This is why they're so far ahead in technology!", "Try to avoid actually pulling money out of your retirement savings. Not only are you paying that stiff penalty today, but you're actually stealing form your future. Many 457 plans allow you to borrow against the balance, usually up to 50% of the plan balance. I'd roll the 401k into the 457 and borrow against it if you really need the money. Borrow a little extra to help you make the first few payments if you need to.", "I think you need to study the history of industrialization.  First of all, these people arent losers. They work honestly, dont commit crime.  Second, minimum wage laws come out of the history of industrialization.  The only reason we have any middle class whatsoever is because of the labor movement. Ill allow you some time to look up, as an example, coal miners strikes, or *The Jungle* by Upton Sinclaire.   Second, please take an econ course above 201. Regulation, yes, brings more business if it is correcting a market failure.  A market failure is when the private market does not produce maximum social benefit. When MPB !=MSB that is a market failure. Pb being private benefit.  Then entire field of economics is dedicated to discovering proper methods to correct market failures,  since most industries have at least some failures, in the most efficient way possible to where MPB=MSB.  Yes, regulation can bring benefit to the economy.   One great and obvious example is the regulation of lemons. Without regulation, there would be no restriction against selling disfunctional products. With widespread sale of dysfunctional products, the economy would suffer as users demand lower prices even for perfectly good products, because they cannot know whether it is a lemon. This is just one example of a regulation against business benefiting the economy.   Once you have done educated yourself, Im happy to continue this discussion on a rational footing.", "It's scary how many of these I used. Today.  Most of that is crap, but many of the buzz words have real, quite useful concept behind them. It's the people who think that just using the words is enough who give them the almost curse word status they have.", "Saneh Cool Care, since its beginning, is known for rendering deliberately executed support and repair administrations for business and mechanical ventilates. Window ventilation system, split AC, and tower AC, are diverse sorts of aeration and cooling systems for that we render upkeep and repair administrations at practical costs."]}
+{"query": "Freelancing and getting taxes taken out up front instead of end of year?", "corpus": ["\"It seems that you think you are freelancing, and they think you are an employee. What's bad for you, the tax office will also think you are an employee if they withhold tax for you. Alternatively, they think you are stupid, and they keep the money, but are actually not paying it to the tax office at all, in which case you will have a bad surprise when you do your tax returns.  First, I'd ask them for proof that they are indeed paying these taxes into some account related to you. I'd then ask a tax adviser for some serious advice. If they are acting out of incompetence and not out of malice, then you should be mostly fine, but your work there will count as employment.  Heaven knows why they treat you as an employee. Check your contract with them; whether it is between you and them or your company and them. It maybe that they never hired a contractor and believe that they have to pay employment tax. They don't. If your company sends them a bill, then they need to pay that bill, 100% of it, and that's it. Taxes are fully your business and your responsibility. As \"\"quid\"\" said, if they say they are withholding tax, then at the very least there must be a paystub that proves they have actually been paying these taxes. If they withhold taxes, and there is no paystub, then this looks like a criminal attempt to cheat you.  If they have actually paid taxes properly into your account, then they are merely creating a mess that can hopefully be fixed. But it is probably complicated enough that you need a tax advisor, even if you had none before, since instead of paying to your company, they paid some money to the company, and some to you personally.\""], "neg": ["I'd share my google sheet I have comparing the two, but in the interest of keeping myself at least a little private, I'll use a made up situation with real numbers.  **Meet Bob.**  Front End dev.  Single.  5y exp in industry.  Likes to live well, in a nice place.  Has no expensive hobbies, or otherwise uncommon expenses.  [Makes 70k in Indianapolis](https://www.paysa.com/salaries/indianapolis,-in--l).  Lives off 50k, puts 20k in the bank yearly.  Receives job offer in Valley. Lets say he makes 170k, which is easily possible.  With a small company, you might expect ~120k.  With a giant, you'd probably be looking at ~200k+.  Both numbers include any RSUs.      **Salary Sources for San Jose**  San Jose was chosen, as many sites simply lump this greater area together as San Jose.  Its just easier, and does not make a huge different in the numbers.  I'm not a front end dev, but 170 is in the ballpark of my offers with larger companies in the valley, as a personal data point.  * [Paysa, which sources salary reports from actual professionals.  Typically from more larger, established companies \\(Google, MSFT, Facebook, Linkedin, Amazon, etc\\)](https://www.paysa.com/salaries/san-jose,-ca--l) * [Indeed, which is much more bottom of the barrel generally speaking.  No large company is throwing their job on Indeed.](https://www.indeed.com/jobs?q=Javascript&amp;l=San+Jose%2C+CA)  **Cost of Living**  Lets see how the COL breaks down.  Im using [this breakdown of what people spend their money on](http://www.businessinsider.com/how-americans-spend-most-of-their-money-2017-1) to get ideas.  Lets say Bob was spending 60k in Indy, saving 20k/yr.    * Rent - $1400/mo apartment, $17000/yr * Food - $20/d, $7300/yr (Bob is a bad cook/lazy) * Transportation - it looks like we can [estimate high and say 10k](https://www.valuepenguin.com/average-household-budget) * Taxes - $14k - https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#FB9ktMO6uP * 10k on other misc. - Healthcare, Entertainment, shit around the house, new socks, etc  (breaks down to $190/wk)  **Total: ~60k**  Lets first try just using COL calculators, which were in the ballpark, but generally high, compared to what I found when breaking down my own expenses.  * [Salary.com says 100% COL increase.](http://swz.salary.com/CostOfLivingWizard/Layoutscripts/Coll_Result.aspx) * [Nerdwallet says 100% COL increase for SF \\(SJ not available\\).](https://www.nerdwallet.com/cost-of-living-calculator/compare/indianapolis-vs-san-francisco) * [Numbeo puts Consumer prices, including rent, to be ~50% higher.](https://www.numbeo.com/cost-of-living/compare_cities.jsp?country1=United+States&amp;city1=Indianapolis%2C+IN&amp;country2=United+States&amp;city2=San+Jose%2C+CA&amp;amount=4%2C500.00&amp;displayCurrency=USD)  For the sake of argument lets run with the the assumption it costs Bob double to continue his standard of living, based off the above.  As you mentioned, and as I fully agree, housing is the biggest expense, so lets check my assumption there.  A Zillow search for Sunnyvale proper, very close to all of the tech giants HQs, shows [1BR in good conditions and of decent size \\(700sqft+\\) run anywhere between 2.3k to 3.5k](https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_rent/Sunnyvale-CA/condo,apartment_duplex,townhouse_type/54626_rid/1-_beds/37.395016,-122.002616,37.348838,-122.064414_rect/13_zm/).  Lets plan for the worst, and say its 3.5k.  Thats 42k/yr.  Living this close (literally biking distance) is a luxury, but lets say Bob hates commuting, so hes willing to pay as such.  Lets not forget Uncle Sam, and more specifically, California's uncle Sam, which is extra greedy.  He will want [roughly 65k](https://smartasset.com/taxes/income-taxes#kMLNaWg8M9), rounding up.  The other big expenses are food and transportation.  Lets say food is 50% more expensive, going with your argument.  7300 * 1.5 = 11k.    Lets say the same for Gas, and general transportation (there is no parking situation in the greater valley - that is a San Francisco downtown city issue, so ignore that).  10 * 1.5 = 15k  Same for everything else.  50% markup.  That laptop in Indy that cost 2k now costs 3k (absolutely not true, but lets roll with it.) . Healthcare too.  10k * 1.5 = 15k  Total San Jose / mid-valley COL: 15k + 15k + 11k + 65k + 42k = 130k.  So using high estimates for everything, Bob now spends 130k of his new 170k salary.  **He now gets to save 40k, double what he did before**.  He also now hopefully has a great name on his resume which will literally open doors, a RSU package which will refresh yearly, **making him earn 500k/yr within a decade**, and will be at the center of his industry.  Keep in mind, this is only coming at this from the mindset of someone in tech.  If I wasn't in tech, I would never, *ever*, ***ever*** consider moving to the valley unless I was bankrolling some other job.  But for tech, the logic is there.  I'm sorry if I upset you, but I've literally broken down my expenses and done all this math for my actual situation.  Lets not even get started with the other perks.  For a large tech company, which is a very realistic goal for someone decently good and easy to work with in tech, you get unlimited vacation, a free for all budget of 2k for training, free lunch and snacks, shuttle service if you live in main hubs (the city, etc), great weather, can ski and surf in the same day - all things you likely do not get in a midwest tech job.", "In Phoenix you can get a two bedroom for $600/mo in an okay neighborhood if you know where/when to look, and a bit cheaper if you're willing to go a bit skeezier. Since we are talking minimum wage, you should be hopefully be able to find a job within biking distance (or, if you live in Tempe, take the free bus.) Have one person work mornings and the other work evenings/nights and you don't need daycare. (Other options: have them stay with a nearby family member, trade off watching the kids with other working families, or go for a three bedroom, grab a family member, and have someone work a 20-hr week instead.) Electricity averages to something like $100/mo over the course of the year (my high was about $150, low was around $40 in a two-bedroom.) So ~$700/mo for shelter, maybe $30/mo for a bus pass. That's $730/mo. I'm not saying it would be comfortable, but it can be done.", "I would add to this that, while everyone is right on trading, there are certain special situations you could look into that could turn a profit in a relatively short time frame (one month, say).   A recent example is Northstar Realty Finance (NRF). I bought in at $16.50 prior to a spinoff, sold half (the spinoff company) at $18.75 within a month, and the other half (the REIT) has since paid a 50 cent dividend and gone up to mid $18s as well within a total of just over 2 months. (This admittedly sounds like bragging, which isn't intended- I just want to give an example of a short term position resulting in a gain, and I don't know any off the top of my head except the one I did recently).   This isn't trading, but it is a short term position that would have turned a profit with $1800. I still wouldn't recommend it, considering commissions eats a sizable portion. But if you want to take short term positions, you don't need as much as you would to be a day trader.   I would read Seth Klarman's Margin of Safety, the sections on spinoffs and bankruptcy. They provide some useful information on some short term positions. However, also be aware that you should be willing to hold any short term position as a long term position if it does not immediately work out. By way of example, I believed NRF would go up post spinoff but the spinoff company stay the same. Instead, NRF stayed the same and the spinoff went up. But NRF was undervalued, so I held it for another month.   Just my advice. As far as learning goes- use play money. But if you never are going to have enough money to really trade with, hopefully my info on short-term positions is helpful.", "Making a game is hard enough, focus on that. If/when you start getting close to having something to sell, then if you're serious and want the company to grow into a full time venture, briefly consult with a lawyer and possibly accountant to set this up. It will save you a lot of time researching what you have to do and a lot of headache from potentially doing things wrong. If you want to try to do it on your own, I'd recommend getting a book on starting a business because there is more to know than a single post can cover.  You'll probably have to file for a DBA (doing business as) at your city hall in order to be allowed to refer to yourself as the name of your company (otherwise you have to use your personal name). Initiating that will likely initiate annual business taxes in your town in addition to the cheap filing fee. You also want to consider how you will handle trademark (of your business and game) and copyright (of your game). If this is going to grow, you'll have to have contracts written for either employees or for freelancers who might produce assets for you. You may also need to consider writing an EULA for your game, privacy policies, etc. Additionally, you'll likely have to file with your state to collect and send sales tax. You'll also want to meticulously track costs and revenue related to your business. Formally starting a business will likely open you up to property, sales and income tax. For example, where I am, was even taxed on the equipment the business uses (e.g. computers). This is why it makes sense to wait until you're closer to having a product before you try to formally start a business and to consult with professionals on the best way.  The type of business you should form will depend on the scope you plan for the company and the amount of time/money you're willing to put in. A sole proprietorship (what you are by default) means there is no difference legally/financially between you as an individual and you as a company. This may be suitable if this is just a hobby, but not if you intend it to grow because that means any lawsuit directed at your company and its money is also directed at you and your money. The differences between an LLC and corporation are more nuanced and involve differences in legal and tax treatment, however, they both shield you from the previously mentioned problem. If you want this to be more than a hobby you should form either an LLC or a corporation. Do some research on the differences and how they might apply to you and in your state.", "Yes definitely  Warren Buffet averaged returns of only around 21% throughout his 40 years in business.  ROE of 23% is probably more than double the ROE of most companies , whats more as the saying goes its easier to grow sales from 1 million to 100 million than to grow sales from 100 million to 10 billion", "\"I don't think there is a law against it. For example comdirect offers multi banking so you can access your accounts from other banks through the comdirect website. My guess would be: Germans are very conservative when it comes to their money (preferring cash above cards, using \"\"safe\"\" low interest saving accounts instead of stocks) so there just might be no market for such a tool. There are desktop apps with bank syncing that offer different levels of personal finance management. Some I know are MoneyMoney, outbank, numbrs, GNUCash and StarMoney.\"", "\"You absolutely, positively can land in jail in the United States of America for an unpaid, NON-governmental debt: \"\"In 2011, Robin Sanders was driving home when she saw the blue and red lights flashing behind her. She knew she had not fixed her muffler, and believed that was why she was being pulled over. She thought she might get a ticket.Instead, Sanders, who lives in Illinois, was arrested and taken to jail.As she was booked and processed, she learned that she had been jailed because she owed debt — $730 to be precise, related to an unpaid medical bill. Unbeknownst to her, a collection agency had filed a lawsuit against her, and, having never received the notice instructing her to appear, she had missed her date in court.\"\" So, a private company is able to marshal the power of the State to arrest a person for a non-criminal act: being in debt. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prisons-then-and-now-faq#.kzmmbtcOZ\""]}
+{"query": "Are marijuana based investments promising, or just another scam?", "corpus": ["Is there any truth to this, or is this another niche scam that's been brewing the last few years? While it may not be an outright scam, such schemes do tend to be on borderline of scams. Technically most of what is being said claimed can be true, however in reality such windfall gains never happen to the investors. Whatever gains are there will be cornered by the growers, trades, other entities in supply chain leaving very little to the investors.  It is best to stay away from such investments."], "neg": ["In general, you would have to be the age of majority (generally, 18) to take out a loan. Additionally, your credit rating must be sufficient for the bank or loan company to be comfortable loaning you money.", "People clamoring for more and more regulation will always be disappointed because businesses will always find ways to get around it.  And, it is the usually the incumbent businesses that are able to do so, while new businesses find increased barriers to entry.  The correct solution is to remove the root source of the tuition bubble, get rid of the government subsidies for higher education altogether.", "I don't think you understand human rights. Human rights aren't something enforced on someone, they are inherent in a person's humanity. If you don't want to participate in society (pay taxes) and would prefer giving up your citizenship or spending time in jail you can choose to stop paying taxes.   It is also important to realize corporations pay a smaller proportion of US tax revenue than they have since before world war 2. Corporations are not pulling their weight considering the benefits they are granted by the US Government.  Your silly argument against paying taxes because you think people worse off economically then you don't deserve the joy of having a family is depressing. The United States is the wealthiest nation in the history of world and people are having on average far fewer children than in the past.  Having a lot of young people is beneficial to the country. The fact their parents are forced to work so much they can't raise their children adequately is a failure of the economy and society, not a personal failure of an individual. Unless you think a poor family in Idaho is responsible for the demise of global capitalism, the financialization of the economy, and the cultural counter revolution against the working class.", "stopit and I are very happy to vote for Romney. Its pathetic how the political narrative has gotten in this country and all the undue shit the job creators have received in this country. Judging by stopit's comment, its safe to say that he supports more tax breaks for the wealthy because they desperately need it. If there is less demand and less people aren't buying things because they are lazy fuck ups and couldn't keep their jobs or their home, or refuse to pay for medical insurance and go bankrupt as a result and keep having children they can't afford then the rich need all the help they can get because no one, NO RED BLOODED AMERICAN, wants to see their wealth get reduced or leave to another country. DON'T LET THEM GO GALT. Please vote Romney.", "So? If the executives have mismanaged the company (and let's not pretend that's what's happening here -- Sears has been being systematically butchered for years at this point, so it's _worse_ than ineptitude), _why the fuck are the executives getting paid instead of existing obligations being at least partially funded_?  If I go to work at a car wash and do such a shit job that I run half a dozen vehicles through the wash with all the windows rolled down, I'm probably not only getting fired, but I'm likely going to be on the hook for damages. Executives pretty much get away with anything that isn't literally criminal in a lot of these cases, and the fact that Sears has been getting parted out for _years_ makes it obvious that they knew full well that it'd be coming to this.", "You're exactly right, I wish more people understood this.   That being said, there is definitely progress in this area. The house actually passed a reasonable bill in the past few days and now the senate has taken it up.   [Source](http://www.reuters.com/article/2011/12/12/idUS125555802420111212)", "&gt;If you lived in a gang banger / drug dealer's house  right, because it's their house. As in, that person is the rightful and legitimate owner of that property.  Are you claiming that the US Federal Government is the rightful and legitimate owner of all the property of the United States?"]}
+{"query": "My boss wants to buy me a gift. How do I account for taxes for this?", "corpus": ["\"Gifts given and received between business partners or employers/employees are treated as income, if they are beyond minimal value. If your boss gives you a gift, s/he should include it as part of your taxable wages for payroll purposes - which means that some of your wages should be withheld to cover income, social security, and Medicare taxes on it. At the end of the year, the value of the gift should be included in Box 1 (wages) of your form W-2. Assuming that's the case, you don't need to do anything special. A 1099-MISC would not be appropriate because you are an employee of your boss - so the two of you need to address the full panoply of employment taxes, not just income tax, which would be the result if the payment were reported on 1099-MISC. If the employer wants to cover the cost to you of the taxes on the gift, they'll need to \"\"gross up\"\" your pay to cover it. Let's say your employer gives you a gift worth $100, and you're in a 25% tax bracket. Your employer has to give you $125 so that you end up with a gain of $100. But the extra $25 is taxable, too, so your employer will need to add on an extra $6.25 to cover the 25% tax on the $25. But, wait, now we've gotta pay 25% tax on the $6.25, so they add an extra $1.56 to cover that tax. And now they've gotta pay an extra $.39 . . .  The formula to calculate the gross-up amount is: where [TAX RATE] is the tax rate expressed as a percentage. So, to get the grossed-up amount for a $100 gift in a 25% bracket, we'd calculate 1/(1-.25), or 1/.75, or 1.333, multiply that by the target gift amount of $100, and end up with $133.33.  The equation is a little uglier if you have to pay state income taxes that are deductible on the federal return but it's a similar principle.  The entire $133.33 would then be reported as income, but the net effect on the employee is that they're $100 richer after taxes. The \"\"gross-up\"\" idea can be quite complicated if you dig into the details - there are some circumstances where an additional few dollars of income can have an unexpected impact on a tax return, in a fashion not obvious from looking at the tax table.  If the employer doesn't include the gift in Box 1 on the W-2 but you want to pay taxes on it anyway, include the amount in Line 7 on the 1040 as if it had been on a W-2, and fill out form 8919 to calculate the FICA taxes that should have been withheld.\""], "neg": ["I just researched it a bit more and you are correct. It is essentially only a drive-reduction gear and a reverse gear. This means there is very, very little to be serviced on the entire drivetrain. The biggest service issue is the battery pack, and that has a lifetime that is accounted for in the 8 year warranty limit. So Tesla is not sweating the number of miles, honestly.", "\"In your situation, you probably should not cash in your IRA and 401(k). A good mortgage lender will want to see that you have \"\"reserves\"\" -- money that you could fall back on if you hit a very rough patch.  Your current savings and retirement accounts might add up to a suitable reserve. You might want to do something like this instead: By the way, instead of cashing in a 401(k), it is usually better to: This method avoids large tax penalties, and encourages you to rebuild your 401(k).  Unfortunately, your large debt balances might prevent you from getting the PLOC.  But even in the worst case scenario (where you cannot use a PLOC to pay off a 401(k) balloon payment), it postpones the tax hit until after the balloon payment.\"", "To get out of the shithole mess that republicans created.. i.e. Economic Depression .. 3 wars..  But I see Your Username checks out so I'm not surprised ..Stop living in the fantasy world comrade.  Being an ignorant confused putts is not a good look.  I welcome you to join us grow ups in reality", "Minimum wage is terribly low.  However, someone making $1700 a month (income from first job), does not have to be homeless in Kansas.   You are not living in the ritzy neighborhood, and would need to budget.   But this is a long way from homelessness.   The average 2bed Kansas City is [under $500 per month](https://www.kcpremierapts.com/how-we-work/nitty-gritty/kansas-city-apartment-pricing.html) in some neighborhoods.   That leaves enough money for food.      Not a desirable lifestyle, but a long way above homelessness unless there are mental health and addiction issues.", "In the UK (similar laws exist throughout Europe, see European Consumer Rights Directive), you have the right to return for a refund for any goods that are bought off-premises for 14 days after delivery. http://www.which.co.uk/consumer-rights/regulation/consumer-contracts-regulations I understand that consumer protections in the USA are not as strong though.", "TrumleThinnSkins government is frozen like a rabbit in the Head lights, he is unable to move or make any meaningful decisions, all he can do is break stuff other people spent time to build, the only storm coming is the massive fart he is going  to let out as all the hot air escapes his saggy white moronic buttocks.", "You could have googled this question.  I did so and found a link to this article. YMMV taking investment advice from thestreet.com is very likely to lose you money.  However, there do not seem to be any sector funds that specifically focus on the electric vehicle market. Along similar, but not exactly the same lines, there are sector funds that focus on renewable energy.  This article reviews some of them."]}
+{"query": "looking for research tool to plug in and evaluate theoretical historical returns", "corpus": ["\"The professional financial advisors do have tools which will take a general description of a portfolio and run monte-carlo simulations based on the stock market's historical behavior. After about 100 simulation passes they can give a statistical statement about the probable returns, the risk involved in that strategy, and their confidence in these numbers.  Note that they do not just use the historical data or individual stocks. There's no way to guarantee that the same historical accidents would have occurred that made one company more successful than another, or that they will again. \"\"Past performance is no guarantee of future results\"\"... but general trends and patterns can be roughly modelled. Which makes that a good fit for those of us buying index funds, less good for those who want to play at a greater level of detail in the hope of doing better. But that's sorta the point; to beat market rate of return with the same kind of statistical confidence takes a lot more work.\""], "neg": ["Looks like some sources are [confirming the acquisition for $970 million.](http://venturebeat.com/2014/08/25/amazon-could-steal-twitch-acquisition-from-google/) This will be interesting to follow, it looks lower than what had been rumored. Amazon shareholders will be happy, but those involved with Twitch may not be as excited. It almost makes you wonder what happened since the early reports make it look like Google was outbid. If Google really did offer $1B, you have to wonder what happened/changed.", "By availing of the web design and development services offered by Markitbee, your company can get the website it deserves. They will not only design an online site based on your specific requirements, but also provide high-quality content. They have a quick turnaround time so your website will be finished before your established deadline. Visit their website at markitbee.com for more information.", "A lot of Americans have used Swiss bank accounts to avoid paying taxes. However recently several large Swiss banks have started disclosing the details on some of their customers to the IRS. There isn't much security in Swiss banking at this point in time.", "I agree.  Finding success in life is hard.  It will probably always be hard.  There is no need for us to exacerbate the issue by NOT helping those we CAN help, or by blaming them for their failures, when we never taught them how to succeed, either.  &gt;In order to acquire capital you need to do productive things, which (idealy) are productive to some degree to society as a whole.  Unless you inherit it.  The problem is, there are TONS of non-productive ways to build capital, that require capital.  Stocks and futures, monopolies, law manipulation, media manipulation, etc.  There are few methods to gain capital, if you have low capital, that aren't controlled by someone with large capital.  And this is okay, so long as those with low capital have sufficient avenues to increase their capital acquisition.    It also doesn't help that capital they do have is now worth less than it used to be.  A minimum wage job used to be sufficient to pay for a year of college.  Now it isn't even sufficient to pay for housing.  You can't just acquire more capital, because existence itself costs capital.  You need food, water, a place to stay, warmth, a way for people to reach you, and a reliable method of transportation.  You probably also need access to a computer and the internet.  All of these repeatedly cost capital, and you already entered with low capital.  I don't believe our capitalist system is a good reflection of s/d anymore.  I believe it represents control by those with the most.    ISPs have local monopolies because people can't easily move, and a startup ISP is expensive.  Pharmaceuticals have a monopoly on new medicines that people need to survive.  It's kind of a health blackmailing system.  Net Neutrality is being attacked, because ISPs want to be able to charge and control who can access what.  Like any company, they want to thrive.  We are letting our freedom be sold off, one piece at a time, because profit, not people, are the most important thing.  At least, that is where I see things heading.", "Thank you gouldy\\_ftw for voting on WikiTextBot.    This bot wants to find the best and worst bots on Reddit. [You can view results here](https://goodbot-badbot.herokuapp.com/).     ***    ^^Even ^^if ^^I ^^don't ^^reply ^^to ^^your ^^comment, ^^I'm ^^still ^^listening ^^for ^^votes. ^^Check ^^the ^^webpage ^^to ^^see ^^if ^^your ^^vote ^^registered!", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://bilbo.economicoutlook.net/blog/?p=36982) reduced by 94%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Today&amp;#039;s blog completes my little history of the US Treasury Federal Reserve Accord, which really marked a turning point in the way macroeconomic policy was conducted in the US. In Part 1, I explained how from the inception, the newly created Federal Reserve Bank, America&amp;#039;s central bank, was required by the US Treasury Department to purchase Treasury bonds in such volumes that would ensure the yields on long-term bonds were stable and low.  &gt; The Federal Reserve certainly ought not to drive rates up by selling in the market and should work with the Treasury to keep confidence in a stable market.  &gt; Third, according to Allan Sproul&amp;#039;s 1964 Reflection - The &amp;quot;Accord&amp;quot; - A Landmark in the First Fifty Years of the Federal Reserve System - published by the Federal Reserve Bank of New York in its Monthly Review, the conflict between the Federal Reserve and the Treasury arose because they had &amp;quot;Overlapping responsibilities&amp;quot; between 1914 and 1951.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/727ww1/when_intragovernmental_relations_became_absurd/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~215878 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*: **Federal**^#1 **Market**^#2 **Treasury**^#3 **Reserve**^#4 **Bank**^#5\"", "\"I read one consultant who recommended something a lot like consensus building, but instead of 100% agreement (which is hard and time-consuming to do), you only go after the decision that everyone can \"\"live with\"\" - major objections had to be resolved, but other than that, it was good enough.  Another interesting method I saw was very decentralized - everyone makes their own decisions for what they will personally do, after consulting with affected parties. Nothing was seen as a command, only advice.  Wish I had more data, but I don't...\""]}
+{"query": "Connection between gambling and trading on stock/options/Forex markets", "corpus": ["For stocks, I would not see these as profiting at the expense of another individual.  When you purchase/trade stocks, you are exchanging items of equal market value at the time of the trade. Both parties are getting a fair exchange when the transaction happens. If you buy a house, the seller has not profited at your expense. You have exchanged goods at market prices. If your house plummets in value and you lose $100k, it is not the sellers fault that you made the decision to purchase. The price was fair when you exchanged the goods. Future prices are speculative, so both parties must perform due diligence to make sure the exchange aligns with their interests.  Obviously, this is barring any sort of dishonesty or insider information on the part of either buyer or seller."], "neg": ["You should try to take out other loans sufficient to pay off your 401(k) loan if you can.   Maybe you can take out a home equity loan?  You can also ask your bank about unsecured loans.  You should also check the rules for your new employer's 401(k), if you're rolling over your 401(k).  There's a small possibility that you could take out another loan right now and apply it to the previous loan balance. Or if you need to wait, you could use it to help pay off any temporary loans that were needed to avoid the distribution penalty.", "It could be a couple of things besides extra principal: I seem to remember hearing that some (shady?) lenders would just pocket extra payments if you didn't specify where they were headed, but I've also been told that this just isn't true.", "\"Why not do both? The object is to \"\"squirrel\"\" away as much money as possible. The 401k has the advantage of being a payroll deduction. The IRA, if you can save the money, gives you more control. When you change jobs, you can \"\"roll over\"\" your first 401k into either your IRA or your second job's 401k. Note: There are legal limits on total contributions to IRA and 401ks. I've forgotten what they are, so find out for yourself. There may also be income limits, but ones that don't apply to most 23-year olds, unless they own their own company or work for say, Goldman Sachs.\"", "I don't use pre-authorized automatic payment methods because there is no control, and it is impossible to get it back. Once you have authorized a firm to withdraw funds from your account, there is no realistic way to revoke that control, save closing down your bank account entirely and moving to another institution. I once had automatic payments set up for my apartment rent, and then one month they withdrew twice on one day, overdrawing my account; it was very difficult to dispute the charge and get it back. The bank was little help as I had authorized them to withdraw funds; it didn't make any difference that they had done it twice, because I had given them permission to withdraw that amount.  The property management company was large and difficult to contact, and at first denied any wrongdoing. tl;dr version: it's more pain than it's worth, and I will never do it again.", "It is creepy how wealthy companies always get these tendencies to change their structure and functioning  to pay the least possible taxes and get into all kinds of this shady shit. I once heard that if you study the behaviour of companies as if they were people, many of them would get diagnosed as psychopaths, and this kind of behaviour is an example of that.   Why does the most profitable company on earth have this perverse urge to increase that money in such shady ways? Why not live up to your honour and pay taxes back to the country that gave you the chance to develop and grow?", "Don't worry about Buffett. I have a feeling this will be like Wells Fargo in the 90s where Buffett will make 1000% his investment by the end of the next decade.  You can hate them all you want, but does anybody really think that Bank of America is going away? This is like when BP supposed caused a trillion of dollars in damage, and the market cap fell something like 140 billion. In the end, it's probably only going to cost them $20 billion. Life is already going on for the oil spill. Bank of America will get some more hate for a while. They'll get tons of lawsuits, but they'll probably settle for something like $30 billion (one year's earnings).  In two or three years, you'll have a company earning $30 billion that is current valued at $50 billion. It's been 4 years since the bubble burst in 2007. Most of the crappy loans are gone already (either defaulted/written off or if they have been paying for 4 years then they are not really crappy at all). There are 4 years worth of prime loans on the books. In 2007, people assumed the somewhat opaque book of loans (mostly subprime) is worth 100 cents on the dollar. Today, people are assuming that the somewhat opaque book of loans (mostly prime) is worth 0 cents on the dollar. Just look around Reddit and see what people are saying about the banks' financial condition, even though they never read any SEC filings or analyst reports. I think (and apparently Buffett also thinks) that the book is worth something between 0 and 100, likely in the upper end.", "With a limited company, you'll have to pay yourself a salary through PAYE. With income from your other job taking you over the higher-rate threshold, you should inform HMRC of this and get a tax code of DO for the second job, meaning 40% tax (and also both employer's and employee's National Insurance) will be deducted from the whole amount of the salary. See here.  Dividends should be like any other dividend -- you won't pay extra tax when you receive them, but will have to declare them on your tax return and pay the tax later. See the official information here. You'll get a £5,000 tax allowance for dividends, but they'll still count as income for purposes of hitting the higher-rate threshold. I think in practice this means the first £5,000 will be tax-free, and the rest will be taxed at 32.5%. But note that you have to pay yourself at least the minimum wage as salary, not as dividend.  I can't see IR35 being an issue.  However, I'm not a professional, and this situation is complicated enough to need professional advice. Talk to an accountant or a tax advisor."]}
+{"query": "What are useful indexes for rapid evaluation of country investment risk?", "corpus": ["Rather than using the Human Development Index or Ease of Doing Business, if you primary purpose is for investments, you need to consider the Country rating provided by various agencies like  These would tell as to how good the country is for investment in general. Just to highlight a difference, China may not fare very high in Human Development Index, however right now from investment point of view its a pretty good market. once you have decided the countries, you can either invest in funds specalizing in these countries or if legally permitted invest directly into the leading stock index in such countries. If your intention is to start a business in these countries, then you need to look at some other indexes. http://www.standardandpoors.com/ratings/articles/en/us/?assetID=1245219962821 http://www.fitchratings.com/jsp/sector/Sector.faces?selectedTab=Overview&Ne=4293330737%2b11&N=0 http://v3.moodys.com/Pages/default.aspx"], "neg": ["I'm not a 'rule of thumb' guy, but here, I'd suggest that if you can set aside 10% of your income each year for college, that would be great. That turns out to be $900/mo.  In 15 years, if you saw an 8% CAGR, you'd have $311K which happens to be in your range of expenses. And you'd still have time to go as the baby won't graduate for 22(?) years. (Yup, 10% is a good rule of thumb for your income and 3 kids) Now, on the other hand, I'd research what grants you'd be able to get if you came up short. If instead of saving a dime, you funded your own retirement and the spouse's IRA if she's not working, and time the mortgage to pay it off in 15 years from now, the lack of liquid funds actually runs in your favor. But, I'm not an expect on this, just second guessing my own fully funded college account for my daughter.", "\"A re-financing, or re-fi, is when a debtor takes out a new loan for the express purpose of paying off an old one. This can be done for several reasons; usually the primary reason is that the terms of the new loan will result in a lower monthly payment. Debt consolidation (taking out one big loan at a relatively low interest rate to pay off the smaller, higher-interest loans that rack up, like credit card debt, medical bills, etc) is a form of refinancing, but you most commonly hear the term when referring to refinancing a home mortgage, as in your example. To answer your questions, most of the money comes from a new bank. That bank understands up front that this is a re-fi and not \"\"new debt\"\"; the homeowner isn't asking for any additional money, but instead the money they get will pay off outstanding debt. Therefore, the net amount of outstanding debt remains roughly equal. Even then, a re-fi can be difficult for a homeowner to get (at least on terms he'd be willing to take). First off, if the homeowner owes more than the home's worth, a re-fi may not cover the full principal of the existing loan. The bank may reject the homeowner outright as not creditworthy (a new house is a HUGE ding on your credit score, trust me), or the market and the homeowner's credit may prevent the bank offering loan terms that are worth it to the homeowner. The homeowner must often pony up cash up front for the closing costs of this new mortgage, which is money the homeowner hopes to recoup in reduced interest; however, the homeowner may not recover all the closing costs for many years, or ever. To answer the question of why a bank would do this, there are several reasons: The bank offering the re-fi is usually not the bank getting payments for the current mortgage. This new bank wants to take your business away from your current bank, and receive the substantial amount of interest involved over the remaining life of the loan. If you've ever seen a mortgage summary statement, the interest paid over the life of a 30-year loan can easily equal the principal, and often it's more like twice or three times the original amount borrowed. That's attractive to rival banks.  It's in your current bank's best interest to try to keep your business if they know you are shopping for a re-fi, even if that means offering you better terms on your existing loan. Often, the bank is itself \"\"on the hook\"\" to its own investors for the money they lent you, and if you pay off early without any penalty, they no longer have your interest payments to cover their own, and they usually can't pay off early (bonds, which are shares of corporate debt, don't really work that way). The better option is to keep those scheduled payments coming to them, even if they lose a little off the top. Often if a homeowner is working with their current bank for a lower payment, no new loan is created, but the terms of the current loan are renegotiated; this is called a \"\"loan modification\"\" (especially when the Government is requiring the bank to sit down at the bargaining table), or in some cases a \"\"streamlining\"\" (if the bank and borrower are meeting in more amicable circumstances without the Government forcing either one to be there). Historically, the idea of giving a homeowner a break on their contractual obligations would be comical to the bank. In recent times, though, the threat of foreclosure (the bank's primary weapon) doesn't have the same teeth it used to; someone facing 30 years of budget-busting payments, on a house that will never again be worth what he paid for it, would look at foreclosure and even bankruptcy as the better option, as it's theoretically all over and done with in only 7-10 years. With the Government having a vested interest in keeping people in their homes, making whatever payments they can, to keep some measure of confidence in the entire financial system, loan modifications have become much more common, and the banks are usually amicable as they've found very quickly that they're not getting anywhere near the purchase price for these \"\"toxic assets\"\". Sometimes, a re-fi actually results in a higher APR, but it's still a better deal for the homeowner because the loan doesn't have other associated costs lumped in, such as mortgage insurance (money the guarantor wants in return for underwriting the loan, which is in turn required by the FDIC to protect the bank in case you default). The homeowner pays less, the bank gets more, everyone's happy (including the guarantor; they don't really want to be underwriting a loan that requires PMI in the first place as it's a significant risk). The U.S. Government is spending a lot of money and putting a lot of pressure on FDIC-insured institutions (including virtually all mortgage lenders) to cut the average Joe a break. Banks get tax breaks when they do loan modifications. The Fed's buying at-risk bond packages backed by distressed mortgages, and where the homeowner hasn't walked away completely they're negotiating mortgage mods directly. All of this can result in the homeowner facing a lienholder that is willing to work with them, if they've held up their end of the contract to date.\"", "\"It would appear that you are not actually \"\"equal\"\" partners.  You have differently valued interests and those values fluctuate based on individual performance.  The TurboTax advice is simplified for entities that don't track interests relative to partner inputs. IRC § 704(a), partner's distributive share is set by the partnership agreement, and § 704(b), failing an allocation by the agreement it is set by the partner's interest in the partnership.  But note § 704(b)(2), which prevents blatant tax-rigging in the partnership agreement.\"", "Setting up the new company can often be scary, especially if you never run a business or company before. We have the excellent and experienced team of professionals who are very helpful for you with the Free company formation process. We are also proud to maintain that our special personal touch in order to deliver the best service. This is very important to launch and Incorporating your business on the right footing. Your trustworthy relationship with us need not end at the services of the company formation. You also avail many benefits from our company professionals in all matters.", "\"I realize. I never would claim I did a ... \"\"triple\"\" full time (?). I was responding to the comment that any credible university wouldn't let you do more than +1 extra class. Obviously, +1 class in terms of hours is variable since it can range from 3-8 hours at a traditional semester university. Our recommended was something like 18 though the upper limit was 20 IIRC (been awhile).\"", "\"what are the incentives to that person to actually pay off his/her debt as opposed to just walking away from it and relying on the cash (s)he has for the future spending needs as opposed to borrowing Well, you can't just \"\"walk away\"\" from debt - you still owe it. Eventually your creditors would end up suing you in court for the money, plus interest owed.  I suppose you could try to continually duck the authorities, but you'd still owe the money legally.\"", "Yes, retail stores will let you use multiple cards to make a purchase. Just be sure to know the exact balance on each one and tell the cashier how much you'd like to put on each card. If you don't know the balance and try to charge more than what is available, your card will be declined."]}
+{"query": "Debit cards as bad as credit cards?", "corpus": ["\"It's a real pain in the rear to get cash only from a bank teller (the end result of cutting the card as suggested). There is a self control issue here that, like weight loss, should ultimately be addressed for a psychologically healthy lifestyle. You don't mention a budget here. A budget is one of the first tools necessary for setting spending limits. Categorizing your money into inviolable categories, such as:  will force you to look at any purchase in context of your other needs and goals. Note that savings is at the top of the list, supporting the aphorism to, \"\"Pay yourself first.\"\" Make realistic allowances for each budget category, then force yourself to stick to this budget by whatever means necessary. Cash in several envelopes labeled with each category can physically reinforce your priorities (the debit card is usually left at home for now).  Roll remaining funds from each month over into the next month to cover irregular larger expenses, such as auto repairs.  What sort of investing are we talking about? If you are just talking about retirement savings, an automatic deduction of just $50 to a Roth IRA account at a discount brokerage every pay check is a good start. An emergency fund of 6 months expenses is also common financial advice, and can likewise be built from small automatic deductions. In defense of wise use of plastic, a debit card can be a great retroactive budgeting tool because it records all spending for you. It takes a lot more effort to save and enter receipts for cash, and a compulsive spender without a budget is just as likely to run out of money whether or not he uses plastic. You could keep receipts in the envelope you take the cash out of when you're getting started. If you are so addicted to spending that you must cut your debit card to enforce your budget, at least consider this a temporary measure to get yourself under control. When the bank issues you a new card, re-evaluate this decision and the self control measures you've implemented to see if you've grown enough to keep the card.\""], "neg": ["And remember, there's nobody but you that can do it - so the most important tool here is your determination and persistence.", "Prison in the US has nothing to do with an economic context. White collar crimes will always be sentenced less harshly than violent crimes.  I don't expect to see Madoff on the street anytime soon. So the original premise doesn't hold across the board.  The system is fucked up though. What can you do. People like Corzine are ingrained in our government and financial institutions.", "The problem is that's all Chipotle has going for it... a big ass burrito with a handful of toppings. Once you eat there twice you've pretty much had all Chipotle has to offer unless you'd like to try a burrito in a bowl. Not exactly a well thought out menu. I don't see Chipotle standing the test of time unless they expand their menu and market. It's just boring after a couple times. You get way too much food also so any claim to being healthy is BS.", "The hell are you talking about? Yahoo doesn't own Alibaba. They owned a stake in the company they got in 2005, long before Mayer had anything to do with the company. Mayer sold off $7B of this stake in 2012, and kept ~$1.3B of that to finance more idiotic acquisitions where she'd overspend and then lay off all the staff and shut down the products she bought.", "\"The problem is that an injunction is like carpet-bombing.   ~~If~~ When various manufacturing industries try to use the law to protect their profits, I think what we'll see is alternate production streams pop up. If GE gets freaky about washing machine motors being produced by local 3D Printers, then hello \"\"make your own washing machine\"\" kits for 1/4 the price.   A wise manufacturing company would embrace the cottage industry - essentially make them outsourced (side-sourced?) support &amp; repair. Then try to grab market share by making that a feature.   Adapt &amp; survive. The painful part is that massive corporations can trundle along with poisoned business plans killing them from the inside out for *decades*\"", "The way the world gained all its wealth is by innovation driven by the pursuit of profit/higher standard of living. If you remove that incentive then we will no longer keep progressing. That's why socialism always fails - you eventually run out of other people's money and innovation halts.", "Why has no one reported on the declining market share of whole foods? Walmart was able to strategically target their customer and go after them. You'll never hear Walmart say this, but I secretly think they are celebrating this acquisition."]}
+{"query": "If a company goes private, does it still count as a capital gain/loss?", "corpus": ["does it still count as a capital gain or loss? Yes. Is it essentially treated like you sold the stock at the price of the buy-out?  Yes. Do you still get a 1099-B from your broker? Yes."], "neg": ["This guy is literally proposing a bucket shop. Trades against customers and copy their trades. No centralized clearing (it's not executing trades at all). And he thinks these are good things that customers should get him for.  Scam. And a very old one at that.", "As a lefty --- get a life and your own opinion, or let other people backed by corporations that you oppose tell you what to think.   This guy is the guy that stole $500 and we let him until we needed him to get caught. And the people that bought CDs from a bank on a shady fucking island, yeah, they were stupid. Caveat emptor.", "\"Don't forget they're trying to rip that fabric of society away from everyone else. They demand their social security, but fight tooth and nail to take food stamps away from others. They had quality K-12 and nearly free higher education, but do everything they can to cut spending on education, cut teacher pay, etc. They have Medicare but want to take any kind of healthcare safety net away from everyone else. And then they blame the young for not buying enough houses and \"\"wrecking\"\" the economy.\"", "Search Engine Marketing (SEM poco chiamato come) comprende anche campagne pubblicitarie a pagamento come Google ad-parole, la costruzione del marchio, banner, viral marketing e anche alcune altre campagne gratuite come l'email marketing e Social Media Optimization (SMO chiamato come poco). Il motore di ricerca di marketing on-line dà risultati più rapidi rispetto al Search Engine Optimization.", "\"Your 401K (and IRA) is a legally distinct entity from yourself. In fact, it is a \"\"trust,\"\" and your Administrator is a \"\"trustee,\"\" while you are both creator and benefactor. This fact, and the 10% early withdrawal penalty, makes it immune from most judgments. The IRS can \"\"levy\"\" your 401K or IRA for back taxes, but must waive the 10% penalty (under the 1997 Tax Reform law). That gives them the power to do what most others can't. A \"\"tricky\"\" banker may persuade you to take money out of your 401K to pay the bank. If you do, s/he has won. But s/he can't go after your 401k.\"", "The buying service your credit union uses is similar to the one my credit union uses. I have used their service several times. There is no direct cost to use the service, though the credit union as a whole might have a fee to join the service. I have used it 4 times over the decades. If you know what make and model you want to purchase, or at least have it narrowed down to just a few choices, you can get an exact price for that make, model, and options. You do this before negotiating a price. You are then issued a certificate. You have to go to a specific salesman at a specific dealership, but near a large city there will be several dealers to pick from.  There is no negotiating at the dealership. You still have to deal with a trade in, and the financing option: dealer, credit union, or cash. But it is nice to not have to negotiate on the price. Of course there is nobody to stop you from using the price from the buying service as a goal when visiting a more conveniently located dealership, that is what I did last time. The first couple of times I used the standard credit union financing, and the last time I didn't need a loan. Even if you don't use the buying service, one way to pay for the car is to get the loan from the credit union, but get the rebate from the dealer. Many times if you get the low dealer financing you can't get the rebate. Doing it this way actually saves money. Speaking of rebates see how the buying service addresses them. The big national rebates  were still honored during at least one of my purchases. So it turned out to be the buying service price minus $1,000. If your service worked like my experience, the cost to you was a little time to get the price, and a little time in a different dealer to verify that the price was good.", "People typically present themselves to be as wealthy as possible to banks and as poor as possible to the government at tax time.  Gross income is really the most reliable number for most folks. Your and your employer are required by law to report an accurate gross income figure annually. Anything else is totally situational.  All they are doing anyway is computing your total debt-to-income ratio and mortgage-to-income ratio. The government agencies that buy mortgages, the big bank that buys the mortgage or the self-underwriting bank has differing standards for different products."]}
+{"query": "What does pink-sheet mean related to stocks?", "corpus": ["It's an over-the-counter stock quote system. Read all about it. Or visit it."], "neg": ["You're asking for a LOT. I mean, entire lives and volumes upon volumes of information is out there.  I'd recommend Benjamin Graham for finance concepts (might be a little bit dry...), *A Random Walk Down Wall Street,* by Burton Malkiel and *A Concise Guide to Macro Economics* by David Moss.", "\"Good debt and \"\"Bad debt\"\" are just judgement calls.  Each person has their own opinion on when it is acceptable to borrow money for something, and when it is not.  For some, it is never acceptable to borrow money for something; they won't even borrow money to buy a house.  Others, of course, are in debt up to their eyeballs. All debt costs money in interest.  So when evaluating whether to borrow or not, you need to ask yourself, \"\"Is the benefit I am getting by borrowing this money worth the cost?\"\" Home ownership has a lot of advantages: For many, these advantages, coupled with the facts that home mortgages are available at extremely low interest rates and that home mortgage interest is tax-deductible (in the U.S.), make home mortgages \"\"worth it\"\" in the eyes of many. Contrast that with car ownership: For these reasons, there are many people who consider the idea of borrowing money to purchase a car a bad idea.  I have written an answer on another question which outlines a few reasons why it is better to pay cash for a car.\"", "\"From further in:   &gt;Kathleen Kennedy, current Co-Chairman of Lucasfilm, will become President of Lucasfilm, reporting to Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn. Additionally she will serve as the brand manager for Star Wars, working directly with Disney's global lines of business to build, further integrate, and maximize the value of this global franchise. Ms. Kennedy will serve as executive producer on new Star Wars feature films, with George Lucas serving as creative consultant. Star Wars Episode 7 is targeted for release in 2015, with more feature films expected to continue the Star Wars saga and grow the franchise well into the future.    and    &gt;The last Star Wars movie release was 2005's Revenge of the Sith – and we believe there's substantial pent up demand. In 2015, we're planning to release Star Wars Episode 7 – the first feature film under the \"\"Disney-Lucasfilm\"\" brand. That will be followed by Episodes 8 and 9 – and our long term plan is to release a new Star Wars feature film every two to three years. We're very happy that George Lucas will be creative consultant on our new Star Wars films and that Kathleen Kennedy, the current Co-Chair of Lucasfilm, will executive produce. George handpicked Kathy earlier this year to lead Lucasfilm into the future. She'll join Disney as President of Lucasfilm, reporting into Walt Disney Studios Chairman Alan Horn and integrating and building the Star Wars franchise across our company.\"", "\"Taken from a website that believes \"\"CO2 is a product of human breath and is plant food, NOT a pollutant.\"\" (literally the subtitle to the entire website).    Oh, look! There goes all its credibility.   [Their justifications](https://defyccc.com/debate-about-brief-sos/#more-2768) to that logic are even worse. They are logic-resistant.   EDIT: Please no more posts from that looney bin. For a moment, I thought I was visiting a satire website, turns out they're just that crazy.\"", "The fact that you are planning to move abroad does not affect the decision to contribute to a 401(k). The reason for this is that after you leave your employer, you can roll all the money over from your 401(k) into a self-directed traditional IRA. That money can stay invested until retirement, and it doesn't matter where you are living before or after retirement age.  So, when deciding whether or not to use a 401(k), you need to look at the details of your employer's plan: Does your employer offer a match? If so, you should definitely take advantage of it.  Are there good investments available inside the 401(k)? Some plans offer very limited options. If you can't find anything good to invest in, you don't want to contribute anything beyond the match; instead, contribute to an IRA, where you can invest in a fund that you like.  The other reason to use a 401(k) is that the contribution limits can be higher. If you want to invest more than you are allowed to in an IRA, the 401(k) might allow that.  In your case, since there is no match, it is up to you whether you want to participate or not. An IRA will allow more flexibility in investing options. If you need to invest more than your IRA limit, the 401(k) might allow that. When you leave your employer, you should probably roll any 401(k) money into an IRA.", "Some credit checks are ignored as part of the scoring process. Some companies will pull your info, to make sure you haven't become a risk. Others will inquire before they send you an offer. Since you didn't initiate the inquiry it can't impact your score.", "\"You ask two questions - First - the market value can drop for two reasons (that I know), the company itself may have issues, and investors don't trust they'll be paid, or a general rise in interest rates. In the latter case, there's little to worry about, but for the former, well, that's your decision, you say \"\"the company is in trouble\"\" yet you believe they'll pay. Tough call. Second - yes, when a bond matures, the money appears in your account.\""]}
+{"query": "How can a 'saver' maintain or increase wealth in low interest rate economy?", "corpus": ["\"Since the other answers have covered mutual funds/ETFs/stocks/combination, some other alternatives I like - though like everything else, they involve risk: Example of how these other \"\"saving methods\"\" can be quite effective: about ten years ago, I bought a 25lb bag of quinoa at $19 a bag.  At the same company, quinoa is now over $132 for a 25lb bag (590%+ increase vs. the S&P 500s 73%+ increase over the same time period).  Who knows what it will cost in ten years.  Either way, working directly with the farmers, or planting it myself, may become even cheaper in the future, plus learning how to keep and store the seeds for the next season.\""], "neg": ["\"The forms are almost identical, just formatted slightly differently. I just compared an old copy of an R form with the current one without the R. I don't know why they removed the R. In any case, I filed my biannual this year on llc-12, no \"\"r\"\", and no issues.\"", "Greek bank deposits are backed by the Greek government and by the European Central Bank. So in order to lose money under the insurance limits of 100k euros the ECB would need to fail in which case deposit insurance would be the least of most peoples worries. On the other hand I have no idea how easy or hard it is to get to money from a failed bank in Greece. In the US FDIC insurance will usually have your money available in a couple of days. If there isn't a compelling reason to keep the money in a Greek bank I wouldn't do it.", "I heard from someone that since my friends are moving money to my account, I'm liable to be taxed by the IRS  Not completely true. If there are large deposits in your account, you may be asked for clarification from IRS. If there is a reasonable justification; in your case the agreement that you are sharing the apartment, the lease deed has all the 3 names, there is explicit mention in lease about how funds are transferred. Note at times the audit maybe in future for quite a bit of past. Hence you would need to keep the record for quite some time. Alternative arrangements like opening a joint account and making payments from that account may make it easier from record keeping point of view.", "Nothing happens. A bank is a business; your relationship with the bank doesn't change because your visa or immigration status changes. Money held in the account is still held in the account. Interest paid on the account is still taxable. And so on. If the account is inactive long enough, abandoned account rules may apply, but that still has nothing to do with your status.", "You do actually have some profits (whatever is left from donations). The way it goes is that you report everything on your Schedule C. You will report this: Your gross profits will then flow to Net Profit (line 31) since you had no other expenses (unless you had some other expenses, like paypal fees, which will appear in the relevant category in part II), and from line 31 it will go to your 1040 for the final tax calculation.", "I bet the poor pay more of their family income on food and rent too! Injustice!  What was the point of this? We were talking about net taxation, not some ratio of gross income on a per family basis. The bottom 40% of American are net beneficiaries of taxes anyway.", "This shows the impact of the inquiries. It's from Credit Karma, and reflects my inquiries over the past two years. In my case, I refinanced 2 properties and the hit is after this fact, so my score at 766 is lower than when approved. You can go to Credit Karma and see how your score was impacted. If in fact the first inquiry did this, you have cause for action. In court, you get more attention by having sufficient specific data to support your claim, including your exact damages."]}
+{"query": "Why are wire transfers and other financial services in Canada so much more expensive than in Europe?", "corpus": ["I don't believe there is any particular structural or financial reason that outgoing wire transfers cost so much in Canada, their costs are no higher than other countries (and lower than many).  Wires seem to be an area where the Canadian banks have decided people don't comparison shop, so it's not a competitive advantage to offer a better price. The rates you quoted are on the low side: $80 for a largish international wire is not unusual, and HSBC charges up to $150! There are several alternative ways to transfer money domestically in Canada. If the recipient banks at the same bank, it's possible to go into a branch and transfer money directly from your own account to their account (I've never been charged for this).  The transfer is immediate.  But it couldn't be done online, last time I checked. For transfers where you don't know the recipients bank account, you can pay online with Interac E-Transfers, offered by most Canadian banks.  It's basically e-mailing money.  It usually costs $1 to $1.50 per transfer, and has limits on how much you can send per day/week. Each of the banks also have a bill-pay service, but unlike similar services in the US (where they mail a paper check if the recipient isn't on their system), each Canadian bank has a limited number of possible payees (mostly utilities, governments, major stores)."], "neg": ["Siri isn't all that bad in my opinion and works well for what I need it to do. Maps, on the other hand, is complete garbage. It usually gets me to where I need to go, but feels very clumsy and uses tons of battery. The complete lack of data is another turnoff. Personally, I'd say that whoever decided to nix the Google Maps app is the bigger idiot. All that really needed to be done was integrate the turn by turn directions (rather than watching a tiny dot moving around).", "I think people are tiring of the 200 TV mega chain bars and prefer something a bit smaller and locally owned. I know I do, and it seems the sales trends back that up. Locally owned non-chain restaurants (mom and pops) are doing well right now.", "1768? 1868? 1968?   Actually, the last time France stood up to the USA or UK was during the De Gaulle government, and his government was nearly toppled by the May '68 Paris uprising. Around 1972, pretty much every one in Europe is under US economic and political hegemony.", "That doesn't explains the decade in between, the revenue sharing agreement and lawsuit, the competition before the IPO etc.  They didn't have the lawsuit and final split because one branch wanted an IPO, they had it because of the revenue sharing agreement pissing off the consulting partners.  Accenture does compete with the Big 4 in the consulting space, especially Deloitte and EY. Why do you think otherwise?", "I would like to see what they propose as far as taxing dividends, capital gains, inheritance and other sources of financial gain that the wealthy seem to rely on far more than this 'income' thing. Income is for us hoi polloi.", "Absolutely. The overhead for a product based business like that is particularly high. Service based businesses tend to have much better profit margins. But if she was running a plant nursery she has to pay huge heating costs, renting the area she operates in, not to mention inventory and employees. That $300k vanishes pretty fast. This article talking about disappearing middle class is a bad argument. This sounds much more about how the recession hurts a small business. Assuming of course it is the recession. I know a coffee shop near me that isn't doing that great and says the economy is hurting them bad. They apparently don't realize that being blatantly rude to their customers drives them away. There are often other sides to the story besides the economy, whether the fault of the business owner or some other factor outside their control that may not be covered in these kinds of posts.", "\"Check out Professor Damodaran's website: http://pages.stern.nyu.edu/~adamodar/ . Tons of good stuff there to get you started. If you want more depth, he's written what is widely considered the bible on the subject of valuation: \"\"Investment Valuation\"\". DCF is very well suited to stock analysis. One doesn't need to know, or forecast the future stock price to use it. In fact, it's the opposite. Business fundamentals are forecasted to estimate the sum total of future cash flows from the company, discounted back to the present. Divide that by shares outstanding, and you have the value of the stock. The key is to remember that DCF calculations are very sensitive to inputs. Be conservative in your estimates of future revenue growth, earnings margins, and capital investment. I usually develop three forecasts: pessimistic, neutral, optimistic. This delivers a range of value instead of a false-precision single number. This may seem odd: I find the DCF invaluable, but for the process, not so much the result. The input sensitivity requires careful work, and while a range of value is useful, the real benefit comes from being required to answer the questions to build the forecast. It provides a framework to analyze a business. You're just trying to properly fill in the boxes, estimate the unguessable. To do so, you pore through the financials. Skimming, reading with a purpose. In the end you come away with a fairly deep understanding of the business, how they make money, why they'll continue to make money, etc.\""]}
+{"query": "When you're really young and have about 2K to start investing $ for retirement, why do some people advise you to go risky?", "corpus": ["\"Why it is good to be risky The reason why it is good to be risky is because risky investments can result in higher returns on your money. The problem with being risky, is there is a chance you can lose money. However, in the long term you can usually benefit from higher returns even if you have a few slip ups. Let me show you an example:  These two lines are based off of placing $2,000 in a retirement fund at age of 20 and then at age of 25 start investing $6,500 a year (based off of a salary of $65,000 with a company that will 1 to 1 match up to 5% IRA contribution, presumably someone with a Master's should be able to get this) and then being able to increase your contribution amount by $150 a year as your salary begins to increase as well. The blue line assumes that all of this money that you are putting in a retirement account has a fixed 3% interest (compounded yearly for simplicity sake) every year until you retire. The red line is earning a 12% interest rate while you are 20 years old and then decreasing by 0.5% per year until you retire. Since this is using more risky investments when you are younger, I have even gone ahead and included losing 20% of your money when you are 24, another 20% when you are 29, and then again another 20% when you are 34. As you can see, even with losing 20% of your money 3 different times, you still end up with more money then you would have had if you stuck with a more conservative investment plan. If I change this to 50% each 3 times, you will still come out about equal to a more conservative investment. Now, I do have these 3 loses placed at a younger age when there is less to lose, but this is to be expected since you are being more risky when you are young. When you are closer to retirement you have less of a chance of losing money since you will be investing more conservatively. Why it is OK to be risky when you are young but not old Lets say you loose 20% of your $2,000 when you are young, you have 30-40 years to make that back. That's roughly $1 a month extra that you are having to come up with. So, if you have a risky investment go bad when you are young, you have plenty of time to account for it before you retire.  Now lets say you have $1,000,000 when you are 5 years from retiring and loose 20% of it, you have to come up with an extra $3,333 a month if you want to retire on time. So, if you have a risky investment go bad when you are close to retiring, you will most likely have to work for many more years just to be able to recover from your loses. What to invest in This is a little bit more difficult question to answer. If there was one \"\"right\"\" way to invest your money, every one would be doing that one \"\"right\"\" way and would result in it not turning out to be that good of investment. What you need to do is come up with a plan for yourself. My biggest advice that I can give is to be careful with fees. Some places will charge a fixed dollar amount per trade, while others might charge a fixed dollar amount per month, while even others might charge a percentage of your investment. With only having $2,000 to invest, a large fee might make it difficult to make money.\""], "neg": ["A reason not to split your stock is that the value of the company might fall back again, and if its stock price falls below $1 it will be delisted from the NYSE. So if the value of your company grows tenfold so the shares go from $5 to $50, you do a ten-for-one split, and then its value shrinks back to where it started, you're off the stock exchange.", "\"You'd have to look at the terms of the loan to be sure, but if the interest compounds weekly then you'd have to calculate the effect of 3 compounding periods, then compute for weekly payments. The balance after 3 weeks would be: Using Excel's PMT function for that principal balance, I get a weekly payment of $189.48.   If the interest doesn't compound, the principal balance will be about $8888.37 and the weekly payment would be $189.85. Note, however, that the terms of the loan could be completely customized, so you'd need to be sure that the payment and the amortization schedule make sense to you before you agree to the loan.  Since the interest is very high, I suspect this is a \"\"no credit needed\"\" car loan which are notorious for unfavorable (to the borrower) terms.\"", "\"That's just it......the \"\"going rate\"\" is inflated. All \"\"piracy\"\" is is a market correction. If you have a product that is easily copied, easily stored, easily duplicated, and easily distributed for next to no cost your products value is essentially zero.   But this doesn't mean they cannot make money off of it. Like TV, where the shows are worth nothing, but the eyes that watch it are they can leverage media in other way. It's just the media industries CHOOSE not to.\"", "Idk man ties with no sport coat/blazer scream salesman to me. Just get a good fit going and you'll be fine.  Unless you're planning to wear a sports coat as well, which in that case go nuts lol", "Building your credit takes time.  The basic idea is pay bills on time, and keep the available credit high.    So you spend between 10-30% on the card and pay off in full each month.  If you have student loans, once you start paying on those, that will help too, after you get some payment history, but again, it will take time.", "\"I worked for a large well known corporation as a senior programmer, and was in charge of interviewing programmers. This is in NYC. Out of 50 pre-screened candidates we hired 2. Half of the candidates can't answer the simplest questions like \"\"write a function to reverse a string\"\", which every first year Comp Science student should be able to do.  And our salaries were good, not $60K.  So yes, even in NYC there's not enough talent.\"", "\"Ditto @GradeEhBacon, but let me add a couple of comments: But more relevantly: GradeEhBacon mentioned transaction costs. Yes. Many tax shelters require setting up accounts, doing paperwork, etc. Often you have to get a lawyer or accountant to do this right. If the tax shelter could save you $1 million a year in taxes, it makes sense to pay a lawyer $10,000 to set it up right. If it could save you $100 a year in taxes, paying $10,000 to set it up would be foolish. In some cases the tax savings would be so small that it wouldn't be worth the investment of spending $20 on a FedEx package to ship the paperwork. Inconvenience. Arguably this is a special case of transaction costs: the cost of your time. Suppose I knew that a certain tax shelter would save me $100 a year in taxes, but it would take me 20 hours a year to do the paperwork or whatever to manage it. I probably wouldn't bother, because my free time is worth more than $5 an hour to me. If the payoff was bigger or if I was poorer, I might be willing. Complexity. Perhaps a special case of 3. If the rules to manage the tax shelter are complicated, it may not be worth the trouble. You have to spend a bunch of time, and if you do it wrong, you may get audited and slapped with fines and penalties. Even if you do it right, a shelter might increase your chance of being audited, and thus create uncertainty and anxiety. I've never intentionally cheated on my taxes, but every year when I do my taxes I worry, What if I make an honest mistake but the government decides that it's attempted fraud and nails me to the wall? Qualification. Again, as others have noted, tax shelters aren't generally, \"\"if you fill out this form and check box (d) you get 50% off on your taxes\"\". The shelters exist because the government decided that it would be unfair to impose taxes in this particular situation, or that giving a tax break encourages investment, or some other worthy goal. (Sometimes that worthy goal is \"\"pay off my campaign contributors\"\", but that's another subject.) The rules may have unintended loopholes, but any truly gaping ones tend to get plugged. So if, say, they say that you get a special tax break for investing in medical research, you can't just declare that your cigarette and whiskey purchases are medical research and claim the tax break. Or you talked about off-shore tax havens. The idea here is that the US government cannot tax income earned in another country and that has never even entered the US. If you make $10 in France and deposit it in a French bank account and spend it in France, the US can't tax that. So American companies sometimes set up bank accounts outside the US to hold income earned outside the US, so they don't have to bring it into the US and pay the high US tax rate. (US corporate taxes are now the highest of any industrialized country.) You could, I suppose, open an account in the Caymans and deposit the income you earned from your US job there. But if the money was earned in the US, working at a factory or office in the US,  by a person living in the US, the IRS is not going to accept that this is foreign income.\""]}
+{"query": "How to Buy “Exotic” Bonds as a Low Net Worth Individual?", "corpus": ["\"There are discount brokers which charge lower fees, which ones are accessible to you will depend on your country. Here's a list for the USA: https://the-international-investor.com/comparison-tables/online-discount-stock-brokers-comparison-table But seriously, as a \"\"low net worth individual\"\", the last thing you should be doing is gamble away that money - and that's what buying junk bonds is: gambling, not investing. They're called \"\"junk bonds\"\" for a reason, namely that the well-considered opinion of most investors is that there is a high probability of the issuer defaulting on them, which means that the invested money is lost.\""], "neg": ["\"This would inevitably lead to a few gatekeepers from which everyone trusts the bonds (ibm GE etc), and millions of small businesses which will have absolutely no access to capital. Once this happens, you will quickly end up with a shadow banking system, where companies like GE switch from making stuff to basically being banks, giving loans to other small businesses with no access to capital, etc.   This is basically done in China in a slightly different way, but, the core state-owned enterprises have near unlimited access to capital, and they use this advantage to invest in, and buy up, any and all interesting companies, simply because they're the only organizations that can essentially \"\"print\"\" money. (Whether you agree with it being printing money or not, the fact is GE / IBM would be able to issue bonds almost whenever they want, similar to the Treasury's monthly bond auctions, and other firms simply unable to.)   So... then you have a few key companies with nearly unlimited right to \"\"print\"\" (used loosely) cash. They use this advantage to push on other businesses, buy them up, or control them in many ways. And then they use this position to eventually take over anything that looks interesting.   What you're imagining as being an open market where everyone's bonds have full information will quickly devolve into information overload, and people choosing the well known brands as their trusted source. Once that happens, the whole idea falls apart, and those few firms will find a way to control not only the money supply, but also who gets to use their money.   You will also have situations where some mom-and-pop takes John-LLC bonds as payment for dinner, and when they try to give John-LLC bonds to their suppliers, their suppliers say 'no thanks, we only deal in IBM bonds.\"\"   Mom-and-pop will find themselves stuck with paper that nobody wants to accept. And mom-and-pop will quickly find themselves in a cash flow crisis, as they have tons of paper, but none of their suppliers will accept that paper.   The only way to get out of this situation would be to convince IBM or GE to give Mom-and-pop some GE bonds in exchange for the John-LLC they have that nobody will accept. Of course, GE and IBM being in the enviable position as some of the few trusted money printers can refuse to accept John-LLC bonds except at a severe discount. \"\"We know John gave you John-LLC bonds to pay for his dinner worth $100, but, we'll only give you $40 worth of GE bonds for it.\"\"  Mom-and-pop will quickly be fucked and go out of business due to having no \"\"hard currency\"\" (aka trusted currency) that they can use to purchase their raw materials.  Demand for GE bonds will skyrocket as everyone seeks a safe-haven (a trusted currency almost everyone will accept), adn GE will find the entire market begging them to print bonds even at no interest just so that the money supply can increase to hold the full amount of trade occurring in the territory.   This is then no different from the Fed during the recession a few years ago (and up until now) where they sell tons of bonds at rock-bottom interest rates simly because all the world is looking for a safe place to put their cash.   The difference, of course, is that GE / IBM can take all this money and issue themselves HUGE bonuses, either on the cash directly or on the profit they've amassed by being the only trusted money issuer, whereas government officials can not.\"", "&gt;[**Как быстро заработать 100 руб в интернете? Способ пассивного заработка в сети. Хайпы, которые платят [2:47]**](http://youtu.be/7lbDnWEDbWo)  &gt;&gt;Друзья, в этом видео, вы узнаете, какие проекты в скаме а какие платят. Так же, есть проект, в котором можно заработать без вложений  &gt; [*^Финансовый ^Вектор*](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCAOABF2yT1SjVqI7RK9aIUg) ^in ^People ^&amp; ^Blogs  &gt;*^13 ^views ^since ^Oct ^2017*  [^bot ^info](/r/youtubefactsbot/wiki/index)", "In the last 15 years, some poor arab gets his house blown up with billions of dollars worth of arms, some poor US taxpayer foots the bill and the cooperation make the money.  The arab house no house, the US tax payer has no saving and lives poor.  Some CEO buys a private island with his bones.  Meanwhile the rest of us is looking for happiness", "Major in CS.  I'm 26 with a BS in Finance (with Accounting minor). I wish I went with a CS back in the day, but oh well. I'm learning programming and computer science on my own now while I work full-time. Fortunately, I'm well on my way towards a strong IT career since I work in business intelligence and big data. It can be a grind while working full-time though.  Don't think you are not good at science classes. I used to think the same. They're not easy, which means you will just have to read and study more and better. Keep at it, develop leadership skills and organize study groups, meet with your professors and TAs if you must. Don't be afraid to ask questions, ever.  Also consider getting a minor in something. It'll be harder but usually well worth it. Pick a minor in a field you find interesting. Every field and industry needs CS majors and you will make yourself that much more valuable. A major in CS with a minor in finance would make you look badass. But don't go with finance though, I suggest a science (any bio, physics or chemistry is good). You'll end up with a nice paying job. I consider my CS skills beginner, but I'm above average compared to the general population and already get paid very well.", "BigBOX specialty stores can't compete with Walmart and Walmart can't compete with Amazon and Amazon won't be able to compete with China's Alibaba and Alibaba Express. Let Walmart and Amazon fold and you will see the rise of the independent retailers... we have to start producing our own products and taxing Chinese imports to level the playing field for American businesses. This is one MONOPOLY everyone in congress seems to NOT  recognize.", "Did you read [Hachette Book's response to Amazon?](http://www.digitalbookworld.com/2014/hachette-ceos-response-to-amazon-advocate-emails-why-we-price-books-the-way-we-do/). Hachette books is **not** arguing that their ebooks should be the same price as the print versions. That's an outright fabrication on Amazon's part.  [Amazon is responsible for 65% of new online book sales, and 41% of *all* new book sales](http://www.publishersweekly.com/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/62520-bea-2014-can-anyone-compete-with-amazon.html#path/pw/by-topic/industry-news/bea/article/62520-bea-2014-can-anyone-compete-with-amazon.html) (that's both print books *and* ebooks). I never said Amazon had a *monopoly*, but by refusing to sell any of Hachette's books, they are literally depriving that company of roughly ~~half~~ 2/5 of it's new book revenue.", "\"I have personally invested $5,000 in a YieldStreet offering (a loan being used by a company looking to expand a ridesharing fleet), and would certainly recommend taking a closer look if they fit your investment goals and risk profile. (Here's a more detailed review I wrote on my website.) YieldStreet is among a growing crop of companies launched as a result of legislative and regulatory changes that began with the JOBS Act in 2012 (that's a summary from my website that I wrote after my own efforts to parse the new rules) but didn't fully go into effect until last year. Most of them are in Real Estate or Angel/Venture, so YieldStreet is clearly looking to carve out a niche by assembling a rather diverse collection of offerings (including Real Estate, but also other many other categories). Unlike angel/venture platforms (and more like the Real Estate platforms), YieldStreet only offers secured (asset-backed) investments, so in theory there's less risk of loss of principal (though in practice, these platforms haven't been through a serious stress test). So far I've stuck with relatively short-term investments on the debt crowdfunding platforms (including YieldStreet), and at least for the one I chose, it includes monthly payments of both principal and interest, so you're \"\"taking money off the table\"\" right away (though presumably then are faced with how to redeploy, which is another matter altogether!) My advice is to start small while you acclimate to the various platforms and investment options. I know I was overwhelmed when I first decided to try one out, and the way I got over that was to decide on the maximum I was willing to lose entirely, and then focus on finding the first opportunity that looked reasonable and would maximize what I could learn (in my case it was a $1,000 in a fix-and-flip loan deal via PeerStreet).\""]}
+{"query": "Company is late in paying my corporate credit card statement - will it hurt my credit?", "corpus": ["\"According to an article on Bankrate.com from 2011, yes, it can hurt your credit: With individual liability accounts, the employee holds all responsibility for the charges, even if the company pays the issuer directly. Joint liability means the company and employee share the responsibility for payments, says Mahendra Gupta, author of the RPMG survey. In both cases, if the card isn't paid and the account becomes delinquent, it will pop up on the employee's credit report and dent his or her credit score, says Barry Paperno, consumer affairs manager at myFICO.com. It doesn't matter if the company was supposed to make the payment; the repercussions fall on the employee. \"\"It will impact your score no differently than if you were late on one of your own accounts,\"\" Paperno says. Usually, with corporate credit cards, the employee is liable along with the employer for charges on the card.  The intent is to provide the employee with an incentive not to misuse the card.  However, this can be a problem if your company is late in paying bills. In the distant past, I had a corporate credit card.  I was not supposed to have to pay the bill, but I did receive a bill in the mail every month.  And occasionally, the payment was late.  In my case, these late payments never showed up on my credit report.  I can't remember now whether or not this card was reported on my credit report at all.  And I remember being told when I got the card that I was jointly responsible for the card with the company. However, your experience may be different.  Do the on-time payments show up on your credit report?  If so, that may be an indication that a late payment might appear.\""], "neg": ["YSK that unless you live in a very low cost of living area, you took an extremely underpaid position out of college, and have kind of fucked yourself in the face.  Source: I'm a senior software engineer with a computer science degree.", "\"Company values (and thus stock prices) rely on a much larger time frame than \"\"a weekend\"\".  First, markets are not efficient enough to know what a companies sales were over the past 2-3 days (many companies do not even know that for several weeks).  They look at performance over quarters and years to determine the \"\"value\"\" of a company.  They also look forward, not backwards to determine value.  Prior performance only gives a hint of what future performance may be.  If a company shut its doors over a weekend and did no sales, it still would have value based on its future ability to earn profits.\"", "\"I am not saying it is fair, or that only they get to say \"\"this sucks\"\" I am saying that you should not be envious of them.    Also, try to remember that the programs like the one they made use of don't just help that family.  Foreclosures drive down property values.  Sure it sucks to see them basically get rewarded for an. . . . optimistic gamble shall we say. . . but they are not the only ones that benefited.  Their neighbors, some of whom likely are honest people who took a cautious path to home ownership, now will not have their homes decrease in value due to sister.  She gets an unfair reward, but it also helps avoid her neighbors getting unfairly dinged.  Not to mention that it is safer to have homes occupied, and they tend to be less likely to fall into disrepair.       Also,  try to remember that every house that does go back to the bank means one more family of renters.  Banks tend to sit on homes, often for way way longer than they should, leaving that house empty, while the former tenants try to rent.  Pour more renters into the pool while banks sit on unsold vacant homes and landlords can be more picky and charge more for rent.   But in the end. . . .man your rent sucks.\"", "It appears to me that the tax code gives significant advantages to being a corporation as opposed to being a person due to the relative ease of legal tax avoidance.   As an individual, avoiding taxes is much harder than it is for a corporation.   I mean, why can't I claim my deficit last year as an operating loss and use it to offset my taxes?  I mean suppose I had to borrow money to afford food, that's pretty vital to my business (staying alive) operations. Why can't I offset my income with my borrowing like a corporation can?", "\"I've tried a lot of tablets and the PlayBook is the best one out there and the sale is a fantastic deal. The hardware and OS kick the ass of Android and Apple. Better cameras, better photos, better sound, better multitasking, better form factor.  I loved the Torch more than any iPhone. The hardware was great and OS was decent. BBOS 10, if like the PlayBook OS as planned, would be better than the other phones out there.  This isn't an error by RIM. It's fashion. Blackberries fell out of fashion. People don't buy based on good planning. They buy on branding and trend, and rationalize on the back end. The evidence for this behaviour is documented over and over and over.  All RIM can do is try to become fashionable again. But fashion trends are random walks that require \"\"tipping points\"\" or critical mass. You can't really plan one. You just have to recognize them and jump on board.  I suspect RIM will get bought out, or become a niche seller again. Wonderful. I'll take their top notch hardware and software at firesale prices while others get trendy but worse systems for more money.\"", "I'm a 911 paramedic that brings in patients to ERs all the time. I've never brought a patient to an ER that wasn't staffed by an adequate number of doctors.  trauma centers are held to an even higher standard. The hospital group has too much to lose if they lose that trauma 1 or trauma 2 rating. They will always maintain adequate required staffing.", "\"The golden rule is \"\"Pay yourself first.\"\" This means that you should have some form of savings plan set up, preferably a monthly automatic withdrawal that comes out the day after your pay is deposited. 10% is a reasonable number to start with. You are in a wonderful situation because you are thinking about this 10-15 years before most of us do.  Use this to your advantage. You are also in a good situation if you can defer the purchase of the house (assuming prices don't rise drastically in the next few years -- which they might.)  If your home situation is acceptable, then sit down with the parents and present a plan.  Something along the lines of:  I'd like to move out and start my   life.  However, it would be   advantageous to stay here for a few   years to build up a down payment and   reserve.  I'm happy to help out with   expenses, but do need a couple years   of rent-free support to get started. Then go into monk mode for one year.  It's doable, and you can save a lot of cash. Then you're on the road to freedom.\""]}
+{"query": "My Co-Signer is the Primary Account Holder for my Car Loan - Does this affect my credit?", "corpus": ["It sounds like your father got a loan and you are making the payments.  If your name and SSN are not on the loan then you are not getting credit for making the payments your father is.  So it will not affect your credit.  If you are on the loan as a secondary borrower it will affect your credit but not substantially on the positive but could affect it substantially on the negative side. Since your father is named as the primary borrower you will probably need to talk with him about it first.  If this is a mistake the 2 of you will need to work together with the bank to get it corrected.  Since your father is currently listed first the bank is probably going to be unable(even if they are willing) to make a change to the loan now with out his explicit permission. In addition if the loan is in your fathers name, if it is a vehicle loan, then the car is most likely in your fathers name as well.  Most states require that the primary signatory on a vehicle loan also be the primary owner on the title to the vehicle.  If your fathers name is the primary name on the title then you would have to retitle the car to refinance in your name."], "neg": ["The only purpose the ILS market fills is directly lining up capital to pay for potential cats. Unless you're doing directly that you don't really have a way to participate, long or short.  The cat bond market really isn't liquid or developed enough for derivatives to exist at this point.   Due to the losses this year the cat bond market could shrink significantly too because all the existing catastrophe models have seemed to be inadequate to model these occurrences and investors are losing their shirts. There are questions of the extent to which the alternative capital in the reinsurance market will reload in the wake of 2017.", "I would personally look at consolidating your debt at a lower interest rate by refinancing your mortgage. I would leave any retirement funds alone unless it was absolutely necessary to touch it with no other avenues available. However, once you have consolidated your debt into the mortgage I would pay more than the minimum amount so that you don't take too long to pay it off. I would put about 50% of the freed-up cash flow back into the repayments, that way you will be paying more debt off quicker and you will have additional cash flow to help your monthly budget. Another good point would be to go through your monthly budget to see if there is any expenses you could reduce or eliminate.", "Is there a point after which they legally unable to charge me? No. If you gave a check, then the bank may bounce it as stale after 6 months, but doesn't have to. With debit/credit transactions, they post as they're processed, and some merchants may not sync their terminals or deposit their manual slips often. As the world becomes more and more connected this becomes extremely rare, but still happens. Technically your promise to pay is a contract which never expires, and they can come after you years later to collect.", "And if it costed 50% more they wouldn't either. I bet you a majority of these people just want to save money on gas. I even thought about it, but its too ugly (the back) and the model S is too big for me.", "Car and health insurance, etc would be budgeted.  Most people know what their monthly nut is and how long they can spend on a job search.  If you really feel that your boss is treating you poorly, sometimes the best thing to do is to tighten your belt, start saving and look for new opportunities.   It is not easy.  Nothing worse doing is.     I know people generally have difficulty saving money, but like I said, ultimately, you are responsible for your own happiness.", "\"Real-time equity (or any other market) data is not available for free anywhere in the US.  It is always delayed by 10-15 minutes. On the other hand, online brokers who target the \"\"day trader\"\" (Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, etc.) offer much closer to real-time data AND feature all the tools/alerts/charts/etc. you could ever possibly dream of.  I bet the type of alert you're asking for is available with just a couple of clicks on one of these brokers' platforms. Of course, accounts with these online brokers are not free; you must pay for these sophisticated tools and fast market access.  Another down side is that the data feeds sent to you by even the most sophisticated online broker are still delayed by tens of seconds compared to the data feeds used by big banks and professional investors.  Not to mention that the investment arm of the broker you use will be making its own trades based on the data feeds before relaying them on to you. So this begs the question: why do you need real-time information?  Are you trying to \"\"day trade\"\" -- i.e. profit from minute-to-minute fluctuations in the stock market?  (I can't in good conscience recommend that, but best of luck to you.)  If on the other hand you don't truly need \"\"real-time\"\" data for your application, then I support @ChrisDegnen's approach -- use public data feeds and write your own software.  You probably will not find any free tools for the sort of alerting you're looking for because most folks who want these types of alerts also need faster feeds and are therefore already using an online broker's tools.\"", "\"Read again what I said in my original post.  \"\"Enterprise Value is the sort of \"\"bare bones\"\" total firm value. It doesn't include any cash because you'd basically be paying cash for cash. Also, this makes analysis of transaction multiples more streamlined, as some firms may have a ton of excess cash on their balance sheet, skewing multiples.\"\"  I said that that is WHY we use enterprise value. Because if you didn't it would skew multiples.\""]}
+{"query": "irr calculation on stock with dividends", "corpus": ["\"Re. question 2 If I buy 20 shares every year, how do I get proper IRR? ... (I would   have multiple purchase dates) Use the money-weighted return calculation: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Rate_of_return#Internal_rate_of_return  where t is the fraction of the time period and Ct is the cash flow at that time period. For the treatment of dividends, if they are reinvested then there should not be an external cash flow for the dividend.  They are included in the final value and the return is termed \"\"total return\"\".  If the dividends are taken in cash, the return based on the final value is \"\"net return\"\". The money-weighted return for question 2, with reinvested dividends, can be found by solving for r, the rate for the whole 431 day period, in the NPV summation. Now annualising And in Excel\""], "neg": ["Is it what I want to eat when I want to eat good food? No, absolutely not. Do I occasionally eat it? Yes. It's a matter of price/time/convenience, which is basically the entire fast food industry. I absolutely believe pizza that isn't artisanal level can be automated and the product can still be damn good. The chief problem with frozen pizza isn't that it's made by a robot, it's that it is frozen.", "\"Accrued interest generally means \"\"interest that is earned but not received\"\" (http://www.businessdictionary.com/definition/accrued-interest.html).  This is the interest that is added on top of the amount that was originally agreed upon. Because your friend missed some months, she will have gained 3% interest on top of the original loan amount for every month that she didn't pay.  The interest even applies to the increased loan amount, so it will increase exponentially for every month that she does not make a payment.  For example, if the loan amount was for $1,000 and she missed the payment the first month, the 3% accrued interest will raise that loan amount to $1030.  If she misses the second month, then the loan amount will become $1060.90 and so on. This means that it will take her more months to pay the loan in its entirety. \"\"Arrears\"\" are the overdue payments that she had not made (http://www.investopedia.com/terms/a/arrears.asp). So the sentence \"\"with susbsequent payments paying the arrears before being applied to the current month's payment\"\" means that she must pay the overdue debt from the previous months first before she can even make the payment for the current month.\"", "The main argument that comes in favor of the [Ranches for Sale in Texas](http://www.texashuntingland.com/)  and how they can support a person spends in his own long term is related towards the concept of producing a transform. Individuals are often frightened to make this kind of a stage as a result of the truth that this really is related to their comfort and ease zone.", "\"Talk to your bank first but shop around a bit as well with other reputable lenders in your area.  Another option, if you're willing to put down ~84% of the purchase price would be to talk to several dealerships BEFORE you set foot on a single lot. Tell them that you are interested in buying a Versa and that you are willing to pay cash but you are not willing to pay more than $10,200. They won't agree (trust me on that) but they will come down from $13,000. Say \"\"Thanks, I'll call you back.\"\" and call one of the other dealerships on your list and tell them \"\"I just spoke with this dealership and they are willing to sell me the car for [whatever number they gave you].\"\" One of two things will happen, either the dealership will come back with a lower price or they will tell you to go buy the car there. Continue this process until you have one dealership left.  I did this with 3 dealerships in 2011 and bought a truck with a $27,000 sticker price for just over $19,000. It took about a week to make all of the calls and I ended up going to a dealership 3 hours away but it was worth it for $8,000.\"", "A Solo 401k plan requires self-employment income; you cannot put wages into it.", "Check with your bank, usually a statement is either at the same day of month (e.g.: every 15th of the month), or every 30 days (e.g: March 15th, April 14th, May 14th, so forth). From my experience, most credit cards use the same day of month strategy. Keep in mind that if the day is not a business day (e.g.: weekend), the statement is closed either the previous or the next business day.", "I guess that is one example out of hundreds.  It does not exemplify the tribes here with huge casinos, hotels and shopping malls.  Maybe those tribes do not want to grow.  I am sick to death of growth.  It serves the few at the expense of the many.  Human sprawling is killing the region where I live in every way, and has killed many before.  If UBI money is helping the surrounding states, it works.  If the Native Americans don't grow their economy, that is their choice.  If they don't want to integrate in whities back stabbing dog eat dog economy.  I empathize fully.  Edit:  And the Navajo people's needs were met.  What is utterly ridiculous is that everyone in this country is given money from someone.  Some just get more than others.  Someone tell me why I am less deserving."]}
+{"query": "How to learn about doing technical analysis?  Any suggested programs or tools that teach it?", "corpus": ["\"A lot of investors prefer to start jumping into tools and figuring out from there, but I've always said that you should learn the theory before you go around applying it, so you can understand its shortcomings.  A great starting point is Investopedia's Introduction to Technical Analysis. There you can read about the \"\"idea\"\" of technical analysis, how it compares to other strategies, what some of the big ideas are, and quite a bit about various chart patterns (cup and handle, flags, pennants, triangles, head & shoulders, etc). You'll also cover ideas like moving averages and trendlines. After that, Charting and Technical Analysis by Fred McAllen should be your next stop. The material in the book overlaps with what you've read on Investopedia, but McAllen's book is great for learning from examples and seeing the concepts applied in action. The book is for new comers and does a good job explaining how to utilize all these charts and patterns, and after finishing it, you should be ready to invest on your own.  If you make it this far, feel free to jump into Fidelity's tools now and start applying what you've learned. You always want to make the connection between theory and practice, so start  figuring out how you can use your new knowledge to generate good returns.  Eventually, you should read the excellent reference text Technical Analysis of the Financial Markets by John Murphy. This book is like a toolbox - Murphy covers almost all the major techniques of technical analysts and helps you intuitively understand the reasoning behind them. I'd like to quote a part of a review here to show my point:  What I   like about Mr. Murphy is his way of showing and proving a point. Let   me digress here to show you what I mean: Say you had a daughter and   wanted to show her how to figure out the area of an Isosceles   triangle. Well, you could tell her to memorize that it is   base*height/2. Or if you really wanted her to learn it thoroughly you   can show her how to draw a parallel line to the height, then join the   ends to make a nice rectangle. Then to compute the area of a rectangle   just multiply the two sides, one being the height, the other being   half the base. She will then \"\"derive\"\" this and   \"\"understand\"\" how they got the formula. You see, then she can   compute the area under a hexagon or a tetrahedron or any complex   object. Well, Mr. Murphy will show us the same way and   \"\"derive\"\" for us concepts such as how a resistance line later   becomes a support line! The reson for this is so amusing that after   one reads about it we just go \"\"wow...\"\"\"\" Now I understand why   this occurs\"\". Murphy's book is not about strategy or which tools to use. He takes an objective approach to describing the basics about various tools and techniques, and leaves it up to the reader to decide which tools to apply and when. That's why it's 576 pages and a great reference whenever you're working.  If you make it through and understand Murphy, then you'll be golden. Again, understand the theory first, but make sure to see how it's applied as well - otherwise you're just reading without any practical knowledge. To quote Richard Feynman: It doesn't matter how beautiful your theory is, it doesn't matter how smart you are. If it doesn't agree with experiment, it's wrong.  Personally, I think technical analysis is all BS and a waste of time, and most of the top investors would agree, but at the end of the day, ignore everyone and stick to what works for you. Best of luck!\""], "neg": ["Thanks for the answer/comments! The time-based method was something we mooted and something I almost went with. But just to wrap this up, the method we settled on was this: Every time there is an entry or exit into the fund, we divvy out any unrealised market profits/losses according to each person's profit share (based on % of the asset purchased at buy-in) JUST BEFORE the entry/exit. These realised profits are then locked in for those particpants, and then the unrealised profits/loss counter starts at zero, we do a fresh recalculation of shareholding after the entry/exit, and then we start again. Hope this helps anyone with the same issue!", "This is like presuming that because the government laid some telephone lines that they'd somehow have backdoor access to listen to your phone calls.  If all they're doing is laying the generic fiber it's got nothing to do with intercepting your information. It's the equivalent to laying own a highway.", "It looks like from their response, they would like you to send a copy of your social security card. Your drivers license or passport will not help verify your social security number. Another option you could try is to get your credit report from one of the other credit bureaus. You should be able to choose from Experian, Trans Union, and Equifax all on annualcreditreport.gov", "Nope. Everyone has a price.      You'd probably spend 1-2 years in prison for the right amount of money and a guaranteed multi-year high-paying position waiting for you after you got out. The company's legal team could work to scrub your record.    Politicians practically do the same thing... enter office, take a $175K annual salary for a few years, act as a vote proxy for a major corp, and exit office to a cushy high-paid corporate job.", "I fucking hate airbnb because they make the rent in In NYC fucking expensive  even with a 100k a year salary.  It's a good thing that NYC  is sending a fine of $1000 to whoever lists their whole apartment for rent on airbnb.", "I see, thanks for the link. My initial impression is that there are probably more considerations than the theoretically optimal way to lever the company. The two tech companies I named have a fear of insolvency baked into their DNA. I would imagine their CFO's are aware of this theory and have either decided protecting against insolvency is more important -- or they've been unable to persuade the CEO/board to do the theoretically optimal thing and distribute that cash to shareholders and put the company into debt.  It's an appeal to authority but I'm still going to assume that if all the tech giants are doing it this way, it's probably the right decision for them. Even if it does conflict with this theory.", "It is perfectly legitimate to adjust your 1099-B income by broker's fees.  Publication 17 (p 116) specifically instructs taxpayers to adjust their Schedule D reporting by broker's fees: Form 1099-B transactions.   If you sold property, such as stocks, bonds, or certain commodities, through a broker, you should receive Form 1099-B or substitute statement from the broker. Use the Form 1099-B or the substitute statement to complete Form 8949. If you sold a covered security in 2013, your broker should send you a Form 1099-B (or substitute statement) that shows your basis. This will help you complete Form 8949. Generally, a covered security is a security you acquired after 2010. Report the gross proceeds shown in box 2a of Form 1099-B as the sales price in column (d) of either Part I or Part II of Form 8949, whichever applies. However, if the broker advises you, in box 2a of Form 1099-B, that gross proceeds (sales price) less commissions and option premiums were reported to the IRS, enter that net sales price in column (d) of either Part I or Part II of Form 8949, whichever applies. Include in column (g) any expense of sale, such as broker's fees, commissions, state and local transfer taxes, and option premiums, unless you reported the net sales price in column (d). If you include an expense of sale in column (g), enter “E” in column (f). You can rely on your own records and judgment, if you feel comfortable doing so.  Brokers often make incomplete tax reporting.  This may have been simpler from their perspective if the broker fees were variable, or integrated, or unknown for a number of clients party to a transaction.  If a taxpayer has documentation of the expenses that justify an adjustment, then it's perfectly appropriate to include that in the calculations. It is not necessary to report the discrepancy, and it may increase scrutiny to include a written addendum.  The Schedule D, Form 8949, and Form 1099-B will probably together adequately explain the source of the deduction."]}
+{"query": "How to refuse a Clearxchange payment?", "corpus": ["\"Your bank uses ClearXchange, not you. It is not a website where you open an account, like many others, but an inter-bank transfer system based on email addresses, kind of like free wire transfers between everyone. You don't have to set anything up, just accept the payment, and the money appears in your account (assuming the client used the email address your bank has on file for you). However, if you still don't want it, you can just ignore it. There is a timeout when his transaction gets auto-cancelled, and he gets his money back. Here is an example text from the 'fine print' (my highlighting): \"\"[...]We will continue our attempts by sending a second notice of a transfer to the recipient, and providing the recipient a period of nine (9) succeeding Business Days to register in the Service, or the person-to-person payment service of clearXchange, Zelle or a Network Bank. At the end of this period, if the recipient still has not registered, the transfer request will be Cancelled. The sender may cancel the transfer at any time during this ten (10) day period if the recipient is not registered at the time of cancellation.[...]\"\" (https://chaseonline.chase.com/Public/Misc/LAContent.aspx?agreementKey=chasenet_la)\""], "neg": ["\"Let's divide all bank accounts into savings and checking. The main difference is that checking is easy to get money from; savings is hard to get money from. Because of this, the federal Reserve requires that banks keep more money on hand to cover transactions in checking accounts. Here is a related question from a banking customer regarding a recent notice on their bank statement: Deposit Reclassification. It seems that the bank was moving the customer's money between hidden sub accounts to make it look like the checking account was really a savings account and thus \"\"reduce the amount of funds we are required to keep on deposit at the Federal Reserve Bank.\"\" If they didn't have to transfer the money many times the bank could keep less cash on hand. But once they did 5 hidden transactions the rest of the money in the hidden savings account would be moved by the bank. The 6 transaction limit is done to not allow you to treat savings like checking. Here is a relevant quote from the Federal Reserve Savings Deposits  Savings deposits generally have no specified maturity   period. They may be interest-bearing, with interest computed or paid   daily, weekly, quarterly, or on any other basis. The two most   significant features of savings deposits are the ‘‘reservation of   right’’ requirement and the restrictions on the number of   ‘‘convenient’’ transfers or withdrawals that may be made per month (or   per statement cycle of at least four weeks) from the account. In order   to classify an account as a ‘‘savings deposit,’’ the institution must   in its account agreement with the customer reserve the right at any   time to require seven days’ advance written notice of an intended   withdrawal. In practice, this right is never exercised, but the   institution must nevertheless reserve that right in the account   agreement. In addition, for an account to be classified as a ‘‘savings   deposit,’’ the depositor may make no more than six ‘‘convenient’’   transfers or withdrawals per month from the account. ‘‘Convenient’’   transfers and withdrawals, for purposes of this limit, include   preauthorized, automatic transfers (including but not limited to   transfers from the savings deposit for overdraft protection or for   direct bill payments) and transfers and withdrawals initiated by   telephone, facsimile, or computer, and transfers made by check, debit    card, or other similar order made by the depositor and payable to   third parties. Other, less-convenient types of transfers, such as   withdrawals or transfers made in person at the bank, by mail, or by   using an ATM, do not count toward the six-per-month limit and do not   affect the account’s status as a savings account. Also, a withdrawal   request initiated by telephone does not count toward the transfer   limit when the withdrawal is disbursed via check mailed to the   depositor.  Examiners should be particularly wary of a bank’s practices   for handling telephone transfers. As noted, an unlimited number of   telephone-initiated withdrawals are allowed so long as a check for   the withdrawn funds is mailed to the depositor. Otherwise, the limit   is six telephone transfers per month. The limit applies to telephonic   transfers to move savings deposit funds to another type of deposit   account and to make payments to third parties.\"", "Since you are paying taxes on the distributions from your mutual funds anyway, instead of reinvesting the distributions back into the mutual funds, you could receive them as cash, then contribute them to your Roth IRA once you are able to open one.", "Sometimes what is holding us back are internalized barriers which don't really exist. Sometimes it is possible to pull yourself up by your bootstraps if only you try. But I think conservatives underestimate the difficulties of following a new paradigm.   I've become fascinated by this topic because it ties in with my thoughts on visionary thinking. What is it that allows some people to break out of rigid patterns of thought, i.e. routines? Researchers in artificial intelligence are developing interesting theories on how to train neural networks to find new possibilities quicker. Some of this research might apply to the human mind and how creativity works.  Anyway, I don't think people can see a way out of poverty when you only present them with hypothetical possibilities. I think we need mentoring programs and apprenticeships. People can only follow a new paradigm when they have an example before them. In other words, if they can do it, I can do it. But when nobody around you is doing it then you are not going to give the possibility much weight. No observations support that optimism.", "At this company, you can get building site signs in an infinite range of colours to suit formal building requirements, evening venues, playgrounds and every other thing. They are made from high quality laminate, Perspex or aluminium.", "&gt; Taking rough rice as an example, there are millions (if not billions) of people who eat rice to survive. People will always need oil to fuel their cars. People will always need electricity.  Commodity values are unlikely to go to 0, I agree. The fact you think this is super-relevant suggests to me you have not fully grasped the nature of the commodities futures markets.  &gt; I don't like to be too risky  You are looking at getting into extremely risky securities.  &gt; I guess what I am trying to do is look into things that allow me to profit, regardless of where equities are going.  Many men have died searching for the holy grail. Speculating in these markets is not for the faint of hearts, let alone for the risk-averse.  &gt; I have gone as far as to look through OTC ADRs to find some foreign value, and I found nothing.  There are plenty of funds offering lots of exposure to international equities, which seem well-geared toward the individual investor.", "\"Grad school applications typically have deadlines around December or January, so you're thinking about this at the right time.   First, obviously, you should get an idea of where you want to go, and what kind of program. There's plenty of ranking lists online that can help give you an idea. Grad school applications take a non-trivial amount of effort, so most people apply to only 5-10.  Next, you'll want to contact potential references. The grad school websites should inform you what type of reference they want, but in my experience these were mostly academic and usually 2-3 per application, finance programs may want more professional references as well. Try to choose the right references for the application, e.g. I applied to financial engineering programs, and would usually have one economics professor and then either a math professor or a statistics professor depending on the focus of the program.  Now, check to see if your programs require a GRE/GMAT score (they probably will), and start studying ASAP. There's tons of study materials available both in book form and online, and if you can put the time in you can probably get a decent score with just a few weeks (4-6) of studying. As far as I know, just about every program that accepts a GMAT score will also accept a GRE score, but not necessarily the other way around, so you may be better off studying for the GRE (verify this!).  And with all those components complete, you'll basically be done! Some applications will ask for various forms of cover letter, or have other essay questions, so set aside some time to write these as well.   Also, if you're looking at Finance Master's programs, I notice that they tend to come in a few varieties. Some set you up for PhDs and are naturally more academic focused, where as \"\"terminal\"\" Master's that resemble an MBA will focus on trying to get you a job. Reflect a bit on what you want to accomplish with your degree and figure out the program that's best for that. If you get in to a top school then it won't matter much regardless, but otherwise it is very likely that schools which produce good PhD candidates and research are not necessarily the same schools which place people on Wall Street.  Hope that helps :)\"", "\"Instead of using the actual index, use a mutual fund as a proxy for the index. Mutual funds will include dividend income, and usually report data on the value of a \"\"hypothetical $10,000 investment\"\" over the life of the fund. If you take those dollar values and normalize them, you should get what you want. There are so many different factors that feed into general trends that it will be difficult to draw conclusions from this sort of data. Things like news flow, earnings reporting periods, business cycles, geopolitical activity, etc all affect the various sectors of the economy differently.\""]}
+{"query": "Current accounts reward schemes and reciprocal standing orders?", "corpus": ["\"I don't think it would be counted as income, and if it's a short-term loan it doesn't really matter as the notional interest on the loan would be negligible. But you can avoid any possible complications by just having two accounts in the name of the person trying to get the account benefits, particularly if you're willing to just provide the \"\"seed\"\" money to get the loop started.\""], "neg": ["Why does total debt matter?  What really matters is debt service.  What is the percentage of GDP that is used for debt service?  If you borrow money at 2% versus 18% it makes a **HUGE** difference in how much you pay back.    In fact, Japan's debt goes down each year that inflation is greater than 2% (in purchasing power).", "I am not an accountant, but I have a light accounting background, despite being primarily an engineer.  I also have a tiny schedule C business which has both better and worse years.  I am also in the United States and pay US taxes.  I assume you are referring to the US Form 1040 tax return, with the attached Schedule C.  However little I know about US taxes, I know nothing about foreign taxes. You are a cash-basis taxpayer, so the transactions that happen in each tax year are based on the cash paid and cash received in that year.  You were paid last year, you computed your schedule C based on last year's actual transactions, and you paid taxes on that income. You can not recompute last years schedule C based on the warranty claim. You might want to switch to an accrual accounting method, where you can book allowances for warranty claims.  It is more complex, and if your business is spotty and low volume, it may be more trouble than it is worth. At this point, you have two months to look for ways to shift expenses into next year or being income into this year, both of which help offset this loss. Perhaps a really aggressive accountant would advise otherwise (and remember, I am not an accountant), but I would take the lumps and move on. This article on LegalZoom (link here) discusses how to apply a significant net operating loss (NOL) in this year to the previous two years, and potentially carry it forward to the next two years.  This does involve filing amended returns for the prior two years, showing this year's NOL.  For this to be relevant, your schedule C loss this year must exceed your other W2 and self-employment income this year, with other tests also applied. Perhaps a really aggressive accountant would advise otherwise (and remember, I am not an accountant), but I would take the lumps and move on.", "No it's really not, I have no illusions that private school is any better than the public schools around here.  The problems with them differ, but one is no better than the other.  Our education system in Florida is broken, the voucher system they instituted created broken schools and soon to be bankrupt private schools.  Every state that's done so has or soon will have the same problems.  Even states that aren't screwing their public schools with vouchers, are screwing them with poor funding at every level.  Shits broke, and getting more broke every year.  Eventually it might get fixed, but I'm not going to play 'maybe' games with my kids.  I'd rather move them to a country that isn't supporting the most expensive military on the planet.", "I'm not in the business but I've always thought that Catalyst + industry context = market beating returns.  Meaning that if you know what an event means faster than everyone else you can make money.  Though I don't know how you'd express that in a report.  An example that comes to mind is when Japan announced they were forming a consortium, the largest in the world, to make LCD panel glass.  After that I got the heck of GLW though the stock price kept going up at the time.  It is like no one understood the implications.", "I've heard many times that large corporations have their accounting departments do all sorts of crazy things to get their tax rate drastically lowered. I'm no accountant, and this is not something I have done a ton of research into, but I did find [this paper](http://www.ctj.org/corporatetaxdodgers/sorrystateofcorptaxes.php#Executive Summary) that states that between 2008 and 2012 the 288 Fortune 500 companies the study looked at only paid an effective tax rate of 19.4%.   Note that the 288 companies selected were selected because of their consistent profitability over that time period.  I am open to the possibility of this study being flawed, but I didn't see anything that jumped out at me.", "Started as pt at a grocery store. Will never get used to throwing all that good meat out. Still has 2 days but there's fresher stock in back. It seems having bold and full shelves is the reason. They throw out food to have that clean magazine photo look of a store.", "I absolutely LOVE Taco Bell's marketing department. Like they took the term polish a turd to the next level. I follow them on twitter, like them on Facebook, get their snapchats, shit I even won a taco shirt from them by doing some online scavenger hunt bullshit. I don't even love their food, in fact I think a Chick Fil A grilled chicken sandwich blows away anything on their menu. They've just found this way to come off as your bro by giving you this food thats cool and cheap and edible. And they're social media platforms are actually FUNNY. I don't know how they did it, but they're an incredible company and a totally different company since when I was a kid and they had those dog commercials."]}
+{"query": "Who gets how many shares when an IPO is oversubscribed?", "corpus": ["A broker will only get so many shares for any IPO. They will give their highest profit customers priority, but try to keep the smaller ones happy as well. So where my TWTR order today was for 1000 shares, I actually was granted 100.  In the dotcon* bubble of the late 90's, there were some stocks I saw as many as 1000 hit my account.  (*not a typo, this is the title of a book on that period, the making of a bubble and irrational doings on Wall Street."], "neg": ["\"Lolol.   Is it \"\"survival of the fittest\"\" or \"\"arbitrary luck and randomness\"\" that fates today's worker? Make your mind up.   There isn't a political/social ideology ever that doesn't pair qualified people where they need to be. Really doesn't matter how passionate you are about being a doctor, if you are terrible at it, you can't be a doctor- this philosophy is not specific to \"\"evil, murdering capitalism\"\" it's consistent throughout. What you're talking about isn't a defined political or social ideology, it's Huggy-lovee-feefee Land.\"", "Do you work with low-skilled employees? Specifically, do you ever have to manage them? I am going to make the assumption that you do not based on the comments you are making. It is impossible to say ALL of anything is a certain way. I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm going to specifically talk about averages. It seems like you've never been around the average.  The average minimum wage employee doesn't have a high school education. It is fairly safe to say that they continuously are not developing skills that provide value both to themselves and others. If a person refuses to provide more for society, should society fill the gap?  You suggest that people who are poor didn't get there because of their own right. Are people who are self-made millionaires (on average) good with finances? Why would that be? If yes, why do you assume those that are successful are so because of their own merit but cannot be blamed for failure?  Seattle is a nice place. My exterior painter is doing a job there right now. It's a 3 month job. He is painting 1,000 apartments. He took 7 guys with him that he pays around $1,750 a week plus room and board. He had to take 7 guys with him because he can't find workers up in Washington. Can you imagine that? People in Seattle have not developed the skill of exterior painting. That's the reality of your job market. Even further, companies do have massive incentives to move to cheaper locations. The starting salary of large corporations varies wildly based on cost of living. Goldman Sachs will offer nearly $100k a year starting to work in the NYC branch compared to $65-70k in Houston.", "THIS. That's why I'm fortunate enough to work a remote job where I live 3 hours north of NYC and have traveled 30 years back in time when it comes to prices of homes. I feel like even with shit credit, the hope of a dream home is much more attainable now that the cost/income ratio is where it should be.", "It's not an easy calculation so I made this demonstration that compares a fixed investment with a 100% mortgage, for a simple case.  (Obviously if you lessen the mortgage with a deposit it's somewhere between the extremes.)  The demonstrations shows some definite differences at higher interest rates.  You can probably decipher the calculations in the code if you're interested.  It's intended to be legible. http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/BuyOrRentInvestmentReturnCalculator/", "\"Following @Brick's advice, I am posting this as an answer so it \"\"stands apart from the question\"\", but all the credit goes to @TTT, whose instructions I followed. I was able to get this collection completely deleted/removed from the 2 bureaus that were reporting it, using only the online dispute process. Of course, your mileage may vary, but here's some more details, that may be helpful to others. Equifax: Success! 3 weeks after disputing the collection using the online dispute process, and uploading my (scanned) \"\"final account statement\"\" to show that I paid the apartment complex, I received an email confirmation that it is deleted. (I had to go to a webpage to get the actual result.) TransUnion: Success! Although I never heard back from TU, my CreditKarma account now shows that the collection is no longer on my TU report either. I am not sure if this is because Equifax deleted it and TU just followed suit, or if TU did their own investigation (ideas, comments? could help others). Their online dispute process bugged out and didn't accept my upload, so they would have had to contact the apartment complex, so I was supposed to receive something by mail. I still haven't, but it's definitely gone from my report. Experian: It didn't show up on this report, so I can't give any feedback. I suppose it's also worth noting that I did not ever have any contact with the Collections Agency. I did visit the apartment office, in person, in order to get a copy of my final statement. While there, I spoke with the (new) manager, who said she would try to reach up the chain of command to figure something out. I'm not sure how much difference, if any, this may have made, as the complex is now owned by an entirely different company. In fact, the new manager had no idea who the old management company was, much less which collections agency they used. Also worth noting: Removing the collection made my score rise from 623 to 701! I know because, after getting the collection removed from my report, I re-applied for the auto loan I had been denied 3 weeks prior, and they gave me my Equifax score both times.\"", "The key point is from the penultimate sentence in your second paragraph: for which you have already paid taxes When you receive a dividend or realise a capital gain, you get taxed on that then, and you shouldn't have to pay taxes on it again in future. So the cost basis gets adjusted to reflect that.", "Rather than screwing around with foreign currencies, hop over to Germany and open an account at the first branch of Deutsche or Commerzbank you see. If the euro really does disintegrate, you want to have your money in the strongest country of the lot.  Edit: and what I meant to say is that if the euro implodes, you'll end up with deutschmarks, which, unlike the new IEP, will *not* need to devalue. (And in the meantime, you've still got euros, so you have no FX risk.)"]}
+{"query": "What prevents investors from buying high yield stocks and selling them as soon as their dividend is paid out?", "corpus": ["\"You have to be the owner of record before the ex-dividend date, which is not the same day as the date the dividend is paid. This also implies that if you sell on or after the ex-dividend date, you'll still get the dividend, even if you no longer own the stock.  Keep in mind, also, that the quoted price of the stock (and on any open orders that are not specifically marked as \"\"do not reduce\"\") on its ex-dividend date is dropped by the amount of the dividend, first thing in the morning before trading starts. If you happen to be the first order of the day, before market forces cause the price to move, you'll end up with zero gain, since the dividend is built into the price, and you got the same value out of it -- the dividend in cash, and the remaining value in stock. As pointed out in the comments (Thanks @Brick), you'll still get a market price for your trade, but the price reduction will have had some impact on the first trade of the day. Source: NYSE Rule 118.30 Also, remember that the dividend yield is expressed in annualized terms. So a 3% yield can only be fully realized by receiving all of the dividend payments made by the company for the year. You can, of course, forget about individual companies and just look for dividends to create your own effective yield over time. But, see the final point... Finally, if you keep buying and selling just to play games with the dividends, you're going to pay far more in transaction fees than you will earn in dividends. And, depending on your individual circumstances, you may end up paying more in capital gains taxes.\""], "neg": ["I think the simple answer to your question is: Yes, when you sell, that drives down the price. But it's not like you sell, and THEN the price goes down. The price goes down when you sell. You get the lower price.  Others have discussed the mechanics of this, but I think the relevant point for your question is that when you offer shares for sale, buyers now have more choices of where to buy from. If without you, there were 10 people willing to sell for $100 and 10 people willing to buy for $100, then there will be 10 sales at $100. But if you now offer to sell, there are 11 people selling for $100 and 10 people buying for $100. The buyers have a choice, and for a seller to get them to pick him, he has to drop his price a little. In real life, the market is stable when one of those sellers drops his price enough that an 11th buyer decides that he now wants to buy at the lower price, or until one of the other 10 buyers decides that the price has gone too low and he's no longer interested in selling. If the next day you bought the stock back, you are now returning the market to where it was before you sold. Assuming that everything else in the market was unchanged, you would have to pay the same price to buy the stock back that you got when you sold it. Your net profit would be zero. Actually you'd have a loss because you'd have to pay the broker's commission on both transactions. Of course in real life the chances that everything else in the market is unchanged are very small. So if you're a typical small-fry kind of person like me, someone who might be buying and selling a few hundred or a few thousand dollars worth of a company that is worth hundreds of millions, other factors in the market will totally swamp the effect of your little transaction. So when you went to buy back the next day, you might find that the price had gone down, you can buy your shares back for less than you sold them, and pocket the difference. Or the price might have gone up and you take a loss.", "An auto title loans are typically utilized by those that wish to obtain a funding with bad credit rating or no credit in any way. An auto-mobile title lending frequently called a vehicle title lending or merely title funding as well as pink slip funding’s. You merely should have a vehicle that is paid off or nearly paid off and also you could make use of the auto title as security to obtain the cash money you require, enabling you to continue driving your vehicle while paying your loan.   Get Auto Car Title Loans Torrance CA and nearby cities Provide Car Title Loans, Auto Title Loans, Mobile Home Title Loans, RV/Motor Home Title Loans, Big Rigs Truck Title Loans, Motor Cycle Title Loans, Online Title Loans Near me, Bad Credit Loans, Personal Loans, Quick cash Loans  Contact Us: Get Auto Car Title Loans Torrance CA 1148 W Clarion Dr, Torrance, CA 90502  Phone : 424-306-1531 Email : atltorrance@gmail.com http://getautotitleloans.com/car-and-auto-title-loans-torrance-ca", "You get to put money away with special tax incentives (ie - no or less taxes to pay)  They are state sponsored and therefore pretty reliable, but some states are better than others. Like with many of these tax incentive type accounts (FSA, Dependent Care Spending Accounts) they are use it or lose it.  (In a 529, use it or transfer it).  So the money put away is a sunk cost towards education and cannot be repurposed for something else should your kid not want to attend school. http://money.howstuffworks.com/personal-finance/financial-planning/529.htm", "\"&gt; Outside of money, the biggest thing I think we will leave to our kids is what we have learned...  I would argue even money is less important, but continue.  &gt; ...you are acting like a totally responsible young adult according to societal norms and people who are supposed to give you advice, and you are totally fucking yourself.  Totally agree.  FYI, your example seems fitting for someone born into a middle class home and their choices are bad but not destructive.  If it were someone from a poor household then the 25 year old doesn't know about the American Heart Association, doesn't know about credit to get a card or house, invests nothing, often gets payday loans, gets a car from a used car auto-lender, drinks and watches a lot of TV, has probably been involved in a pregnancy, and plays the lottery in the hopes of a better life.    &gt; Is that your fault?  I would say, \"\"no\"\".  Society has effectively set you up to fail.  &gt; What if you've concluded generational wealth is simply luck...  &gt; You may dismiss your opportunity as bullshit, and remained trapped in the standard American day to day wage/debt slavery.  You almost certainly will dismiss the opportunity.  Even if you can realize the AHA, financial advisor, or payday loan guy gave you bad advice, there are better looking opportunities.  Put away money for a rainy day?  Fuck that!  If I listen to the auto-loan guy I get a car *today*.  I'm not sure I understand where your contention was.  Are you thinking that people shouldn't be cynical  of the system and be able to recognize an opportunity to better their life?  I'm heading out for the evening.  I'll look for your replay later tonight and maybe respond.  Thanks for the thoughtful discussion.\"", "I think there's no single one size fits all way to do hierarchies and flat structures.  One can have very insular divisions where everything goes in and out of the division via the supervisor in charge of them, but all of the divisional supervisors having a very flat structure working among each other, for example.  I think this resolves a lot of the noise issue from low-ranking employees talking to people that they really shouldn't be while still maintaining the efficiency benefits for low level management which presumably has enough seniority to understand how things work (or are new people in those positions who are important enough to handhold them through learning that quickly).", "I definitely see the advantages of globalism. And from an economical point of view the takeovers make sense.  But from a political strategic point of view, I think we Europeans should be careful. They are state-owned, we'd literally be selling to the Chinese government.  I'm Belgian, and one of our distribution system operators almost got taken over by a Chinese state owned company. That's a bit too strategic to my liking.", "\"That's OK, there are new \"\"fronts\"\" in the war ... not just \"\"Print On Demand\"\" (aka POD) and Independent *publishing*, but the soon to be here *local* (in store) print on demand.  And of course e-books (especially independently published e-books) are s-l-o-w-l-y (but *steadily*) picking up steam as well.\""]}
+{"query": "Calculate Finance Rate, Interest Amount when we have below line Fees", "corpus": ["The equation for the payment is  This board does not support Latex (the number formatting code) so the above is an image, the code is M is the payment calculated, n is the number of months or periods to pay off, and i is the rate per period. You can see that with i appearing 3 times in this equation, it's not possible to isolate to the form i=....  so a calculator will 'guess,' and use, say, 10%. It then raises or lowers the rate until the result is within the calculator's tolerance. I've observed that unlike other calculations, when you hit the button to calculate, a noticeable time lag occurs. I hope I haven't read too much into your question, it seemed to me this was what you asked."], "neg": ["I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:  - [/r/talkbusiness] [I just made a public DropBox w\\/ DMR reports for the following social media channels: Reddit, YouTube, LinkedIn, Twitter, &amp; facebook. (Enjoy!)](https://np.reddit.com/r/talkbusiness/comments/795ezw/i_just_made_a_public_dropbox_w_dmr_reports_for/)  [](#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)", "It really depends on the amount of money - I currently have to pay my mortgage in the UK from the US until my house there is sold and my wife sends money from her (US) Paypal account to my UK Paypal account. As personal payments these don't attract the sort of fees you see for ebay payments et al. Compared to the fee-o-rama that a wire transfer turns into (I tried once from BofA to HSBC UK), it is noticeably cheaper for the amount of money we're sending. That said, a lot of the currency transfer services have support for monthly payments and you might get a decent exchange rate and fewer (or no) fees that way.", "I like when I get told about something last minute, scamper like mad to get it done ASAP, and then get yelled at for holding things up.  I threaten to hold them to our review cycle process which calls for 4-7 business days.", "You can open an HSA account with any financial institution that you like, and roll over the money from your current account into the new one.  Since you are no longer in a High Deductible Health Plan, you can't contribute any new money into an HSA, but you can still spend the money in your HSA on eligible medical expenses, until it is gone.  There are lots of things that you can spend HSA money on, so there is no need to cash out and take on taxes and penalties. Yes, there are HSA accounts that don't charge ongoing maintenance fees.  Check with a local credit union; they usually have no-fee HSA accounts.", "Did she work at a staff level prior to this?  I don't know her experience, but if she worked as a staff level security analyst for 20 years, then I would call her qualified.  Your degree doesn't matter. They are very rarely relevant after a year or two of employment.", "Thanks for the reply! I am considering all lines of work as the priority is the location, then the job. But if the work I can get is relevant and expands my network, that carries a lot of value.  The plan is to stay where I am for the next 2-3 years to gain the required work experience to become a charterholder and developing my skills/project portfolio to become a better candidate. I would still be young enough to move to Australia/UK on a working vacation/youth mobility and I want to be set up to have a good chance by then.", "Very cool! good for you. We're a rare breed - actually doing something with our finance knowledge.  The rotten part I think is they've had enough success to be self employed. At that point, you start realizing the limitations of most people when you are successful, and so you become closed off. I'm as guilty of this as they were.  &gt; conservative.... but it's not for me  You're right on that part. Definitely have to see what your sweet spot is and stick to that. Anything that requires me to constantly check up on the industry is out for me. But I follow tesla for many reasons and it's something I worked hard to get comfortable with (more than 1,000 hours). My comfort zone is owning 4 stocks after looking at 1,000+. And watching them closely, ignoring the rest. I also don't have time for much more. My other favorite, that might be more up your alley: Davita (DVA). I am a big fan and comfortable with the industry to know they're going to do well from here."]}
+{"query": "What factors make someone buy or sell a stock?", "corpus": ["\"First, note that a share represents a % of ownership of a company. In addition to the right to vote in the management of the company [by voting on the board of directors, who hires the CEO, who hires the VPs, etc...], this gives you the right to all future value of the company after paying off expenses and debts. You will receive this money in two forms: dividends approved by the board of directors, and the final liquidation value if the company closes shop. There are many ways to attempt to determine the value of a company, but the basic theory is that the company is worth a cashflow stream equal to all future dividends + the liquidation value. So, the market's \"\"goal\"\" is to attempt to determine what that future cash flow stream is, and what the risk related to it is. Depending on who you talk to, a typical stock market has some degree of 'market efficiency'. Market efficiency is basically a comment about how quickly the market reacts to news. In a regulated marketplace with a high degree of information available, market efficiency should be quite high. This basically means that stock markets in developed countries have enough traders and enough news reporting that as soon as something public is known about a company, there are many, many people who take that information and attempt to predict the impact on future earnings of the company. For example, if Starbucks announces earnings that were 10% less than estimated previously, the market will quickly respond with people buying Starbucks shares lowering their price on the assumption that the total value of the Starbucks company has decreased. Most of this trading analysis is done by institutional investors. It isn't simply office workers selling shares on their break in the coffee room, it's mostly people in the finance industry who specialize in various areas for their firms, and work to quickly react to news like this. Is the market perfectly efficient? No. The psychology of trading [ie: people panicking, or reacting based on emotion instead of logic], as well as any inadequacy of information, means that not all news is perfectly acted upon immediately. However, my personal opinion is that for large markets, the market is roughly efficient enough that you can assume that you won't be able to read the newspaper and analyze stock news in a way better than the institutional investors. If a market is generally efficient, then it would be very difficult for a group of people to manipulate it, because someone else would quickly take advantage of that. For example, you suggest that some people might collectively 'short AMZN' [a company worth half a trillion dollars, so your nefarious group would need to have $5 Billion of capital just to trade 1% of the company]. If someone did that, the rest of the market would happily buy up AMZN at reduced prices, and the people who shorted it would be left holding the bag. However, when you deal with smaller items, some more likely market manipulation can occur. For example, when trading penny stocks, there are people who attempt to manipulate the stock price and then make a profitable trade afterwards. This takes advantage of the low amount of information available for tiny companies, as well as the limited number of institutional investors who pay attention to them. Effectively it attempts to manipulate people who are not very sophisticated. So, some manipulation can occur in markets with limited information, but for the most part prices are determined by the 'market consensus' on what the future profits of a company will be.  Additional example of what a share really is: Imagine your neighbor has a treasure chest on his driveway: He gathers the neighborhood together, and asks if anyone wants to buy a % of the value he will get from opening the treasure chest. Perhaps it's a glass treasure chest, and you can mostly see inside it. You see that it is mostly gold and silver, and you weigh the chest and can see that it's about 100 lbs all together. So in your head, you take the price of gold and silver, and estimate how much gold is in the chest, and how much silver is there. You estimate that the chest has roughly $1,000,000 of value inside. So, you offer to buy 10% of the chest, for $90k [you don't want to pay exactly 10% of the value of the company, because you aren't completely sure of the value; you are taking on some risk, so you want to be compensated for that risk].  Now assume all your neighbors value the chest themselves, and they come up with the same approximate value as you. So your neighbor hands out little certificates to 10 of you, and they each say \"\"this person has a right to 10% of the value of the treasure chest\"\". He then calls for a vote from all the new 'shareholders', and asks if you want to get the money back as soon as he sells the chest, or if you want him to buy a ship and try and find more chests. It seems you're all impatient, because you all vote to fully pay out the money as soon as he has it. So your neighbor collects his $900k [$90k for each 10% share, * 10], and heads to the goldsmith to sell the chest. But before he gets there, a news report comes out that the price of gold has gone up. Because you own a share of something based on the price of gold, you know that your 10% treasure chest investment has increased in value. You now believe that your 10% is worth $105k. You put a flyer up around the neighborhood, saying you will sell your share for $105k. Because other flyers are going up to sell for about $103-$106k, it seems your valuation was mostly consistent with the market.  Eventually someone driving by sees your flyer, and offers you $104k for your shares. You agree, because you want the cash now and don't want to wait for the treasure chest to be sold. Now, when the treasure chest gets sold to the goldsmith, assume it sells for $1,060,000 [turns out you underestimated the value of the company]. The person who bought your 10% share will get $106k [he gained $2k]. Your neighbor who found the chest got $900k [because he sold the shares earlier, when the value of the chest was less clear], and you got $104k, which for you was a gain of $14k above what you paid for it. This is basically what happens with shares. Buy owning a portion of the company, you have a right to get a dividend of future earnings. But, it could take a long time for you to get those earnings, and they might not be exactly what you expect. So some people do buy and sell shares to try and earn money, but the reason they are able to do that is because the shares are inherently worth something - they are worth a small % of the company and its earnings.\""], "neg": ["\"The _only_ commercials that work on me are fast food ones.  And usually only when I'm sitting on the couch thinking, \"\"I'm hungry.  I don't want to make something.\"\" and even then, it's a crap-shoot.    The idea fast-food commercial for me would be a side-scrolling list of menu items with names underneath the name of the place to eat.  So I could go \"\"Ooh!  Jack in the Box tacos!\"\" (not that I ever would..)  I don't give two shits about \"\"funny\"\" or \"\"edgy\"\" commercials, etc.\"", "\"An option is an instrument that gives you the \"\"right\"\" (but not the obligation) to do something (if you are long). An American option gives you more \"\"rights\"\" (to exercise on more days) than a European option. The more \"\"rights,\"\" the greater the (theoretical) value of the option, all other things being equal, of course. That's just how options work.  You could point to an ex post result, and and say that's not the case. But it is true ex ante.\"", "I think it will be good for certain infrastructure sects to be privatized. Since when has the government ever completed anything on budget or on time? Let someone else put their dollar at risk, not ours. Just one less thing the government has control of. I'm open to some change. We'll see what happens.", "&gt; Prices can still be low and people can still make tons of money, just slightly less money for those at the top and slightly more for those at the bottom rungs.  You cannot simply *pay* people a wage different to market wage. Why would the executives take accept a salary at 80% of the market wage when they could just get a job at 100% of the market wage?  And at the other end, if you simply started paying the workers 20% more, suddenly all of the workers at that new price point want to get a job at Wal-Mart. They swiftly will replace all the current employees, who cannot perform at that level. If they *could*, why would they have been working at Wal-Mart?  You are railing against reality. Yes, it sucks that some people are only capable of labour at low productivity levels. Totally agree. Simply trying to *pretend* that they are *more* productive is just ridiculous, though.", "\"Mortgage agreements usually have a clause in which the mortgagor warrants that all the statements and information which they have provided to the mortgagee are correct. In your case, this probably included your credit score. Since your \"\"statement\"\" concerning your credit score is no longer accurate, they want you to update the agreement with the new information before the final version is prepared. Credit scores change for many random reasons. The agencies re-calibrate formulas constantly. It is unlikely that your mortgage negotiations affected your credit score. The bank will only start reporting the facts of mortgage to a credit agency when you start paying (or not paying) the loan. Credit agencies don't care whether you have a loan or not. They only care whether you have paid your debts, or not paid them.\"", "It's just human nature. At least in cases where all options are equal people will probably choose the mine with less deaths. Also if there is some mine with 100x as many deaths as average it will raise awareness in the circles of power.", "I am actually partial to the idea of negative taxation systems, here in Australia we have the 'work for the dole' program which is essentially what the author describes, but it is inefficient and demeaning. It would be far more efficient to dramatically reduce the minimum wage and introduce a negative tax rate, or rather bracket the tax rate such that it enters negative territory at some point. This way employers can afford to employ more staff and people would still be compensated through the tax system and end up reasonably well off. So long as the compensation is fair I don't see how this is not preferable to a tax-and-transfer system where the government taxes with one hand and gives with the other?"]}
+{"query": "Ethics and investment", "corpus": ["\"Are there businesses which professionally invest ethically? Yes.  The common term for this is \"\"socially responsible investing\"\".  Looking at that page and googling that term should provide you with plenty of pointers to funds to investigate. Of course, the definitions of \"\"ethical\"\" and \"\"socially responsible\"\" vary from person to person and fund to fund.  You'll have to take a look at each fund to see which ones match your principles.\""], "neg": ["When I was in grad school (at an engineering school) my apartment-mates and I came up with this formula: Worked marvelously.", "\"&gt;If there aren't enough seats in the classrooms, some people will be left without the college education they want, no matter how the financing is provided.  I'll grant you this, but we can always produce more classrooms.  Let's use your loan example. If I take out a college loan it represents the value of some other asset, and the lender's belief that I will later be able to compensate the lender for giving up that asset.  Just as we could price the value of the hunter's demise, we can price the value of a student's failure or success. If the student has delivered in the past (good grades, high productivity), then we can reliably price the cost of her college education.   In a very real way, she has \"\"created\"\" her own seat in the classroom right now by promising to pay for it in the future. And we can rely on this promise on the basis of her past performance. I won't get into whether this is reliable or even desirable.  Just as we priced the value of the hunter's non-performance/demise, we can price the student's non-performance/default. We can build this into the cost of the loan, or spread the cost out among all the other loans we give.\"", "This depends on a lot actually - with the overall being your goals and how much you like risk.   Question: What are your fees/commissions for selling? $8.95/trade will wipe out some gains on those trades. (.69% if all are sold with $8.95 commission - not including the commission payed when purchased that should be factored into the cost basis) Also, I would recommend doing commission free ETFs.  You can get the same affect as a mutual fund without the fees associated with paying someone to invest in ETFs and stocks. On another note: Your portfolio looks rather risky.  Although everyone has their own risk preference so this might be yours but if you are thinking about a mutual fund instead of individual stocks you probably are risk averse. I would suggest consulting with an adviser on how to set up for the future.  Financial advice is free flowing from your local barber, dentist, and of course StackExchange but I would look towards a professional. Disclaimer: These are my thoughts and opinions only ;) Feel free to add comments below.", "Have her pay something like a friendly monthly rent. This should be less than half of the monthly mortgage cost, since you are assuming the risk (and benefits) of a mortgage and closer to the rent of similar places near you. For when you get married and she is to have half the apartment, have a pre-agreed way to calculate a lump-sum that she needs to provide to match your own contributions up to that time, as if you two had equal contributions from the beginning. The financially precise way to do it would be to have her pay more than the mere sum of the amount (since she will be providing the amount at a later time than you), but I would be generous and skip this in your place if the difference is not too big. If you break up, she will have payed what would be a fair amount of rent, as if you two were renting, so, in this sense, it is fair that she would not have a claim on the apartment. In case that you two would like that she keeps the apartment, you can just sell it to her, having her pay this same amount as above and assume responsibility for the rest of the mortgage.", "Dollar is the lingua franca of the financial industry and unluckily it is the US currency. It is till today considered the most safest investment bet, that is why you have China possesing $3 trillion of US debt, as an investment albiet a very safe one. Financial investors get in queue to by US bonds the moment they are put up for sale. Because of the AAA rating the investors consider it to be safe at a specific rate. Now when you lower the credit rating you are indirectly asking the US government that you want a higher return(yield) on your investments. When you ask for higher yields, it translates into higher interest rates (money US would get for bonds issued decreases and so more bonds are issued). So you basically start looking at a slowdown in consumer spendings households and businesses. With already defaults, repossesions and lesser spending, the slowdown would increase manifold.", "Yes and no.  Courts do understand the idea of tyranny of the majority.  Specifically, actions that hurt the company for personal gain is still theft against the minority shareholders.  It's common misconception that this fiduciary duty means that a CEO's job is to raise the price of their stock.  The truth is, stock price is a number that has an extremely tenuous relation to actual company health.  So, it's entirely possible for a shareholder lawsuit to happen.  It's just typically cheaper and less hassle to sell the stocks for a loss and get out while they can.", "\"*Moving your text out of order for (I hope) clarity*  &gt; Because... (it) is a violation of the social contract. I'm quite sure I explained this already multiple times.  You've not explained, you just keep repeating your assertion.  You say \"\"The social contract is X\"\" and I ask, \"\"Why must it be X\"\" and you respond, \"\"Because the social contract is X.\"\"  Let me try a different approach.  &gt; Because the only modern justification for the existence of a nation is the social contract.  I disagree.  I think a nation can exist for whatever reason it's populace decides and today, more often than not, it includes providing for the welfare of it's citizens.  What do you think prevents a social contract from being so?  &gt; Exactly. That's why we have the social contract...  Great! It sounds like you now agree that a modern government is required for capitalism to exist.  &gt; Please elaborate as to why that is a problem in the first place.  Because it makes for an unstable system which will hurt the welfare of the people which is opposed to my definition of the social contract.\""]}
+{"query": "Is there a free, online stock screener for UK stocks?", "corpus": ["Yes, http://shares.telegraph.co.uk/stockscreener/ has what you're looking for."], "neg": ["\"&gt;\"\" I think we can all agree people are not a commodity that is valued in dollars.\"\"  I don't agree with that statment. Ever read an economics textbook? There are three [factors of production](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Factors_of_production) Land, Labor, and Capital. Labor (ie. people) are a commodity that are valued in dollars. The United States governement [values a human life](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Value_of_life#United_States) at around +/- $10 million dollars. The claims that high minimum wages force people out  of the labor force is supported by many famous economists. Milton Friedman (a noble prize winning economist) stated in regards to the [minimum wage](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=ca8Z__o52sk) that \"\"People whose skills are not sufficient to justify that kind of a wage will be unemployed.\"\"\"", "Great, that means less idiots clogging up the lines.  Why are your panties in a bunch? All american profits still get taxed like normal. Now tell me Lib, why does the US get to double dip on taxes for money created outside of the states?  Edit: That wasn't including the excess tax to repatriate that money.", "A lot of articles about this kind of thing ask you to do the simple math: $5k < $15k.  If you've got a trustworthy mechanic, and you're looking to save money, it's simple, you're looking at $10k in savings, not even counting interest, higher insurance, etc. On the other hand, if you're just lusting after a new car, and don't mind spending the extra money, then why not? As you mentioned, however, if you think you'll get at least the value of your repair back, you might as well get the car repaired for $5k, so you'll be able to get around town.  If you still decide you want a new car, then you'll have a trade-in worth $6500 instead of $1500.", "I agree with what you said regarding not wanting to put the work in to get it.  When I was coming out of school and deciding whether or not to pursue my CPA (I went into industry (Private Accounting), not Public Accounting) my manager told me this.  What would you think of someone who went to law school and didn't take the bar? Seems ridiculous doesn't it?  Well the same, kind of, can be applied to the CPA/CA - if you have a degree in accounting... why not take the CPA exam?", "&gt;Restaurants and hotels are posting new job openings faster than they can fill them. This is a promising sign for the economy. Many jobs in the hospitality industry have low pay but don't require specialized skills. So they often serve as a stopgap for people between jobs. In periods when the broader job market is bleak, jobs in this sector tend to get snapped up quickly.  What utter bullshit. We are progressively turning into a low wage country and NPR wants to trump this as good for the economy.", "\"I bet he didn't even get offered an IPO - he probably thought that if you buy it on the first day that's the \"\"ipo\"\" and you can make money on a bounce.  Honestly, I think this open access to the stock market whereby anyone can be a 'trader' is a terrible thing.\"", "If this is something you plan to continue doing it would make sense to create it as it's own business entity and then to get non-profit status eg: 501c3.   Otherwise I'm pretty sure you have to think of it as YOU receiving the money as a sole proprietor - and file a couple more tax forms at the end of the year. I think it's a Schedule C.  So essentially if you bring in $10,000, then you spend that $10,000 as legit business expenses for your venture your schedule C would show no profit and wouldn't pay taxes on it. BUT, you do have to file that form. Operating this way could have legal implications should something happen and you get sued. Having the proper business entity setup could help in that situation."]}
+{"query": "How is my employer affected if I have expensive claims on my group health insurance?", "corpus": ["Your employers insurance premiums will definitely go up if there are a lot of claims when it is time for them to renew their policy. It is also possible that if this happens the employer will pass along some of the additional cost to employees. The insurance company will not try to have you removed, it doesn't work that way with group policies. They just jack up the price as mentioned previously.  If you take a new job your cancer will affect the future employer in the same way. As to whether you should keep it a secret, I don't think it is something you have to disclose unless it affects your ability to perform your job, even then it may be protected under the Americans with Disabilities Act. It is true that some employers could exhibit some bias because of this, especially a small company that is likely to have a small group that is more likely to see price hikes because of a single employee making expensive claims. Bottom line: I wouldn't lie about it to a future employer, but I wouldn't volunteer that information either unless it is material to your job performance."], "neg": ["\"People like to call it \"\"Chinese State-Sponsored Capitalism,\"\" but it is absolutely not capitalism.  Capitalism doesn't allocate capital to build cities for which there are no residents.  It doesn't pick winners by deciding who is best at bribing government officials.    We may not always like what the invisible hand deals us, but the idea that central planners are better at allocating capital than an ecosystem of individuals acting in their own interests just doesn't make any sense.  The more I learn about the world, the more I realize how little I know.  Expecting humans to be smart enough to understand and manage something as complex as an economy is akin to expecting present-day doctors to design a human body that rivals a natural human body in form and function.  I understand the need to occasionally intervene and mitigate some of the harsher aspects of nature, but when you take the stance that central planning is superior to a free-market system (or as free as possible given our inclinations towards empathy), you are basically saying that humans are capable of beating nature at its own game.  That is an audacious presumption.  I have seen zero evidence of that being the case now or at any point in the past.\"", "\"Funny you mentioned \"\"the protestors are here already,\"\" since they're cause is already a lost one. As you mentioned, everything will be on sale; those that already have excess income will be able to gobble up discounted assets, while those that are already in financial trouble (a la OWS protestors) will be left in the dust asset-wise, and if/when they recover the discount period will long be over.   Hence, the wealth gap will continue to widen, despite the OWS movement's passionate--yet uninformed and fruitless cause.   Also, I liked your ideas on guns. Arms and ammunition are--and especially will be in case of a tumultuous future period--a precious commodity in themselves and prove to be a wise investment, even if they only end up being used as a hobby only.\"", "That changes things. If they are provide the service for free why would anyone pay for the same services from you? What do you provide that they don't? What makes your tutoring better than theirs? Being 'professional' doesn't really help. There needs to be a reason that someone should pay you instead of the free tutoring.", "&gt; It's a huge joke. People are putting their stock in it, but there was a front page story just yesterday about another crypto currency that went from $300 to $0.10 with a single transaction.  Hi, long time crypto nerd here... Just wanted to say that transaction was on one exchange and the price pretty much went back to normal in a few seconds. Due to the lack of experience in trading some people just dump like that on a whim, its not the norm, but it does happen.    In any case, that was some +1,000 units worth which again is super rare. They likely bought a long time ago and forgot them... again, fairly uncommon.", "\"The answer to your question depends on what you mean when you say \"\"growth\"\".  If you mean a literal increase in the aggregate market capitalization of companies, across the entire market, then, no, this sort of growth is not possible without concomitant economic growth.  The reason why is that the market capitalization of each company is proportional to its gross revenue, and the sum of all revenue from selling \"\"final goods\"\" (i.e., things purchased and used by consumers) is, apart from a few technicalities, the definition of GDP.  The exact multiplier might fluctuate up or down depending on investors' expectations about how sales will grow or decline going forward, but in a zero-growth economy this multiplier should be stable over the long run.  It might, however, still fluctuate over the short term, but more about that in a minute.   Note that all of this applies to aggregate growth across all firms.  Individual firms can still grow, of course, but as they must do this by gaining market share from other companies such growth would be balanced by a decline for some other firm.  Also, I've assumed zero net exports (that's one of the \"\"technicalities\"\" I mentioned above) because obviously you could have export-driven growth even if the domestic economy were stationary. However, often when people talk about \"\"growth\"\" in the market, what they really mean is \"\"return\"\".  That is, how much does your investment earn for you.  This isn't really the same thing as growth, but people often think of it that way, particularly in the saving phase of their investing career, when they are reinvesting their returns, and therefore their account balances are growing.  It is possible to have a positive return, averaged across the market, even in a stationary economy.  The reason why is that there are really only two things a firm can do with its net profits.  One possibility is that it could invest it in growing the business.  However, there is not much point in doing that in a stationary economy because by assumption no increase in aggregate consumption (and therefore, in the long run, aggregate production) are possible.  Therefore, firms are left with only the second option, which is to pay them out to investors as dividends.  Those dividends provide a return that is independent of economic growth. Would the stock market still be a good investment in such an economy?  Yes.  Well, sort of.  The rate of return from firms' dividend payouts will depend on investors' demand (in aggregate) for returns on their investments.  Stock prices will rise or fall, causing returns to respectively fall or rise, to find that level.  If your personal desire for returns is lower than the average across the investing public, then the stock market would look like a good investment.  If your desired return is higher than the average, then it will look like a poor investment.  The marginal investor will, of course be indifferent.  The practical upshot of this is that the people who invest in the stock market in this scenario will be precisely the ones for whom the stock market is a good investment, given their personal propensity to save and desire for returns, and so forth. Finally, you mentioned that in your scenario the GDP stagnation is due to declining population.  I am less certain what this means for investment, but my first thought is that you would have a large retired population selling its investments to fund late-life consumption, and you would have a comparatively small (relative to history) working population buying those assets.  This would lead to low asset prices, and therefore high rates of return.  However, that's assuming that retirees need to sell assets to fund their retirement consumption.  If the absolute returns on retirees' assets are large enough to fund their retirement consumption then you would wind up with relatively few sellers, resulting in high prices and therefore relatively low rates of return.  It's not obvious to me which effect would dominate, and so it's hard to say whether or not the resulting returns would look attractive to the working-age population.\"", "\"Take your idiotic treating all crimes as eqivalent and cram it :) You seem to think everyone here must either 100% buy Taibbi style bulshit or they must think crimes are not crime. Your black and white view of the situation where you make strawmen of others nuanced views makes you look like a childish idiot, and I suspect you do not really want to look that way.  It is very important to accurately measure crimes, to avoid wasting scarce resources when fighting crime. Promoting poor reporting as \"\"it's all ok because it was similar to reality\"\" is intellectually dishonest and poor policy.\"", "I did not vote for Trump but I can admit that he is getting the worse coverage. I have watched some of his press conferences and I have been astonished at how the media portrays and takes snippets to create an entirely different story. Yes, it is communication 101 but it is disturbing."]}
+{"query": "Hearing much about Dave Ramsey. Which of his works is best in describing his “philosophy” about money?", "corpus": ["Start with his website, specifically his seven steps. Most everything else is around motivating people to actually do the plan. As he often says personal finance is 80% personal and 20% finance, by which he means that things that make sense financially (paying off high interest debt first) don't necessarily motivate action (so instead pay off the smallest debt first to get motivation). Really the rest is details around those seven concepts. On his site there is a link to a free one-hour podcast for the iPod, and you can pay for the full three hours of his radio show on podcast. He started on radio, and it is probably his best format. The reason Dave Ramsey has limited appeal beyond the US is that he is explicitly evangelical. He views his system as an extension of his Christian beliefs. That sells very well in parts of the US, but doesn't port very well. There is actually nothing religious in his program, other than the occasional reference to biblical verses in an attempt to tie his program into his religion, but people who are really interested and want to teach his program, not just practice it, are going to find they need to be an Evangelical (or at least a Christian) to fit in. Addendum: I should mention that Dave Ramsey is changing the FPU program (and I expect it will trickle into other things) to be more explicitly (although apparently not overtly) religious and have a stronger emphasis on budgeting. See here."], "neg": ["\"Calculating beta is finding the correlation between the dependent variable, MSCI world benchmark, and the independent variable, your companies. If you know how to run liner regression models, run each company as the independent variable with the dependent MSCI. You can use Excel to gather this result (Y = MSCI price change at closing hour while X = company stock price closing prince). Running the regression will give you the Beta (and alpha when doing portfolios); which (from linear algebra) is the \"\"m\"\" in y = mx + b\"", "You do not need to report gifts from US residents (US citizens/green card holders/tax residents due to length of stay) since filing gift tax return is their responsibility. In case of foreigners you need to report gifts in excess of $100K. In any case, transfers between spouses are exempt from gift tax.", "Each country would have to go back to its own currency, or the rich countries would just kick the poor ones out of the EU.  It would be bad for the poor countries, and the global economy would suffer, but it really wouldn't be a big deal.", "I think it's more good marketing/word of mouth and false hype more than anything. Everyone wants In 'n Out burger to be AMAZING HOLY SHIT BEST THING EVER, but really it's just a bit better than average. But fair enough.", "\"&gt;the attorneys behind the case plan to ask for \"\"an award of up to $16,500,000 in attorneys' fees and expenses.  Fucking lawyers.  They get crazy fees and we get worthless coupons.  Lawyers are the only thing *worse* than Ticketmaster.  Oh, and guess where that $16.5M will be coming from?  *Future* ticket prices.  i.e. WE FUCKING LOST, THE LAWYERS FUCKING WON, AND TICKETMASTER CAME OUT EVEN...\"", "A cooperative society means a general public enrolled or considered to be gotten under any law identifying with agreeable orders for the present in power in any State or under the Central demo. Useful societies could be enacted laws by the specific State cooperative Societies Act or by the Multi-State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002. The societies, whose primary destination is to serve the financial investment in a specific State, are enacted laws by the Cooperative Societies Act of that particular State. While a society whose principle targets are to serve the diversions of its members in even more than one State, are legislated by the Multi State Cooperative Societies Act, 2002.  Address : Crystal Consultancy, Office Number- 204, 45B, 1st Floor, Hasanpur Main Road, Patparganj, I.P. Extension, Delhi- 110092 phone no-011-22235922,9711105597", "\"If you're ready to start a 529 account, it makes a big difference which state you choose (some states have excessive fees).  It doesn't have to be your own state, but some states give you tax incentives to stay in-state.  What you need to do is check out Clark Howard's 529 Guide and check to see if your state is in the \"\"good\"\" list.  If not, then pick out a good state.\""]}
+{"query": "How do cashier's checks work and why are they good for scams?", "corpus": ["\"There are two different issues at play here, and they are completely separate from each other: A bank or cashier's check is \"\"safer\"\" than a regular personal or business check because it avoids problem #1. Problem #2 exists with all kinds of paper checks. I assume the reason the warnings are about cashier's check moreso than personal checks, is simply because people already know to wait for personal checks to clear before handing over merchandise to the buyer. People are less likely to do that when receiving cashier's checks, but perhaps they still should if there is any doubt about the validity of the check. One could argue that a cashier's check actually provides a false sense of security due to this (to the receiver). On the flip side, if you are the payer, then a cashier's check could be thought of as more secure than a personal check because you don't have to reveal your bank account information to a stranger.\""], "neg": ["Inflation is a reflection on the expansion of the money supply, aka debt,  being created by a central bank. Fiat currencies usually inflate, because there is no limit to the amount of debt that can be created. The consequences of reckless money supply expansion can be seen throughout history, see Zimbabwe, though there have been many others...Brazil, Argentinia, etc...", "This line of thinking assumes that eventually we reach a state where not one single person wants more or better stuff then they already have access to.  Even in the most advanced imaginable future, where machines make everything and robots provide every service, and all the machines and robots are made and maintained by other machines and robots, people will still have jobs. Even if there were infinite numbers of free robots, so that no task could ever be done cheaper by a human than it would cost to buy a robot, everyone's people's job will be to sit around and invent more and better stuff for robots to build.", "Assuming you max-out your Roth IRA with $5000 in inflation-adjusted contributions every year from 25-65, your balance at age 65 will depend on the post-inflation return you get in the account.  Assuming you withdraw 4% per year after that, here is what your income will be: (All numbers are in inflation-adjusted 2011 dollars.)   If your post-inflation return is zero - if you buy treasury bonds, money-market accounts, or something like that - you'll have a simple $5000 * 40 = $200,000, which will give you an income of around $8000 per year. If you get a 3% post-inflation return - e.g. fairly safe Muni bonds, corporate bonds, and boring stocks - you'll approximately double your money to around $393,000, giving you an income of over $15,000 per year. If you get a 6% return - e.g. more aggressive stocks and more risk-taking - you'll approximately double your money again to over $825,000.  A 4% withdrawal rate will give you an income of around $33,000 per year. Stocks have historically returned around inflation + 8% - that will get you over $1.4 million - and an annual income of over $56,000 per year. So, yes, it is feasible to retire on nothing but a maxed-out Roth IRA.", "I did a brief analysis during my undergrad on the sustainability of Subprime Auto-Loans ...there was definitely a lot more information that I could have included in my research. IMO it'd be a decent topic that would be perfect for a quantitative argument.", "But.. what I really want to know.... is it illegal, particularly the   clause REQUIRING a trade in to qualify for the advertised price? The price is always net of all the parts of the deal. As an example they gave the price if you have $4000 trade in. If you have no trade in, or a trade in worth less than 4K, your final price for the new car will be more. Of course how do you know that the trade in value they are giving you is fair. It could be worth 6K but they are only giving you a credit of 4K. If you are going to trade in a vehicle while buying another vehicle the trade in should be a separate transaction. I always get a price quote for selling the old car before visiting the new car dealer. I do that to have a price point that I can judge while the pressure is on at the dealership.. Buying a car is a complex deal. The price, interest rate, length of loan, and the value of the trade in are all moving parts. It is even more complex if a lease is involved. They want to adjust the parts to be the highest profit that you are willing to agree to, while you think that you are getting a good deal. This is the fine print: All advertised amounts include all Hyundai incentives/rebates, dealer   discounts and $2500 additional down from your trade in value. +0% APR   for 72 months on select models subject to credit approval through HMF.   *No payments or 90 days subject to credit approval. Value will be added to end of loan balance. 15MY Sonata - Price excludes tax, title,   license, doc, and dealer fees. MSRP $22085- $2036 Dealer Discount -   $500 HMA Lease Cash - $500 HMA Value Owner Coupon - $1000 HMA Retail   Bonus Cash - $500 HMA Military Rebate - $500 HMA Competitive Owner   Coupon - $400 HMA College Grad Rebate - $500 HMA Boost Program - $4000   Trade Allowance = Net Price $12149. On approved credit. Certain   qualifications apply to each rebate. See dealer for details. Payment   is 36 month lease with $0 due at signing. No security deposit   required. All payment and prices include HMA College Grad Rebate, HMA   Military Rebate, HMA Competitive Owner Coupon and HMA Valued Owner   Coupon. Must be active military or spouse of same to qualify for HMA   Military Rebate. Must graduate college in the next 6 months or within   the last 2 years to qualify for HMA College Grad rebate. Must own   currently registered Hyundai to qualify for HMA Valued Owner Coupon.   Must own qualifying competitive vehicle to qualify for HMA Competitive   Owner Coupon.", "To me the key is a budget.  Each month, before it begins, decide on what to spend on each dollar that you earn.  Money should be allotted for normal expenses such as housing, food, transportation, and utilities. If you have any consumer debt that should be a priority.  Extra money should go to eliminate that debt. There should be money allotted to savings goals (such as retirement, home down payment, or vacation home).  Also there should be money set aside for clothing and giving.  Giving is an important part and often overlooked part of wealth creation.   Somewhere in there you should also give yourself a bit of free money.  For example one of the things I spend my free money on is coffee.  I buy freshly ground coffee from a really good supplier.  It is a bit expensive, but that is okay as it does not preclude me from meeting other goals. If you still have money left after all of that increase your giving some, your savings some, and your free money some.  You can then spend that money without guilt. If your budget includes $100 of free money per month, and you want something that costs $1000, save up the $1,000 and then buy it.  Do not borrow to buy free money stuff!   Doing those sorts of things will make you weigh purchasing decisions very carefully. If you find that you cannot stick to a budget, you should enlist a friend to be your accountability partner.  They have to be very good with money.", "A bid is an offer to buy something on an order book, so for example you may post an offer to buy one share, at $5. An ask is an offer to sell something on an order book, at a set price. For example you may post an offer to sell shares at $6. A trade happens when there are bids/asks that overlap each other, or are at the same price, so there is always a spread of at least one of the smallest currency unit the exchange allows. Betting that the price of an asset will go down, traditionally by borrowing some of that asset and then selling it, hoping to buy it back at a lower price and pocket the difference (minus interest). So, let's say as per your example you borrow 100 shares of company 'X', expecting the price of them to go down. You take your shares to the market and sell them - you make a market sell order (a market 'ask'). This matches against a bid and you receive a price of $5 per share. Now, let's pretend that you change your mind and you think the price is going to go up, you instantly regret your decision. In order to pay back the shares, you now need to buy back your shares as $6 - which is the price off the ask offers on the order book. Because of this spread, you have lost money. You sold at a low price and bought at a high price, meaning it costs you more money to repay your borrowed shares. So, when you are shorting you need the spread to be as tight as possible."]}
+{"query": "Do governments support their own bonds when their value goes down?", "corpus": ["Companies do not support their stock. Once the security is out on the wild (market), its price fluctuates according to what investors think they are worth. Support is a whole different concept, financially speaking: Support or support level refers to the price level below which, historically, a stock has had difficulty falling. It is the level at which buyers tend to enter the stock. So it is the lowest assumed price for that stock. Once it reaches its price, buyers will rush to the stock, raising its price. The company wants to keep the stock price at acceptable levels, as it can be seen as the general view of the company's health. Also several employees/executives in the company have stock or stock options, so it is in their interest to keep their stock price up. A bond that goes down in value may indicate a believe the bond issuer (government in this case) won't honor the bond when it matures. As for bonds, there is a wealth of reading in this site: Can someone explain how government bonds work? Who sets the prices on government bonds?  Basic understanding of bonds, values, rates and yields"], "neg": ["yeah... no track record.  Here's what I'm predicting:  PayPal-like policies designed to keep money in limbo (aka a float operation).  Personally, I'm surprised that Visa, Mastercard, et. al. haven't applied Dodd-frank transaction fee limits to prevent square from inserting itself between the consumer and creditor.", "I am newly applying to finance related jobs, my question is, could someone ELI5 what exactly different sectors within finance are? Like capital markets, derivatives, equity research, wealth management. All of this seems overwhelming coming at it at once.", "Russia has become more risky as an investment, thus investors, basically the market, wants to be paid more for investing in or owning those bonds. As yields go up, prices go down. So right now you can buy a low priced Russian bond with a high yield because the market views the risk involved as higher than risks involved in other similar securities.", "I'm old. When I was young, the schools were preparing us all for the Metric System. But the change never happened, due, I believe, to simple arrogance. Let the world cope with out 45/17th nuts and bolts.   Now of course, we're not so powerful and I do assume that American Toyota factories use metric parts.  I write this from a metric coffee house in Amsterdam. I am coping quite well with their products offered metrically.  Have a good day!", "\"Hurd did almost as much in his short time there to gut R&amp;D, engineering, and every other \"\"cost centre\"\" within HP as he could, leading to a dearth of product and technology in the pipeline.  Tough to innovate with nothing but sales and marketing.\"", "Definitely don't grocery shop when you're hungry.  Also, watch for sales, and then buy in bulk and freeze it.", "You may want to keep some of your change - especially your nickels.  I know George would be disappointed if I didn't point this out. :)"]}
+{"query": "2 401k's and a SEP-IRA", "corpus": ["question #2 - yes, 25% of your 1099 income. Good idea. It adds up quickly and is a good way to reduce taxable income."], "neg": ["Al igual que la fidelidad del cliente, la “lealtad” a una marca está cuestionada.  Cómo valora el público tus marcas está cambiando, garantía de desempeño y diferenciación se están volviendo más relevantes. Las variaciones en los hábitos de consumo y en las relaciones empresa-cliente afectan estas valuaciones.  El principal activo de tu marca es la garantía que le provee al consumidor sobre la satisfacción de sus expectativas. Proporciona seguridad en el proceso de decisión de compra, lo hace más fácil.  Antes la gente adquiría una marca “conocida” pues brindaba confianza en su desempeño y el costo de conseguir referencias sobre productos sustitutos era alto. Hoy la información satura la Internet y los medios de comunicación, las opiniones positivas y negativas se diseminan rápidamente en la web. La publicidad pierde credibilidad y solo satisfacer al cliente mejor que la competencia cada día te permitirá mantener el valor de tu marca.", "\"As a Canadian resident, the simple answer to your question is \"\"yes\"\" Having worked as a tax auditor and as a Certified Financial Planner, you are required to file an income tax return because you have taxable employment income. All the employer is doing is deducting it at source and remitting it on your behalf. That does not alleviate your need to file. In fact, if you don't file you will be subject to a no filing penalty. The one aspect you are missing is that taxpayers may be entitled to tax credits that may result in a refund to you depending on your personal situation (e.g spousal or minor dependents). I hope this helps.\"", "It could be a couple of things besides extra principal: I seem to remember hearing that some (shady?) lenders would just pocket extra payments if you didn't specify where they were headed, but I've also been told that this just isn't true.", "Thanks!   &gt; How do you believe it should be approached?   Businesses should be more cognizant of the fact that they have enormous amounts of technical debt, or what will be considered to be debt, that will suddenly need to be solved.  Infrastructure or applications that haven't seen a dime in 5+ years. Shadow IT that was stood up (e.g. hey we use this access database that everyone completely forgot about to meet this one specific need) and has somehow managed to survive. That's one of the most frequent issues that will grind consolidations to a halt. The business need to involve IT as early as possible in the M&amp;A process.  Cross-platform can usually be solved by some form of extraction, translaton, load processes. That's straightforward but it does take time.  If you're a company that cares enough to have a disaster recovery team you should also have an IT M&amp;A team that meets regularly to have a dry-run of an M&amp;A that covers the processes from end to end for 2-3 worst-case-scenarios. New scenarios should be identified. If you do enough M&amp;As you'll have compiled a fairly decent playbook of scenarios after the third or fourth. You'll have a well oiled machine that your investors can and should be proud of.   For perspective the best M&amp;A team I've seen was Microsoft's and even then shit regularly hits the fan for those guys when it comes to technical debt. That's something to keep in mind.", "\"Look, as my final comment.  You're overthinking this.  Companies routinely have waaaay more cash on their books than they \"\"need\"\" because they keep a rainy day fund.  Yes, there are extreme examples like Apple that has about 60 billion more than they need but practically all companies are going to maintain excess cash for emergencies, acquisitions, etc.  As I said in another comment, the common theme between a DCF and an EV multiple is that they are both capital structure independent.    Even here there are going to be differences, companies with a really shitty capital structure (read: too much debt) will trade publicly at a lower enterprise value multiple because of the risk that they go bankrupt.  In an acquisition, this (probably) would not be the case.  In the case of a DCF, you would probably raise your discount rate to account for the risk of bankruptcy.\"", "When a company IPOs the underwriters sell a given percentage on IPO day and shortly thereafter. Whatever is sold on IPO day trades freely.   Insiders, employees and investors who bought before the IPO only sell a percentage of their shares on IPO day. They all also agree to 'lock up' the remainder for a period of time, so that not everyone is rushing to the exits right away. Well, if you're an employee you don't per-se agree, it's just how your stock options are setup and you don't really have a say in the matter.", "For ankle and foot problems, you need to go to Preferred Foot and Ankle Specialist Gilbert AZ. Recommending Dr. Mikkel Jarman, DPM, Gilbert Podiatrist. Phone 480 497-3946 or PreferredFootAnkle.com. He is one of the very best Foot Doctor Gilbert AZ and offers effective pain alleviation."]}
+{"query": "For a car, what scams can be plotted with 0% financing vs rebate?", "corpus": ["The car deal makes money 3 ways. If you pay in one lump payment. If the payment is greater than what they paid for the car, plus their expenses, they make a profit. They loan you the money. You make payments over months or years, if the total amount you pay is greater than what they paid for the car, plus their expenses, plus their finance expenses they make money. Of course the money takes years to come in, or they sell your loan to another business to get the money faster but in a smaller amount. You trade in a car and they sell it at a profit. Of course that new transaction could be a lump sum or a loan on the used car... They or course make money if you bring the car back for maintenance, or you buy lots of expensive dealer options. Some dealers wave two deals in front of you: get a 0% interest loan. These tend to be shorter 12 months vs 36,48,60 or even 72 months. The shorter length makes it harder for many to afford. If you can't swing the 12 large payments they offer you at x% loan for y years that keeps the payments in your budget. pay cash and get a rebate. If you take the rebate you can't get the 0% loan. If you take the 0% loan you can't get the rebate. The price you negotiate minus the rebate is enough to make a profit. The key is not letting them know which offer you are interested in. Don't even mention a trade in until the price of the new car has been finalized. Otherwise they will adjust the price, rebate, interest rate, length of loan,  and trade-in value to maximize their profit. The suggestion of running the numbers through a spreadsheet is a good one. If you get a loan for 2% from your bank/credit union for 3 years and the rebate from the dealer, it will cost less in total than the 0% loan from the dealer. The key is to get the loan approved by the bank/credit union before meeting with the dealer. The money from the bank looks like cash to the dealer."], "neg": ["When you send money with Western Union, it is essentially a cash transaction.  You supply Western Union with the name of the recipient and a location.  Your recipient then shows up at a Western Union office, shows some identification, and receives cash.  At this point, the transaction is over.  It is impossible to retract it at this point, because Western Union has already handed out cash, and they have no way of contacting the recipient any longer. This is the reason why you might want to legitimately use Western Union.  It is an instant way to send cash to anyone anywhere in the world.  Let's say that your best friend is stuck in a foreign land and desperately needs money.  You can give him cash just as fast as each of you can get to a Western Union office, and you don't even need a local bank account to do so. Unfortunately, however, the nature of the service also makes it useful for scammers.  You should never use this service to pay for something from someone you don't know, because there are absolutely no safeguards. As mentioned by user662852 in the comments, you can indeed cancel a Western Union money transfer if you do so before the money is picked up by the recipient.  But after they pick it up, the cash is gone.", "I would advise against this. My main reason for saying so is that you are in a time of major transition, and transition equals uncertainty. What if the new job turns out to be a bad one, and at the same time the house is more difficult to rent out than you expect? That seems like a situation that would be worse than the sum of its parts. Some other things to consider: first, if you want to buy a house where your new job is located, you will not be able to borrow as much for that house.  This is especially important if you are moving to a city with a very high Cost of Living. Second, your margin on the rental doesn't sound like it would leave much room for profit. A $100 difference between your mortgage and your rent amount will be eaten up very quickly through property management fees and maintenance.  If the value of the house does not rise like you expect, that could mean you put in a lot of effort for very little or no gain. Finally, this will require a good deal of time management. Between relocating, closing on this house, and beginning a new job, it sounds like you'll have a lot going on. This may not concern you much, but it's still worth considering.", "that's really nice, we already know whose side you are on. do you honestly think you are going to change my opinion of this situation or somehow prove me wrong in a way in which I wont just jerk off and ignore it anyway?   Or are you the one masturbating over their supposed intelligence now?", "I have not opened any NRE/NRO account before coming to Finland.  This is in violation of Foreign Exchange Management Act. Please get this regularized ASAP. All your savings account need to be converted to NRO. Shall I transfer funds from abroad to both NRE and NRO account or I can transfer only to NRE account in India? You can transfer to NRE or NRO. It is advisable to transfer into NRE as funds from here can be repatriated out of India without any paperwork. Funds from NRO account need paperwork to move out of India. I am a regular tax payer in abroad. The Funds which i'll transfer in future will attract any additional tax in India? As your status is Non Resident and the income is during that period, there is no tax applicable in India on this. Few Mutual Fund SIPs (monthly basis) are linked with my existing saving account in india. Do these SIPs will stop when the savings account will turn into NRO account? Shall I need to submit any documents for KYC compliance? If yes, to whom I should submit these? is there any possibility to submit it Online? Check your Bank / Mutual Fund company. Couple of FDs are also opened online and linked with this existing saving account. Do the maturity amount(s) subject to TDS or any tax implication such as 30.9% as this account will be turned into NRO account till that time and NRO account attracts this higher tax percentage. These are subject to taxes in India. This will be as per standard tax brackets. Which account (NRE/NRO) is better for paying EMIs for Home Loan, SIPs of Mutual Funds, utility bills in India, transfer money to relative's account etc Home Loan would be better from NRE account as if you sell the house, the EMI paid can be credited into NRE account and you can transfer this out of India without much paperwork. Same for SIP's. For other it doesn't really matter as it is an expense. Is there any charge to transfer fund from NRE to NRO account if both account maintain in same Bank same branch. Generally No. Check with your bank. Which Bank account's (NRE/NRO) debit/ATM card should be used in Abroad in case of emergency. Check with your bank. NRE funds are more easy. NRO there will be limits and reporting. Do my other savings accounts, maintained in different Banks, also need to be converted into NRO account? If yes, how can it be done from Abroad? Yes. ASAP. Quite a few leading banks allow you to do this if you are not present. Check you bank for guidance.", "\"Social security and pensions make up a big part of it.  You may want to look at the source of the data.  If a person, has 5K at Vanguard, 5K at Fidelity and 100K at the bank; Fidelity will report on that person as having only 5K.  Vanguard will do the same. The opening pitch of a life insurance salesman sometimes includes the \"\"100 man story\"\".  Before retirement age:  26% of people will die, 54% will be broke, 5% will work, 4% will be secure, and 1% will be wealthy.  Then they sell you life insurance which is a horrible product for retirement savings. If you further dig into this subject you will find a great disparity between the mean and median retirement savings.  That is because many Americans have none, and those that do skew the average upward and have no where near mean or average. Its like this with other things in personal finance.  For example those with actual credit card debt have much higher than the average.  As those with none, or even no credit cards skew the average downward.  In my opinion it is like this because of behavior.  If one saved half of the average car payment over their working life in a growth stock mutual fund, they would make it to that 4% category.  If they also had a good salary, kept debt to a minimum, and saved a healthy amount they would make it to that 1% category.  It was a daily choice that was made many years prior to retirement.\"", "Properties do in fact devaluate every year for several reasons. One of the reasons is that an old property is not the state of the art and cannot therefore compete with the newest properties, e.g. energy efficiency may be outdated. Second reason is that the property becomes older and thus it is more likely that it requires expensive repairs. I have read somewhere that the real value depreciation of properties if left practically unmaintained (i.e. only the repairs that have to absolutely be performed are made) is about 2% per year, but do not remember the source right now. However, Properties (or more accurately, the tenants) do pay you rent, and it is possible in some cases that rent more than pays for the possible depreciation in value. For example, you could ask whether car leasing is a poor business because cars depreciate in value. Obviously it is not, as the leasing payments more than make for the value depreciation. However, I would not recommend properties as an investment if you have only small sums of money. The reasons are manyfold: So, as a summary: for large investors property investments may be a good idea because large investors have the ability to diversify. However, large investors often use debt leverage so it is a very good question why they don't simply invest in stocks with no debt leverage. For small investors, property investments do not often make sense. If you nevertheless do property investments, remember the diversification, also in time. So, purchase different kinds of properties and purchase them in different times. Putting a million USD to properties at one point of time is very risky, because property prices can rise or fall as time goes on.", "How complicated is your budget? We have a fairly in depth excel spreadsheet that does the trick for us. Lots of formulas and whatnot for calculating income, outgo, expected and actual expenses, expenses budgeted over time (i.e. planned expenses that are semi-annual or annual) as well as the necessary emergency funds based on expenses.  Took me a few hours to initially create and many tweaks over months to get just right but it's reliable and we know we'll never lose support for it. I'd be willing to share it if desired, I'll just have to remove our personal finance figures from it first."]}
+{"query": "Selling an app, sharing income, how does it work tax-wise?", "corpus": ["There are a few different ways to organize this, but mostly I think you need to talk to a lawyer.  The 50/50 split thing should be in writing along with a bunch of other issues. You could have one of you doing a sole proprietorship where the other person is a contractor that receives half of all revenues/profits.  The person that owns the sole proprietorship may be entitled to deduct certain costs of running the entity.  The other person would then be 1099'd his share of revenues. You could set up a partnership, again legal paperwork is necessary. You could also setup an S-Corp, where each of you is a 50% owner. You could also setup an LLC that is organized as any of the above.  I would only do this if you can self fund some additional tax preparation costs.  Figure about $600/year at a minimum.   There are a lot of options with a sole proprietorship being the easiest.  Your first step on the new venture would be to apply for an EIN (free), and then opening a business bank account. Good luck."], "neg": ["It is a dangerous policy not to have a balance across the terms of assets. Short term reserves should remain in short term investments because they are most likely needed in the short term.  The amount can be shaved according to the probability of their respective needs, but long term asset variance usually exceed the probability of needing to use reserves. For example, replacing one month bonds paying essentially nothing with stocks that should be expected to return 9% will expose oneself to a possible sudden 50% loss.  If cash is indeed so abundant that reserves can be doubled, this policy can be expected to be stable; however, cash is normally scarce.  It is a risky policy to place reserves that have a 20% chance of being 100% liquidated into investments that have a 20% chance of declining by approximately 50% just for a chance of an extra 9% annual return. Financial stability should always be of primary concern with rate of return secondary only after stability has been reasonably assured.", "I asked how often grocery purchases are made in a comment, but I'm going to assume weekly for simplicity. If a roommate is present during the week following a grocery purchase, then they owe a share according to their preferences as you outlined them above. You will have to track the grocery cost by category for that week and calculate the balance owed by the person for that week. If there is a partial week where most expect to leave for a holiday or otherwise, then fewer groceries should be purchased for that week, and the cost of shares will decrease accordingly. One need only indicate preferences once, and weekly attendance thereafter. The only issue remaining is to determine how to record shares. If a normal person consumes 3 shares of milk, and .5 shares of butter, and so on, you simply add up all of the milk shares for the week and divide the milk bill by those shares. Same with the butter. The downside of this method is that you have to predict consumption in advance, so you may instead calculate by consumption after the fact with a deposit paid by all to create the initial grocery supply which will be refunded when that person leaves the grocery purchase co-op, and shares are calculated by who participated in the week prior to the grocery purchase. This also allows for a mid-week refresh if any commodity incurs higher than expected consumption, with the mid-week bill being added to the end of week refresh trip.", "Ok, so here's the strategy I decided to go with in the meantime: Allocate E1 to A_corp and E3 to A_ira. Here are my considerations which I assume at this stage to be right:", "If it's real, it's illegal. She needs someone to be a middle man who transfers money and doesn't ask questions. The list of possible reasons should be plenty obvious and range anywhere from fraud to terrorism.  There are thousands of ways to get already transferred money back from your account. If the source of the money is some kind of fraud that's only detected 2 years later, someone will ask you for the money back in 2 years. If real people who operate within legal and moral boundaries want to pay someone, they do not ask someone on Facebook to do it for them.", "I have found that using the online version can help determine the correct product.  Try Deluxe online, you can upload the data from last year. When you get to the key forms see what happens if you don't switch.  Then switch to Premiere. Compare the results.", "Its participating preferred with a 1x liquidation preference. Very unfriendly for the company owner. Most startups these days are seeded with convertible notes because there's less thinking about the valuation of the company; that question is booted to the series A. its also easier to draw up the legal docs; pretty much a standard loan agreement. Finally, it can be far friendlier for the owner depending on if the note is an uncapped note. This is expensive financing and your friend can definitely find cheaper money if he looks for it.", "\"Also here's a source for the $3.7 trillion number.      http://www.bloomberg.com/news/2011-12-08/u-s-municipal-bond-market-28-larger-than-estimated-federal-reserve-says.html    It's not 'incorrect data'.        EDIT:  Furthermore, in order to know the \"\"extent\"\" of the crime (your own admission) we NEED to know the size of the entire market otherwise you can't have any perspective or determine extent.  So there's no reason it shouldn't be mentioned in the article.\""]}
+{"query": "how does one see the CBOE VIX index on Google Finance?", "corpus": ["For whatever reason, I don't believe they offer it.  Yahoo does.  A google for google finance VIX turns up people asking the question, but no quote on google."], "neg": ["Odd, I've been Platinum Exec for a year and regular Platinum for 2 and I have not had any of these delays everyone is talking about. I usually fly Denver to DFW to where ever (south america or europe). I fly at least 8 legs per month if not more.  Maybe I'm just lucky and I jinxed myself.", "The trouble is not enough Americans today are willing to do hard physical work for low pay. At the same time, Americans aren't willing to pay more for things like landscaping and fruits and veggies. I would be delighted if we fixed our broken legal immigration system, but since we can't seem to do that, we get illegal immigrants, and every day both you and I use products they produced.", "\"You can infer some of the answers to your questions from the BATS exchange's market data page and its associated help page.  (I'm pretty sure a page like this exists on each stock exchange's website; BATS just happens to be the one I'm used to looking at.) The Matched Volume section refers to all trades on a given date that took place on \"\"lit\"\" exchanges; that is, where a public protected US stock exchange's matching engine helped a buyer and a seller find each other.  Because there are exactly 11 such exchanges in existence, it's easy to show 100% of the matched volume broken down into 11 rows. The FINRA & TRF Volume section refers to all trades on a given date that took place on \"\"non-lit\"\" exchanges.  These types of trades include dark pool volume and any other trade that is not required to take place in public but is required to be reported (the R in TRF) to FINRA.  There are three venues via which these trades may be reported to FINRA -- NASDAQ's, NYSE's, and FINRA's own ADF.  They're all operated under the purview of FINRA, so the fact that they're \"\"located at\"\" NASDAQ or NYSE is a red herring.  (For example, from the volume data it's clear that the NASDAQ facility does not only handle NASDAQ-listed (Tape C) securities, nor does the NYSE facility only handle NYSE-listed (Tape A) securities or anything like that.) The number of institutions reporting to each of the TRFs is large -- many more than the 11 public exchanges -- so the TRF data is not broken down further.  (Also I think the whole point of the TRFs is to report in secret.)  I don't know enough details to say why the NASDTRF has always handled more reporting volume than the other two facilities.  Of course, since we can't see inside the TRF reporting anyway, it's sort of a moot point.\"", "I assume that there is proper documentation. Loan can only be credited to your NRO account. See RBI regulation Persons Resident in India borrowing in INR from NRIs/PIOs 2.1 Available routes for borrowing: Persons resident in Indian may borrow in INR from NRIs/PIOs under the following two routes: 2.1.1 Borrowing in INR by persons other than companies in India: A person resident in India, not being a company incorporated in India,   may borrow in INR from NRIs/PIOs after satisfying the following terms   and conditions: Borrowing shall be only on a non-   repatriation basis; The amount of loan should be received either by inward remittance from   outside India or by debit to NRE/NRO/FCNR(B)/NRNR/NRSR account of the   lender, maintained with an authorised dealer or an authorised bank in   India; Period of loan shall not exceed 3 years; Rate of interest on the loan shall not be more than two per cent above   Bank Rate prevailing on the date of availment of loan; Payment of interest and repayment of principal shall be made only to   the NRO account of the lender.", "I live in Upstate NY. It's a great, reasonable cost place to live -- provided that you have a job.  In NYC, there are probably a few hundred jobs with duties similar to mine in a 45-minute radius. Upstate, there may be 5-6.", "You can never depend ONLY on pension. You must get financial education and invest your money. I recommend you to read The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham...it's the bible of Warren Buffet. Besides, you don't need to be a Billionaire for retiring and be happy. I recommend you to get education in ETFs. I quote The Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham p. 131. According to Ibboston Associates, the leading financial research firm, if you had invested $12,000 in the Standard & Poor's 500-stock index at the beginning of september 1929, 10 years later you would have had only $7,223 left. But if you had started with a paltry $100 and simply invested another $100 every single month, then by August 1939, your money would have grown to $15,571! That's the power of disciplined buying-even in the face of the Great Depression and the worst bear market of all time. You are still young to make even bolder investments. But seriously you can never depend ONLY on pension. You won't regret learning how to invest your money, it doesn't matter if it's in the stock market, real state market, whatever market... Knowing what to do with your money is priceless. I hope this helps. Happy profits!", "SECTION | CONTENT :--|:-- Title | Introducing Amazon Go and the world’s most advanced shopping technology Description | Amazon Go is a new kind of store featuring the world’s most advanced shopping technology. No lines, no checkout – just grab and go! 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+{"query": "How can I transfer and consolidate my 401k's and other options?", "corpus": ["The simplest way to consolidate the funds your old 401(k) plans is by doing what's called a Direct Rollover (whereby the funds go directly into the new plan and skips you completely) from each of the old plans into either an IRA that you establish with a provider of your choice or even into your current employer's 401(k) plan if that is available. That way, the funds are in one central account and available to invest. Plus it eliminates the mandatory 20% withholding if the rollover is indirect and is sent to you first before the deposit into the new plan. It is important to bear in mind that you have 60 calendar days from the date of distribution to get the full amount into the new plan and a rollover is considered a tax reportable, but not necessarily a taxable event provided you deposit the funds within the time frame allotted."], "neg": ["No tax consequences to you. Tax consequences to your sister. From your comment: My sister is single, but my wife and I have a son. So we can avail   $14000 x3 = $42000 without the need to report it. The remainder   ($70000-$42000) = $28000 will be reported against the lifetime   exclusion by my sister on her return. Per my understanding, the $28000   is also not subject to any gift tax It is subject to gift tax, and she must submit gift tax return (form 709) to the IRS. On that return she can choose to apply part of the lifetime exemption and reduce the lifetime limit, or pay the tax and keep the lifetime limit. If she applies the exemption, she needs to keep track of it, so that it could be properly applied next time, or when she passes away. The lifetime exemption is in fact intended for the estate tax. But people can chose and apply it to gifts during lifetime and reduce the exemption for estate. This is something of consequence to take into account. Yearly $14K cap is not related to the lifetime exemption and is for gifts per donor per donee. Breaking the gift into several occasions over several years helps reducing the tax burden on the donor without touching the lifetime exclusion and affecting the estate tax. But if you don't have the time...", "OK, were there any fund managers stupid enough to bet on Facebook? If there are, they should all be out of jobs by now. (They won't be, but they should.)  Facebook was a bad investment on paper, on hype, and on fundamentals. There was no reasonable expectation of it going up on IPO.", "Because I want my plane flown by some ex-military NASA hotshot pilot with ice water running through his veins, and I am willing to pay for it. Would you rather have Neil Armstrong or Uniblab responsible for your life?", "If you read r/business you see posts about market caps of companies, which is an equally nonsensical metric.   Yeah, there's a lot of fluff in r/bitcoin but you might learn a few things about cryptocurrencies, even if you don't think there's any value in it.", "No, they do this to change behavior by providing a disincentive (the stick) - $2 fee - on something they want their customers to do less of. In this case, they want everyone to sign up for automatic billing via CC or bank transfer.  Their mistake was to not combine this with a positive incentive (the carrot) on the behavior they want more of. In this case, they should have promised a $2 monthly discount for the first year for customers who switch to automatic billing.", "You are right: if the combined value of all outstanding GOOG shares was $495B, and the combined value of all GOOGL shares was $495B, then yes, Alphabet would have a market cap of at least $990B (where I say at least only because I myself don't know that there aren't other issues that should be in the count as well). The respective values of the total outstanding GOOG and GOOGL shares are significantly less than that at present though. Using numbers I just grabbed for those tickers from Google Finance (of course), they currently stand thus:", "My husband used this device at work in an organization/club that collects dues for fundraisers. The fundraisers are only for the club. So I think that is not business at all. They have no business tax id#, etc? and they use it for personal reasons when collecting money via Cc#'s if this helps you."]}
+{"query": "Are there any ETFs that follow the “Dogs of the Dow” allocation?", "corpus": ["Google is your friend. If you buy me a beer, I might be as well. By the way DOD is the ticker.  Dogs of the Dow ETF"], "neg": ["The problem is a little deeper than that. What you are witnessing is a change in the economy, a transformation so to say. Many people in society are unaware of this, the unadapted as I call them. Check this if you curious about this transformation, I believe its a good thing. https://www.cityxcape.com/secret-spots/2017/10/15/battle-of-ideas", "Use other currencies, if available. I'm not familiar with the banking system in South Africa; if they haven't placed any currency freezes or restrictions, you might want to do this sooner than later.  In full crises, like Russian and Ukraine, once the crisis worsened, they started limiting purchases of foreign currencies. PayPal might allow currency swaps (it implies that it does at the bottom of this page); if not, I know Uphold does. Short the currency Brokerage in the US allow us to short the US Dollar.  If banks allow you to short the ZAR, you can always use that for protection.  I looked at the interest rates in the ZAR to see how the central bank is offsetting this currency crisis - WOW - I'd be running, not walking toward the nearest exit.  A USA analogy during the late 70s/early 80s would be Paul Volcker holding interest rates at 2.5%, thinking that would contain 10% inflation. Bitcoin Comes with significant risks itself, but if you use it as a temporary medium of exchange for swaps - like Uphold or with some bitcoin exchanges like BTC-e - you can get other currencies by converting to bitcoin then swapping for other assets.  Bitcoin's strength is remitting and swapping; holding on to it is high risk. Commodities I think these are higher risk right now as part of the ZAR's problem is that it's heavily reliant on commodities.  I looked at your stock market to see how well it's done, and I also see that it's done poorly too and I think the commodity bloodbath has something to do with that.  If you know of any commodity that can stay stable during uncertainty, like food that doesn't expire, you can at least buy without worrying about costs rising in the future.  I always joke that if hyperinflation happened in the United States, everyone would wish they lived in Utah.", "\"The supposition at the core here is supposed health risks - and costs- of green house gas on individual realities health? Almost laughable using data in such a way. Further, the attempt to suggest \"\"only\"\" 84 billion cost in regulations assumes regulations and the economy exists in a vacuum. The economy doesn't work like thAt, but then again, given the priorities of the individuals writing/supporting the paper, this propaganda is no surprise. Regulations curb business, income, efficiency, materials usage, individual and collective quality of life and a host of other positive indicators. The lefts obsession with regulation is absurd- and lacks accurate empirical support for long term net gain.\"", "To a point.  There is also increasing prices to make their toys a premium product.  Part of it is paying for many if not most of the sets to be tied to licenses, another part is more complicated sets as they became a premium brand.    But as they became a premium brand, they began losing the lower end of the market.  I buy lego, but at toys for tots time I donate megablocks.", "Clearly the US isn't interested in prosecuting executives for criminal activity, and hasn't been for years. Rick Scott perpetrated the largest Medicare fraud in history, but he was never charged with a crime because his company (HCA Columbia) agreed to pay nearly a billion in fines. His lack of a criminal record and substantial net worth left him free to pursue other opportunities, like becoming the governor of Florida.", "\"I think it could put a serious dent in Ticketmaster's profits.    At the very least, it introduces a huge competitor into a space where there pretty much isn't one, and that'll drive competition.    In the short term though, I can see Ticketmaster just increasing fees to cover the \"\"loss\"\".\"", "Ever wondered why no bankers got arrested? Henry Paulson needed them on board. He has gone on record saying as much. You don't make this sort of rescue by dangling people over a cauldron, you need the political will. Remember some of the banks didn't even need TARP, they had to be convinced to take them against their best interests."]}
+{"query": "Can someone explain how government bonds work?", "corpus": ["\"The short of it is that bonds are valued based on a fundamental concept of finance called the \"\"time value of money\"\". Stated simply, $100 one year from now is not the same as $100 now. If you had $100 now, you could use it to make more money and have more than $100 in a year. Conversely, if you didn't invest it, the $100 would not buy as much in a year as it would now, and so it would lose real value. Therefore, for these two benefits to be worth the same, the money received a year from now must be more than $100, in the amount of what you could make with $100 if you had it now, or at least the rate of inflation. Or, the amount received now could be less than the amount recieved a year from now, such that if you invested this lesser amount you'd expect to have $100 in a year. The simplest bonds simply pay their face value at maturity, and are sold for less than their face value, the difference being the cost to borrow the cash; \"\"interest\"\". These are called \"\"zero-coupon bonds\"\" and they're around, if maybe uncommon. The price people will pay for these bonds is their \"\"present value\"\", and the difference between the present value and face value determines a \"\"yield\"\"; a rate of return, similar to the interest rate on a CD. Now, zero-coupon bonds are uncommon because they cost a lot. If I buy a zero-coupon bond, I'm basically tying up my money until maturity; I see nothing until the full bond is paid. As such, I would expect the bond issuer to sell me the bond at a rate that makes it worth my while to keep the money tied up. So basically, the bond issuer is paying me compound interest on the loan. The future value of an investment now at a given rate is given by FV = PV(1+r)t. To gain $1 million in new cash today, and pay a 5% yield over 10 years, a company or municipality would have to issue $1.629 million in bonds. You see the effects of the compounding there; the company is paying 5% a year on the principal each year, plus 5% of each 5% already accrued, adding up to an additional 12% of the principal owed as interest. Instead, bond issuers can offer a \"\"coupon bond\"\". A coupon bond has a coupon rate, which is a percentage of the face value of the bond that is paid periodically (often annually, sometimes semi-annually or even quarterly). A coupon rate helps a company in two ways. First, the calculation is very straightforward; if you need a million dollars and are willing to pay 5% over 10 years, then that's exactly how you issue the bonds; $1million worth with a 5% coupon rate and a maturity date 10 years out. A $100 5% coupon bond with a 10-year maturity, if sold at face value, would cost only $150 over its lifetime, making the total cost of capital only 50% of the principal instead of 62%. Now, that sounds like a bad deal; if the company's paying less, then you're getting less, right? Well yes, but you also get money sooner. Remember the fundamental principle here; money now is worth more than money later, because of what you can do with money between now and later. You do realize a lower overall yield from this investment, but you get returns from it quickly which you can turn around and reinvest to make more money. As such, you're usually willing to tolerate a lower rate of return, because of the faster turnaround and thus the higher present value. The \"\"Income Yield %\"\" from your table is also referred to as the \"\"Flat Yield\"\". It is a very crude measure, a simple function of the coupon rate, the current quote price and the face value (R/P * V). For the first bond in your list, the flat yield is (.04/114.63 * 100) = 3.4895%. This is a very simple measure that is roughly analogous to what you would expect to make on the bond if you held it for one year, collected the coupon payment, and then sold the bond for the same price; you'd earn one coupon payment at the end of that year and then recoup the principal. The actual present value calculation for a period of 1 year is PV = FV/(1+r), which rearranges to r = FV/PV - 1; plug in the values (present value 114.63, future value 118.63) and you get exactly the same result. This is crude and inaccurate because in one year, the bond will be a year closer to maturity and will return one less coupon payment; therefore at the same rate of return the present value of the remaining payout of the bond will only be $110.99 (which makes a lot of sense if you think about it; the bond will only pay out $112 if you bought it a year from now, so why would you pay $114 for it?). Another measure, not seen in the list, is the \"\"simple APY\"\". Quite simply, it is the yield that will be realized from all cash flows from the bond (all coupon payments plus the face value of the bond), as if all those cash flows happened at maturity. This is calculated using the future value formula: FV = PV (1+r/n)nt, where FV is the future value (the sum of the face value and all coupon payments to be made before maturity), PV is present value (the current purchase price), r is the annual rate (which we're solving for), n is the number of times interest accrues and/or is paid (for an annual coupon that's 1), and t is the number of years to maturity. For the first bond in the list, the simple APY is 0.2974%. This is the effective compound interest rate you would realize if you bought the bond and then took all the returns and stuffed them in a mattress until maturity. Since nobody does this with investment returns, it's not very useful, but it can be used to compare the yield on a zero-coupon bond to the yield on a coupon bond if you treated both the same way, or to compare a coupon bond to a CD or other compound-interest-bearing account that you planned to buy into and not touch for its lifetime. The Yield to Maturity, which IS seen, is the true yield percentage of the bond in time-valued terms, assuming you buy the bond now, hold it to maturity and all coupon payments are made on time and reinvested at a similar yield. This calculation is based on the simple APY, but takes into account the fact that most of the coupon payments will be made prior to maturity; the present value of these will be higher because they happen sooner. The YTM is calculated by summing the present values of all payments based on when they'll occur; so, you'll get one $4 payment a year from now, then another $4 in two years, then $4 in 3 years, and $104 at maturity. The present value of each of those payments is calculated by flipping around the future value formula: PV = FV/(1+r)t. The present value of the entire bond (its current price) is the sum of the present value of each payment: 114.63 = 4/(1+r) + 4/(1+r)2 + 4/(1+r)3 + 104/(1+r)4. You now have to solve for r, which is difficult to isolate; the easiest way to find the rate with a computer is to \"\"goal seek\"\" (intelligently guess and check).  Based on the formula above, I calculated a YTM of .314% for the first bond if you bought on Sept 7, 2012 (and thus missed the upcoming coupon payment). Buying today, you'd also be entitled to about 5 weeks' worth of the coupon payment that is due on Sept 07 2012, which is close enough to the present day that the discounted value is a rounding error, putting the YTM of the bond right at .40%. This is the rate of return you'll get off of your investment if you are able to take all the returns from it, when you receive them, and reinvest them at a similar rate (similar to having a savings account at that rate, or being able to buy fractional shares of a mutual fund giving you that rate).\""], "neg": ["Businesses have bond ratings just like people have credit ratings. It has become common for businesses to issue low rate bonds to show that they are strong, and leave the door open for further borrowing if they see an opportunity, such as an acquisition.  One of the reasons Microsoft might want to build a credit reputation, is that people become familiar with their bonds and will purchase at lower rates when they want to borrow larger amounts of money, rather than assuming they are having financial issues which would lead them to demand higher rates.", "The short float ratio and percent change are all calculated based on the short interest (the total number of shares shorted).  The short interest data for Nasdaq and NYSE stocks is published every two weeks. NasdaqTrader.com shows the exact dates for when short interest is published for Nasdaq stocks, and also says the following: FINRA member firms are required to report their short positions as of settlement on (1) the 15th of each month, or the preceding business day if the 15th is not a business day, and (2) as of settlement on the last business day of the month.* The reports must be filed by the second business day after the reporting settlement date. FINRA compiles the short interest data and provides it for publication on the 8th business day after the reporting settlement date. The NYSE also shows the exact dates for when short interest is published for NYSE stocks, and those dates are exactly the same as for Nasdaq stocks. Since the short interest is only updated once every 2 weeks, there is no way to see real-time updating of the short float and percent change.  That information only gets updated once every 2 weeks - after each publication of the short interest.", "For a company listed on NASDAQ, the numbers are published on NASDAQ's site. The most recent settlement date was 4/30/2013, and you can see that it lists 27.5 million shares as held short.  NASDAQ gets these numbers from FINRA member firms, which are required to submit them to the exchange twice a month: Each FINRA member firm is required to report its “total” short interest positions in all customer and proprietary accounts in NASDAQ-listed securities twice a month. These reports are used to calculate short interest in NASDAQ stocks. FINRA member firms are required to report their short positions as of settlement on (1) the 15th of each month, or the preceding business day if the 15th is not a business day, and (2) as of settlement on the last business day of the month.* The reports must be filed by the second business day after the reporting settlement date. FINRA compiles the short interest data and provides it for publication on the 8th business day after the reporting settlement date.", "&gt; fucked over all local coffee shops  Planning permissions aside, I would think the consumers of Brighton did that, not Starbucks. Or did they offer free coffee until all the other coffee shops went bust?  But what do I know, I prefer McDonalds coffee to Starbucks.", "\"The government program to keep the unemployed from gaming the system that they mention isn't really what the article is about.  Most of their complaints are about internships, apprenticeships, and unpaid overtime for salaried employees.  The sectors that are most notorious for these sort of things are those that are often over-saturated with qualified candidates.  I work in graphic design.  The for-profit colleges in the US churn out graphic design graduates is disgustingly high numbers.  It's an easy program to sign people up for because is sounds fun.  \"\"Art is fun, computers are fun.  Make it a career!\"\"  However there really aren't that many graphic design positions available.  Lots of unemployed or underemployed graphic designers means that more of them are willing to work for cheap or free to beef up their resumes.  Cheap freelance options means companies are getting rid of in-house designers.  Those of us that are left can no longer earn what we're worth but to keep doing what we love we have to suck it up and work the long unpaid hours for less pay.  similar things are taking place in a lot of sought after professions like finance, law, advertising, public relations, government, and various non-profits.  It's not terribly ethical, but it's hard to blame employers for not paying interns then they're salivating for a chance to run coffee just to get a foot in the door.  TL;DR: People want their long term career choice worse than they want to get paid immediately.\"", "Since there's no taxable income (inheritance is not taxed to you), you do not need to amend. The executor used the correct form. Note, I'm not a tax adviser or a licensed professional. For a tax advice advice contact a CPA/EA licensed in your state.", "The problem with the vintage motorcycle is that the spare parts can be tough to come by because the manufacturing companies will have stopped their manufacturing. But Geloman's Indian Spares opened doors for people, who are willing to buy the old Indian motorcycle spares parts online. Any time you purchase an old motorcycle, you should be willing to put in the effort to care for the motorcycle. Although, it is important that you check the authenticity of the online websites before making a purchase."]}
+{"query": "Buy index mutual fund or build my own?", "corpus": ["You better buy an ETF that does the same, because it would be much cheaper than mutual fund (and probably much cheaper than doing it yourself and rebalancing to keep up with the index).  Look at DIA for example. Neither buying the same amount of stocks nor buying for the same amount of money would be tracking the DJIE. The proportions are based on the market valuation of each of the companies in the index."], "neg": ["I was thinking something similar but that he is trying to fish for 'the best deal' by 'walking away'....or he wants show his base he was very conflicted and not totally roll over on them.  It did seem odd that only every news outlet reported inside sources say he was pulling out and he would announce his decision in a couple days.", "\"The account you are looking for is called a \"\"Positive Pay\"\" account.  It generally is only for business accounts, you provide a list of check numbers and amounts, and they are cross-referenced for clearing. It normally has a hefty monthly fee due to the extra labor involved.\"", "I didn't realize that was twitter. You're right that it doesn't sound like there is one, but it also doesn't sound like there isn't one. If business guy was generally more reasonable I'd assume there would be as generally you'd get one first. But just because he's unreasonable now doesn't totally exclude the possibility.  On the facts as we have em you're right but seems there very reasonably could be more based on his comment and general situation.", "\"It's called a \"\"Pyramid scheme\"\". Its illegal in almost every country of the Western world. You're not going to earn lifetime income, of course, and these things collapse pretty quickly. Most of the \"\"common folks\"\" don't return the investment, its the organizers who take the money. Sometimes they run, most times they end up in jail. The way these schemes work is that they pay the early \"\"investors\"\" from the fees paid by new \"\"investors\"\". As long as a steady stream of new people keep signing up and paying into it those who got in very early make money. The idea is based on the geometric procession of each new person signing up two or more people, and those people doing the same. Pretty quickly at that rate you need to sign up every human being on the planet to keep the new money flowing in to make it work, which obviously is not realistic. Ultimately a small % of the people (if they can stay out of jail) will make a big amount of money the vast majority of \"\"investors\"\" get stiffed.\"", "The answer to this question is given by the fact that many public companies have people who are opposed to the company's aims or practices and who own their stock, often a single share, for the purposes of turning up to shareholder meetings and haranguing directors/asking awkward questions/disrupting proceedings, etc. If public companies could stop these campaigning shareholders from owning stock they would.", "\"not sure how you could be more wrong.  my favorite part by far was the fedora worthy \"\"nonsense, and unworthy of further comment.\"\" definitely followed by a little tip, wasn't it?  you've missed every single point i bought up. i'm not acting like investors are fat cats - you're borderline illiterate, and spend too much time on r/libertarian or watching fox news, so you jumped at the opportunity to straw man \"\"a dang pretentious librul.\"\" what i said was \"\"relatively elite,\"\" exactly because i'm not saying they're cigar chomping pigs- they have a lot of money relative to most of the population.  i simply don't care enough to try to go point by point. my whole point was that the comment i was replying to represents the style of mainstream economics that misrepresents basic phenomena, and your reply was just a doubling down.  \"\"they are rational\"\" - lol literally choke on your MLP figurine. you've no idea what you're talking about. your other posts indicate a greater ignorance - you don't know how to watch the vix, or why your options move the way they do? really shocking /s\"", "\"How will making energy cheaper help?  The issue is that average earnings have barely moved since the 70's, inflation has sky-rocketed for necessities and for assets.  My dad was making the same as I am now when he bought their first home for $40,000.  My smaller place cost me $300,000+.  That isn't fucking sustainable.  Natural gas, gasoline, electricity, those are all tiny slices of pie in comparison to food and shelter.    Then the American government makes all these shitty chess-play moves that they think will stimulate the economy but they don't take into account that civilians aren't entities that behave like ideal statistical models.  They don't fucking understand that people are concerned about the viability of their futures.  The whole thing is nose-diving into the ground.  Read the the book \"\"The Death of Money\"\" by James Rickards, America is fucked and the politicians don't care because they will be financially OK and will pass the buck on to the next generation to deal with.\""]}
+{"query": "Looking for advice on rental property", "corpus": ["I think the first step is to be thankful that your relationship with this person has not degenerated into lawsuits and bickering.  That would greatly affect your cash flow and valuations!  It also seems that this person is open to a variety of solutions.  This truly is a gift. I see two options without taking a mortgage or fronting cash: The key here is if the 65% property already has a mortgage.  Does it have enough equity to provide 15% cash out, and cover the existing mortgage?  What is the interest rate?  Can you get a lower rate that will reduce the impact of a higher mortgage payment will have on your income?  Can you have your partner finance the 15%?   In the end there really isn't a way to divest this company without impacting your income."], "neg": ["This is a big and complex topic, but it's one I think people get wrong a lot.  There's a lot of ways to treat a child's pocket money: Tell a kid that they're getting $10/week allowance.  Help them keep it safe, but don't give them access to it: Put it in a drawer in your office, or a piggie bank on a high shelf.  Encourage them to save up for a big purchase.  Help them decide what to spend it on.  When they find something they want, talk it over with them to make sure it's right for them. This seems like a good approach, because it encourages thrift, long term thinking, savings, and other important elements of real life.  But it's a TERRIBLE idea.  All it does is make the child think of it as if it wasn't really their money.  The child gets no benefits from this, and will certainly not learn anything about savings. Give the kid $10/week.  Full stop. This seems like a bad idea, because the kid is just going to waste it.  Which they will.  :)  That's the point!  There's NO way to learn except by experience. Try and shift control of discretionary spending to the child as and when appropriate.  Give them some money for clothes, or a present for their birthday, and let them spend it.  If they're going to be spending all day at some event, give them money for lunch.  And if they misspend it - tough!  No kid is going to starve in one day because the spend their lunch money at a video arcade, but they will learn a valuable lesson.  :) You have to be careful here of two mistakes.  First, only do this for truly discretionary spending.  If your kid needs clothes for school, then you better make sure they actually buy it.  Second, make sure that you don't end up filling in the gaps.  What you're teaching here is opportunity costs, and that won't work if your child gets to have his cake and eat it too.  (Or go to the movies and STILL get that new Xbox game.) Have them get a job.  And, it should go without saying, give them control of the money.  It's incredibly tempting to force them to save, be responsible, etc.  But all this does is force them to look responsible...for as long as their under your thumb.  Nothing will impart the lessons about why being responsible is important like being irresponsible.  And it's sure as hell better to learn that lesson with some paper route money when your 14 than with your rent money when your 24...", "You could probably see prices at one of the Obamacare websites.  I'm on Obamacare in Massachusetts, and the premiums for me ranged from about $300-600 per month.  For a couple, you just multiply by two (couples don't get any discounts over single people).  So for a couple, the cost is about $600-$1200 per month. I never looked at family prices because I don't have kids, but I think the family plans are not that much more than the plans for a couple.", "The biggest problem I see while looking for a new job so I can get out of where I am is that they basically want someone with Kevin Mitnick skills to install ram at a help desk. It's getting absurd what they put for qualifications for some of these jobs.", "\"Ok, I was being a bit rhetorical, sorry, it failed to come across.  I know there are other firms, but I have never seen anyone say \"\"ex-Bain people\"\". Is McKinsey sort of used like you just used google, not to refer to the company but as a type of thing (google = search engines; McKinsey = management consultants)?\"", "I believe the reasons:", "Then why do countries with single payer health plans see the cost for medical services increase beyond the rate of inflation every year?   [Seriously, just look at these numbers.](http://www.towerswatson.com/assets/pdf/3585/Towers-Watson-Global-Medical-Trends-Svy-Rpt.pdf)  It doesn't matter that they spend less of apercent of GDP on health care than us, because the net effect of thier models cause cost inflation that increases that percentage, just like ours. You could transplant thier model to the US and still see the same upward momentum. It is mathematically unsustainable.", "A *lot* of big companies offer credit cards. And it makes total sense. For example, if you have a Macy's card, you get access to special discounts that you wouldn't normally get. It saves the consumer money and builds loyalty to the brand. Same for Southwest credit cards. It's a completely normal move.  EDIT: Also, Uber doesn't actually have to do much - it's the issuing bank that manages the program. *Most* of the branded credit cards you see are Chase, BTW. Amazon and Southwest are both run by Chase."]}
+{"query": "Is the Canadian Securities Course (CSC) enough to get started in the finance industry in Canada?", "corpus": ["\"Wikipedia says \"\"The Canadian Securities Course (CSC) offered by the Canadian Securities Institute (CSI) is the initial course required for becoming licensed to work within the Canadian securities industry (outside Quebec) as a securities dealer or securities agent.\"\" Src: Candian Securities Course EfficientMarket Canada adds \"\" You require it and further courses for other jobs in the investment industry. Generally some work experience is also required. All of this is governed by various self-regulatory agencies. The material in the course is strong on money making products, and fairly weak on material that would actually protect a consumer from harm. Passing the course is very little indication that you understand what's important about investing, for example, you won't be taught much of anything about the theory of investment, or the markets, or things like the efficient market hypothesis.\"\" Src: EfficientMarket.ca on the CSC So it appears that the CSC is necessary to work as certain types of financial agencies. That being said, I doubt it will be enough to get your foot in the door. This seems more like a prerequisite rather than a true qualification, so you'll be competing with MBAs/Finance students and other people who either have experience or training in the financial industry. I'd recommend you look into the Chartered Financial Analyst (CFA) certification as that will provide you with a rigorous knowledge of financial theory as well as asset management, which seems more appropriate for what you'd like to do. From there you'll have to network like crazy and leverage your experience to get in at a Canadian financial firm and eventually wealth management. So yes, I suppose a CSC is a good first step but more will certainly be required and I doubt it will be enough to land you a full time position.  Another important factor is age - nobody expects undergrads to have extensive certifications or experience, but it's harder for a 35 year old to enter a new industry, especially finance.\""], "neg": ["\"Dimon's analysis and conclusions regarding his own lack of leadership and flawed oversight, leaves me frustrated and thinking... \"\"No Shit Sherlock!\"\"     For five years we keep hearing over-and-over from an endless procession of Wall Street Elite how nobody understood the smoke-and-mirror shenanigans and that none of them believed that they were involved in any wrongdoing. Each time that this lame conclusion of blaming \"\"unexpected consequences and complexity\"\" is offered, are we really meant to accept it? Does anyone accept it? Stating that \"\"I now know that deceitful business practices and blatant gambling had grave consequences\"\" is hardly a revelation.   Seriously, Dimon had to be the archetype for the **[Captain Hindsight](http://vimeo.com/16315458)** character.\"", "Summarized article: On Friday, the Dow Jones Industrial Average dropped almost 275 points and wiped out the last of the index's gains for the year.   Friday's massive selloff was triggered by a dismal US jobs report and data indicating a European and Chinese economic slowdown. Friday was the worst day of the year for the market.   Worried investors moved cash to the US Treasury bond market which also dragged the yield to a record low.   Some analysts believe the panic in the market may cause the Federal Reserve to plan for additional stimulus.   Federal Reserve Chairman Ben Bernanke is scheduled to speak next week.   *For more summarized news, subscribe to the [/r/SkimThat](http://www.reddit.com/r/SkimThat) subreddit*", "There are several questions to answer before help can be given. How much revenue did you have this year? What is expected revenue growth for next few years? Are you operating as a sole proprietor, partnership or corporation? If a corporation did you maintain your books on the cash basis or accrual? I recommend you seek a CPA not a bookkeeper. And, don't wait until end of year to fund one.", "My wife and I use a digital form of the envelope system. We call it a budget; we record how much we want to allocate each month to spend--for each category of expense--in a spread sheet. Why use prepaid cards? Why not open a bunch of bank accounts and use debit cards from each if you want to separate the money? You could also keep a ledger for each account that you spend from on a smart phone or even in a physical ledger.  The reason for the envelope method is that it psychologically hurts some people to physically part with cash. Once you digitize it in some factor, you lose what is the primary touted benefit, and it's no longer the envelope system. The secondary benefit that--once the budget for one category is gone, it's gone--is only as good as the discipline you have to not rob cash from another envelope; why is this any easier than the discipline of not debiting beyond the bottom of the ledger? So a budget IS a digital version of the envelope system; once the physical cash is removed from the equation, it's definitely not the envelope system. Sorry for the contrarian take on this question, but I've never been a fan of the envelope system for many of the reasons you have described. I guess I'm too young for the cash psychology to work for me.", "\"The pure numbers answer says you want the refund to be close to $0.  You can even argue, as some answers have, that you want to try to maximize the payment without receiving any sanctions for underpaying during the year. If you trace the money, it's easy to see why.  Let's say you get a paycheck.  Tag some of the dollars for Uncle Sam.  These are the dollars that, eventually, will be given to the IRS.  Now consider the following scenarios: From the raw numbers like this, its clear that you lose utility by setting yourself up for a large refund check.  The money was yours the entire time, but you chose to give it to Uncle Sam instead. However, the raw numbers are only part of the puzzle.  If you're a cold steely-gazed numbers person, they're the part that matters.  When the billionares are playing their tax evasion games, this is the only thing they are paying attention to.  However, real humans have a few psychological reasons they may choose to lose utility in terms of raw dollars in exchange for psychological assistance: These attitudes exist, and may be ideal for any one person.  Obviously the financially savvy answer of \"\"minimize your refund\"\" is the ideal answer from a dollars and cents perspective, but its up to you to see whether that attitude is right when you account for all of the non-measurable things, like stress.  In general, I would lead anyone to \"\"minimize your refund,\"\" but I would be remiss if I didn't include the very real psychological reasons people choose to deviate from it.\"", "\"The appropriate structure for an organization depends largely on the size of the firm. Smaller firms can employ some non-traditional hierarchies more easily (i.e., flat design), whereas the same structures are more difficult to use in mid-size and large companies. The most important pieces of any corporate structure are (1) clarity of roles, (2) accountability, and (3) ease of communication.  Firstly, everyone in the organization must have clarity of their own role and how it fits into the bigger picture. That means a structure that is easy to understand, and a comprehension of how all the roles tie in to each other.   Secondly, a good structure will enable and empower leadership to hold the team accountable, and be held accountable in turn. What is often misunderstood about accountability is that people often assume that it simply means punishing poor behavior when something breaks down. In reality, that's holding people responsible, not accountable. Accountability is something that is self-driven and is a product of sound relationships and transparency. As an example, one of the most common breakdowns in accountability is found in passive non-responsiveness. This is when you may reach out to a business partner for help or an update, but they simply do not reply (as in email, text, or voicemail).   Thirdly, the structure should be such that it is easy for individuals to communicate across and up/down the chain. This doesn't mean that if you send an email, communication is easy. Rather, who do I reach out to for this problem? What are the best practices or agreed-upon methodologies for a certain practice, and how does the team know this? Some of this should be codified in the form of standard operating procedures (SOPs) which can be referenced at any time. Many companies use a \"\"playbook\"\" which is a high-level reference guide on how to operate the business (an example is found here: https://www.atlassian.com/team-playbook). A playbook can be anything from a PDF to an interactive website like the aforementioned link. It should always have the most up-to-date information.  Most companies will change their structure over time as their environment (both internal and external) change and they need to adapt. For example, a small firm may not need an HR department, but as it employs more and more people, a need to have someone (or an entire team) focused on human capital management rises quickly -- an owner-operator can handle only so much before it is time to scale up.  The most important thing to consider is who you hire. People are the largest expense to an organization, and having the right people in the right roles is the best way to avoid unnecessary incremental costs resulting from inefficiency, fraud, or risky behavior. Always look for the personality traits that make a good employee relative to the role (i.e., customer service: friendliness; finance: integrity; operations: teamwork).  One of the most obvious parts of a business as it scales up is specialization. You want to find a balance, though. For example, HR handles all human relations issues, while Legal handles all internal claims, suits, and patents. There is an overlap that occurs here, as internal claims often start as human relations issues, which means you must have healthy communication and clear accountability for an appropriate hand-off so Legal takes a claim at the right point in time. While this example may be a little obvious, many times the edges are blurred, and clarity of role can be difficult.  I hope that helps! Reach out with any follow-up questions.\"", "\"I'm of the same line of thinking. The reddit community has been an amazing resource for me in the past on items like this. I have my areas of expertise (as a lawyer I have a \"\"binders full of precedents\"\"), but loan proposals are not one of those areas. And when I deal in areas I don't have mastered, I like to consider examples where professionals might consider the job \"\"well done\"\" in order to question, push back, or assist my own professionals.\""]}
+{"query": "Paid credit card bill, but money didn't leave my checking account [duplicate]", "corpus": ["The fact that your credit card has seen the payment is strong evidence that the transaction did in fact take place.  But it's not unusual for there to be a delay of one or two business days before transactions show up in your online banking records.  Saturday and Sunday are not business days.   I bet you will see it on Monday.  If it's not there by Tuesday, you could call the bank."], "neg": ["\"Of course, which is why you need to have a scoring function / utility function for the \"\"filters\"\", i.e. Are you going to value it by rate of accuracy hor by a metric where wins = +2, losses = -1, such that it uses a criteria like that to decide whether or not a filter adds value, (some even use a compound effect i.e. wins = 2+e^(1+w) where w is the consecutive wins).  A metric like the above would capture the trade off between predictive power and profit. Also some traders watch their Max DD very carefully so they may be very risk averse.\"", "What would be the best way to estimate / calculate the basis risk exposure of a commodity trading company? Naturally companies are very cagey when it comes to such info, but is there a way to come up with an approximate number?", "\"Concerning the general problem of short selling and the need to borrow shares to complete the transaction : Selling short is a cash transaction.  Unlike a futures contract, where a short seller is entering into a legal agreement to sell something in the future, in the case of short selling a share the buyer of the share is taking immediate delivery and is therefore entitled to all of the benefits and rights that come with share ownership.  In particular, the buyer of the shares is entitled to any dividends payable and, where applicable, to vote on motions at AGMs.  If the short seller has not borrowed the shares to sell, then buyer of non-existent shares will have none of the rights associated with ownership. The cash market is based on the idea of matching buyers and sellers.  It does not accommodate people making promises. Consider that to allow short sellers to sell shares they have not borrowed opens up the possibility of the aggregate market selling more shares than actually exist.  This would lead to all sorts of problematic consequences such as heavily distorting the price of the underlying share.  If everyone is selling shares they have not borrowed willy-nilly, then it will drive the price of the share down, much to the disadvantage of existing share holders. In this case, short sellers who have sold shares they have not already borrowed would be paying out more in dividends to the buyers than the total dividends being paid out by the underlying company. There are instruments that allow for short selling of unowned shares on a futures basis.  One example is a CFD = Contract for Difference.  In the case of CFDs, sellers are obliged to pay dividends to buyers as well as other  costs related to financing. EDIT Regarding your comment, note that borrowing shares is not a market transaction.  Your account does not show you buying a share and then selling it.  It simply shows you selling a share short.  The borrowing is the result of an agreement between yourself and the lender and this agreement is off market.  You do not actually pay the lender for the shares, but you do pay financing costs for the borrowing so long as you maintain your short position. EDIT I realise that I have not actually read your question correctly.  You are not actually talking about \"\"naked\"\" short selling.  You are talking about selling shares you already own in a hope of maintaining both a long and short position (gross).  The problem with this approach is that you must deliver the shares to the buyer.  Otherwise, ask yourself what shares is the buyer actually buying if you want the bought shares to remain in your account. If you are not going to deliver your long position shares, then you will need to borrow the shares you are selling short for the reasons I have outlined above.\"", "While Rocky's answer is correct in the big picture there is another factor here to keep in mind: The disruption while you're waiting to resolve it. If a fraudster gets your card and drains your account you'll get your money back--but there will be a period while they are investigating that it won't be available. For this reason I avoid debit card transactions and only use credit cards.  If the fraudster gets your credit card you might lose access while they investigate but you don't lose access to your bank account.", "It's the rate of return on new opportunities. The rate on existing projects isn't relevant. If you buy a bond 10 years ago when market Interest rates were 8%, and you have cash to buy another bond today, it is today's interest rates that are relevant, not the rates 10 years ago.", "\"of course if you asked me to give you $24.4955 I can't. No, but if I asked you to give me $24.4955 and you gave me a piece of paper saying \"\"I O U $24.4955\"\", and then this happened repeatedly until I had collected 100 of these pieces of paper from you, then I could give them back to you in exchange for $2449.55 of currency. There's nothing magical about the fact that there doesn't happen to be a $0.001 coin in current circulation.  This question has some further information.\"", "Wait. You equate public domain to being free. Public domain does mean that the source doesn't get paid. Remember when Its a Wonderful Life was in the public domain? TV stations still showed it, and they ran advertisements. Thousands of students each year buy Romeo and Juliet by William Shakespeare, and thousands of others purchase tickets to see their local high school perform the play, or watch a film version.  People pay money for those versions because a person, or people, or a printer put work into producing the product. You can't take the files directly from Project Gutenberg and sell them, you need to add value. In the case of Huck Finn Google thinks that version does add value. Therefore they do allow them to charge for that version. If the work your propose to translate is in the public domain in the country you will be selling, then you can avoid having to pay royalties  for the source material. But you will have to check the copyright situation yourself."]}
+{"query": "Why do so many NFL (pro football) players have charities?", "corpus": ["\"In addition to tax-related benefits, one answer may be that it helps them avoid being inundated with requests to support other foundations. Most charities have access to public records that indicate potential donors based on income and demographic. They can use that info to solicit for donations. \"\"Hey NFL Player, you have lots of money, and we have cute starving emus that really need your help!\"\" Here's a blurb from Foundation Source about some of the benefits to starting your own foundation.  Get an Immediate Tax Deduction, but Give Later: You get the tax deduction when the foundation is funded, then make your charitable   gifts over time. Leave a Lasting Legacy: Foundations set up in perpetuity can burnish your name far beyond your lifetime. Because gifts are made   from an endowment that generates investment revenue, the total gifts   made by the foundation can far surpass the actual funding. Be Taken More Seriously as a Philanthropist: A foundation imparts a gravitas that causes people to take your philanthropy more seriously,   due to the structured, organized approach you employ for your giving. Sidestep Unsolicited Requests: When you focus your foundation on specific giving areas, your mission statement can be used to politely   turn down off-target funding requests. Deepen and Focus Your Philanthropy: Whereas individual donors often spread their giving among as many causes as possible, the formalized   structure of a foundation often encourages donors to narrow their   focus to specific causes. Build a Better Family: As family members take on philanthropic research, present their findings to the board, participate in the   decision-making process, and track results, they hone skills that will   serve them for years to come. Tax-Deductible Grants to Individuals in Need: A private foundation allows you to provide emergency assistance directly to individuals   using dollars for which you’ve already received a tax deduction. Run Charitable Programs Without Setting Up a Separate Nonprofit: Direct charitable activities are IRS-approved programs that permit   foundations to directly fund and carry out their own projects. Pay Charitable Expenses: All legitimate and reasonable expenses incurred in carrying out the foundation’s charitable mission can be   paid by the foundation and will count toward the annual minimum   distribution requirement. Provide Loans Instead of Grants: When used to support a charitable purpose, private foundations can employ loans, loan guarantees, and   even equity investments, which are paid back (potentially with   interest), so you can recycle your philanthropic capital for other   charitable causes. https://www.foundationsource.com/resources/library/top-10-advantages-of-a-private-foundation/ There's a similar list here on the website for an attorney that specializes in philanthropy and non-profits. I won't copy/paste that list as it's similar, but I wanted to provide an additional source confirming the above benefits. This link contains some disadvantages as well.  http://www.hurwitassociates.com/l_start_pros.php\""], "neg": ["I spent some time comparing banks' interest rates until I realized that it didn't actually matter (to me). The only money I keep in checking and savings accounts is money that I'm going to spend shortly or is part of an emergency fund, and in both those cases convenience of liquidity is far more important than small differences in interest (I want to be able to go to a nearby branch, even if traveling, and pull out large sums of money). The majority of our money goes into investment accounts, where it's earning much more than even the best savings account. Most of your 100k would be much better served in a stock/bonds mix. Are standard taxable investment accounts one of those things you can't open? What about if you opened one in your home country?", "I think you're missing the point. We all have things we are good at and we all have styles we like to do it in. Was Bach's skills nature or nurture, I think we can assume both. If he had the same nurture in a different time period where a different form of music was dominant would he have found as much success? We can't truly know, but perhaps, perhaps not. If his childhood was different, if his parents were different, would he even have been a musician or a composer? Again, perhaps, perhaps not. Luck is how our parents raised us, the teachers we get in school, the friends we make, how our peers treat us, the year we were born, the random events of our lives, and so much more.   To some degree we make our own luck, yes, but to suggest that we all are dealt the same hand to play with or that all hands are equal is lunacy.", "There is nothing inappropriate about this reply, yet I'm bumped down to -1 to make me invisible. That is not how debate is supposed to happen.  If someone disagrees, they should do it in words. Downvotes are for inappropriate conduct.", "Facebook may sue you or your company for not paying the bill for the ads that Facebook ran for you or your company. There is a chance they may ban you and/or your company in addition to that to get the money as there was likely an agreement you accepted to put ads on Facebook.", "Larger burgers are good for a treat but they aren't so good as a regular meal for many.  A McDonald's cheeseburger Happy Meal, for example, is a decent meal for many lightly active adults.  A Big Mac combo is pretty close to 2 meals worth of calories.", "You create products and services that aren't tied to your personal hours worked. They generate income, like a golden egg. They need various amounts of care, but in general, they have a positive return on time spent on it. The returns can be 1000x even, like the one man who created flappy bird. Luck helps too, in those cases :)  The author of that article, on the other hand, is selling his time, not a product. That doesn't scale well, especially if you're one human.", "This was all luck, that amount of leverage will destroy your account in a single bad trade. You profit is way less than it should be because you are getting killed on fees.  Take a look at the bitcoin trade, you should have 2,157.30 in profit but you only have 1825.42. And your currency trades were consistently positions that were worth $400,000 dollars, where you were pulling out ~$50 in profits, even though they should have been ~$80 profits. You are consistently getting 30% less than you should be, and consistently betting waaaaay bigger amounts than you account can really handle. Bad trades will probably have 30% greater losses than actual, and when the market moves the wrong direction then a single position will wipe out your account. Yes, you could have just bought bitcoin and gotten great profits. You totally nailed the directions of the markets! It is just a matter of time before you blow up, the trailing profits won't always help you when the market starts going down first."]}
+{"query": "Retirement Options for Income", "corpus": ["\"I can think of one major income source you didn't mention, dividends.  Rather than withdrawing from your pension pot, you can roll it over to a SIPP, invest it in quality dividend growth stocks, then (depending on your pension size) withdraw only the dividends to live on. The goal here is that you buy quality dividend growth stocks.   This will mean you rarely have to sell your investments, and can weather the ups and downs of the market in relative comfort, while using the dividends as your income to live off of.   The growth aspect comes into play when considering keeping up with inflation, or simply growing your income.   In effect, companies grow the size of their dividend payments and you use that to beat the effects of inflation. Meanwhile, you do get the benefit of principle growth in the companies you've invested in.   I don't know the history of the UK stock market, but the US market has averaged over 7% total return (including dividends) over the long term. A typical dividend payout is not much better than your annuity option though -- 3% to 4% is probably achievable.   Although, looking at the list of UK Dividend Champion list (companies that have grown their dividend for 25 years continuous), some of them have higher yields than that right now.   Though that might be a warning sign... BTW, given all the legal changes around buy-to-lets recently (increases stamp duty on purchase, reduction in mortgage interest deduction, increased paperwork burden due to \"\"right to rent\"\" laws, etc.) you want to check this carefully to make sure you're safe on forecasting your return.\""], "neg": ["As a parent with a 4 yr old, it's not my reason. I want him to build something with his hands. Spend $50 on a Lego kit and what do you get? A tiny set of very specific parts for one build. Or I can spend that money on some other construction toy for half the price (blocks, Lincoln logs, train set) and you have similar enjoyment.", "&gt;I would propose that organizations like big box stores fall somewhere between animals and foreign peasants as far as our feelings of responsibility towards them.  I disagree.  To me and most people I know, big-box stores are *worse* than foreign peasants.  To foreign peasants, we're apathetic.  To big-box stores, we're hateful.", "Will never be a Uber customer. I prefer my taxis to be a sustainable business, where drivers make an actual wage, which is above the minimum hourly rate for 17 year old kids.  Currently the most efficient Uber driver can make around 10 cents per mile, in net income. Or less than $4 an hour, even if driving non-stop.", "If the ruleset you've created turns out to have unintended consequences (and from the article, there is at least MP who thinks so), then creating more rules to clarify or modify existing rules to keep everything operating within the intent of the law isn't insanity, it's smart government.", "Eric is right regarding the tax, i.e. ordinary income on discount, cap gain treatment on profit whether long term or short.  I would not let the tax tail wag the investing dog. If you would be a holder of the stock, hold on, if not, sell. You are considering a 10-15% delta on the profit to make the decision.  Now. I hear you say your wife hasn't worked which potentially puts you in a lower bracket this year. I wrote Topping off your bracket with a Roth Conversion which would help your tax situation long term. Simply put, you convert enough Traditional IRA (or 401(k) money) to use up some of the current bracket you are in, but not hit the next. This may not apply to you, depending on whether you have retirement funds to do this. Note - The cited article offers numbers for a single person, but illustrates the concept. See the tax table for the marginal rates that would apply to you.", "\"Without knowing anything else about you, I'd say I need more information. If all of your investments are in stocks, then that's not really diversified, regardless of how many stocks you own.  There are other things to invest in besides stocks (and bonds, for that matter). What countries?  \"\"International\"\" is pretty broad, and some countries are better bets than others at the moment. If you're old, I'd say very little of your money should be in stocks anyway. I'd also seek financial advice that is tailored to your goals, sophistication, etc.\"", "&gt; The report I linked to appears to disagree with you about the numbers.  I can't remember the report you linked anymore but prior to 2010/2011 (drawdown) there was only a single point (2007/2008) where contractors outnumbered troops, and it was by (iirc from the chart) 30-40k. USAID had 53k contractors under them at that time. The math there means that, at no point prior to the drawdown, did DoD contractors outnumber DoD personnel.  &gt;I wonder how it works out from a budgetary perspective for the professional mercenary companies, who I've read get paid massive amounts, which, I imagine, must irritate those doing similar work for government pay. People like Blackwater and their ilk.  That was the contracting work that I did. The military guys are just envious (but in a pretty positive way - certainly not hatin') and the government civilians can be annoyed but largely don't care. Everyone is in the same boat, pretty much - you're all there together. The military guys know that if they want to do contracting they need to follow a certain career path which they either choose not to pursue or can not.   State Department employees had the biggest problem with it because a) contractors fuck all of their women and b) they make more than the Staties without having a degree. It's very much a classist thing, and they are on the losing end of it. Kids educated at Cornell and now playing diplomat don't appreciate that.  Pay (for me) was $675 a day for some of the time, $1125 a day for the other part. It was decent pay, I worked 4 hours a day on average, and I got to work out a lot, but the food sucked and there were too few girls. And the ones that were there... you didn't want them. Or at least I didn't. But I've seen some of the best looking guys I've ever met dick down some ugly girls in country, and there was no way that I was about to fight with them over the (stretch marked or busted looking) scraps."]}
+{"query": "What reason would a person have to use checks in stores?", "corpus": ["Rational reason. They like this method of paying. There is a delay between writing the check and having the money removed from the account. Their checkbook makes a carbon copy of the check, so they can update their balance easier. They can leave the store and update their checkbook register, or the spreadsheet or their Quicken or budget application data. They don't have to try and remember the amount, store name or date."], "neg": ["Dealhoud, You are on the right path but this is actually an Equivalent annual cost problem. You have to take it a step further and divide the NPV by the Annuity factor.  You need to calculate the annuity factor and divide the investment by that amount.    Annuity Factor = (1-(1/(1+r)^n )) /r   We know the annual cost of the the current forklift = $5K. We need to figure out the Equivalent annual cost of the new forklift.  Investment / Annuity Factor + annual Cost = EAC.   Therefore $20K / (1 - (1/(1.04^10 )) / 0.04 = $2,465.82 + annual Maintenance = $4,465.82 therefore it makes sense to replace the old machine.", "Here at Burpengary Dental Professionals we believe in providing an anxiety free, professional and affordable dental experience to all our patients. As the regions leading dentist we can handle all of your oral health needs including check ups, teeth cleaning, fillings, root canals, and much more. For professional service, great prices and a perfect smile, call us today.", "Most construction is not done in 110 degree heat and there are plenty of immigrants making, what to them are good wages, but compared to prior construction wages, not great. Just because you haven't met them means little.   And most people with the option to work for Apple as a programmer are not the people looking to be in construction. Same could be said of all the people looking for the jobs at Amazon warehouses this week.", "\"Brokers need to assess your level of competency to ensure that they don't allow you to \"\"bite off more than you can chew\"\" and find yourself in a bad situation. Some brokers ask you to rate your skills, others ask you how long you've been trading, it always varies based on broker. I use IB and they gave me a questionairre about a wide range of instruments, my skill level, time spent trading, trades per year, etc.  Many brokers will use your self-reported experience to choose what types of instruments you can trade. Some will only allow you to start with stocks and restrict access to forex, options, futures, etc. until you ask for readiness and, for some brokers, even pass a test of knowledge. Options are very commonly restricted so that you can only go long on an option when you own the underlying stock when you are a \"\"newbie\"\" and scale out from there. Many brokers adopt a four-tiered approach for options where only the most skilled traders can write naked options, as seen here. It's important to note that all of this information is self-reported and you are not legally bound to answer honestly in any way. If, for example, you are well aware of the risks of writing naked options and want to try it despite never trading one before, there is nothing stopping you from saying you've traded options for 10 years and be given the privilege by your broker. Of course, they're just looking out for your best interest, but you are by no means forced into the scheme if you do not wish to be.\"", "You are right sir. We both make good points and it just goes to show you how the MBA is NOT as prestigious anymore. I still think it should be. I'm getting paid worse than some BA's I know for Christ sake.", "Businesses from food to retail, all assume the risk of spoilage, theft, or any form of lost assets. It's just business. With that said, I'm sure your mom didn't imagine too many ways she could've lost out when opening her nailshop. I'm unsure what the policy is that you're looking for, but my best advice to you would be to cut your losses and learn from this.  Hopefully you and your mother can be sure to check or figure out a system to ensure customers don't lie about their payments. Good luck", "People normally hold precious metals as a protection against the whole system going down: massive inflation, lawlessness, etc.  If our whole government and financial system broke completely and we returned to a barter economy, then holding silver would likely turn out to be a good thing. However, precious metals are not very good hedges against individual calamity, like losing your job.  They are costly and inconvenient to sell and the price of these metals fluctuates wildly, so you could end up wanting to sell just when the metal isn't worth much. I'd say having some precious metal isn't unreasonable, but it should not make up a major portion of one's total net worth.  If you want protection against normal problems, especially as a person of limited means, start with an emergency savings account and paying down debt.  That way fixed costs will be less likely to turn an unfortunate turn of events into a personal catastrophe."]}
+{"query": "What do brokerage firms do?", "corpus": ["Off the top of my head, a broker: While there are stock exchanges that offer direct market access (DMA), they (nearly) always want a broker as well to back the first two points I made.  In that case the broker merely routes your orders directly to the exchange and acts as a custodian, but of course the details heavily depend on the exchange you're talking about. This might give you some insight: Direct Market Access - London Stock Exchange"], "neg": ["The US (in fact the global) banking industry is subject to Anti-Money Laundering & Counter-Terrorism funding laws, slowing down funds transfer eliminates a great deal of fraud.", "Banks and energy are fundamental requirements for modern civilisation, and there are plenty of both who contribute a great deal to society's well-being, but I do know where you are coming from.  The nature of the system we have is that the largest organisations tend to attract the most ruthless leaders who are prepared to screw over people and the environment in pursuit of their own selfish interest. Sociopaths cunning enough to not get caught out are rewarded and those who prioritise social benefits over the growth of their organisation are out-competed and make themselves less relevant. In theory, that should be kept in check by culture of social responsibility, a strong free press and good government, but those things have been eroding for a long time.  There are mutual funds who seek to invest only in ethical companies. Ethics are subjective, so there's always the possibility that you'd disagree with their choices, or they make errors of judgement, but it's a better option than a fund that only considers returns. You've got a better chance that it is run by people who think ethics are important, so they might not see their clients as muppets to be fleeced (like Goldman Sachs apparently does).  Alternatively, you could invest in a fund that contributes to growing a developing nation's economy, or only invests in renewable energy, or agriculture, or whatever you consider important.", "\"Private equity firms have a unique structure: The general partners (GP's) of the firm create funds and manage the investments of those funds.  Limited partners (LP's) contribute the capital to the funds, pay fees to the GP's, and then make money when the funds' assets grow. I believe the article is saying that ultra high net worth individuals participate in the real estate market by hiring someone to act as a general partner and manage the real estate assets.  They and their friends contribute the cash and get shares in the resulting fund. Usually this GP/LP structure is used when the funds purchase or invest in private companies, which is why it is referred to as \"\"private equity structure,\"\" but the same structure can be used to purchase and manage pools of real estate or any other investment asset.\"", "What options do I have? Realistically?  Get a regular full time job.  Work at it for a year or so and then see about buying a house. That said, I recently purchased a decent home.  I am self-employed and my income is highly erratic.  Due to how my clients pay me, my business might go a couple months with absolutely no deposits.   However, I've been at this for quite a few years.  So, even though my business income is erratic, I pay myself regularly once a month.  In order to close the deal with the mortgage company I had to provide 5 years worth of statements on my business AND my personal bank accounts.  Also I had about a 30% down payment.   This gave the bank enough info to realize that I could absolutely make the payments and we closed the deal. I'd say that if you have little to no actual financial history, don't have a solid personal income and don't have much of a down payment then you probably have no business buying a house at this point.  The first time something goes wrong (water heater, ac, etc) you'll be in a world of trouble.", "Is there a debit card accessing this account?  When you spend money on a debit card for certain item, including, but not limited to gas, restaurant, hotel, a bit extra is held in reserve. For example, a $100 restaurant charge might hold $125, to allow for a tip. (You're a generous tipper, right?) The actual sales slips my take days to reconcile.  It's for this reason that I've remarked how credit cards have their place. Using debit cards requires that one have more in their account than they need to spend, especially when taking a trip including hotel costs.", "The only reason I can think of is that the bonds are bought automatically by some investment pools, groups or institutions. That will stop very quickly once the management finds some other place to put the money.", "Car rental chains are so dependent on location/airport... I could tell you that I prefer Budget, cheap, easy to deal with, great cars, etc., but someone could reply to me and tell me Budget murdered their dog.  But with that said, I do prefer Budget in most areas... even if my first car choice isn't available, they have other great options:  1. Mustang convertible 2. Mustang 3. Charger RT 4. Camaro  Those are my preferences with them (in order).  Be warned though if you've never been in a Camaro... a Mustang feels like a fucking Suburban compared to a Camaro."]}
+{"query": "What is the minimum age for early retirement", "corpus": ["You can withdraw from CPP as early as 60. However, by doing so, you will permanently reduce the payments. The reduction is calculated based on average life expectancies. If you live for an average amount of time, that means you'll receive approximately the same total amount (after inflation adjustments) whether you start pulling from CPP at 60, 65, or even delay your pension later. People may have pensions through systems other than CPP. This is often true for big business or government work. They may work differently. People who retire at 55 with a pension are not getting their pension through CPP. A person retiring at 55 would need to wait at least five years to draw from the CPP, and ten years before he or she was eligible for a full pension through CPP. Canada also offers Old Age Security (OAS). This is only available once you are 65 years old or older, though this is changing. Starting in 2023, this will gradually change to 67 years or older. See this page for more details. As always, it's worth pointing out that the CPP and OAS will almost certainly not cover your full retirement expenses and you will need supplementary funds."], "neg": ["The best way to look at it is this: I would suspect most people would say no.  Most people do not have the time, skill, or risk tolerance to be able to leverage capital as large as the value of their own home. Remember that a 15-year fixed has a slightly lower interest rate than a 30-year fixed (difference of 0.5–1%).  If you won't have the discipline to invest every cent left in your pocket, then you are better off with the 15-year and the lower rate.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.ceps.eu/publications/eu-and-israel-partnership-and-weight-history) reduced by 87%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; &amp;quot;If I have to choose between a small Israel, without territories, but with peace, and a greater Israel without peace, I prefer a small Israel.\"\"  &gt; Netanyahu&amp;#039;s terms in office - he was prime minister in 1996-99 and again after 2009 - saw a sharp deterioration in relations with the EU. Seen from Jerusalem, the EU appears to be siding with the Palestinians; it is the Palestinian authority&amp;#039;s largest donor, and some member states, including France, were early champions of Palestinian statehood.  &gt; With Israel&amp;#039;s domestic politics having shifted dramatically to the right over the past decade or so, a loss of power for Netanyahu&amp;#039;s Likud party or the prime minister&amp;#039;s removal over an ongoing corruption investigation would change little with regards to attitudes towards the Palestinians, and hence relations with the EU. At the same time, the regional setting, with wars ongoing in Syria, Yemen, and Iraq; low-intensity conflict in Libya; and increasing competition between Saudi Arabia and Iran, shows little sign of improving.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6ywdm7/ceps_the_eu_and_israel_partnership_and_the_weight/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~206605 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*: **Israel**^#1 **Palestinian**^#2 **EU**^#3 **Israeli**^#4 **war**^#5\"", "\"No it does not.  Candlesticks really have nothing to do with this, a stock price can open different then the previous day's close. Examining the chart of TSLA provides an example it closed on 1/18 at 238.8 it opened on 1/19 at 243.7 In candlestick parlance is is known as a \"\"gap up\"\".\"", "\"The value of a stock ultimately is related to the valuation of a corporation.  As part of the valuation, you can estimate the cash flows (discounted to present time) of the expected cash flows from owning a share.  This stock value is the so-called \"\"fundamental\"\" value of a stock.  What you are really asking is, how is the stock's market price and the fundamental value related?  And by asking this, you have implicitly assumed they are not the same.   The reason that the fundamental value and market price can diverge is that simply, most shareholders will not continue holding the stock for the lifespan of a company (indeed some companies have been around for centuries).  This means that without dividends or buybacks or liquidations or mergers/acquisitions, a typical shareholder cannot reasonably expect to recoup their share of the company's equity. In this case, the chief price driver is the aggregate expectation of buyers and sellers in the marketplace, not fundamental evaluation of the company's balance sheet.   Now obviously some expectations are based on fundamentals and expert opinions can differ, but even when all the experts agree roughly on the numbers, it may be that the market price is quite a ways away from their estimates.  An interesting example is given in this survey of behavioral finance.  It concerns Palm, a wholly-owned subsidiary of 3Com.  When Palm went public, its shares went for such a high price, they were significantly higher than 3Com's shares.  This mispricing persisted for several weeks. Note that this facet of pricing is often given short shrift in standard explanations of the stock market.  It seems despite decades of academic research (and Nobel prizes being handed out to behavioral economists), the knowledge has been slow to trickle down to laymen, although any observant person will realize something is amiss with the standard explanations.   For example, before 2012, the last time Apple paid out dividends was 1995.  Are we really to believe that people were pumping up Apple's stock price from 1995 to 2012 because they were waiting for dividends, or hoping for a merger or liquidation?  It doesn't seem plausible to me, especially since after Apple announced dividends that year, Apple stock ended up taking a deep dive, despite Wall Street analysts stating the company was doing better than ever.  That the stock price reflects expectations of the future cash flows from the stock is a thinly-disguised form of the Efficient Market Hypothesis (EMH), and there's a lot of evidence contrary to the EMH (see references in the previously-linked survey).  If you believe what happened in Apple's case was just a rational re-evaluation of Apple stock, then I think you must be a hard-core EMH advocate. Basically (and this is elaborated at length in the survey above), fundamentals and market pricing can become decoupled.  This is because there are frictions in the marketplace making it difficult for people to take advantage of the mispricing.  In some cases, this can go on for extended periods of time, possibly even years.  Part of the friction is caused by strong beliefs by market participants which can often shift pressure to supply or demand.  Two  popular sayings on Wall Street are, \"\"It doesn't matter if you're right.  You have to be right at the right time.\"\"  and \"\"It doesn't matter if you're right, if the market disagrees with you.\"\"  They suggest that you can make the right decision with where to put your money, but being \"\"right\"\" isn't what drives prices.  The market does what it does, and it's subject to the whims of its participants.\"", "Why?  I fly on a regular basis and I've never had a single issue with TSA agents.  With the new machines, going through security is fast, effective, and painless.  The stories you see on the internet are almost always from someone who purposely created a confrontation because they already had an agenda to prove.", "Annual sales dived five straight years, and the company closed 450 stores. Then they tried to merge with Office Depot. That didn't work. So by going private with Sycamore Partners Staples they have an opportunity to revamp their businesses away Wall Street pressure. Staples is being sold at a fraction of the price.", "Loans are indeed a bitch. You should make enough to cover your expenses and live comfortably. Any salary above that is at your discretion. You shouldn't feel pressured to compete for highest salary because if you're happy, it really doesn't matter."]}
+{"query": "Recommendation on Options Back Testing tool please", "corpus": ["Power Options is one such example of what you seek, not cheap, but one good trade will recover a year's fee.  There's a lot you can do with the stock price alone as most options pricing will follow Black Scholes.  Keep in mind, this is a niche, these questions, while interesting to me, generate little response here."], "neg": ["&gt;  I would have to spend at least a few more years in school rather than a single semester to get a comp sci major instead of the minor.  Exactly. And the benefits are priced appropriately. As in, you will get it off a minor about what you put in - not much.", "Under US law, if you clearly have more than half of a torn bill it is worth its full value; the smaller piece is worth nothing... except that having both halves makes the banking system much happier, since it prevents some particularly stupid counterfeiting attempts. So this proposal wouldn't be cheat-proof unless the cut is close enough to the middle to make determining 51% difficult. And I'd like to see you try to explain to a bank how so many bills were cut in half... (This is more normally an issue when money has been damaged unintentionally, of course.)", "How is the government paid for these things? How is this handled without taxes? Are you suggesting that the people pay for all of this because they supposedly derive all the benefit while the businesses supposedly derive none from infrastructure.  Yes public roads may not be restricted by entities except in safety measures and compliance with DOT regulations. It is illegal for company A to blockade or otherwise make unavailable a public road to keep company B or the general public from using it.   These type of rules also apply to communication lines and power infrastructure and are designed to decrease duplication and ensure that selected infrastructure is appropriate for the area.", "I apologize in advance if this seems heartless, Lord knows many on this site would consider me such, but it is my intention to be helpful. Rhetorically: Given your disability, could you find a different line of work that would have earn you a decent income?  You mentioned fighting for disability for 5 years.  Could that time have been spent creating a different occupation?  Could you still do so? As you mention these are not large numbers prior to disability, but post-disability they are overwhelming.  The tone of your post suggests that you feel trapped and helpless, and I really hate that for anyone.  In some ways you are so close, just another $300/month puts you in the black!    My encouragement would be to find a way to make this work.  Find a way to earn more and you can keep your house and car.", "&gt; loses from WaPo to reduce his tax bill  That's not even how taxes work! Christ, isn't this an economics subreddit? You're really out of your element here, bud. That would be the absolute stupidest strategy of all time.", "We play Cash Flow and Cashflow for Kids by Robert Kiyosaki. Our kids love it.", "\"I would hold off on making that threat (closing your account). First, because as others have said, it's not likely to help. And second, assuming you're willing to make good on that threat, you should only play that card as a final absolute last resort, because if it fails, and you close your account, there is little to nothing else you can try to get what you want. First, talk one-on-one with a personal banker at your local BA branch. You might be surprised at how helpful they can be. Next, try talking to customer service on the phone. After that, you might try sending a letter to corporate HQ. A lot depends on the particular \"\"feature\"\" you are talking about and why they removed it. It could be that 1) the bank finds the feature is just too costly provide for free, 2) there may be a technical reason why they can no longer provide it, 3) it could be as simple as that few to none of their customers (excluding you) are actually using the feature, or 4) it could be that due to changing regulation, or market forces, no bank is offering that feature anymore. Also, while they may not care specifically about your business, the local branch has an incentive to not drive customers away if it can be reasonably avoided.\""]}
+{"query": "How to use stocks certificate as a gift to a teenager?", "corpus": ["Yes, depending on what you're trying to achieve. If its just a symbolic gift - you can use a service like this. There are several companies providing this service, look them up, but the prices are fairly the same. You'll end up getting a real stock certificate, but it will cost a lot of overhead (around $40 to get the certificate, and then another $40 to deposit it into a brokerage account if you want to sell it on a stock exchange). So although the certificate is real and the person whose name on it is a full-blown shareholder, it doesn't actually have much value (unless you buy a Google or Apple stock, where the price is much much higher than the fees). Take into account that it takes around 2 months for the certificate to be issued and mailed to you, so time accordingly. Otherwise, you can open a custodial brokerage account, and use it to buy stocks for the minor. Both ways are secure and legal, each for its own purpose and with its own fees."], "neg": ["interesting and good points BUT,   1- the S&amp;P e-mini has plenty of liquidity for me and all of us here at reddit. idont think that we could move/influence its price with our trades.   2- i dont have the historical of bid-ask or tick by tick, it is backtested on 1min chart, entering the trade at a close of a 1min bar and subtracting a commission/slippage of a tick or two per trade. your thoughts ?", "Aaah, okay that makes much more sense now. Thank you for clarifying.  I completely see what you mean. And I second a lot of what you just said. You didn’t exactly answer my question but that’s okay — I very much enjoyed what you’ve said anyways and it was interesting to hear your opinion and thoughts on such a matter. Thanks :)", "\"A DCF includes changes in working capital which is a source or use of cash.  I also don't like your characterization of enterprise value as \"\"cashless\"\" because it's also \"\"debtless\"\".  It's capital structure independent -- just like a DCF is.  **That's the common theme.**\"", "I doubt you're going to find anywhere that will give you free outgoing wires unless you're depositing a huge amount of money like $500K or more. An alternative would be to find a bank that offers everything else you want and use XETrade for very low cost online wires. I've used them in the past and can recommend their services. Most banks won't charge for incoming wires. I have accounts at E*Trade Bank that don't charge any fees and I can do everything online. You might want to check them out. E*Trade also offers global trading accounts which allow you to have accounts denominated in a few foreign currencies (EUR, JPY, GBP, CAD and HKD I think). I don't think there is a fee for moving money between the different currencies. If your goal is simply to diversify your money into different currencies, you could deposit money there instead of wiring it to other banks.", "Especially since the 2007 UCS Falcon has been selling for over $1000 on ebay pretty much since it was discontinued.  There's clearly a market and it's not like it's the only falcon in town, the 75105 is $150. I don't understand why people are getting bothered by the price tag of the largest commercially available lego set ever.", "I went to Sears on Dec 22nd because it's very close to my house. I just wanted to get a few toys for my nieces/nephews.  Their toy section was smaller than the one at CVS/Walgreens.  What the fuck kind of department store doesn't carry toys.   They had less than 20 different items.", "&gt; A significant proportion of recent economic growth has relied on borrowed money -- today standing at a dizzying 325 percent of global gross domestic product. Debt allows society to accelerate consumption, as borrowings are used to purchase something today against the promise of future repayment. Unfunded entitlements to social services, health care and pensions increase those liabilities. The bill for these commitments will soon become unsustainable, as demographic changes make it more difficult to meet."]}
+{"query": "Responsible investing - just a marketing trick?", "corpus": ["\"You are correct that, barring an equity capital raise, your money doesn't actually end up in the company. However, interest in their stock can help a company in other ways; Management/board members hopefully own shares or options themselves, thus knowing that \"\"green\"\" policies are favorable for the stock price (as your fund might buy shares) can be quite an incentive for them to go green(er).  Companies with above average company share performance are also often viewed as financially healthy and so creditors tend to charge lower interest for companies with good share performance.  Lastly, a high share price makes a company difficult to take over (as all those shares have to be acquired) and at the same time makes it easier for the company to perform takeovers themselves as they can finance such acquisitions by issuing more of their own shares. There is also the implication that money flowing towards such green companies is money flowing out of/away from polluting companies, for these \"\"dirty\"\" companies the inverse of the previous points can hold true. Of course on the other hand there is quite an argument to be made that large enough \"\"green\"\" funds should actually buy substantial positions in companies with poor environmental records and steer the company towards greener policies but that might be a hard sell to investors.\""], "neg": ["\"I hate to be the guy that says this but if you are indeed competing in the CFAI Research Challenge it is probably important. Remember you cannot use CFA as a noun (CFA's) you can only use it as an adjective ie a CFA charterholder.  As far as you question, what was provided below is pretty much all you need. Security Analysis, anything from the NYU professor and Greenwald stuff (although Greenwald, like someone already mentioned, is balance sheet focused) will get you where you need to go.  I am not sure what you mean by \"\"exotic valuation\"\" methods. As far as I know, the three most accepted and used valuation models by practitioners are the DCF model, the multiple model and the residual income model.  DCF uses short term cash flows and a terminal value discounted to today at some discount rate. The multiple model puts some multiple on earnings, book value, cash flow to arrive at a fair value. The residual model is the opposite of the DCF. One starts with the assets book value, then accrues all income generated in excess of WACC from all future periods.  Find some CFAI Level 2 books on equity and bond valuation. They pretty much cover it all.  And for a closing note, to perform well in investing and valuing companies it is not about what valuation model you use. Focus on WHY an asset should be worth what you think it is worth, not HOW you get to some valuation of that asset. Just my two cents.\"", "&gt; They are outsourcing R &amp; D and just buying innovation  Yeah that was the impression I got, but it seems unsustainable!  I have to wonder what their horizon is like for breaking even on their investment. And since the barrier to entry for a new dating app/service is relatively low, it seems like a huge risk given how easily a new startup could skim off their user base.  Unlike Facebook which has infiltrated all aspects of peoples' lives, dating apps have a very narrow focus, and users can get sick of any given app very quickly.", "When Obama came into office we were running a roughly $1.16 trillion deficit, and when he left office it was only $600 billion.  Yes, the total debt kept going up because he never got that number to zero, but he made a lot of progress.  Trump, by contrast, seems determined to blow up the deficit, just has the last Republican president did.  And the Republican before that.  And the Republican before that...  EDIT: Thanks for the gold kind stranger!", "\"I wouldn't worry about \"\"it probably wouldn't be best time for withdrawal\"\" aspect too much.  With a bit of planning and organization, you could cash out investments held in one country and have them reinvested in another one in a matter of days (if not less), minimising your \"\"time out of the market\"\".  If the markets are cheap when you sell, the chances are you'll be able to buy in again at much the same price.  There's a small chance you miss out on the markets lurching upwards, but you might just as easily miss out on a fall and come out ahead.  Old saying: \"\"time in the market is more important than market timing\"\". Tax it's hard to discuss without mentioning specific countries.  e.g if you were resident in the UK you'd probably want to invest within an \"\"ISA\"\" tax-free wrapper; gains are tax free and there's no penalty for withdrawing when you leave.  No idea what equivalents there are around Europe. Interestingly there seems to be some recognition by the EU that this sort of thing is an issue for an increasingly mobile workforce; was recently some news of plans for a pan-European pension savings vehicle.\"", "Banks make money by charging fees on products and charging interest on loans. If you keep close to a $0 average balance in your account, and they aren't charging you any fees, then yes, your account is not profitable for them. That's ok. It's not costing them much to keep you as a customer, and some day you may start keeping a balance with them or apply for a loan. The bank is taking a chance that you will continue to be a loyal customer and will one day become profitable for them. Just be on the lookout for a change in their fee structure. Sometimes banks drop customers or start charging fees in cases like yours.", "\"I'm a mathematician, not an accountant.  But my feeling has been that the distinction between Asset and Liability is mainly a sign convention, and comes from a wish to avoid negative numbers. Suppose you take out a loan for $1000 and deposit the proceeds in your bank account.  Under normal accounting conventions, your bank account is an Asset and the loan is a Liability.  After the loan, Bank has a balance of 1000 and Loan has a balance of 1000.  You can compute your net worth by adding all Assets and subtracting all Liabilities (so in this case your net worth remains 0). If you treat Loan as an Asset account, then after taking out the loan, you should give it a balance of -1000.  Under this convention, you have lots of negative numbers to deal with everywhere, which I suspect early accountants would have found inconvenient.  The Asset/Liability convention means you only need to deal with negative numbers in unusual situations (overdrawn bank account, overpaid loan, etc). Likewise, in theory you could treat Expense accounts as negative Income. But I'm not sure why you feel the need to reinvent the wheel by \"\"simplifying\"\" double-entry accounting like this.  The standard conventions are not that complicated, and their major advantage is that they're standard: other people will be able to understand your books if they ever need to.  (Say you want to hire somebody to do your taxes at some point: if your books are kept in your own idiosyncratic system, their job will be at best error-prone and at worst impossible.)   It's a bit like a proposal to simplify English spelling: shur, a sistum waar yu rit lik this mit bee simplur in sum abstrakt sens, but if nobudee els can reed it eezulee, it izunt ackshyualee veree yusful.\"", "I own less than 1BTC, and I think this is a bubble about to burst but it could go either way. After all, a small purchase of bitcoins three years ago paid for my brand new Toyota Sequoia this summer. You never know."]}
+{"query": "Benjamin Graham: Minimum Size of the company", "corpus": ["Smaller markets can actually be more volatile so it's not a good idea to lower Graham's criteria for them. The only real adjustment possible is inflation adjustment. $100 million in 1973 United States works out to $500 million today based on the difference in CPI/Inflation from 1973. This number will be different for other markets where the rate of inflation since 1973 has been different. So the real question to ask is - what is to $100 million in the United States in 1973 worth today in your market? Source: http://www.serenitystocks.com/how-build-complete-benjamin-graham-portfolio"], "neg": ["\"Seriously whole foods accounts for maybe 5% of market share in the grocery industry. I feel like I have seen a lot of \"\"writers/reporters/bloggers\"\" trying to paint amazon as taking over groceries and retail, but it's just a huge overreaction. Just like the stock market overreacted to amazon purchasing whole foods, this is just another overreaction.\"", "This can make a difference of a few points. When your balance is reported on a monthly basis to the bureaus that current balance is used to determine your utilization. Keeping it paid down will  help in this case. If you are monitoring your credit regularly, you can see what time of the month your balance is reported and pay before then (just make sure you include enough padding to be sure your payment clears before the reporting date--normally only a business day or so, but weekends can throw it all off).", "See that's where you're wrong. It's NOT a traditional game of musical chairs.  It's musical chairs where anyone with the right idea and ambition can build their own chair and take a seat!  The pie is NOT fixed.  That's what's so great about free market capitalism. But with that comes responsibility for your own life, which apparently, and unfortunately, has turned out to be overly difficult for an increasing portion of the population.", "I'm a two time Dungeons and Dragons World Champion - or whatever.  There are as many ways to answer your question as there are ways to be competitive. But that's not the point. I think you're doing yourself a disservice by employing a pop-psychology approach that has very little value in evaluating potential candidates. You'll succeed in picking out who shares your interest in sports, but little else. Even the famous [Meyers-Briggs Test](Meyershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Reliability) has been generally dismissed as unreliable.  Seeking information in a roundabout way is like shooting an arrow into the air and hoping to hit the bullseye. Just aim directly for the target and you'll get better results. If you want to know if someone is competitive, ask them if they're competitive. - explain why a competitive nature is important. Complete transparency and honesty is always the best approach.   Any trained psychologist will tell you (and I know several) that your method is not only ineffective, but recklessly assumptive.", "&gt; Prove it, name an example country that is now a devastated wasteland for providing decent wages alone.  He can't. In fact, most European nations mandate a much higher minimum wage than what is being proposed in the United States; and do so while maintaining a higher standard of living for the average citizen. The argument to depress wages is nothing but right-wing propaganda, enthusiastically supported by employers.", "The free market will determine exchange rates.   But only sort of. If anyone leaves the euro expect and immediate mother-of-all-bank-runs. Then the new currency will begin to trade both officially and unofficially and eventually a market clearing price will be set. Whether that lands on an officially pegged rate or at a discount to that rate is a total crapshoot and not even worth trying to predict.", "The rental industry is seasonal. They purchase additional inventory (vehicles) for their busy seasons and sell the extra inventory afterwards."]}
+{"query": "Pay via Debit Card or Bank's portal", "corpus": ["There are reward points that you have already mentioned. Some banks also give reward points for netbanking transfer, although very few and less than debit card. On a fraudulent site, debit card adds a layer, if compromised, easy to change. i.e just hot list the card, get a new card issued. Netbanking quite a few banks have incorrect implementation and difficult to change the login ID / User ID. The dispute resolution mechanism is well established as there is master or visa network involved. The ease of doing transaction is with netbanking as for card one has to remember 16 digits, expiry, cvv. The entire process of card usage is multiparty, on slow connection if something goes wrong, it takes 3 days to figure out. In netbanking it is instantaneous. You just login to bank and see if the debit has gone through."], "neg": ["There are entire 5-person teams dedicated to forecasting *individual products* at major companies that roll up to product class teams, which then roll up to balance sheet forecasting. Since all of those companies have major capital markets operations, these things get huge. The real forecasters are spending 10-14 hours a day, year-round using massive models to come up with competent forecasts. I did this for a few years, it's leaps and bounds more than applying multiples.   I hope you get a lot of participation, but you have to see the flaw in this dataset. I think this would be better done by honing your focus in on what forecasting you're talking about. It's a very, very broad field.", "Ally Bank is a good online only account.  They reimburse any ATM Fees you may occur.  I have both checking and savings, with both Ally and ING Direct.  I don't know about having 25 total accounts - seems like overkill to me.  I do something similar though - I get direct deposit into one account, then transfer the average bill amount each pay to a different account that I never touch other than for the allotted bills.  It works well, especially for Utilities that are inflated seasonally. What do you use to mange the 25 accounts?  I use Quicken, but I don't have 25 accounts...yet.", "You are in a difficult situation because of US regulation, that is much more demanding to fulfill than in EU or rest of the world.  Second, Interactive Brokers stopped serving FX for US clients. Third, EU brokers - like Saxo Bank - don't accept US clients: Almost any private client can open an account with Saxo Bank, although there are few exceptions. You can’t open an account if you are US, Iranian or North Korean resident - Brokerchooser: Saxo Bank Review Working for Brokerchooser, I would say you are limited to Oanda or Gain Capital. The latter is an ECN broker, and operates through other white label partners, you could try Forex.com also.", "\"I always liked the answer that in the short term, the market is a voting machine and in the long term the market is a weighing machine. People can \"\"vote\"\" a stock up or down in the short term.   In the long term, typically, the intrinsic value of a company will be reflected in the price. It's a rule of thumb, not perfect, but it is generally true. I think it's from an old investing book that talks about \"\"Mr. Market\"\".   Maybe it's from one of Warren Buffet's annual letters.    Anyone know? :)\"", "(I'm assuming this is a publicly traded company, if not, things are somewhat different.) The objection that management might have that flows out of the fact that the pool of available options is fixed in size for the current year. (Or maybe several years depending on how they structured the compensation plan.) Within that pool they have allocated some to various key individuals and then some to to the ESOP pool. They don't want requests for more options than they planned to issue in that period. Suppose that many people notice that the companies prospects are good and offer to forgo some salary for options. This could easily eat up the whole pool and leave nothing for the rest of the year. If I was management here, I would want to structure it so that I had control over how many options were granted so that everyone eligible got some and the pool lasted until the end of the year.", "There's an unavoidable risk of defects in any complex factory-built piece of equipment, price and quality notwithstanding.  Which is also a great justification for an infinite mile drivetrain warranty.  The only reason other car companies don't offer such a thing is because consumers have never had any leverage to ask for it.  Tesla does it because they can.", "The original investors and founders own them. Think about it this way - When you hear that an IPO priced at $10 opened at $50, is that 'good or 'bad'? Of course, it depends who you are. If you are the guy that got them at $10, you're happy. If you are the founder of the company, you are thinking the banker you paid to determine a market price for the IPO failed. Big. He blew it, basically as you just sold your company for 20% of the perceived value. But, instead of selling all the shares, just sell, say, 5%. Now, the IPO opening price is just a way to understand the true value of your company while keeping 95% of the upside once the market settles down to a regular trading pattern. You can slowly sell these shares into the market or you can use them as cash to take over other companies by buying with these shares instead of actual cash.  Either way, the publicly traded shares should trade based on the total value of the company and the fraction they represent."]}
+{"query": "Historic prices for currencies, commodities,", "corpus": ["My guess it's a legal agreement between Yahoo and data provider on what data can be stored, displayed and for how long. Check out this list of data providers"], "neg": ["\"Why is nobody providing a service that is basically: Give me your money. I will invest it as I see fit. A year later I will return the capital to you, plus half of any profits or losses. This means that if your capital under my management ends up turning a profit, I will keep half of those profits, but if I lose you money, I will cover half those losses. Because they can already make lots of money by just charging people an unconditional fee and not having to cover their losses.  Why take on the risk of having to cover your losses when they can just take a percentage of your assets and stick you with any losses? In addition, as Charles E. Grant mentioned in a comment on another answer, if a person has both sufficient capital to cover your losses and sufficient confidence in their investing acumen that they don't think they will have to do so, they have little need for your money.  Rather than take half the gains on your money, they will invest their own money (they must have some, or else they can't guarantee your losses) and take all the gains. Your scheme would only be plausible as a partnership between a person with investing skills but little capital, and another person with ample capital and less skill.  In that case, the investment whiz could genuinely benefit from access to the bankroller's capital.  As quid noted in chat, this does exist in the form of ad-hoc private equity arrangements between individuals.  However, such a setup is unlikely to exist as an \"\"off-the-shelf product\"\" marketed at retail investors, because financial institutions have more capital than any individual retail investor -- and, more generally, anyone with sufficient skill to pull this off will (at least in theory) quickly accumulate enough capital that they can negotiate a less risky payment plan.\"", "http://www.vistageconnect.com -- Who are you speaking to? Just who is your marketing message trying to reach? Marketing and branding expert David Avrin explains how taking a bit of time to get to better know your customers can help yield better results for your overall marketing efforts.", "There are two different liabilities here. You signed, so the bank can rightfully demand the money from you. Even though it is not your debt. You signed, so you have to pay.  However, it's really the business that is responsible for the account, so you can ask the business to refund the money. You might ask them to pay the bank instead if you haven't paid yet.", "#2 is really important.    Western tourists hate getting assaulted by a bunch of shouting people who are all trying to get their attention and sell them something.  It's really stressful.   You just need to be calm, quiet, smile, make eye contact, and speak in normal English to get attention.  Some distinctive/visible clothes/hat/trademark accessory could be helpful just to make you stand out a bit and be memorable.         I would get a tshirt printed with the front explaining your services/prices to major destinations and the back with important info that can be read while driving.", "The KOHLER engine is designed to help you achieve more than you imagined. They are great engines manufactured with obsession for perfection and performance. A KOHLER engine is crafted for strong, dusty and rugged application, where it can deliver the demands of an operation, enduring long hours of patient rigorous work.", "Yes, you do. Unless you actually donate it, the loan will be repaid and as such - is an asset for you. On your taxes you report the interest you got paid for the loan. You can claim the interest as a charitable deduction, if you don't effectively charge any (IRS dictates minimum statutory interests for arm-length loan transactions).", "In today’s world, mobile apps have taken center-stage in our lives in many ways - shopping, ordering food, looking for services, checking out reviews, testing new products, booking tickets for events, using social media, reading news. Read full story."]}
+{"query": "Can I negotiate a credit card settlement by stopping payments?", "corpus": ["\"This would be on your credit for ~8 years.   If it goes according to your plan, it will take 6 months to a year to do the settlement by getting behind enough to let it go to collections and then settling.   The write-off will then be on your credit record for 7 years before it \"\"falls off\"\". Your cash out refinance would have to cover you for at least the next 8 years to be valuable. And you have a lot of assumptions to get there: In short, there's one way (or only a few ways) this works out well in your favor.  There are many ways that this has the chance to hurt you.    I don't like \"\"investments\"\" with those kind of odds.\""], "neg": ["\"Every company with a \"\"Strong Culture\"\" Ie Office bars and happy hours, nap rooms, pool tables, zen/mediating rooms, etc,etc seem to be the most successful. Its unfortunate that they people pay for no work/life balance... but at least they get to get drunk in the office...\"", "\"Stocks are regarded as an inflation hedge because when your money is worth less, everything else is worth more. i.e. Stocks are more expensive (go up) simply because your money is worth less, but not because of better earnings across individual companies. So that general idea can effect sentiment, whereby if everyone believes it then more people buy stocks if they think there will be a lot of inflation. But it doesn't explain actual behavior (whether \"\"more\"\" people buy, hold or sell.) It's worth noting that individual companies and stocks also may be adversely affected by inflation, since their own assets or accounting may already be outside of the currency and/or they may already be engaging in their own hedging.\"", "Are you allowed to have two personal current accounts with a debit card attached to each one? Yes, you may have as many current accounts you want, but you should ask why should I have more than one. It is cumbersome and time consuming to keep track of ongoing incoming credits and outgoing debits. Open to bank fraud too, if you aren't careful. If yes, can a sole trader in the UK use the second personal account for business transactions? Yes, but no payments to the business. At the end of the year you file you P11D, even if you have a business bank account. You would need to justify the expenses by keeping the bills and stuff. As it will be a personal account, you have to little more careful, not to mix personal and business expenses.  If you are allowed to use a second personal account for business transactions, then why would someone choose to open a business bank account, where you have to pay? What are the benefits? First of all no company will pay into you personal account, for any transactions, they need to pay you. They will only pay to an account registered with the business, with whom they are dealing with. Benefits are you have your business expenses sorted out in one account and personal expenses in other. Pure business expenses comes out of the business account, rather than from your personal purse, keeps the accounts smooth. No need to sort out expenses at the end of each quarter or at the end of each month.", "Cash has zero value until it is transformed into something material.  Cash hoarders realize no improvement in their lifestyle by gaining more cash than they need.  If corporations are already so flush with cash they only inflate the stock market, why would further tax breaks improve anything?  An inflated stock market only improves income for very few.  People who need money will spend it and put it back into circulation.  People will not hoard cash if they know more will show up regardless of their ability to perform.  Less financial pressure and less resentment of the rich for their preferential treatment would create a more positive attitude among the population and improve productivity.  A happier work force is a more productive work force.  People should only work part time anyway so they can have a life outside of work to enjoy their lives while they have the health to do it.  Slaving your life away until you can't do the things you always wanted to do does not improve a person's outlook.  Life according to me.  Was a reduction in unemployment compensation, medicare, medicade and SNAP payments included in the study?  There may be a reduction in spending on crime and addiction as well.", "I would say that the three most important skills are: Note that some costs are hidden. So, for example, a mutual fund investing in other countries than where you live in may mean the investment target country charges a certain percentage of dividends going to the mutual fund. The mutual fund company doesn't usually want to tell you this. There may be clever financial instruments (derivatives) that can be used to avoid this, but they are not without their problems. If you diversify into equities at low cost, you will have a very wealthy future. I would recommend you to compare two options: ...and pick from these options the cheaper one. If your time has a high value, and you wish to take this value into account, I would say it is almost always far better option to choose an index fund. Whatever you do, don't pay for active management! It is a mathematical truth that before costs, actively managed investments will yield the same return than indexed investments. However, the costs are higher in active management, so you will have less total return. Don't believe that good historical return would imply good future return. However, if for some reason you see an index fund that continuously loses to the index more than by the amount of stated costs, beware!", "I go out often to restaurants, and I've never had to wait more than 20 minutes with a reservation, and it's extremely rare than I have to wait more than 5 minutes.  If you had to wait 2 hours you were not speaking up for yourself, and that's a horribly run restaurant.", "\"I'm told that the analysis and arriving at an answer with a good attitude is the correct response and not the precise answer.  Bad answer : What? That's impossible, go fuck yourself, asshole. Better: Well, I have a Expedition and its cabin is about six feet across, ten feet deep and four feet high, so lets say 400,000 sq inches (rounding means your cool, right). About a third of the space is taken up by seats and what not, so 275,000 sq inches free. Lets assuming we pack the balls in there tight from the sun roof. I figure a tennis ball takes up 4/3(3.1416)2.5\"\" each, so lets say 10. So 27,500. I'd order 30,000  to be safe and have a well stuffed SUV. Do you want the engine compartment full too? Too much: Same as above but \"\"so to test this I was able to cram 27895 without damaging any of the plastic SUV parts, and allowing for the sun roof to close.\""]}
+{"query": "My bank wants to lower my credit limit on my credit card. Will this impact me negatively?", "corpus": ["No, it will have no negative impact on getting a mortgage. You are building up a history with regular payments and are not carrying a balance on the card each month. Your ability to get a mortgage will ultimately be based on other things. Money Saving Expert has a good guide on what will affect your credit score. A further discussion on the topic that backs up that what a mortgage company is interested in is affordability and a stable history. They really don't care about utilisation ratios.  (Though might be spooked by almost maxed out cards - sign of poor spending control, or large unused limits - too easy to go into bad debt.)"], "neg": ["\"Your logic breaks down because you assume that you are the only market participant on your side of the book and that the participant on the other side of the book has entered a market order. Here's what mostly happens: Large banks and brokerages trading with their own money (we call it proprietary or \"\"prop\"\" trading) will have a number of limit (and other, more exotic) orders sitting on both sides of the trading book waiting to buy or sell at a price that they feel is advantageous. Some of these orders will have sat on the book for many months if not years. These alone are likely to prevent your limit orders executing as they are older so will be hit first even if they aren't at a better price.  On more liquid stocks there will also be a number of participants entering market orders on both sides of the book whose orders are matched up before limit orders are matched with any market orders. This means that pairing of market orders, at a better price, will prevent your limit order executing. In many markets high frequency traders looking for arbitrage opportunities (for example) will enter a few thousand orders a minute, some of these will be limit orders just off touch, others will be market orders to be immediately executed. The likelihood that your limit order, being as it is posited way off touch, is hit with all those traders about is minimal. On less liquid stocks there are market makers (large institutional traders) who effectively set the bid and offer prices by being willing to provide liquidity and fill the market orders at a temporary loss to themselves and will, in most cases, have limit orders set to provide this liquidity that will be close to touch. They are paid to do this by the exchange and inter-dealer brokers through their fees structure. They will fill the market orders that would hit your limit if they think that it would provide more liquidity in such a way that it fulfils their obligations. Only if there are no other participants looking to trade on the instrument at a better price than your limit (which, of course they can see unless you enter it into a dark pool) AND there is a market order on the opposite side of the book will your limit order be instantaneously be hit, executed, and move the market price.\"", "While historical performance is not necessarily indicative of future performance, I like to look at the historical performance of the markets for context. Vanguard's portfolio allocation models is one source for this data. Twenty years is a long term timeline. If you're well diversified in passively managed index funds, you should be positioned well for the future.  You've lost nothing until it's realized or you sell. Meanwhile, you still own an asset that has value. As Warren Buffet says, buy low and sell high.", "My first thought is: email? Are you sure it is legitimate? Verify everything. Assuming it is legitimate:", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-09-26/mike-novogratz-is-set-for-comeback-with-crytocurrency-hedge-fund) reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Novogratz will put up $150 million of his own money and plans to raise $350 million more by January, mainly from family offices, wealthy individuals and fellow hedge fund managers, said a person familiar with his plans.  &gt; For Novogratz, 52, the fund marks a comeback to professional money management after humbling losses at Fortress and almost two years of self-imposed exile from Wall Street.  &gt; With a $500 million hedge fund, Novogratz will be able to capture trading opportunities that require more scale, as well as wield influence with developers, entrepreneurs and regulators.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/72ofsc/mike_novogratz_is_forming_a_500mil_crypto_hedge/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~217166 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*: **Novogratz**^#1 **fund**^#2 **trade**^#3 **bitcoin**^#4 **way**^#5\"", "Lucasfilm is more than just Star Wars, they also have Industrial Light and Magic (still one of the top VFX companies in the business) as well as Skywalker Sound and LucasArts, a respectable game division. Even if Lucasfilm didn't own Star Wars, they would still have enough valuable assets to justify a large purchase by Disney.", "\"What this means is this: The authors of the website claim they have calculated the cost that it will take to \"\"fully fund the Medicare, Medicare Prescription Drug Program, Social Security, Military and civil servant pensions.\"\" They claim that the government will have to spend $114T to do the things it is currently promising to do, and it hasn't set aside the money to do it. That's what is meant by an 'unfunded mandate'. Firstly I would take with a grain of salt the calculations of any website which claims the US is a kleptocracy in its title. You know they are coming to this with an agenda. Secondly this is money that the government has not actually spent. The government doesn't owe this money to anyone, and it is absolutely untrue that \"\"you are responsible along with everyone else to pay this back\"\". The worst they can claim is that the government will, one day, have to spend it - assuming that nothing else changes in that time. A government could pass a law that reduced Medicare, or raised taxes, and the 'unfunded mandate' would simply go away. Thirdly the calculation must assume a time period over which the money is spent. But the site carefully doesn't specify it. They can make the amount bigger or smaller as they choose, just by changing the time period over which it is calculated. To give an example, an unfunded mandate is a bit like enrolling in a four year college course without knowing how you are going to pay for it. You've said you are going to spend money on tuition - you may even have promised your mother you will finish the course - but you can in fact drop out if you choose and you don't owe anything for courses you haven't taken yet.  Some unfunded mandates can be legal obligations, but this isn't one. And in neither case are they money you actually owe. That's not to say that unfunded mandates are not a cause for concern - they represent a discrepancy between what a government says it will do, and what it can currently afford to do. As an illustration of how this works, you can look at either Russia ten years ago or Greece right now. All the expenditures in these ares are being cut. People are certainly angry, but there is nothing they can do to force the government to make those payments.\"", "\"The price movements of Bitcoin are actually cogent in at least one sense:  Why in the world would somebody use bitcoin right now to buy anything?  That $100 item you bought today represents (to most) a huge opportunity cost as far as \"\"missed returns in the future\"\" go.  It's basically a dollar-deflationary cycle, which we know to be corrosive to an economy:  You don't buy today what you expect to be cheaper tomorrow.  That's highly problematic for bitcoin as far as business adoption is concerned.\""]}
+{"query": "First time consultant, doubts on Taxation", "corpus": ["1.If the compensation that I receive is over 10 lakhs, how much would be deducted as tax No tax will be deducted by the company. You have to calculate the tax and pay in Advance by yourself. There are quite a few Banks that give you online facility to pay your tax. There is no service tax. Otherwise the tax slabs are right. The current budget has slightly revised the tax brackets. 2.So are these the right taxes and % that Need to be paid? If not do let me know the correct deductions. Yes. Revised brackets for financial year 2014-2015 are NIL for first 2.5 lakhs. Other brackets are unchanged. 4.What others legal options I have to decrease the tax liability? As an employee of my ex company I had once taken an FD (that reduced my tax) The options are same as salaried, i.e. you can claim exemption under 80C or on interest of housing loan, etc. As a consultant certain expenses can also be deducted.  You should also talk to a CA who can help you with this as there will be some paperwork involved."], "neg": ["So your argument for a national ID is that we're already fucked so might as well add another data point?  There's other ways to solve this problem that doesn't introduce more privacy concerns... advocating against a national ID is not the same as advocating for using an SSN as an ID.", "You can use an intermediary online bank account.  For example, ING Direct has the ability to link to other real banks.  You can link to both your old and new banks. Once linked, transfer the money from old bank to ING.  Then transfer from ING to new bank. There are delays, and you can't transfer directly from bank-to-bank, but this should work, and should be free. The same concept should apply for something like PayPal or another online financial service.", "A pattern of high level people buying or selling is a sign, positive or negative. An individual, not so much. He can be selling to diversify, trying to keep his investments from being all in the company. He can be selling to pay his large bills. Same reasons any of us might be selling an investment to have cash to use.", "Do a common size analysis to  compare to its competitors. Also run a rqtio analysis to the industry. Explain the commonalities and differences as it pertains to the business.   A lot of big banks publish research on public companies and where they're headed in terms of financials. They are usually published for a fee but you can sometimes find them for free online.  It would be useful to talk about the current financial landscape like yellen, rate hikes etc if you wanna go there.", "I would say it really depends on where you are applying.   Almost all the candidates that we get directly from school are either CFA level I candidates or have passed it already. It has become ubiquitous enough to not be note worthy for us (can't speak for other places). However, if you don't have anything else going on atm then definitely take the exam.  I would also say that you should pick/hone your programming skills revise your textbooks. I can't believe the number of MFE graduates who don't know what risk-neutral pricing means.", "The middle class attack continues...    Nevermind that all that tax money goes to salaries, then returns in taxes, and eventually trickles back up to the wealthy in product purchasing, interest, etc, etc.  That is too long term thinking for short term America. We have forgotten that people need to have money to spend it.  This just sucks more money out of the economy and [again slows the velocity of money](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V) which is at some of the lowest levels since it was tracked. Money is being hoarded and that helps noone in a consumer economy, not even the wealthy.  The check engine light is on in the American consumer economy and noone cares about fixing it or taking it in for repairs.", "Does anyone here have a source to find free PDFs of books related to finance, specifically corporate finance? I would like to truly learn about the subject but all the books I've found so far are too expensive for me to rent.   Alternatively, any other quality sources (doesn't have to be books) about corporate finance for a beginner would be fine as well. Thanks in advance."]}
+{"query": "Where can I find historical P/E ratios for companies?", "corpus": ["\"The mathematics site, WolframAlpha, provides such data. Here is a link to historic p/e data for Apple. You can chart other companies simply by typing \"\"p/e code\"\" into the search box.  For example, \"\"p/e XOM\"\" will give you historic p/e data for Exxon. A drop-down list box allows you to select a reporting period : 2 years, 5 years, 10 years, all data.  Below the chart you can read the minimum, maximum, and average p/e for the reporting period in addition to the dates on which the minimum and maximum were applicable.\""], "neg": ["The stock market was already reaching highs way before trump took office. Fortune 500s and Dow were already reporting record profits every quarter before trump. The dozens of new retail/food/medial/plaza buildings to open this year in my city were already being built and going to open. The expansion on our already brand new hospital was already happening. The new school and medical university has nothing to do with trump. No i don't think the new 10,000 home development site approval has anything to do with trump. Trump literally has done nothing so far but win the election. These things were happening already. Employers are already desperate for employees I don't think anyone is hiring more because trump is in office when they were hiring already.", "\"Many of my friends said I should invest my money on stocks or something else, instead of put them in the bank forever. I do not know anything about finance, so my questions are: First let me say that your friends may have the best intentions, but don't trust them. It has been my experience that friends tell you what they would do if they had your money, and not what they would actually do with their money. Now, I don't mean that they would be malicious, or that they are out to get you.  What I do mean, is why would you take advise from someone about what they would do with 100k when they don't have 100k. I am in your financial situation (more or less), and I have friends that make more then I do, and have no savings. Or that will tell you to get an IRA -so-and-so but don't have the means (discipline) to do so. Do not listen to your friends on matters of money. That's just good all around advise. Is my financial status OK? If not, how can I improve it? Any financial situation with no or really low debt is OK. I would say 5% of annual income in unsecured debt, or 2-3 years in annual income in secured debt is a good place to be. That is a really hard mark to hit (it seems). You have hit it. So your good, right now. You may want to \"\"plan for the future\"\". Immediate goals that I always tell people, are 6 months of income stuck in a liquid savings account, then start building a solid investment situation, and a decent retirement plan. This protects you from short term situations like loss of job, while doing something for the future.   Is now a right time for me to see a financial advisor? Is it worthy? How would she/he help me? Rather it's worth it or not to use a financial adviser is going to be totally opinion based. Personally I think they are worth it. Others do not. I see it like this. Unless you want to spend all your time looking up money stuff, the adviser is going to have a better grasp of \"\"money stuff\"\" then you, because they do spend all their time doing it. That being said there is one really important thing to consider. That is going to be how you pay the adviser. The following are my observations. You will need to make up your own mind.  Free Avoid like the plague. These advisers are usually provided by the bank and make their money off commission or kickbacks. That means they will advise you of the product that makes them the most money. Not you.  Flat Rate These are not a bad option, but they don't have any real incentive to make you money. Usually, they do a decent job of making you money, but again, it's usually better for them to advise you on products that make them money. Per Hour These are my favorite. They charge per hour. Usually they are a small shop, and will walk you through all the advise. They advise what's best for you, because they have to sit there and explain their choices. They can be hard to find, but are generally the best option in my opinion.   % of Money These are like the flat rate advisers to me. They get a percentage of the money you give them to \"\"manage\"\". Because they already have your money they are more likely to recommend products that are in their interest. That said, there not all bad. % or Profit These are the best (see notes later). They get a percentage of the money they make for you. They have the most interest in making you money. They only get part of what you get, so there going to make sure you get the biggest pie, so they can get a bigger slice. Notes In the real world, all advisers are likely to get kickbacks on products they recommend. Make sure to keep an eye for that. Also most advisers will use 2-3 of the methods listed above for billing. Something like z% of profit +$x per hour is what I like to see. You will have to look around and see what is available.  Just remember that you are paying someone to make you money (or to advise you on how to make money) so long as what they take leaves you with some profit your in a better situation then your are now. And that's the real goal.\"", "\"Yes, you can usually deposit/pay money into a credit card account in advance. They'll use it to pay any open debt;  if there's money left over they'll carry it as a credit towards future changes. (\"\"Usually\"\" added in response to comments that some folks have been unable to do this -- though whether that was really policy or just limitation if web interface is unclear.  Could be tested by simply sending them an overpayment as your next check and seeing whether they carry it as a credit or return the excess.)\"", "Schwab High Yield Investor Checking does not charge for incoming wires.", "In the San Francisco bay area I know the region is putting to use Clipper cards. If you load them with clipper cash that money sticks around until you ultimately use it. The card itself maxes out at like $300 but any excess funneling into the card is kept with Clipper and shows up in your account as like some itemized deposit pending to distribute to your card once the card's balance drops below the limit to the amount that is pending deposit. If you however use the money for something like a month pass which is only good for that month and you don't use the pass to break even then you lose that money.", "http://www.ftc.gov/bcp/edu/pubs/consumer/credit/cre27.pdf if you are in the US Look at section 805 and 805 about how they may contact you and what they are and aren't allowed to do. You can simply send a Certified Mail, Return Receipt (CMRR) letter explaining you have no part of it, and that they are not allowed to contact you by any means other than in writing from this point forward. Then you can either put return to sender on the letters (it costs them money) or open them and delete anything you don't need.", "In this case, trust the real estate agent; negotiating experience is one of the things you selected them for. Especially if they're suggesting a lower number than you expected, since they get paid on commission and so may be biased the other way.  Part of their job is to look for hints about how motivated this seller is and what price they might accept, as opposed to what price they hope to get.  And remember that the default assumption is that the two parties will meet in the middle somewhere, which means it's customary to offer 10% less to signal that you could probably be talked into it if they drop the price about 5%. This is like bridge-hand bidding: it's a semi-formalized system of hints about levels of interest, except with fewer conventions and less rationality. As far as the seller paying the closing costs: that's really part of the same negotiation, and doing it that way makes the discussion more complicated for the seller since they need to figure out how much more to charge you to cover this cost. If they offer, great, factor that into what you are willing to pay... but I wouldn't assume it or ask for it. Edit: Yes, unless you have engaged a Buyer's Agent (which I recommend for first-time buyers and maybe all huyers), their fiduciary duty is to the seller. But part of that duty is to make the sale happen. If the price goes too high and you walk away, neither the agent nor the seller make money. A bad agent can be as bad as a bad car salesman, sure. But if you don't like and mostly trust your agent, you are working with the wrong agent. That doesn't mean you give them every bit of information the seller might want, but it does mean you probably want to listen to their input and understand their rationalle before deciding what your own strategy will be."]}
+{"query": "Calculate APR for under 1 year loan", "corpus": ["Is the pay cycle every 2 weeks? So 30% each two week period is 1.3^26 = 917.33 or an APR of 91633%.  Loansharks charge less, I believe standard vig was 2%/week for good customers. Only 180% per year."], "neg": ["If you're a sole proprietor there's no reason to have a separate business account, as long as you keep adequate records, as you are one and the same for tax purposes. My husband and I already have 5 accounts and a mortgage with one bank. I don't see the need to open up yet another account.  As a contracted accountant, I don't need to write business checks, and my expenses are minimal. As long as I have an present my assumed business name certificate and ID, there's no reason for a bank not to deposit into my personal account.", "I get it; money is money and shareholders demand businesses make as much as they possibly can. Great. That doesn't change my opinion that tax inversions are wrong. They deprive the US of valuable income which has been earned through infrastructure, defense, education, etc. It's legal right now so fine but I don't have to patronize businesses which choose to do this. So if the deal closes, as much as I don't eat fast food often, Burger King will lose my future business. Just my choice. And my choice to make the suggestion to others in as many public forums as possible.. &lt;shrug&gt;", "\"It's not consistent across the states. Most states have some implementation of these functions but fully regulated states don't have all of them and many are \"\"functions\"\" but are owned by the same entity.  Look at the southeast, the rockies, the PNW, AZ there are zero or few opportunities for merchant anything.\"", "Real question: Besides just doing what pharma companies do normally, which is raising prices astronomically for drugs which have no generics available, was he really the bad guy in other terms or did he just come off as a massive dickhead?", "The story says this property ranked near the bottom among NJ casinos for money won from gamblers.  It's not just poor financial planning that caused this place's failure. Operationally, it was poorly managed as well considering it's excellent location.", "The details of the DJIA methodology is outlined in the official methodology document on their website.  In addition, you will need their index mathematics document, which gives the nitty-gritty details of any type of adjustments that must be made. Between the two you should have the complete picture in as fine a detail as you want, including exactly what is done in response to various corporate actions like splits and structural changes.", "The limits for 2011 and 2012 are $5000 or $6000 if you are 50 or older. The 2011 income limit is $169K, but that's MAGI, not gross. With a $180K income, your MAGI is likely below $169, but you can only tell by looking at your return. If you are this close, you might have to convert to a non-deducted IRA, or withdraw the money. Else, you can fund the 2011 IRA when you file the return in 2012 to be sure."]}
+{"query": "Why haven't there been personal finance apps or softwares that use regression modeling or A.I.?", "corpus": ["What would they be trying to predict?  The value YNAB and Mint provide is objective truth about what you've spent. They can force you to think about the tradeoffs inherent in budgeting by showing that you've overspent one category, and making you decide where to find the money to cover it. They can call your attention to a credit card swipe that's larger than you intended, to a subscription you didn't intend to keep, etc. by just generally getting you to read and think about your transaction history and the sums of transactions per category and overall. Prediction doesn't really enter into it. One way to understand Mint's business model is as a service that collects training data for machine learning models that do try to predict things, such as how stock prices will move or whether users will click on certain ads."], "neg": ["Based on the additional comment you gave, I would recommend that you keep the capital from the businesses separate as much as possible.  It sounds like you won't get into any trouble legally if you make 'loans' or transfers of capital from one business into the other. But I would suggest that you keep detailed records of any transfers that you do make.  The reason why is that in any business, it is important to know the economics of how your business makes money. If you find yourself making transfers repeatedly, then your business model may be bad. Even if your transfers are only to deal with the cost of poor customers, it could still mean that your business model needs to be adjusted.  But if it's a question of the timing of cash flows, then there's really nothing wrong with taking some of the money from your successful pants operation and building up more working capital in your stationery shop.", "\"What do you mean by 'make'?  I am in the US, but I'm sure it's typical that any business has a \"\"bottom line\"\", the profit after all costs including paper losses for things like depreciation. This is then taxed, either at the business level or to the individual. The individual's person expenses don't come into play, unless those expenses are tied to the business, e.g. Some kind of function at their house which includes clients/customers.\"", "You could do that once, maybe, if the lender negotiates rather than going to court and taking you for everything you have plus having you wages garnished for the next several decades. And in the process, you would destroy your credit rating, making it impossible to borrow again any time soon. Doing this deliberately is fraud ... But worse than that, it's blatently stupid. You are likely to lose far more than you could gain.", "Its very silly of you to have house savings while you have these debts.  Your total (listed) debt is 1657, with a savings of 2000, and a tax refund of 985.   I'd be done with the Apple loan and CC tomorrow.  Does that accomplish the goal of making a significant difference in your debt?  Yes it does. This will leave you with 1328.  I'd keep 500 or so in an emergency fund, and put the rest to the car.  Although 828 will not help much with the car it would probably knock a month off.   Next work like crazy to pay off the car.  Get a second job or work overtime. Then save a emergency fund of 3 to 6 months of expenses as if you already owned the house.  I would tend to go on the high side as I suspect you are single. Only then does it makes sense to save for a down payment.   Although it is an American institution, the book The Millionaire Next Door might be helpful for you.  Your most powerful wealth building tool is your income.  When one handicaps that tool with payments and exorbitant lifestyle choices you greatly reduce your ability to become wealthy. These amounts are so small, you should just knock them out.", "\"This is a great question.  I've participated in a deal like that as an employee, and I also know of friends and family who have been involved during a buyout.  In short:  The updated part of your question is correct: There is no single typical treatment.  What happens to unvested restricted stock units (RSUs), unvested employee stock options, etc. varies from case to case. Furthermore, what exactly will happen in your case ought to have been described in the grant documentation which you (hopefully) received when you were issued restricted stock in the first place. Anyway, here are the two cases I've seen happen before: Immediate vesting of all units.  Immediate vesting is often the case with RSUs or options that are granted to executives or key employees.  The grant documentation usually details the cases that will have immediate vesting.  One of the cases is usually a Change in/of Control (CIC or COC) provision, triggered in a buyout.  Other immediate vesting cases may be when the key employee is terminated without cause, or dies.  The terms vary, and are often negotiated by shrewd key employees. Conversion of the units to a new schedule.  If anything is more \"\"typical\"\" of regular employee-level grants, I think this one would be.  Generally, such RSU or option grants will be converted, at the deal price, to a new schedule with identical dates and vesting percentages, but a new number of units and dollar amount or strike price, usually so the end result would have been the same as before the deal. I'm also curious if anybody else has been through a buyout, or knows anybody who has been through a buyout, and how they were treated.\"", "Ah, then we have fundamentally opposed views. I think there is a common leadership skill that one can develop. A skill that entails communicating with stakeholders, negotiating goals, developing a strategy, and leading an organization to accomplish said goals.  You do not think this is its own skill?", "As most people said, family loans are dangerous to the relationship.  The lender should not lend more than they are willing to forgive, and the borrower should not borrow more than they are very certain they can repay. I would suggest a few things to consider: Anecdote: I borrowed some money from my grandfather when I graduated from college to help with cash flow for an apartment, vehicle, etc.  It was about 5% of my starting annual salary and I paid it back quickly and with interest."]}
+{"query": "how much of foreign exchange (forex/fx) “deep liquidity” is really just unbacked leverage and what is the effect?", "corpus": ["\"In essence the problem that the OP identified is not that the FX market itself has poor liquidity but that retail FX brokerage sometimes have poor counterparty risk management. The problem is the actual business model that many FX brokerages have. Most FX brokerages are themselves customers of much larger money center banks that are very well capitalized and provide ample liquidity. By liquidity I mean  the ability to put on a position of relatively decent size (long EURUSD say) at any particular time with a small price impact relative to where it is trading. For spot FX, intraday bid/ask spreads are extremely small, on the order of fractions of pips for majors (EUR/USD/GBP/JPY/CHF). Even in extremely volatile situations it rarely becomes much larger than a few pips for positions of 1 to 10 Million USD equivalent notional value in the institutional market. Given that retail traders rarely trade that large a position, the FX spot market is essentially very liquid in that respect. The problem is that there are retail brokerages whose business model is to encourage excessive trading in the hopes of capturing that spread, but not guaranteeing that it has enough capital to always meet all client obligations. What does get retail traders in trouble is that most are unaware that they are not actually trading on an exchange like with stocks. Every bid and ask they see on the screen the moment they execute a trade is done against that FX brokerage, and not some other trader in a transparent central limit order book. This has some deep implications. One is the nifty attribute that you rarely pay \"\"commission\"\" to do FX trades unlike in stock trading. Why? Because they build that cost into the quotes they give you. In sleepy markets, buyers and sellers cancel out, they just \"\"capture\"\" that spread which is the desired outcome when that business model functions well.  There are two situations where the brokerage's might lose money and capital becomes very important. In extremely volatile markets, every one of their clients may want to sell for some reason, this forces the FX brokers to accumulate a large position in the opposite side that they have to offload. They will trade in the institutional market with other brokerages to net out their positions so that they are as close to flat as possible. In the process, since bid/ask spreads in the institutional market is tighter than within their own brokerage by design, they should still make money while not taking much risk. However, if they are not fast enough, or if they do not have enough capital, the brokerage's position might move against them too quickly which may cause them lose all their capital and go belly up. The brokerage is net flat, but there are huge offsetting positions amongst its clients. In the example of the Swiss Franc revaluation in early 2015, a sudden pop of 10-20% would have effectively meant that money in client accounts that were on the wrong side of the trade could not cover those on the other side. When this happens, it is theoretically the brokerage's job to close out these positions before it wipes out the value of the client accounts, however it would have been impossible to do so since there were no prices in between the instantaneous pop in which the brokerage could have terminated their client's losing positions, and offload the risk in the institutional market. Since it's extremely hard to ask for more money than exist in the client accounts, those with strong capital positions simply ate the loss (such as Oanda), those that fared worse went belly up. The irony here is that the more leverage the brokerage gave to their clients, the less money would have been available to cover losses in such an event. Using an example to illustrate: say client A is long 1 contract at $100 and client B is short 1 contract at $100. The brokerage is thus net flat. If the brokerage had given 10:1 leverage, then there would be $10 in each client's account. Now instantaneously market moves down $10. Client A loses $10 and client B is up $10. Brokerage simply closes client A's position, gives $10 to client B. The brokerage is still long against client B however, so now it has to go into the institutional market to be short 1 contract at $90. The brokerage again is net flat, and no money actually goes in or out of the firm. Had the brokerage given 50:1 leverage however, client A only has $2 in the account. This would cause the brokerage close client A's position. The brokerage is still long against client B, but has only $2 and would have to \"\"eat the loss\"\" for $8 to honor client B's position, and if it could not do that, then it technically became insolvent since it owes more money to its clients than it has in assets. This is exactly the reason there have been regulations in the US to limit the amount of leverage FX brokerages are allowed to offer to clients, to assure the brokerage has enough capital to pay what is owed to clients.\""], "neg": ["Rent. You have no idea whether you will still be in the same part of the country five years from now; you may not even be in the same country. A house is a boat anchor you really do not need or want at this time. It's also a set of obligations you may not want to take on yet.  And buying is not automatically more financially advantageous than renting, when you remember that money not going into the house can go into your retirement plan or other investments.", "\"Well, you mentioned McKinsey earlier and that's a consulting firm.  All of them draft from the Ivy's (plus the other top tiers) but it also helps to come from a school that is well known but not an Ivy. (NYU comes to mind)  My friends from CUNY Honors Baruch got jobs in accounting pretty easily as CUNY Baruch has programs set up with different companies and a fairly established network in the accounting field. It's pretty good if all you want to do is accounting.   In my experience, there's less of a \"\"prestige\"\" focus with IB's and accounting firms. The top consulting firms, on the other hand, are quite \"\"prestige\"\" focused. (worked in one that hired 80-90% from top tiered schools)  It's hard to put an umbrella statement over everything because there are exceptions. And, networking can trump everything.  You should be less concerned about schools and more about grades. A brand name won't help if you have an average GPA. To that point, take a major you'd do well at. Statistics, computer science, mathematical engineering are in demand but your major won't help if the work is too difficult/uninteresting leading to lower grades.\"", "\"There's no objective definition of what your house is worth between sales.  If you sell it for $107K, then that's the current functional definition of its worth.  There is not \"\"extra\"\" money to be had because you sold it for less than it was worth.  If the buyer is able to flip it for more, then the value of the house effectively went up and he will pocket the difference when he sells it. EDIT This turned out to be unexpectedly controversial, so let me be more precise in my answer.  I think this is important because it seems like many people misunderstand equity and how it figures (or doesn't) into the value of their home, which then leads to significant confusion and errors in what's many people's largest single investment. At any given time there are several possible ways to put a dollar value on your home.  A non-exclusive list that includes: Some of these obviously are more \"\"official\"\" than others. It would not be strange for these different values to vary by quite a bit at any given time. (This is what I meant in my original answer when I said there's \"\"no objective definition of what your house is worth between sales.\"\") The interesting thing - and what I meant in my original answer when I wrote \"\"current functional definition of its worth\"\" - is that none of these factor directly into the transaction that the OP described of selling his house except for the last.  Using the numbers from the OP's example, that means the $107K.  Wherever the OP got the number $155K (either from one of the options on my list above or somewhere else), it won't be directly part of the sale between him and his friend. (For completeness, with a nod to Eric's comments on my original answer, some of these numbers may indirectly influence the sale.  For example, the buyer typically won't be able to get a mortgage for a value greater than the appraised value of the house, and so that might influence what he's willing and able to bid.  There may also be tax consequences if the price is artificially low, like, say, a gift.  As further expounded below, however, that's not directly relevant to answering the OP's stated question.) Now, the OP seemed to believe that there is an \"\"extra\"\" $48K in cash up for grabs in this scenario.  That comes from the $155K value that the OP claims his house has and the $107K price of the actual proposed sale.  This is a complete misconception.  When the buyer and seller sit down at closing and the title agent sums up who owes and who receives cash in this transaction, the $155K \"\"theoretical\"\" value will not enter into the calculation and therefore no one will pocket it. Subsequently, however, after the buyer takes possession, he may sell it.  If it's true that he \"\"got a deal\"\" on the transaction at $107K, then he maybe able to flip it and turn a profit.  But if that happens, it will be in a completely separate, subsequent transaction. Even if you look to this hypothetical second sale, however, the $155K doesn't really figure.  The new owner will have to find his own buyer, and they will have to agree on a price.  That might happen to be $155K, but there's no real reason to believe that it will or it won't.\"", "A $2 fee to push customers towards setting up automatic bill pay is a very different thing than participating in writing legislation which would cripple the internet.   BoA's fee was pure greed. GoDaddy has no sane reason for backing or even participating in SOPA. Verizon wanted people to use automatically bill pay, so they created a fee to punish those that didn't use have recurring payments. Do you really not see the difference between these 3? Verizon just screwed up by not offering an incentive to go along with the punishment. It was a PR blunder, not greed or maliciousness.", "The way the question is worded, it is slightly opinion based. Just to point out;   Tax benefits - Upto 50000 INR is tax free when invested here. This is actually 200,000 INR under 80C. So if you invest max of 150,000 in other instruments in 80C; you can still invest 50,000 into NPS. Hopefully it will provide some lumpsum money that I could probably use to buy a house / kid's education / kid's marriage. There are very few withdrawal options. Generally in the current scenario; By the time you retire; you would already have house, kid would have got married. Answers given the current data is it a worthwhile investment? It is a good investment option available. It is up to individual to select this or invest else where. If yes, would be better to fix choice at 50% in E and 25% in C and E or go for the auto choice? As you are young it is better to have max 50% in Equity and actively monitor this and change the percentage as you near the retirement age. If you don't have time, or are not financial savy, or one is plain simple lazy; going with Auto choice makes sense. bad investment because if you put the same money into equity oriented mutual funds then you will get better returns ... This depends. If you are currently investing everything into Equity; then yes at absolute level, the returns are high. However if you are investing into Equity and debt to achieve a balance, then NPS is doing it automatically for you. As the NPS has very low costs, there is substantial advantage. In some years [2013-2014?] the NPS equity return has been excellent and exceeded leading mutual funds. Other Aspect Edits: The Annuities need to invest in guaranteed risk free instruments; generally bonds. As the rates are locked for life, they need to factor things like average life expectancy, demographics, etc. This is largely statistical. Similar to how the Insurance premiums are decided. This is adjusted periodically. Say they offer 6.5% for 100 people. The investments into bonds is yielding only 6%. Then for next 100 people, they would offer 5.5%. However if the mortality increases, i.e. 50 people die at age of 70, they just need to adjust it to 5.75% for next 100 ... so there are quite a few parameters that go in and statical models output what the rate should be offered. At times the corpus manager may take a hedge to minimize downside. This is a specialized subject and there no dummies that show how rates are determined. It is also a trade secret.", "Large and well-known companies are typically a good starting point. That doesn't mean that they are the best or even above average good, but at least they don't cheat you and run with your money. A core point is someone you pay, not the company whose investment he sell you. Although the latter seems cheaper on first glance, it isn't - if you pay him, his interest is to do good work for you; if they pay him, his interest is to sell you the product with the highest payment for him. That does not imply that they are all that way; it's just a risk. There are many good advisers that live from commissions, and still don't recommend you bad investments. Depending on the amounts, you could also read up a bit and open an account with a online investment company. It is discussable, but I think the cost for an adviser only starts to become worth it if you are deep into 5 digits of money.", "Wasn't a bailout, it was a stick up. GSEs have paid back $130 billion over the original loan amount (which was around $180 b iirc). Gov't took them over under false pretenses, and implemented the net worth sweep under even falser pretenses."]}
+{"query": "How did I end up with a fraction of a share?", "corpus": ["It's not that uncommon but it doesn't usually come from standard purchases.  Investopedia explains: Definition of 'Fractional Share' A share of equity that is less than one full share. Fractional shares usually come about from stock splits, dividend reinvestment plans (DRIPs) and similar corporate actions. Normally, fractional shares cannot be acquired from the market. However, there is at least one investment firm that markets itself as offering fractional shares.  Fractional investing makes more sense, since an investor's perspective is to invest a certain number of dollars into equity, not to buy a certain number of shares that closely mirror the dollar commitment."], "neg": ["I own a few MLPs that operate oil/gas pipelines (TSE:IPL-UN, NYSE:BPT, NYSE:APL), and I'm very happy with their performance. Because they don't pay corporate tax MLPs tend to pay higher dividends than most regular stocks. I pay H&R Block to do my taxes, and they sort out all the arcane details.", "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 $2/lb chicken), but the 5% when I'm feeling fancy it's pretty hard to beat Whole Foods.", "In the UK the official rule is that a cheque is valid for 3 years from the date it was wrote. However after 3 months some banks can choose to turn them down. I had a cheque once that was a year old which is when I looked it up to see whether it was stil valid, and I found the laws regarding it then.  I was actually quite surprised it was 3 years! Btw if it does bounce your quite entitled to ask your employer for a replacement cheque.  They owe it you and it's just sat in their account assigned to you anyway.", "\"You are not smart.   The average person works more than 25 years. And because it's an average earnings increase, OF COURSE EVERYONE DOESN'T REACH IT. By the way, the greatest predictor of a person not reaching it is that person getting a liberal arts degree. And since you seem to want to do baseless math, I'll let you go ahead and decide how much the other 10% has to make in order for it to be true.   The point is that if you go to college, particularly to get a more valuable degree, you are making an astoundingly good investment. Are there exceptions? Absolutely. There are always exceptions. That doesn't disprove the facts.   Go look at the actual statistics by major or career. Don't bring this, \"\"I'll bet\"\" nonsense into the argument as if it proves anything.\"", "You made 94$ on an investment of 554.80 *100 = 55480$ for an approx holding period of 1 year. So the % return is ~0.16%, which is not much better than the short term us treasury rate. The current 1 year treasury rate is 0.27%: http://ycharts.com/indicators/1_year_treasury_rate So yes, you have a risk free portfolio, so you make the risk free rate. Remember this is an European option, so you are stuck for 1 year. if you found the same mispricing in an American option, then you found an arbitrage.", "\"Typically, there are three ways an acquisition is financed. What is used is called the \"\"consideration\"\".  1.) Cash - Existing cash on the balance sheet is used. Think of it like purchasing something with your debit card.  2.) Stock - This a bit more complicated. The acquiring company issues new shares and exchanges those shares for shares of the acquiree. Because new shares are issued, this can have a dilutive effect on the stock price of the acquirer. However, it can have an accretive effect if enough synergistic value between the two companies is realized and/or expected.  3.) Debt - Basically like taking out a loan.   The \"\"consideration\"\" for a deal is often reported, as you read in your article.  Most deals are a combination of cash/stock/debt. (Debt is often referred to as \"\"cash\"\" - i.e. if you take out a loan, you are essentially receiving cash.)    When it comes to which is best to use, there are quantitative analyses for that - with a specific focus on the acquirer's EPS (Earnings per share) post-deal.  The factors that are considered are the forgone interest on cash, the additional interest gained from taking on debt, and the dilutive effects of issuing new stock. There is no right answer for which is best, as there are multiple different factors and circumstances involved across M&amp;A deals. Each company has different borrowing rates and synergistic value expected from their deals. One big factor is the timing and stock price of both companies during the deal. If the acquirer is trading at an all time high and the acquiree is at an all time low, then perhaps an all-stock deal would be advantageous to the buyer.   Typically, companies want to avoid stock deals because they are the most dilutive.\"", "The best way to make money on a downward market is to buy at the bottom, sell at the top.  Lather, rinse, repeat."]}
+{"query": "Why does an option lose time value faster as it approaches expiry", "corpus": ["If you think about it, the value of an option comes from the chance that the price at the expiration date can exceed the strike price. As it gets closer to the expiration date, the chance is getting smaller, because there is simply not enough time for an out-of-money option to hit that strike. Therefore, the value of an option decays."], "neg": ["It isn't that good for EU banks either, but ultimately, it will be easier for them. The splitting of entities will be a common problem and not just in banking. However there can be no joint organisations without a joint regulatory mechanism and the British government have rejected that.", "Eh. It's what Walmart will do. The real question is, will they do it quietly or make a splash about it? Because the last thing anyone wants is Walmart butting heads with its employees in an election year, but those crazy bastards running the show in Bentonville aren't above being confrontational when everyone thinks/believes/prays they'll just back down and wait for a saner time to drop rocks on people's heads.   That's what the source of entertainment is going to be here; how will Walmart handle this and will the politicians stick their noses in it too? And is this a union-organised thing or an informal affiliation of employees that covertly agreed to do this? Also, will it spread?   That's about the sum-total of stuff we have to think about, since they don't actually change any unemployment numbers around by firing experienced employees and hiring people they have to train up and deploy again. Hell, they do it so often it probably doesn't really cost them any extra either.", "\"This reminds me of philosopher John Rawls' \"\"difference principle\"\", which states that growing inequality is acceptable as long as the people at the bottom of the income scale are better off than they were before.   Edit: Low income people are surely better off in some ways; notably, they can afford to buy consumer goods that they couldn't before. But it is harder for them to achieve upward social mobility.\"", "It appears that hashes starting with 00000 are password already 'reversed' (I don't know the correct word for it).  So if you want to test if your password is in the file, you'll have to look for your original hash and 00000restofyouroriginalhash  Example for 'linkedin':  * 7728240c80b6bfd450849405e8500d6d207783b6 is not present * 0000040c80b6bfd450849405e8500d6d207783b6 is present  Python script to do it quickly if you are interested :      from hashlib import sha1     def check_pass(plaintext, offset=5):         hashed = sha1(plaintext).hexdigest()         return (hashed, '0' * offset + hashed[offset:])", "Yes did this. Had 5 years management experience at a state level with industry specific qualifications (financial services). Interview with the dean, written request and I was in on the basis that after the first 4 terms they could either give me a graduate diploma and send me on my way OR let me finish the MBA.   Now I have an MBA.", "if employees are difficult to fire, it make it difficult to hire to begin with. It is well proven phenomenon in South European countries. Making union powerful simply create two tire system whereby the system only protect those who are already employed.   North European countries, instead, adopt flexible system whereby business is free to fire but redundancy pay increase by the number of years of employment. Also, this is backed by robust unemployment benefit.", "The point is, genuine users are catching on and Instagram has to give the appearance of doing something about it or lose their user base in boycotts.  This is about the time when the next big thing starts to emerge and the company releasing updates like this starts circling the drain."]}
+{"query": "Why do banks require small businesses to open a business bank account instead of a cheaper personal one?", "corpus": ["The bank won't let you because: Differences in required account features — Business accounts have different features (many of them legal features) that are required by businesses. For instances: Do you want to be able to deposit cheques that are written out to your business name? You need a business account for that. Your business could be sold. Then it wouldn't be your business, so it wouldn't make sense to put the business account under your personal name. The bank account and the cash it holds is a business asset and should be owned by the business, so when the business is sold the account goes with it. This is especially the case for a corporation that has shareholders, and not a sole proprietorship. For a business, you could also, in theory, assign other people as signing authorities on the business account (e.g. your corporate treasurer), and the individuals performing that role could change over time. Business accounts allow for this kind of use. Market segmentation — The bank has consciously undertaken to segment their product offerings in order to maximize their profit. Market segmentation helps the bottom line. Even if there were zero legal reasons to have separate personal vs. business accounts, banks would still make it their policy to sell different account types according to use because they can make more money that way. Consider an example in another industry: The plain-old telephone company also practices segmentation w.r.t. personal/business. Do you want a telephone line for a business and listed as such in the phone book? You need a business line. Do you want a phone line hooked up at a non-residential address? You need a business line. Here it's clear it is less of a legal issue than with the bank account, and it doesn't matter that the technical features of the phone line may be identical for the basic product offerings within each segment. The phone company has chosen to segment and price their product offerings this way. Q. Why do companies choose to charge some kinds of customers more than others for essentially the same underlying service? A. Because they can."], "neg": ["\"One thing I've run into (working for a smaller MSO/Cable Company) is that when we started offering TiVo to our customers directly, we ran into all kinds of restrictions. Some examples - since we carries Starz/Encore, the TiVos we provided customers had to have the Netflix app disabled. More recently, I've seen more apps like Amazon Movies, the music video on-demand service, and more removed due to FCC restrictions on cable operators. Meanwhile, customers who pickup their TiVo from Best Buy or retail get the full experience. Now, one would think \"\"Yay! It's better for the customer to go buy the unit\"\". However, when they get it from us, they never have to worry about repairs (I went through two Series 2 units personally years ago - usually was the HDD) and we also take care of the programming guide cost so the customer doesn't have to worry about the monthly charge to TiVo or choosing a lifetime sub that's locked to one unit. It just really frustrates me because I prefer the TiVo over our standard Motorola HD DVRs but these regulations have made them (the ones we provide/rent to the customer) no better than the regular DVRs.\"", "Best banquet halls in Kolkata will have a wedding authority on work force. Invest energy auditing your goals and let the master manage you through the system. The wedding coordinator will enable you to distinguish the measure of the lobby you need, and exercise a nourishment determination. You will wish to consider the extent of the move floor, stage, and head table while deciding wedding halls in south Kolkata.", "\"Economists actually hate the interest deduction, especially for mortgages. From The Economist:   \"\"Allowing interest payments, but not dividends, to be deducted from corporate profits before tax is paid is a huge distortion to the system. It is a perk worth around 11% of the value of corporate assets. It has tended to encourage companies to take on more debt. By doing so, it may make the economy more risky at the margin: in a recession, highly-indebted companies are likely to go bust more quickly, whereas companies with lots of equity capital can ride out the storm. As a result, this newspaper has favoured the abolition of the deductibility rule.\"\"  http://www.economist.com/news/finance-and-economics/21716050-would-be-risky-time-fiddle-tax-code-what-if-interest-expenses  More from 538  https://fivethirtyeight.com/features/the-tax-deductions-economists-hate/\"", "You need a find a financial planner that will create a plan for you for a fixed fee. They will help you determine the best course of action taking into account the pension, the 403B, and any other sources of income you have, or will have. They will know how to address the risk that you have that that particular pension.  They will help you determine how to invest your money to produce the type of retirement you want, while making sure you are likely to not outlive your portfolio.", "Unions are a joke. They were created originally with good intentions, to protect workers interests. Now, it's all corruption and overpaid high school dropouts making $40/hour for holding a stop sign.   You barely graduated high school. In no situation is your hourly rate worth $150 to me.  Unions need to be put in their place.", "\"Even if the price of your home did match inflation or better — and that's a question I'll let the other answers address — I propose that owning a home, by itself, is not a sufficient hedge against inflation. Consider: Inflation will inflate your living expenses. If you're lucky, they'll inflate at the average. If you're unlucky, a change in your spending patterns (perhaps age-related) could result in your expenses rising faster than inflation. (Look at the sub-indexes of the CPI.) Without income also rising with inflation (or better), how will you cope with rising living expenses? Each passing year, advancing living expenses risk eclipsing a static income. Your home is an illiquid asset. Generally speaking, it neither generates income for you, nor can you sell only a portion. At best, owning your principal residence helps you avoid a rent expense and inflation in rents — but rent is only one of many living expenses. Some consider a reverse-mortgage an option to tap home equity, but it has a high cost. In other words: If you don't want to be forced to liquidate [sell] your home, you'll also need to look at ways to ensure your income sources rise with inflation. i.e. look at your cash flow, not just your net worth. Hence: investing in housing, as in your own principal residence, is not an adequate hedge against inflation. If you owned additional properties to generate rental income, and you retained pricing power so you could increase the rent charged at least in line with inflation, your situation would be somewhat improved — except you would, perhaps, be adopting another problem: Too high a concentration in a single asset class. Consequently, I would look at ways other than housing to hedge against inflation. Consider other kinds of investments. \"\"Safe as houses\"\" may be a cliché, but it is no guarantee.\"", "Basically the banks (Countrywide was the worst about this) failed to uphold lending standards when they were giving out mortgages because it wasn't in their self-interest-- after the banks would give someone a mortgage the banks would make their fees off the mortgage and then bundle these mortgages into securities. The banks then had these sub-prime mortgages that are now bundled together as securities, then Moody's/S&amp;P and other ratings agencies gave them AAA ratings despite nearly everyone in the industry knowing they were time-bombs waiting to go off. Goldman Sachs and everyone else knew what was going on, but they didn't want to get stuck holding the bag, per se, so they committed fraud by knowingly misleading their clients to buy these securities.  The problem isn't that we need more regulations-- it's that the regulations we have aren't even being enforced. Obama has prosecuted 1/3 as many financial crimes at Bush/Clinton/Reagan."]}
+{"query": "Is UK house price spiral connected to debt based monetary system?", "corpus": ["\"There are a few factors at work here, supply and demand being the main one. The Office for National Statistics has some good information: http://visual.ons.gov.uk/uk-perspectives-housing-and-home-ownership-in-the-uk/ Supply has historically struggled to compete with demand in the UK and this situation has been exacerpated since the 1980s when Margaret Thatcher was Prime Minister.  She set up a variety of schemes to encourage people to own their own home, such as tax relief (MIRAS) and since then home ownership in the UK has increased dramatically. The then conservative government also set up the \"\"right to buy\"\" scheme (in 1980) that allowed council tenants to purchase their council houses at a discounted rate.  The effect of this was to increase the number of home owners whilst reducing the amount of housing available for councils to rent to new tenants.  Anecdotal evidence (I can't find a documented source to back this up) suggests that councils did not build sufficient new homes to replace those purchased by their ex-tenants. The population of the UK has also increased, by around 10 million since 1980 (around 20%) and this has pushed up demand for housing.  House building in the UK has not kept pace with these factors that has led to a shortage of supply that has pushed up prices. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/rel/pop-estimate/population-estimates-for-uk--england-and-wales--scotland-and-northern-ireland/2013/sty-population-changes.html There's another factor at play here as well.  If you go back to the 1970s around 53% of women would go out to work but in 2013 this figure increased to 67% as it became more common for households to have double incomes.  This extra supply of cash also pushed up house prices. http://www.ons.gov.uk/ons/dcp171776_328352.pdf Your question regards a debt based monetary system is not entirely clear, but there are limitations put onto how much money people can borrow that are potentially limiting how much house prices can rise by.  Today most lenders are more conservative in how much they will lend but this wasn't the case in the mid 2000s when house prices rose very quickly.   Lenders are more cautious today after the crash of the late 2000s, but things are begining to relax again and they are starting to lend more which could in turn lead to further house price rises in line with what was seen in the 2000s. Recessions have coincided with house prices falling back or at least being stable.  In the 1980s house prices trebled from 1980 to 1988 but then fell back a little as the recession hit, before starting to rise again in 1997.  This rise was sustained until 2008 during which time prices trebled again.  Based on this you could assume prices will treble again as we come out of the recession, as long as this is sustained for 8 years or so. However, as the potential for more households to become double income is reduced (high female employment already) and wages are unlikely to raise that quickly, this may not be realistic, unless the mortgage lenders become extremely lax, to the point of reckless! To answer your other question, about the affordability of housing, this will be based on the level of wages in the UK and how strict or lax the lenders are, also taking into effect the availability of housing for purchase.  If wages rise, house prices will rise, if lenders are willing to lend more money, house prices will rise and if demand continues to outrstip supply, prices will rise. None of the major UK political parties are likely to solve the problems of population growth and not enough houses being built so it is likely prices will rise but you could argue that they are not far off a peak based on current wages and lenders attitudes.  If the UK economy continues to recover from the recession, it is possible they will fuel another housing boom by lending ever increasing salary multiples as happened in the 2000s, unless there is government intervention, ie regulation of the lenders.\""], "neg": ["That is where I think Walmart comes in to buy up a business like this. With their network of stores and the insane buying power they have the can push a good solid quality that the middle class American wants and do it very cheaply. I feel this will be their main combat against Amazon buying whole foods. Currently Walmart makes more on grocery sales than anything else as a hole and will continue to do so because of what and how they are doing it. Walmart is sneaky as fuck when it comes to what they can do and how they can do it. Even Walmart buying up Advanced Auto Parts is a solid counter move to Amazon buying Whole Foods...the next step is buying a Blue Apron type business... and with how Blue Apron is doing financially and given their name they are entering buy off territory.  In my humble albeit non pro status in the stock market my 3 buys are Snap Chat, GoPro, and Walmart for long term retire and never have to worry about money again companies. I am by no means an expert but I have never come close to losing money in the stock market and do a good amount of research before I invest. Snapchat is my top 1 tbh. Sorry for going on a tangent lol", "\"not sure how you could be more wrong.  my favorite part by far was the fedora worthy \"\"nonsense, and unworthy of further comment.\"\" definitely followed by a little tip, wasn't it?  you've missed every single point i bought up. i'm not acting like investors are fat cats - you're borderline illiterate, and spend too much time on r/libertarian or watching fox news, so you jumped at the opportunity to straw man \"\"a dang pretentious librul.\"\" what i said was \"\"relatively elite,\"\" exactly because i'm not saying they're cigar chomping pigs- they have a lot of money relative to most of the population.  i simply don't care enough to try to go point by point. my whole point was that the comment i was replying to represents the style of mainstream economics that misrepresents basic phenomena, and your reply was just a doubling down.  \"\"they are rational\"\" - lol literally choke on your MLP figurine. you've no idea what you're talking about. your other posts indicate a greater ignorance - you don't know how to watch the vix, or why your options move the way they do? really shocking /s\"", "It has been hinted at in some other answers, but I want to say it explicitly: Volatility is not risk. Volatility is how much an investment goes up and down, risk is the chance that you will lose money. For example, stocks have relatively high volatility, but the risk that you will lose money over a 40 year period is virtually zero (in particular if you invest in index funds). Bonds, on the other hand, have basically no volatility (their cash flow is totally predictable if you trust the future of your government), but there is a significant risk that they will perform worse than stocks over a longer period. So, volatility equals risk only if you are day trading. A 401(k) is literally the opposite of that. For further reading: Never confuse risk and volatility Also, investing is not gambling. Gambling is bad because the odds are stacked against you. You need more than average luck to actually win and the longer you play, the more you will lose. Investing means buying productive capital that will produce further value. The odds are in your favor. Even if you do a moderately bad job at investing, the longer you stay, the more you will win.", "I don't think BB sells $300 suits. I think they're going to be more like +$800, but it has been awhile since I've looked.   As far as shoes, yeah, I meant Allen Edmonds for AE. They're like the entry level for nice shoes. They're not cheap tho. The benefit to them is that they look a little nicer, and should last much longer if you take care of them. AE sells their factory seconds at:   https://shoebank.com/  Ive gotten two pair from there and haven't been able to find the defect. As far as which black shoe, that's up to you. You cannot go wrong with their park ave's, but they might be a bit formal. I have the Mora's, but I wouldn't recommend monk straps for your first pair.  Maybe consider a dark brown shoe. It will look a little more natural with the Navy suit, and is arguably a bit more versatile. The stand is always a good option.", "Its only a matter of time before Governments worldwide crack down on Bitcoin. Apart from using it for illicit purchases, money laundering or speculation based on its hard limited supply, what use does it have?   The transaction fees are much greater than other methods for small transactions, and its store of wealth is questionable given the vulnerability to hacking and volatility.", "Yes, you do.  You also need to file a tax return every year, and if you have more than $50k of total savings you need to declare this every year.", "\"Even if you reject the premise of the article (which I imagine many in this sub would), how can you see capitalism as an entirely faultless system? What do you mean by \"\"people have the choice to fix things\"\"? How can people fix an issue like, say, inequality without reforming capitalism itself?\""]}
+{"query": "What does it mean when someone says “FTSE closed at xxx today”", "corpus": ["FTSE is an index catering to the London stock exchange. It is a  Capitalization-Weighted Index  of 100 companies listed on the London Stock Exchange with the highest market capitalization . When somebody says FTSE closed at 6440, it basically means at the end of the day, the index calculated using the day end market capitalization of the companies, included in the index, is 6440."], "neg": ["Despite my previous claim to not respond to crank messages, no, you are also spectacularly ignorant of the basics about how inflation is calculated.  The Department of Labor Statistics has an army of people going into retail each month to evaluate comparables.  Heads of lettuce, gallons of milk and twinkies are not, in fact, 4x smaller than they were in 2007 and even if they were, DLS corrects for it.", "They are advertising the echo so people will start ordering their groceries (and everything else on amazon) via the echo. They aren't adding a best buy into whole foods. Just showing people the future is here. Order your groceries with your voice while you head is in the refrigerator looking for things you need.", "A debt is created when the service is rendered or the goods are sold to you.  The bill is simply a way of recording the debt and alerting you to it.", "Since you ask.... How do I do it? My frugality doesn't come from budgeting or even half so much from keeping money away from myself (though mostly-one-way retirement accounts help). It's a matter of world-view. Spending and shopping for things you don't need is a vice. Limit your indulgence in it. I've also made wasteful purchases in my life. When I find myself considering buying something that I don't really need, I ask myself whether it will end up like... like the stupid eyeglass cleaner gadget from the Sharper Image that I used twice. Or the Bluetooth earpiece that spent 98% of its time lost and .02% of its time in my ear. Or the little Sony VAIO laptop which was great on the train, but probably cost 8 times as much as an EeePC and didn't do way too much more. (In my defense on that one, it was just before netbooks were really taking off... but I still felt bad about it the next year). I've also got two savings goals. The first is responsible and very big (financial stability: a year's expenses plus money for a down payment on a house. a California house. in a good neighborhood.) The second is personal and just medium-big (a large musical instrument). I've decided not to spend money on the second until I'm financially stable and I have enough money to take care of the first... so that makes me more willing to scrimp and save to pursue the first than I would be otherwise. Advice for others? Ask yourself: Why are you buying that thing? You can survive without it, can't you? You didn't need it a week ago, did you? Does the old one have holes in it or something? Or will you at least use it regularly, for years? Why aren't you buying the cheaper kind? Or buying it used?", "As JB hints, it is likely due to superior or improving, fundamentals. If the fundamentals of a company improve then its ability to repay loans improves. If its ability to repay improves then more sources of cash become willing to lend to the company. Also if fundamentals are improving then more sources are willing to buy and/or hold the stock.", "If you don't want to pay much attention to your investments, target date funds -- assuming you find one (like Vanguard's) with no management fees beyond those acquired from the underlying funds -- are usually a great choice: when the target date is far off, they invest almost entirely (usually 90% or so) in (mutual funds that in turn consist of many) stocks, with the remainder in bonds; as the date gets closer, the mix is automatically shifted to more bonds and less stocks (i.e. less risk, but less potential return too).", "When the first gas cars were made 100 years ago, they were toys for the rich  You can't go from zero to cheap mass market instantly  It's not a conspiracy, it's the nature of the business  The only way to introduce a new product like an electric car is to target the buyer who is not primarily concerned with cost  Later, as experience is gained, costs will come down  I remember the first CD recorder  It cost $15,000 and the disks were $30 each  Now, you can get a CD/DVD recorder for $30"]}
+{"query": "Issuing bonds at discount - computing effective interest rate", "corpus": ["In this case the market interest rate is the discount rate that sets equal the market price (current value) of the bond to its present value. To find the market interest rate which is also referred to as promised yield YTM you would have solve for the interest rate in the bond price formula A market price of bond is the sum of discounted coupons and the terminal value of the bond. Most spreadsheet programs and calculators have a RATE function that makes possible finding this market interest rate. First see this for finding a coupon paying bond price The coupon payments are discounted so is the par value of the bond and sum of such discounts is the market price of the bond. The TVM functions in Excel and calculators make this possible using the following equation Let us take your data, 9% $100,000 coupon with 5 years remaining to maturity with market interest rate of 10%. Bonds issued in the US mostly pay two coupons per year. Thus we are finding the present value of 10 coupons each worth $4500 and par value of $100,000. The semi-annual market interest rate is 10%/2 or 5% The negative sign indicate money going out of hand Now solving for RATE is only possible using numerical methods and the RATE function is programmed using Newton-Raphson method to find one of the roots of the bond price equation. This rate will be the periodic rate in this case semi-annual rate which you have to multiply by 2 to get the annual rate. Do remember there is a difference between annual nominal rate and an annualized effective rate. To find the market interest rate  If you don't have Excel or a financial calculator then you may opt to use my version of these financial functions in this JavaScript library tadJS"], "neg": ["Not even an LA thing. There are three in Orange County, and one in Downey — in the entire state.  A small number of store is very likely going to skew the data. It should have been limited to chains with a minimum of say 25 stores in a state.  But BI and Forequare knew that going into their report because there was so much drama over the one they produced last year.   And there seems to be even more outrage this year, with numerous articles on the report.", "Is Jim right to be worries? Yes, since the statute of limitations for refunds for 2012 is close and he might lose any tax refunds he might be entitled to for that year. Also, the pattern itself may raise some flags of suspicion and trigger audits, both because of such a variance in income and because of the medical expenses (which are generally considered a red flag). So he might get audited. However, if all the income and expenses are properly documented, audit itself should not be a problem.", "Didn't people say this the last election cycle?  Has America ended yet?  We're still here.  But, really, why blame the President?  He's not a dictator.  He can only pass laws that get through house and senate.  This kind of fear mongering is stupid.", "The literal answer to your question is that a number of different types of mutual funds did not have significant downturns in 2008. Money Market Funds are intended to always preserve capital. VMMXX made 2.77% in 2008. It was a major scandal broke the buck, that its holders took a 3% loss. Inverse funds, which go up when the market goes down, obviously did well that year (RYARX), but if you have a low risk tolerance, that's obviously not what you're looking for. (and they have other problems as well when held long-term) But you're a 24-year-old talking about your retirement funds, you should have a much longer time horizon, at least 30 years. Over a period that long, stocks have never had negative real (inflation-adjusted) returns, dating back at least to the civil war. If you look at the charts here or here, you can see that despite the risk in any individual year, as the period grows longer, the average return for the period gets tighter and tighter. If you look at the second graph here, you see that 2011 was the first time since the civil war that the trailing 30-year return on t-bills exceeded that for stocks, and 1981-2011 was period that saw bond yields drop almost continuously, leading to steady rise in bond prices. Although past performance is no guarantee of future results, everything we've seen historically suggests that the risk of a broad stock-market portfolio held for 30 years is not that large, and it should make up the bulk of your holdings. For example, Vanguard's Target retirement 2055 fund is 90% in stocks (US + international), and only 10% in bonds.", "Surely there's more to the picture than this.  Breaking the borrowing limit by going to 3.5% multiple times is surely no where near as bad as going to 18% once.  On top of this there was a fundamental difference in the use of capital.  Borrowing to invest (as Germany did) has been ridiculously beneficial for them.", "You probably won't get a mortgage. UDSA has a 41% ratio of monthly debt to monthly income limit, and a score of 660 or better. A 250,000 mortgage at current rates for 30 year mortgage is about $1560/mo. (included in this figure is the 1% mortgage insurance premium, the .4% annual fee, the current rate for a 660 credit rating, the 2% points fee added at the front of the mortgage, typical closing cost added to transaction, and the .5% fee for over-mortgage insurance for the first 3 years since your mortgage will be higher than the value of the house due to these additional fees) Credit card payments = $120 ($60 times 2) Car payments = $542 ($271 for your car, $271 for the car you will be getting) Student loan = $50/month Child Support = $500/month Total = $2772/month Your income per month is 82000/12 = $6833/month $2772/$6833 = 40.6%...  This is awfully close to the limit, so they likely would also look at your ability to save.  Not seeing savings in the above example, I assume it is low.  USDA site One mortgage help site breaks down some of the requirements into layman's language. Not knowing your exact location (county/state) and how many children you have, it is hard to be sure whether you make too much to qualify.  This link shows the income limits by number of people in the house and the county/state.  There are few places in which you could be living that would qualify you to any of their programs unless you have a several children. As others have posted, I suggest you get your debt down.", "I question the reliability of the information you received.  Of course, it's possible the former 401(k) provider happened to charge lower expense ratios on its index funds than other available funds and lower the new provider's fees.  There are many many many financial institutions and fees are not fixed between them.  I think the information you received is simply an assumptive justification for the difference in fees."]}
+{"query": "Understanding stock market terminology", "corpus": ["Opening - is the price at which the first trade gets executed at the start of the trading day (or trading period). High - is the highest price the stock is traded at during the day (or trading period). Low - is the lowest price the stock is traded at during the day (or trading period). Closing - is the price at which the last trade gets executed at the end of the trading day (or trading period). Volume - is the amount of shares that get traded during the trading day (or trading period). For example, if you bought 1000 shares during the day and another 9 people also bought 1000 shares each, then the trading volume for the day would be 10 x 1000 = 10,000."], "neg": ["No, there is no advantage.  There may be some peace of mind at no cost if you are already in the lowest tax bracket.  Otherwise, it is actually disadvantageous. Consider the following scenario: RRSP HBP withdrawal $15000 ($1000/y repayment), You are required to pay back $1000 a year with no tax advantage. Any additional RRSP payments can be designated as HBP (no tax advantage) or as a regular RRSP contribution Tax = (Taxable Income - contributions) * rate. So, you are forgoing the tax benefit for no advantage.", "No, it is not. If that were the case, you would have no such thing as a growth stock. Dividends and dividend policies can change at any time.  The primary reason for investment in a company is access to a firm's earnings, hence the idea of P/E. Dividends are factored in with capital appreciation, but studies have shown that dividends are actually detrimental to future growth.   They tend to allow easier access to shareholders because of the payouts, reducing the cost of equity. But, if you reduce the growth rate as well, sensitivity tables can demonstrate deterioration or stagnation over time.   Some good examples are GE and Microsoft.", "This podcast really opened my eye to Netflix's toxic culture.  Netflix can still continue to get away with this short term thinking culture because it's still growing. Once growth stopped, I don't think current culture is sustainable.  They'll have to reinvent themselves again or die.    It made me question the value of unlimited vacation and one year maternity Netflix so proudly advertised. I suspect any Netflix employee  who plan to take those benefits will find themselves unemployed very quickly.", "I didn't realize the min wage in NYC was higher than the rest of NY state.  WOUld $11.50 change much, in NYC?  Childcare at $400?  I live in a pretty rural area where you can get an acre of land and a decent house for under $100K.  To get daycare under $1000 a month you have to find someone working under the table, not registered and not paying taxes.  Even then, it is $800 a month for two kids.", "NAV is  how much is the stuff of the company worth divided by the number of shares. This total is also called book value. The market cap is share price times number of shares. For Amazon  today people are willing to pay 290 a share for a company with a NAV of 22 a share. If of nav and price were equal the P/B (price to book ratio) would be 1, but for Amazon it is 13.  Why? Because investors believe Amazon is worth a lot more than a money losing company with a NAV of 22.", "\"The basic theoretical reason for a company to return money to shareholders is that the company doesn't need the money for its own purposes (e.g. investment or working capital). So instead of the company just keeping it in the bank, it hands it back so that shareholders can do what they think fit, e.g. investing it elsewhere. In some cases, particularly \"\"private equity\"\" deals, you see companies actively borrowing money to payout to shareholders, on the grounds that they can do so cheaply enough that it will improve overall shareholder returns. The trade-off with this kind of \"\"leveraging up\"\" is that it usually makes the business more risky and every so often you see it go wrong, e.g. after an economic downturn. It may still be a rational thing to do, but I'd look at that kind of proposal very carefully. In this case I think things are quite different: the company has sold a valuable asset and has spare cash. It's already going to use some of the money to reduce debt so it doesn't seem like the company is becoming more risky. Overall if the management is recommending it, I would support it. As you say, the share consolidation seems like just a technical measure and you might as well also support that. I think they want to make their share price seem stable over time to people who are looking at it casually and won't be aware of the payout - otherwise it'd suddenly drop by 60p and might give the impression the company had some bad news. The plan is to essentially cancel one share worth ~960p for every payout they make on 16 shares - since 16x60p = 960p payout this should leave the share price broadly unchanged.\"", "\"VaR does not do what it is supposed to do which is give you a \"\"floor\"\" with confidence on your potential losses.  Even for portfolios with millions of instruments, it will not give you a metric that means anything.  The point im trying to convey is that VaR does not give any meaningful information as its horribly inaccurate and that we would be better off WITHOUT VaR.\""]}
+{"query": "Taking partial capital loss purely for tax purposes", "corpus": ["Note that the rules around wash sales vary depending on where you live. For the U.S., the wash sale rules say that you cannot buy a substantially identical stock or security within 30 days (before or after) your sale. So, you could sell your stock today to lock in the capital losses. However, you would then have to wait at least 30 days before purchasing it back. If you bought it back within 30 days, you would disqualify the capital loss event. The risk, of course, is that the stock's price goes up substantially while you are waiting for the wash sale period. It's up to you to determine if the risk outweighs the benefit of locking in your capital losses. Note that this applies regardless of whether you sell SOME or ALL of the stock. Or indeed, if we are talking about securities other than stocks."], "neg": ["I got an idea, lets keep doing this every 50 years or so. Fuck remembering that a living wage is key to the economy, we can just keep booming and busting BECAUSE ITS SO MUCH FUCKING FUN.  Write a cocksucking social contract and stick to it fucking fucking idiots.", "A pattern of high level people buying or selling is a sign, positive or negative. An individual, not so much. He can be selling to diversify, trying to keep his investments from being all in the company. He can be selling to pay his large bills. Same reasons any of us might be selling an investment to have cash to use.", "FRED isn't recording people, it's recording households.  A household can hold any number of people.  When your person moves from a rental back in to their family's house, the number of separate households goes down to 9; and home ownership shoots up to 55.5% according to FRED.", "Facebook is currently the most often visited site on the web. So it only follows that we as marketers should take full advantage of all the promotional possibilities it offers.  Facebook adder software makes it super simple to market to whatever demographic you’re marketing to as well as whatever niche you’re tapping into.  Currently you’ll find that there are several tools out there that are used for sending out multiple friend requests at a time. Yet although, there are a relatively large number that will actually get the job done, only smaller fraction of these types of programs can perform this action without getting your account banned.  Facebook is fairly vigilant with respect to their methods of detecting spam. Therefore, if you decide to use an automated process to build your fan page, you must be somewhat strategic in your methodology. The application you use, must allow you to easily set things such as how many friend request you can make and over what period of time you can make them. You should try to keep the number of friend request per day under 50, because  sending out 100′s of request per day will surely get you banned.", "Some proportion of the costs of a policy have little to no relationship to miles driven.  Think of costs of underwriting, and more especially sales/marketing/client acquisition costs (auto insurance isn't in the same league as non-term life insurance (where the commissions and other selling expenses typically exceed the first year's worth of premiums), but the funny TV ads and/or agent commissions aren't free), as well as general business overhead. Also, as noted by quid, some proportion of claim risk isn't correlated to distance covered (think theft, flood, fire, etc.). There are also differences in the miles that are likely to be driven by a non-commercial/vehicle-for-hire driver who puts 25k miles a year vs. one who puts 7k per year.  The former is generally going to be doing more driving at higher speeds on less-congested freeways while the latter will be doing more of their driving on crowded urban roads.  The former pattern generally has a lower expected value of claims both due to having fewer cars per road-mile, fewer intersections and driveways, and also having any given collision be more likely to result in a fatality (paralysis or other lifetime disability claims are generally going to exceed what the insurer would pay out on a fatality).", "\"Note that these used to be a single \"\"common\"\" share that has \"\"split\"\" (actually a \"\"special dividend\"\" but effectively a split). If you owned one share of Google before the split, you had one share giving you X worth of equity in the company and 1 vote. After the split you have two shares giving you the same X worth of equity and 1 vote. In other words, zero change. Buy or sell either depending on how much you value the vote and how much you think others will pay (or not) for that vote in the future.  As Google issues new shares, it'll likely issue more of the new non-voting shares meaning dilution of equity but not dilution of voting power. For most of us, our few votes count for nothing so evaluate this as you will.  Google's founders believe they can do a better job running the company long-term when there are fewer pressures from outside holders who may have only short-term interests in mind. If you disagree, or if you are only interested in the short-term, you probably shouldn't be an owner of Google. As always, evaluate the facts for yourself, your situation, and your beliefs.\"", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-australia-cba-moneylaundering-idUSKCN1B70XL?il=0) reduced by 78%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; SYDNEY - Commonwealth Bank of Australia, the nation&amp;#039;s biggest lender, has been hit with a public inquiry into its governance and culture - the second regulatory probe to be launched this month after it was accused of massive breaches of money-laundering rules.  &gt; CBA was sued this month by financial intelligence agency AUSTRAC which alleges that criminals and terror financiers laundered millions of dollars through CBA accounts - the first lawsuit of it kind against a major Australian bank and exposing CBA to a fine potentially amounting to billions of dollars.  &gt; Last year, CBA admitted to using unscrupulous practices that cheated people out of life insurance payments, and in 2014 Narev publicly apologized after CBA advisors were found to have given customers poor financial advice.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6whxsk/australias_prudential_regulator_launches_inquiry/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~199698 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*: **Bank**^#1 **CBA**^#2 **Commission**^#3 **Royal**^#4 **probe**^#5\""]}
+{"query": "operating income", "corpus": ["Sedar is I guess the Canadian equivalent of EDGAR. You can find the company's filings there.  Here's a picture from their filings. Can't post the link, if you go and find the filing through Sedar you'll know why (it's not as nice a site as EDGAR). The 4.8 million is from unrealized gain on biological assets. So that's what it is. The reason, I think, as to why Operating Income is a positive 2.67 even though Operating Expense and Gross Profit are both negative is because Google Finance backed into Operating Expense. Operating Income is the same between the two sources, it's just the unrealized gain that moves."], "neg": ["Zoopla may not always accurately reflect the market price. Your best bet is to get a quote for local registered) letting agents. That way you know you are close to the real market value. Also, these quotes may come into handy if you have a mortgage on the property. Since most banks will require you to provide proof of rent figures you are projecting by sending in official quotes. Hope this helps..", "Satya has amazingly turned MS around. They were the laughing stock of most developers for many years but have picked up a number of big name developers, released a lot of great developer tools and are starting to be relevant again. It's an amazing transformation and for the first time in my life I'm looking forward to what they do next.", "\"I have heard that investing more money into an investment which has   gone down is generally a bad idea*. \"\"Throwing good money after bad\"\" so   to speak. Is investing more money into a stock, you already have a stake in,   which has gone up in price; a good idea? Other things being equal, deciding whether to buy more stocks or shares in a company you're already invested in should be made in the same way you would evaluate any investment decision and -- broadly speaking -- should not be influenced by whether an existing holding has gone up or down in value. For instance, given the current price of the stock, prevailing market conditions, and knowledge about the company, if you think there is a reasonable chance that the price will rise in the time-period you are interested in, then you may want to buy (more) stock. If you think there is a reasonable chance the price will fall, then you probably won't want to buy (more) stock. Note: it may be that the past performance of a company is factored into your decision to buy (e.g was a recent downturn merely a \"\"blip\"\", and long-term prospects remain good; or have recent steady rises exhausted the potential for growth for the time being). And while this past performance will have played a part in whether any existing holding went up or down in value, it should only be the past performance -- not whether or not you've gained or lost money -- that affects the new decision. For instance: let us suppose (for reasons that seemed valid at the time) you bought your original holding at £10/share, the price has dropped to £2/share, but you (now) believe both prices were/are \"\"wrong\"\" and that the \"\"true price\"\" should be around £5/share. If you feel there is a good chance of this being achieved then buying shares at £2, anticipating they'll rally to £5, may be sound. But you should be doing this because you think the price will rise to £5, and not because it will offset the loses in your original holding. (You may also want to take stock and evaluate why you thought it a good idea to buy at £10... if you were overly optimistic then, you should probably be asking yourself whether your current decisions (in this or any share) are \"\"sound\"\"). There is one area where an existing holding does come into play: as both jamesqf and Victor rightly point out, keeping a \"\"balanced\"\" portfolio -- without putting \"\"all your eggs in one basket\"\" -- is generally sound advice. So when considering the purchase of additional stock in a company you are already invested in, remember to look at the combined total (old and new) when evaluating how the (potential) purchase will affect your overall portfolio.\"", "First, to answer the question.  The benefit of a 401k is that you don't have to pay income tax on the money contributed nor do you pay capital gains tax on the money that accumulates.  You get that with the restriction that you can't willy nilly remove and contribute money to the account (and you are taxed on withdrawals, more severely if you do it before you are 65).  Similar sorts of restrictions apply to all retirement accounts which give tax benefits.  Now, for the 7000 not providing benefit.  Assuming a very modest 4% growth, over 40 years 7000 becomes 34,671. Not something to sneeze at (inflation, risk reward, blah, blah, blah, it is less than it looks, but 4% is really pretty low, the stock market averages anywhere from 7-&gt;10% and IIRC the bond market is somewhere around 5%).  Now, certainly, to avoid bankruptcy you should withdraw.  However, if it is possible, you will be best served by keeping the money in your 401k account.  The penalties and lost earning opportunities are pretty significant.  /u/BeatArmy99 [has the numbers](http://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/2ct0qy/why_cant_i_access_my_401k_if_its_my_money/cjiorl7) for how much you lose by doing an early withdraw.  Don't do this lightly and I would suggest avoiding cashing out the whole thing if you can.", "Is there an indicator about what percentage must be paid when?  Where does economics end and finance start?  I feel quite geeky, but I have been studying a bit of finance, and listening to bloomberg while I work (I am software dev) and want to understand everything :D  edit: just found about this [https://www.google.com/publicdata](https://www.google.co.uk/publicdata/explore?ds=ds22a34krhq5p_&amp;met_y=gd_pc_gdp&amp;idim=country:pt:es:el&amp;hl=en&amp;dl=en#!ctype=l&amp;strail=false&amp;bcs=d&amp;nselm=h&amp;met_y=gd_mio_eur&amp;scale_y=lin&amp;ind_y=false&amp;rdim=country_group&amp;idim=country:pt:es:el:de:fr:uk&amp;idim=country_group:eu&amp;ifdim=country_group&amp;hl=en_US&amp;dl=en&amp;ind=false)", "Banks buy up, because they get free money at 0.1% interest or so. It does not mean that anybody will afford the houses at those prices in the future. The price will not go up to infinity, unless there is a major inflation round, in which case you will have to wait a decade to sell the house at nominal price after the central bankers let you to do so.   But then again. it is better to own a house in that case, than not having one.", "I don't understand why these things are always either/or. It's not just lucky circumstances and it's not just hard work that makes someone successful. Example abound of rich kids who don't pan out and poor kids who make it.   Personally, I had access to a good education growing up and I pushed myself hard to capitalize on it. Luck is the access, but hard work was necessary to convert. I've had success in my career. Part of it is that I had opportunities to tackle tough challenges, but I also pushed to convert on those opportunities."]}
+{"query": "How does Robinhood stock broker make money?", "corpus": ["Robinhood seems interesting. Some say it's a gimmicky site with a nice UI not an investing or trading platform. From investopedia: 1. For now, the app stays afloat for mainly two reasons. First, the business itself is extremely lean: no physical locations, a small   staff, no massive public relations campaigns and only one operating   system platform to maintain. Robinhood also generates interest off of   unused cash deposits from user accounts according to the Federal Funds   rate. 2. Second, venture capitalists such as Index Ventures, Ribbit Capital,   Google Ventures, Andreessen Horowitz, Social Leverage,and “many   others” have invested more than $16 million in the app. 3. According to Barron’s, Robinhood plans to implement margin trading in   2015, eventually charging 3.5% interest for the service. E*Trade   charges 8.44% for accounts under $25,000. Phone assisted trading will   also be available at $10 per trade in the future. 4. Originally, Robinhood planned to make money off of order flows – a   common tactic used by discount brokerages in the 1990s to generate   revenue. According to the company's FAQ, Robinhood backpedaled on the   idea because it executes orders through a clearing partner and, as a   result, receives little to no payment for order flow. The company is   willing to return to its original plan in the future if it receives   order flows directly or begins to generate a lot of revenue from them."], "neg": ["Brokers will have transaction fees in addition to the find management fees, but they should be very transparent. Brokering is a very competitive business.  Any broker that added hidden fees to their transactions would lose customers very quickly to other brokers than can offer the same services. Hedge funds are a very different animal, with less regulation, less transparency,  and less competition. Their fees are tolerated because the leveraged returns are usually much higher. When times are bad, though,  those fees might drive investors elsewhere.", "I'm fairly intelligent, and I'm willing to work my ass off. But I only have a high school degree and no real marketable skills. I don't drink or get high, I'm not even looking to become wealthy as I'm not very materialistic, I just want to earn enough to pay for the basics, save up, and room to grow in case I ever want a family", "Creative workshop leaders aren’t just chirpy, arty people with a head full of ideas. It’s a lucrative business where they need to constantly innovate and manage people, time and resources. Here are simple tips to make the most of it all.", "Risk and return always go hand by hand.*  Risk is a measure of expected return volatility. The best investment at this stage is a good, easy to understand but thorough book on finance. *Applies to efficient markets only.", "Direct answers to your questions: contribute 6%, and put it in the Target Date Fund (probably Target Date Fund 2050).", "&gt;  Did you tell your wireless router to stay only on channel 11 or did Apple finally fix that?  Had to tie down the router to channel 11.  My only hesitation is that I'll miss the Del key, and I'm scared about all the emacs shortcuts, but others have done it, so I'll live.", "Unfortunately, sex is such an important and intimate part of our human mind.It is hardly surprising that it generates so many problems for so many people. In the world all men want girls to fuck for her level.Do not be afraid to say what is on your mind, just as long as you are not making it sound like you are acting out a part of a porn movie. For instance, when you tell your partner how good his or her skin feels on yours, it shows that the slow, close and passionate moment of love."]}
+{"query": "Is building a corporation a good option?", "corpus": ["Creating a corporation is not necessarily less taxes. In fact, you'll face the problem of double taxation, and since you must pay yourself a reasonable salary, if your corporation doesn't earn much to give you as dividend after the salary, and/or your tax bracket is low, you'll in fact may end up paying more taxes. Also there's a lot of bureaucracy involved in managing a corporation. Liability on the other hand is important, and what's more important - is asset separation and limiting the liability to the corporation assets, keeping your personal assets safe. To achieve that, you don't have to create a corporation, but you can create a Limited Liability Company (LLC). LLC are disregarded entities for tax purposes (i.e.: you won't have to pay taxes twice, only once as a sole proprietor/partner), but provide the liability limitation and asset separation. LLC's are much less formal, and require much less paperwork reducing the risk of corporate veil piercing because of non-compliance. I myself decided to manage my investments through LLC's for that very reason (asset separation)."], "neg": ["\"You owe only $38,860 to pay off your loan now, possibly less.   From what you say about your loan, tell me if I got this right: 30 year loan $75,780 original loan amount 9% annual interest rate $609.74 monthly payment You have made 272 payments Payment number 273 is not due until late 2019, possibly early 2020 If I have correctly figured out what you have done, you have been making monthly payments early by pulling out payment coupons before they are due and sending them in with payment.  You are about 4 years ahead on your payments.   If I have this correct, if you called the bank and asked \"\"what is my payoff amount if I want to pay this loan off tomorrow\"\" they would answer something like $38,860.  When you pay a loan off early, you don't just owe the sum of the coupons still remaining.  In your case, you owe at least $16,000 less! Indeed, if there is some way to convert your 4 years of pre-payments into an early payment, you would owe even less than $38,860.  I don't know banking law well enough to know if that is possible.   You should stop pulling coupons out of your book and paying them early.  Any payments you make between now and when your next payment is actually due (late 2019 sometime?) you should tell the bank you want applied as an early payment.  This will bring your total owed amount down much faster than pulling coupons out of your book and making payments years early.   If there is someone in your family who understands banking pretty well, maybe they can help you sort this out.  I don't know who to refer you to for more personal help, but I really do think you have more than $16,000 to gain by changing how you are paying your mortgage.   Good luck!\"", "One such strategy I have heard for those who have this opportunity is to purchase the maximum allowed. When the window to sell opens, sell all of your shares and repurchase the most you can with the amount you gained (or keep an equivalent to avoid another transaction fee). This allows you to buy at a discount, and spread out the risk by investing elsewhere.  This way you are really only exposing yourself to lose money which you wouldn't have had access to without the stock discount.", "(disclaimer: I don't answer specifically about Australia) As long as people don't question car usage and urban sprawl, and thus are willing to pay a premium for being stuck in traffic jams every working day, I don't see any reason why fuel producers wouldn't increase their prices. Given increasing demand from China and other rapidly growing countries, given state of remaining world resources, I think that fuel is a bargain nowadays.", "I would read any and all of the John Bogle books.  Essentially:  We know the market will rise and fall.  We just don't know when specifically.   For the most part it is impossible to time the market. He would advocate an asset allocation approach to investing.  So much to bonds, tbills, S&P500 index, NASDAQ index.  In your case you could start out with 10% of your portfolio each in S&P500 and NASDAQ.  Had you done that, you would have achieved growth of 17% and 27% respectively.  The growth on either one of those funds would have probably dwarfed the growth on the entire rest of your portfolio.  BTW 2013 and 2014 were also very good years, with 2015 being mostly flat. In the past you have avoided risk in the market to achieve the detrimental effects of inflation and stagnant money.  Don't make the same mistakes going forward.", "It was interesting to read the data regarding student loans, and the type of impact it has had to borrowers. The Fed did not necessarily signal the economy is in trouble, but a great deal of households don't have adequate savings to sustain against a moderate financial shock.", "...a marketing guy who as a teenager invented a color cathode ray tube design that almost beat Sony to a patent on the Trinitron display. He also did a pretty good job foreseeing the mobile &amp; Internet revolution (in hindsight it doesn't seem impressive, but when you compare to what most other tech CEO's were thinking at the time, he was way ahead of most of them).  These notions we get about people we've never met....", "\"If you have a business web site, using firstname.lastname@businessdomain.*x* would be the best choice. Using an @gmail address should be a second choice.  If gmail is your only option, though, I would strongly recommend avoiding the aka.username portion. If firstname.lastname@gmail.com isn't available (and, for most people, it no longer is), using something such as FirstinitialLastname.businessname@gmail.com would be a much better option (for example, John Smith with Example Enterprises would be JSmith.ExampleEnterprises@gmail.com).  If you're looking for an email address to use for purposes such as a resume / CV or similar documents, then I would suggest to try to find a variation that includes your first name and last name on gmail. You can use your middle initial, as well, if necessary.  John Curtis Smith could have any combination such as jcsmith, john.c.smith, johnathan.smith, johnathan.c.smith, j.curtis.smith (though that last one will imply that John prefers to be called Curtis), and similar.  Also, and I say this as honest advice from someone who has been in charge of hiring people in the past, if you're concerned about professionalism, you'll want to ensure your grammar and spelling are impeccable. A quick glance at your posting history makes me think you're a Brit, or are currently living in England, so working on your English skills will be important. People will find it difficult to take someone seriously, otherwise, and a poor first impression via text or email can easily cost you whatever it is you're trying to establish, *especially* if you aren't the only person attempting to establish yourself for that position.  You have several errors in your post (\"\"I just a question,\"\" \"\"approriate,\"\" \"\"buisness,\"\" and a lack of sentence structure and punctuation in general).  It may seem silly to concern yourself with typing properly in a post on Reddit, but think of it as practice in a medium (text and typing) where repetition is key. If you're used to typing poorly, it'll take a lot more effort to type well when it counts, and you're more likely to miss an error that could cost you a job or client.  Good luck to you!  ^^^In ^^^before ^^^mentioning ^^^spelling ^^^/ ^^^grammar ^^^and ^^^missing ^^^something ^^^in ^^^my ^^^own ^^^text.\""]}
+{"query": "I have made all the payments on a car I cosigned. Do I have to fight for possession of the vehicle?", "corpus": ["Ordinarily a cosigner does not appear on the car's title (thus, no ownership at all in the vehicle), but they are guaranteeing payment of the loan if the primary borrower does not make the payment. You have essentially two options: Stop making payments for him.  If he does not make them, the car will be repossessed and the default will appear on both his and your credit.  You will have a credit ding to live with, but he will to and he won't have the car. Continue to make payments if he does not, to preserve your credit, and sue him for the money you have paid.  In your suit you could request repayment of the money or have him sign over the title (ownership) to you, if you would be happy with either option.  I suspect that he will object to both, so the judge is going to have to decide if he finds your case has merit. If you go with option 1 and he picks up the payments so the car isn't repossessed, you can then still take option 2 to recover the money you have paid.  Be prepared to provide documentation to the court of the payments you have made (bank statements showing the out-go, or other form of evidence you made the payment - the finance company's statements aren't going to show who made them)."], "neg": ["How about a slightly different approach. Invest in a duplex or trip/quadplex. Live in one unit, rent out the rest. Chances are you'll end up either paying nothing in total, or even making money as your tenants pay your bills for you. Depends a lot on your area and your willingness to deal with the crap of tenants, but have a look into it. You'll be surprised what you can buy in your area and the types of people you might end up living with you...", "Angels are different from venture capitalists because they use their own personal money to invest in a business. Venture capitalists invest from a fund which they manage on behalf of those who invest in the fund. If you are interested in connecting with an angel investor right now, you can find one using Angel Investment Network.", "Fuck that. Let the market do its work.  I'm telling you now, I simply refuse to eat manufactured meat in its entirety. I am a hunter I eat meat that I harvest in the wild it allows me to provide healthy, free range meat to my family and take part in not only nature but a cultural tradition that is older than humankind.   Sorry but whilst factory meat might make up some of my diet at some stage in the future it will not account for the majority of my meat consumption.", "\"I think all transportation uses only 1/3 of oil produced at best.  That includes many things that won't be electrifed soon, like planes and ships.  Don't forget how much oil agriculture uses in both fertilizer, pesticides and the least in running the equipment itself.  So while demand may soften over time, it's not like will suddenly glut.  Peak Oil (which we reached with \"\"conventional oil\"\" vs fracked) kinda says that each subsequent barrel will get more and more expensive to pump out (rather the popular perception we will suddenly run out).  That basically has been a truism since over a century, because ERoEI on oil has declined.  At peak return, iirc in the 1930s or so, we were getting something like 300 barrels of oil out for every barrel of energy invested on some fields in Saudi Arabia, now the overall average is down to around 10 or less?  Point is, oil won't go to $10.  Oil industry could not survive on it and they know we don't have alternatives for many oil uses (it's the most easily portable liquid with the highest energy concentration), so why price it as such?  If people really wanted to reduce their carbon/oil footprint, they'd stop pining for electric cars and switch to a plantbased diet - which will have a far greater impact for much less investment.  On top of all the health benefits they accumulate.\"", "The government has expenditures, part of which includes interest expense on debt.  The government first pays with your taxes, the remainder, which varies between a few billion to tens of billions to sometimes hundreds of billions of dollars, is called the deficit.  The government takes out loans, called US Treasury Bonds, to pay the deficiet.  The interest payments on this new debt is added to the interest expenditure the government pays every year.", "I'm assuming you're in Germany or Europe based on your question, but here's an American's perspective that should pertain you you as well: Once you have a steady income and an emergency fund large enough to keep you from going bankrupt, then start learning about retirement and investment options.", "\"Institutional investors are the \"\"elephant\"\" in the room. When they \"\"sneeze,\"\" everyone else \"\"catches cold.\"\" They're fine, if they're buying after YOU do. They're not bad, if you want to buy after they sell en masse. But when you read about moves of 10 percent, 15 percent or more in a single day, it's because a bunch of institutional investors all decided to do the same thing on the same day.  That's more volatility than most people can stomach. Fewer institutional investors in a stock mean fewer chances of those things happening.\""]}
+{"query": "Multiple accounts stagnant after quitting job.", "corpus": ["Adapted from an answer to a somewhat different question. Generally, 401k plans have larger annual expenses and provide for poorer investment choices than are available to you if you roll over your 401k investments into an IRA. So, unless you have specific reasons for wanting to continue to leave your money in the 401k plan (e.g. you have access to investments that are not available to nonparticipants and you think those investments are where you want your money to be), roll over your 401k assets into an IRA. But I don't think that is the case here.  If you had a Traditional 401k, the assets will roll over into a Traditional IRA; if it was a Roth 401k, into a Roth IRA. If you had started a little earlier, you could have considered considered converting part or all of your Traditional IRA into a Roth IRA (assuming that your 2012 taxable income will be smaller this year because you have quit your job). Of course, this may still hold true in 2013 as well.  As to which custodian to choose for your Rollover IRA, I recommend investing in a low-cost index  mutual fund such as VFINX which tracks the S&P 500 Index. Then, do not look at how that fund is doing for the next thirty years.  This will save you from the common error made by many investors when they pull out at the first downturn and thus end up buying high and selling low. Also, do not chase after exchange-traded mutual funds or ETFs (as many will likely recommend) until you have acquired more savvy or interest in investing than you are currently exhibiting. Not knowing which company stock you have, it is hard to make a recommendation about selling or holding on. But since you are glad to have quit your job, you might want to consider making a clean break and selling the shares that you own in your ex-employer's company. Keep the $35K (less the $12K that you will use to pay off the student loan) as your emergency fund. Pay off your student loan right away since you have the cash to do it."], "neg": ["What is it that you think he is producing? He sells timeshares. If he quit selling timeshares someone else would. Maybe someone who thinks making 25% is good enough. That's how business works. It is why when you arrest one drug king pin 3 more pop up. Maybe even an employee at the current company.", "\"It is called \"\"Opportunity Cost.\"\"   Opportunity cost is the value you lose because of a decision you made.   This is the book definition from Investopedia. The difference in return between a chosen investment and one that is necessarily passed up. Say you invest in a stock and it returns a paltry 2% over the year. In placing your money in the stock, you gave up the opportunity of another investment - say, a risk-free government bond yielding 6%. In this situation, your opportunity costs are 4% (6% - 2%).\"", "\"Oh the classic \"\"much human nature\"\" argument which ignored capitalism had existed for less than tree centuries as and there are still several tribes where people hunt and share their hunt without even telling who hunted the animal or where.people eat whatever they hunted after everybody else has eaten first  But people are naturally selfish, surely it's not cultural or due to an economic system\"", "It take 10 years or more to build a nuclear plant then 20 - 30 years after that to break even on cost. By that time, 2047, solar *(+ storage) will be so cheap  the plant would have gone bankrupt a decade earlier. The right time to build more nuclear power plants was 20 years ago.", "Personally, I started renting out because I couldn't afford to buy a place but now I'm quite comfortably past that point.  My three main issues are: These views aren't for everyone but I find it hard to seriously contemplate dealing with 2 while 1 and 3 are issues.   To be honest, I found that I learned a lot sharing a place for the first few years and still enjoying it now.  I don't really think you should bring it down to a financial issue unless your decision is already made.", "Why are self checkout lanes always available? Because people don't want the do extra work.  Sure this is coupd be a good idea in a small convenience store setting, but not a large grocery store.  It just seems like a complete logistical nightmare, especially with produce.  With massive upfront construction costs or refit costs, and then add in the new maintenence, preventative maintenance, and monitoring costs.  Do you truly see savings when cashiers are cheap?  On top of everything, you are still going to have lines.  A week''s worth of groceries doesn't bag itself.", "Germany is substantially cheaper than the London . You would need at least double your current income to maintain the same lifestyle in London.  Even then, you will likely have to settle for a cramped housing or a long commute. Java developers are largely contractors in the UK.  Typical wages and rates can be found at www.itjobswatch.co.UK Wages go up and down depending on supply and demand. Don't quit till you have another offer."]}
+{"query": "How do markets “factor in” a future event?", "corpus": ["\"At the most fundamental level, every market is comprised of buyers and selling trading securities. These buyers and sellers decide what and how to trade based on the probability of future events, as they see it. That's a simple statement, but an example demonstrates how complicated it can be. Picture a company that's about to announce earnings. Some investors/traders (from here on, \"\"agents\"\") will have purchased the company's stock a while ago, with the expectation that the company will have strong earnings and grow going forward. Other agents will have sold the stock short, bought put options, etc. with the expectation that the company won't do as well in the future. Still others may be unsure about the future of the company, but still expecting a lot of volatility around the earnings announcement, so they'll have bought/sold the stock, options, futures, etc. to take advantage of that volatility.  All of these various predictions, expectations, etc. factor into what agents are bidding and asking for the stock, its associated derivatives, and other securities, which in turn determines its price (along with overall economic factors, like the sector's performance, interest rates, etc.) It can be very difficult to determine exactly how markets are factoring in information about an event, though. Take the example in your question. The article states that if market expectations of higher interest rates tightened credit conditions... In this case, lenders could expect higher interest rates in the future, so they may be less willing to lend money now because they expect to earn a higher interest rate in the future. You could also see this reflected in bond prices, because since interest rates are inversely related to bond prices, higher interest rates could decrease the value of bond portfolios. This could lead agents to sell bonds now in order to lock in their profits, while other agents could wait to buy bonds because they expect to be able to purchase bonds with a higher rate in the future.  Furthermore, higher interest rates make taking out loans more expensive for individuals and businesses. This potential decline in investment could lead to decreased revenue/profits for businesses, which could in turn cause declines in the stock market. Agents expecting these declines could sell now in order to lock in their profits, buy derivatives to hedge against or ride out possible declines, etc. However, the current low interest rate environment makes it cheaper for businesses to obtain loans, which can in turn drive investment and lead to increases in the stock market. This is one criticism of the easy money/quantitative easing policies of the US Federal Reserve, i.e. the low interest rates are driving a bubble in the stock market. One quick example of how tricky this can be. The usual assumption is that positive economic news, e.g. low unemployment numbers, strong business/residential investment, etc. will lead to price increases in the stock market as more agents see growth in the future and buy accordingly. However, in the US, positive economic news has recently led to declines in the market because agents are worried that positive news will lead the Federal Reserve to taper/stop quantitative easing sooner rather than later, thus ending the low interest rate environment and possibly tampering growth.  Summary: In short, markets incorporate information about an event because the buyers and sellers trade securities based on the likelihood of that event, its possible effects, and the behavior of other buyers and sellers as they react to the same information. Information may lead agents to buy and sell in multiple markets, e.g. equity and fixed-income, different types of derivatives, etc. which can in turn affect prices and yields throughout numerous markets.\""], "neg": ["The only advantage of changing all your money now to the new currency is that you might get a better conversion rate now than later, so you get more of the new currency and you may pay a lower percentage fee for changing a larger sum of money. However, regarding the better conversion rate - you will not know this except with hindsight. The disadvantage of changing all at once is that if you have changed too much and need to change back to your own currency or a third currency, you will be charged fees and lose on the conversion rate twice. If you know how long you are going to be in the new country, say 12 months, maybe start by converting an amount you think you will be spending in a month. If you spend more then you can change a bit more the next month, or if you spend less change less the next month. If you find you are spending similar amounts for the next month or so, then you can budget on the amount you may be spending for the remainder of your stay and then convert this amount over. If you have a little left over at the end of your stay maybe reward yourself with something or buy a present for someone special back at home. If you need a little more, just convert this amount in the last month or so.", "\"Definitely depends on the field. I work in derivatives (but not on the pure quant side, though), and that's one of the fields that tends to hire the most mathsy guys. Basically involves applying a lot of stochastic calculus and probabilistic concepts to practical pricing problems.   If you want a nice little application from a math perspective (but not necessarily practical), check out \"\"A Closed-Form Solution for Options with Stochastic Volatility\"\" by Heston (1992). Should give a decent idea of how typically the problem solving process works in derivative-land: start with a practical problem relating to a probabilistic/modelling concept (eg implied distribution of expected returns) -&gt; apply some math -&gt; come up with some sort of solution.  *edit: clarification 1st paragraph\"", "What source said the Fed considers them retired? And you know $2 trillion of that is mortgage backed securities. No one seems to have told the homeowners their mortgages are forgiven as I haven't seen the block parties for that.", "Not to overkill the theres a few more I can think of right now", "\"First, your professor should learn proper grammar. Should be, \"\"Why **do**....\"\"  Second, it looks like you're dealing with synthetic securities. You can create a synthetic T-Bill by doing a combination of long/short calls/puts.  But ignore all that. Just think about this without the technical jargon. We know that the risk free rate is typically what T-Bills are yielding right? And we know that since options are inherently more risky than US government debt, investors will demand a higher interest rate to compensate them for the risk. So, as the risk free rate increases, the value of a call will move the same direction, otherwise investors would stop dealing with call options and would instead buy safer, less-risky \"\"riskless\"\" investments.  It's not really an options question, just one of basic finance, risk, understanding of interest rates, etc.\"", "\"In other words, does the market have control over sale numbers or do I? You both do, just like for the bike.  You have control over the price you ask, and the buyer has control over the price they pay.  If the two do not align, no sale takes place. Your question uses the words \"\"sell\"\" and \"\"sale\"\" ambiguously.  You can decide to ask for any price you want.  You cannot actually sell anything until someone agrees to buy what you are offering.\"", "&gt;Man is a social animal.  He generally is; but he doesn't *have* to be.  Not in anything like way that the aforementioned bees are.  &gt;The survival of our species has been only made possible by our acceptance of our co-dependency.   Au contraire. The social co-dependency (within limits) has served to both allow the species to thrive, AND at the same time, has often severely limited and constrained us.  The vast majority of human history has essentially been one of cyclical feudal-fascistic/crony-capitalistic -- monarchical governments in collusion with an elite of rentier-landowners who together control commerce -- growth during the early post anarchy stages, and then followed by later implosion as the system ossifies (with socialistic aspects implemented in an attempt to maintain power in the face of a growing mob)."]}
+{"query": "Can the purchaser of a stock call option cancel the contract?", "corpus": ["You bought the right – but not the obligation – to buy a certain number of shares at $15 from  whomsoever sold you the option, and you paid a premium for it.  You can choose whether you want to buy the shares at $15 during the period agreed upon. If you call for the shares, the other guy has to sell the shares to you for $15 each, even if the market price is higher. You can then turn around and promptly resell the purchased shares at the higher market price. If the market price never rises above $15 at any time while the option is open, you still have the right to buy the shares for $15 if you choose to do so. Most rational people would let the option expire without exercising it, but this is not a legal requirement.  Doing things like buying shares at $15 when the market price is below $15 is perfectly legal; just not very savvy.  You cannot cancel the option in the sense of going to the seller of the option and demanding your premium money back because you don't  intend to exercise the option because the market price is below $15.  Of course, if the market price is above $15 and you tell the seller to cancel the contract, they will be happy to do so, since it lets them off the hook. They may or may not give you the premium back in this case."], "neg": ["\"&gt;When I was a student, back in the early nineties, I had a holiday job at the frozen-food supermarket chain, Iceland.  One morning, presumably fresh from a leadership course at Frosty HQ, our manager called all the staff together to admonish us for our apparent lack of enthusiasm for the sale of turkey nuggets.  “Sometimes I feel that some of you are only in this for the  money” she hissed.  She was cut off by incredulous laughter.  After all, what other motivation could there be for spending one’s weekend restocking a giant fridge freezer?  This is ironically (ROTFLMAO) hilarious.    After all what exactly is the underlying motivation of the \"\"company\"\" itself?  The good of all little children of the world... hence the dispensing of \"\"turkey nuggets\"\" for FREE???  Oh wait, the goal is to make money.  Herp Derp.    ---  &gt;Innocuous as this may sound, it’s a cultural shift that poisonously favours the employer over the worker.  For as long as companies are able to offer their staff these intangible psychological carrots, they are able to get away with not paying them in full for the work they do. &gt; &gt;[...] &gt; &gt;For companies, it’s a perfect ruse.  Like faith healers, the more evangelical fervour they can fire up in their staff, the more they can squeeze out of them, and the less they ask in return.   I heard this kind of BS (along with the Soviet-style \"\"banners\"\" and \"\"mission statements\"\" and \"\"5 year plans\"\") well over a decade ago.  My response then to it -- (from a friend/CEO who was trying to \"\"entice\"\" me into working for his company, and tried this schtick because he'd recently been indoctrinated into the BS via Harvard's OPM/MBA program) -- was simple, I said \"\"Sorry guy, cut the BS, I'm basically prostituting my mind/skills/time &amp; labor -- make me a better offer in terms of $$ or STFU.\"\" He started to take umbrage at the \"\"prostitute\"\" concept, and I replied that I wasn't born yesterday, I knew that he had inherited the company, that he himself really didn't give a rats arse about making &amp; selling the products that he did, and that the whole enterprise was (as essentially all enterprises are) ALL ABOUT making money -- so if he wanted me on his team, he would need to PAY. (And besides, his entire reason for wanting to hire me was that he KNEW I would be able to help make his operation significantly more efficient and therefore more profitable.)  Sometimes you just need to clock these jackasses over the head with a baseball bat -- they get so caught-up and habituated in using the buzzwords and euphemisms that they delude themselves into thinking that they *really ARE* \"\"doing God's work\"\". (The irony is that those same \"\"delusions\"\" and buzzwords tend to make them easy marks for scamming \"\"con-men\"\" consultants; something that I have seen happen several times, often almost hilariously.)  And I also see that this is the influence of \"\"creeping socialism\"\" -- as if there is something inherently \"\"wrong\"\" with making a profit and it has to be \"\"justified\"\" with something more noble -- which is total delusional *ballocks*. The only reason to plant a seed is to reap the harvest; and thus feed yourself (and incidentally, others, from whom you are entitled to expect something in return/exchange).\"", "Fair point.  I think malpractice insurance is more to protect the patient than the doctor, even though the doctor pays the premiums   The government requires it so they can't kill or injury a patient and then just declare bankruptcy without paying damages.  If claims were allowed for negligence that insurer would be creating what's known as a moral hazard issue and there would essentially be nothing stopping corporations/executives from constantly screwing over the public.  That insurer would be bankrupt in no time.", "\"Donbey since you mention your expenses are very low, I'm going to assume that social security will cover your expenses once you qualify for it.  Since you have no savings currently the first and most important job for this money is to make sure that you can live comfortably until social security kicks in.  Social security could start for you as early as 62 so you need to set aside at least two years worth of money plus another chunk as a safety measure. Also, if you don't have health insurance please look to get a plan through your local ACA exchange as not having health insurance is by far the most common way someone your age ends up bankrupt.  Insurance will eat up a good chunk of the money, but will be much cheaper after the first year if you continue to have no income. Now, if your expenses are low enough, you can look to use this money to delay when you start taking social security as long as possible as the longer you delay social security the more money you get.  The AARP has a calculator where you can see how much more per year you will get from social security if you delay taking it as long as you can.  This is a great way to insure you live as comfortably as possible even if you live to 120.  Assuming you are reasonably healthy, this is a very secure and very meaningful way to \"\"invest\"\" this windfall. Once you have set aside the money for your expenses, emergencies, health care and delaying social security in a combination of checking and high-yielding savings accounts, yhen it can be in your interest to invest any remaining amount.  Common, solid, low-risk investments for a 10+ year time frame would be either: While Glen is correct that it is possible for even the best bond fund to lose money it is rather unlikely that you will end up losing money over a period of 10 years.  The nice thing about the bond fund is that most funds (find the right one) don't charge a fee if you need to need to take your money out early.  CDs guarantee that you won't lose your money, but if you have to take the money out in an emergency the fees will eat up way more money than a bond fund would normally lose.  Also, a good bond fund will generally yield a bit more than a CD. Investing in stock is generally much too risky for this sort of time frame without large savings to back it up.\"", "It depends on what you paid for, but usually audit support is an unrelated engagement to the return preparation. If the accountant made a professional mistake, you can request correction and compensation from that accountant, other than that any accountant can help you with audit regardless of who prepared the return. The original accountant would probably be better informed about why you reported each number on the return and how it was calculated, but if you kept all the docs, it can be recalculated again. That's what happens in the audit anyway.", "Thanks for that. After a while I was just writing for the enjoyment of writing (and because my wife is out of town) but it's cool that you followed it all the way and compliments are always appreciated! I long ago learned that the art of successful debate is at least 50% the ability to refrain from name calling.", "Atlanta, and I hate it. I'm really not a city person - I like mountains and trees and streams. I'm not trying to hate on city people, I was just hating on this dude for hating things he hasn't experienced.  Like I said, I like the state of Nevada - the parks and stuff are awesome, I just hate Las Vegas like I hate NYC and LA and SF and every other big city.   But anyway, going back to the GP, he said he has never visited Las Vegas and he hates it. That's lame. You should experience something before you hate it.", "Both of you sit down with a lawyer who practices in real estate and foreclosures, and hash out every single possibility of what could conceivably go wrong, with nothing out of bounds.  Come up with a reasonable and fair plan for resolving each situation, that you are willing to commit to, life and breath, for real, no exit.  Put all of it into a legal commitment between you two.  However this is a fearless, searching and even ruthless contemplation, requiring a level of intimacy and personal responsibility you may not be comfortable with. and there's absolutely no room for dancing around unspoken questions.  So in essence, it puts the hardest stuff up-front.  If you put that much thought and honesty into it, you'll probably be OK. But you probably won't want to be that honest, or won't want to do the deal after you do."]}
+{"query": "How can banks afford to offer credit card rewards?", "corpus": ["There are 3 entities in a credit card transaction; Typically when you swipe for 100, the merchant only gets around 97.5. The 2.5 is divided amongst the 3 entities, roughly around 0.5 for the Merchant Bank, around 0.5 for the Card Network and a lions share to Issuing Bank of around 1.5 The reason Issuing Bank gets large share is because they take the risk and provide the credit to customer. Typically the Issuing Bank would pay the Merchant bank via the Card Network the money in couple of days. So the Merchant Bank is not out of funds. The Issuing Bank on the other hand would have given you a credit of say 10 to 50 days depending on when you made the transaction and when the payment is due. On an average 30 days of credit. So roughly the Acquiring Bank is lending money at the rate of 18%. It is from this money the Issuing Bank would give out rewards, which is typically less than 1%. Also in cases where say Merchant Bank and the Issuing Bank are same, Bank would make money on both the legs of transaction and hence launch co-branded cards with better rewards. The above numbers are illustrative and actual practices vary from Bank to Bank to card Network to Country Related question at How do credit card companies make profit?"], "neg": ["Quick, move to the state where the ticket was bought.  Set up a resident and then claim the prize.  Then, move back home, if you want. IMO But both states will still try to make a claim for the tax money, if you give them a reason to try.   They have nothing else to do, but look for revenue.", "\"Yea, but the market has almost built up an immunity to the \"\"back and forth\"\" of this thought over the past couple months. There's essentially too much talk and not enough action. BUT, It will be interesting to see the effect this Mueller investigation news has over the next couple days, cause I'm assuming the media will push the story. Although the Dow broke new highs today it was essentially flat.   Personally I think the markets being propped up. Also, The dollar is being artificially pushed down (because the fed needs it weak for inflation rises). But who knows, it's just a thought and I will keep trading with the trends!!\"", "Depends on when you are seeing these bids & asks-- off hours, many market makers pull their bid & ask prices entirely.  In a lightly traded stock there may just be no market except during the regular trading day.", "An example, where I live. When you buy a house, the seller wants 'black' money. This is because that way the seller pays less taxes. However, it's not smart for the buyer to pay in black, as the tax reductions are lower. Eventually, when the buyer tries to sell the house, he has to declare the difference, so a higher buy price should not have affected... apart from the notary minutes.", "You will have to rebalance every time your Boolean Buy flag is true. You buy 20% of each fund then next week you have to sell down to 10% of your first 5 funds and buy 10% of the second 5.", "I think the personal information part of this is key. Anyone that's tried to operate a home business understands the catch-22 of advertising your home address. My home phone rings all the time with salesman trying to lease me copiers and sell health insurance plans. I also don't want the damn FedEx man at my front door at 8:00 am with a priority package. I'm also an attorney and I don't want needy clients showing up at my house. My point is, Facebook sells my personal information and I prefer they wouldn't. LinkedIn sells my commercial information ad I prefer they would.", "There's no reason why you couldn't have your work withhold the money for you, but you have to keep a close eye on it an file paperwork causing extra work for yourself and the payroll department. You also have that money withheld weekly instead of keeping access to the money until the end of the quarter if you paid directly to the treasury."]}
+{"query": "How do government bond yields work?", "corpus": ["Why does the rising price of a bond pushes it's yield down? The bond price and its yield are linked; if one goes up, the other must go down. This is because the cash flows from the bond are fixed, predetermined. The market price of the bond fluctuates. Now what if people are suddenly willing to pay more for the same fixed payments? It must mean that the return, i.e. the yield, will be lower. Here we see that risk associated with the bonds in question has   skyrocketed, and thus bonds' returns has skyrocketed, too. Am I right? The default risk has increased, yes. Now, I assume that bonds' price is determined by the market (issued by   a state, traded at the market). Is that correct? Correct, as long as you are talking about the market price. Then who determines bonds' yields? I mean, isn't it fixed? Or - in the   FT quote above - they are talking about the yields for the new bonds   issued that particular month? The yield is not fixed - the cash flows are. Yield is the internal rate of return. See my answer above to your first question."], "neg": ["\"&gt;Canada has universities that are hugely benefitting. Students don’t want to go to a country where they think they will be unwelcome. Smart people from India and China look at Trump and they make the decision that serves their interests the best.  No data. Have you been to China? Do you speak Chinese?  \"\"I’d shut the fuck up about things I don’t understand\"\"\"", "\"I'm not sure how legitimate this idea is, but when I see something like Airbnb coming into play in hospitality I think it opens a lot of potential doors.  You need to realize the full scope of staying at a hotel. Its not just the room you sleep in. There are toiletries, concierge services, taxi/rides if they flew to the area, theres a lot out there when you think about it.  Now imagine you book a place with airbnb.  If i go there will they have toothpaste? Imagine just some kind of company that provides basic toiletries for a fair price for someone who is managing a listing and provides travel items etc whether the person wants to buy in bulk expecting a steady flow to save money, or buy in set packages in smaller sets. create some kind of \"\"basic bundle\"\" including necessities etc.  This is just an example.\"", "A central bank typically introduces new money into the system by printing new money to purchase items from member banks.  The central bank can purchase whatever it chooses.  It typically purchases government bonds but the Federal Reserve purchased mortgage-backed-securities (MBS) during the 2008 panic since the FED was the only one willing to pay full price for MBS after the crash of 2008. The bank, upon receipt of the new money, can loan the money out.  A minimum reserve ratio specifies how much money the bank has to keep on hand.  A reserve ratio of 10% means the bank must have $10 for every $100 in loans. As an example, let's say the FED prints up some new money to purchase some office desks from a member bank.  It prints $10,000 to purchase some desks.  The bank receives $10,000.  It can create up to $100,000 in loans without exceeding the 10% minimum reserve ratio requirement.   How would it do so?  A customer would come to the bank asking for a $100,000 loan.  The bank would create an account for the customer and credit $100,000 to the customer's account.  There is a problem, however.  The customer borrowed the money to buy a boat so the customer writes a check for $100,000 to the boat company.  The boat company attempts to deposit the $100,000 check into the boat company's bank.  The boat company's bank will ask the originating bank for $100,000 in cash.  The originating bank only has $10,000 in cash on hand so this demand will immediately bankrupt the originating bank. So what actually happens?  The originating bank actually only loans out reserves * (1 - minimum reserve ratio) so it can meet demands for the loans it originates.   In our example the bank that received the initial $10,000 from the FED will only loan out $10,000 * (1-0.1) = $9,000.  This allows the bank to cover checks written by the person who borrowed the $9,000.  The reserve ratio for the bank is now $1,000/$9,000 which is 11% and is over the minimum reserve requirement.  The borrower makes a purchase with the borrowed $9,000 and the seller deposits the $9,000 in his bank.  The bank that receives that $9,000 now has an additional $9,000 in reserves which it will use to create loans of $9,000 * (1 - 0.1) = $8100.   This continual fractional reserve money creation process will continue across the entire banking system resulting in $100,000 of new money created from $10,000. This process is explained very well here.", "The short answer is that you can use student loans for living expenses.  Joe provides a nice taxonomy of loans.  I would just add that some loans are not only guaranteed, but also subsidized.  Essentially the Government buys down the rate of the loan. The mechanics are that a financial aid package might consist of grants, work study (job), subsidized, and guaranteed loans.  One can turn down one or more of the elements of the package.  All will be limited in some form. The work study will have a maximum number of hours and generally has low pay.  Many find better deals working in the businesses surrounding the college or starting their own services type business.  The grants rarely cover the full cost of tuition and books.  The loans will both be limited in amount.  It mainly depends on what you qualify for, and generally speaking the lower the income the more aid one qualifies for. Now some students use all their grant, all their loan money and buy things that are not necessary.  For example are you going to live in the $450/month dorm, or the new fancy apartments that are running $800/month?  Are you going to use the student loan money to buy a car?  Will it be a new BMW or a 8 year old Camary? I see this first hand as I live near a large university.  The pubs are filled with college students, not working, but drinking and eating every night.  Many of them drive very fancy cars. The most onerous example of this is students at the military academies.  Attendees have their books and tuition completely paid for.  They also receive a stipend, and more money can be earned over the summer.  They also all qualify for a 35K student loan in their junior year.  Just about every kid, takes this loan.  Most of those use the money to buy a car.  I know a young lady who did exactly that, and so did many of her friends. So kids with a starting pay of 45K also start life with a 35K.  Buying a nice car in the military is especially silly as they cannot drive it while deployed and they are very likely to be deployed.  At least, however, they are guaranteed a starting job with a nice starting pay, and upward potential. College kids who behave similarly might not have it as good.  Will they even find work?  Will the job have the ability to move up?  How much security is in the job?  One might say that this does not apply to engineers and such, but I am working with a fellow with a computer science degree who cannot find a job and has not worked in the past 6 months.  This even though the market is super hot right now for computer engineers. So, in a word, be very careful what you borrow.", "Your question is missing too much to be answered directly. Instead - here are some points to consider. Short term gains taxed at your marginal rates, whereas long term gains have preferable capital gains rates (up to 20% tax rate, instead of your marginal rate). So if you're selling at gain, you might want to consider to sell FIFO and pay lower capital gains tax rate instead of the short term marginal rate. If you're selling at loss and have other short term gains, you would probably be better selling LIFO, so that the loss could offset other short term gains that you might have.  If you're selling at loss and don't have short term gains to offset, you can still offset your long term gains with short term losses, but the tax benefit will be lower. In this case - FIFO might be a better choice again. If you're selling at loss, beware of the wash sale rules, as you might not be able to deduct the loss if you buy/sell within too short a window.", "\"Based on what you asked and your various comments on other answers, this is the first time that you will be making an offer to buy a house, and it seems that the seller is not using a real-estate agent to sell the house, that is, it is what is called a FSBO (for sale by owner) property (and you can learn a lot of about the seller's perspective by visiting fsbo.com). On the other hand, you are a FTB (first-time buyer) and I strongly recommend that you find out about the purchase process by Googling for \"\"first-time home buyer\"\" and reading some of the articles there. But most important, I urge you DO NOT make a written offer to purchase the property until you understand a lot more than you currently do, and a lot more than all the answers here are telling you about making an offer to buy this property.  Even when you feel absolutely confident that you understand everything, hire a real-estate lawyer or a real-estate agent to write the actual offer itself (the agent might well use a standard purchase offer form that his company uses, or the State mandates, and just fill in the blanks). Yes, you will need to pay a fee to these people but it is very important for your own protection, and so don't just wing it when making an offer to purchase. As to how much you should offer, it depends on how much you can afford to pay. I will ignore the possibility that you are rich enough that you can pay cash for the purchase and assume that you will, like most people, be needing to get a mortgage loan to buy the house. Most banks prefer not to lend more than 80% of the appraised value of the house, with the balance of the purchase price coming from your personal funds. They will in some cases, loan more than 80% but will usually charge higher interest rate on the loan, require you to pay mortgage insurance, etc. Now, the appraised value is not determined until the bank sends its own appraiser to look at the property, and this does not happen until your bid has been accepted by the seller. What if your bid (say $500K) is much larger than the appraised value $400K on which the bank is willing to lend you only $320K ? Well, you can still proceed with the deal if you have $180K available to make the pay the rest. Or, you can let the deal fall apart if you have made a properly written offer that contains the usual contingency clause that you will be applying for a mortgage of $400K at rate not to exceed x% and that if you can't get a mortgage commitment within y days, the deal is off. Absent such a clause, you will lose the earnest money that you put into escrow for failure to follow through with the contract to purchase for $500K.  Making an offer in the same ballpark as the market value lessens the chances of having the deal fall through. Note also that even if the appraised value is $500K, the bank might refuse to lend you $400K if your loan application and credit report suggest that you will have difficulty making the payments on a $400K mortgage.  It is a good idea to get a pre-approval from a lender saying that based on the financial information that you have provided, you will likely be approved for a mortgage of $Z (that is, the bank thinks that you can afford the payments on a mortgage of as much as $Z). That way, you have some feel for how much house you can afford, and that should affect what kinds of property you should be bidding on.\"", "You can evaluate portfolio raw returns or risk adjusted returns. To evaluate raw returns, I would personally compute the total returns over the time period in question for both portfolios.  To compute total returns, split the time into a bunch of subperiods by the dates at which you contributed money.  Compute each subperiod return by dividing the value of the portfolio at the end of the subperiod (but before adding additional cash on that day) by the value at the beginning of the subperiod (after adding cash on that day).  Then multiply all these returns together.  Finally, subtract 1.  That's your total return. For the portfolio where you didn't add any money it's easy: just divide the end value by the beginning and subtract 1. Whichever has a higher return performed better. To compute risk adjusted returns, get the portfolio returns from both portfolios (daily or monthly) and use OLS to regress on a benchmark portfolio return (something like the S&P500).  The intercept of the regression is a measure of the risk-adjusted peformance of your portfolio.  Higher the better.  More sophisticated models will do multiple regression using a few benchmark portfolios at the same time."]}
+{"query": "At what point does it become worth it to file an insurance claim?", "corpus": ["An article linked from cnn.com has some great advice, which I think are good rules of thumb. Also, at least my insurance gives a premium price for those who haven't filed a claim in 5 or more years for homeowners or rental insurance. See if you have a similar discount, will loose it, and guess how much that will cost you over 5 years. My rule of thumb: Your premium might go up quite a bit, possibly as much as triple, especially for a large claim. But, it is certainly worth it if you are going to get more than triple your premium through your claim. The worst case: Mortgage mandated insurance, which will be about triple your current cost."], "neg": ["&gt;You assume that the government is a god and all things exist only because of it. You are the zealot here fighting against a competing option and opinion. Every church wants to believe it is the one true church and non believers should be punished for their non belief. Statism truly has become the next wave religion.    No, I assume that government is an institution that keeps getting recreated for any society larger than a hunter-gatherer tribe because of how useful it is.  If anyone is approaching cultbait status, it would be anti-government believers, who blindly believe that all the benefits of a first-world society somehow magically have nothing to do with the forms of the government selected by that society.", "I can see three possibilities:  * The money was illegally transferred and used for operating costs when they started having trouble.  * The company was playing Enron-like accounting games, and were reporting imaginary profits and gains.  In that case, the money never really existed.  * The money was outright stolen, and is in somebody's offshore bank accounts.  Or some combination of these.", "You can find both here: http://www.bde.es/tipos/tipose.htm", "\"I think one major point you're missing here is the decreased interest rates following the 9/11 attacks.  After rates were dropped in late 2001 many less fortunate people could \"\"afford\"\" mortgages on large houses, especially when using variable rate mortgages. This was the root cause of the bubble that was not taken into account by the bank's and rating agencies models.\"", "Yes, I think this is the general idea. We're going through a deleveraging. On the one hand, this isn't entirely a bad thing because the financial crisis showed some people were lending irresponsibly. A lot of bad loans were made and bad loans that don't get repaid cause a lot of havoc.  One the down side, like the original poster said this makes it seem like money is drying up. This has been a bigger problem in some places than other. A lot would argue, myself included, that the US has deleveraged relatively--and key word is relatively--smoothly. Other places, like Europe have not been so lucky.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.smh.com.au/federal-politics/political-news/philip-morris-ordered-to-pay-australia-millions-in-costs-for-plain-packaging-case-20170709-gx7mv5.html) reduced by 85%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Tobacco giant Philip Morris has been ordered to pay the Australian government millions of dollars in legal costs after its failed bid to kill off plain packaging laws.  &gt; Two years later, the court now says Philip Morris must cover Australia&amp;#039;s legal costs, plus an undisclosed percentage of the arbitration costs.  &gt; &amp;quot;It&amp;#039;s good to see that Australia&amp;#039;s world-leading legislation was upheld and that the abuse of process by Philip Morris has now resulted in costs going to the Australian government,&amp;quot; Mr Swan said on Sunday.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6mef7p/philip_morris_ordered_to_pay_australian/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~163662 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*: **cost**^#1 **Australia**^#2 **Court**^#3 **government**^#4 **legal**^#5\"", "It's amateurish to expect Facebook to do anything other than what Zuckerberg wants. His shares give him control over the company. This was known before the IPO. People that thought he would change and take actions that would benefit them, instead of himself are learning an expensive lesson."]}
+{"query": "Why are taxes on actively managed funds higher than those on index funds?", "corpus": ["This depends on the particular index, of course. Capital gains taxes occur when stock is sold (for a profit). This occurs less frequently in an index fund: Where an active manager frequently buys and sells stocks (after all, he wants to be active :-) ), the index fund only sells stocks when the particular stock leaves the index. For an index such as the S&P 500 this does not happen that often.  The more specific the criteria of the index fund, the more often the selling of stock and thus the need to pay capital gains taxes occurs."], "neg": ["\"Will the bank be taxed on the $x received through selling the   collateral? Why do you care? They will, of course, although their basis will be different. It is of no concern for you. What is your concern is that the write-off of the loan is taxed as ordinary income (as opposed to capital gains when you sell the stocks) for you. So when the bank seizes the stocks, they will also report to the IRS that they gave you the amount of money that you owed them (which they will \"\"give you\"\" and then put it on the account of the loan). So you get taxed on that amount as income. In addition, you will be taxed on the gains on the stocks, as giving them to the bank is considered a sale. So you may actually find yourself in a situation where you'd be paying taxes twice, once capital gains, and once as ordinary income, on the same money. I would strongly advise against this. If it is a real situation and not a hypothetical question - get a professional tax advice. I'm not a professional, talk to a CPA/EA licensed in your state.\"", "I filed all my tax returns when I was abroad so they know how much I   made (just not how much I saved). I smell problems here. If you were compliant wrt to your filings, you must have filed FBAR forms and form 8938. Even if you were below the threshold for form 8938, you will probably be above it when you move back to the US - the threshold for people living in the US is much lower. Do I still need to declare it, even though I might not intend to use   this money to help my kids through college? I believe so. Here's what they want: Nothing there suggests that it is only limited to the accounts in the US or to the money you intend to use to help your kids through college.", "An inherited Roth has no tax due at withdrawal. This doesn't change in the case of an inherited Roth received through a spouse as a result of a QDRO. So no tax for you.  To be clear, for an inherited Roth, there's an RMD each year (even though one may be under 59-1/2, e.g. a 5 yr old beneficiary will have an RMD) but there is no penalty for taking more than the RMD or cashing the full value.  Is there more to your question? Why are you taking on debt?", "What's interesting is the fox article they are citing talks about the impact on home owners and business not the benefit to labor. ¯\\\\\\_(ツ)\\_/¯   &gt;[Just how bad is it? According to the National Association of Home Builders, more than 56 percent of developers nationwide are reporting labor shortages. ](http://www.foxnews.com/us/2017/08/02/texas-home-builders-relying-on-immigrant-labor-feel-effects-immigrant-crackdown.html)", "Food is almost never a valid expense. Reason for it is simple - if you were not conducting business you would have to eat too. Ad 1. I don't see why travel in that case would not be a valid expense, as the only reason for you to travel there is for business reasons. Ad 2. Unlikely as there is a duality of purpose. So while part of it may be business, you are also getting personal benefit from the visit (coffee/cakes etc) so that generally is a no. Ad 3. No, while you can claim for entertainment of employees (to sensible extends), that doesn't work when entertaining clients. Ad 4. If any part of the trip is for leisure then you cannot claim it as business expense, sorry! If there is any duality of use then it's not a business expense. And food, as always, is a no go.", "\"I've had an echo (well, now three of them) for more than two years.  It starts out as a novelty.  Then you find the things that are useful, which is mostly just kitchen timers, quick math &amp;amp; conversion questions, music &amp;amp; radio &amp;amp; podcasts, and trivia questions to settle an argument.  Sometimes I ask about the weather, something in the news, etc.  And then, occasionally I'll order something or add something to a shopping list.  The only home automation device I control with the echo is the thermostat (\"\"Alexa, make it cooler\"\").  The latest development is our acquisition of the Echo Show, which just adds a touch screen.  That has added the ability to   a. Shop visually, which I still don't do often;  b. Entertain/distract my toddler for a few minutes in the kitchen (\"\"Alexa, play Daniel Tiger\"\"); and  b. Video chat with my mom, for whom I also bought one (again, for keeping the kid occupied while we're cooking).  So, all in all, I don't think I'm really using it the way Amazon wants (i.e., voice purchases, and buying more Alexa-connected devices because i have this hub), but I'm still happy with it and use it every day.  And as you might gather, i am neither single nor old nor affluent.  So that's my story.\"", "You will almost certainly be paying taxes in Czech Republic, short of being American of Eritrean, citizenship has little to no bearing on tax. If you are working from home, you will probably be a contractor. In Romania you would work through either an SRL or you would set up a PFA. Essentially a limited company or a sole trader. You will need to find the Czech equivalents. I would advise finding a small business accountant. They will be able to advise what is the most cost effective solution, in some countries (like my one) you can save considerable amounts of tax by working through a company. There is a link with some information."]}
+{"query": "How to understand expenses matter relative to investment type for mutual funds?", "corpus": ["The net return reported to you (as a percentage) by a mutual fund is the gross return minus the expense ratio.  So, if the gross return is X% and the expense ratio is Y%, your account will show a return of (X-Y)%.  Be aware that X could be negative too. So, with Y = 1, If X = 10 (as you might get from a stock fund if you believe historical averages will continue), then the net return is 9% and you have lost (Y/X) times 100% = 10% of the gross return. If X = 8 (as you might get from a bond fund if you believe historical averages will continue), then the net return is 7% and you have lost (Y/X) times 100% = 12.5% of the gross return. and so on and so forth.  The numbers used are merely examples of the returns that have been obtained historically, though it is worth emphasizing that 10% is an average return, averaged over many decades, from investments in stocks, and to believe that one will get a 10% return year after year is to mislead oneself very badly. I think the point of the illustrations is that expense ratios are important, and should matter a lot to you, but that their impact is proportionately somewhat less if the gross return  is high, but very significant if the gross return is low, as  in money-market funds.  In fact, some money market funds which  found that X < Y have even foregone charging the expense ratio  fee so as to maintain a fixed $1 per share price.  Personally,  I would need a lot of persuading to invest in even a stock fund with 1% expense ratio."], "neg": ["If the Democrats controlled the House the legislation would be equally as crony, bullshit, and corrupt. We just went through the entire ordeal in preventing SOPA from passing, which had explicit support from Democrats. So don't tell me  with a straight face that the parties are any different.   Obama is no different than Romney, the only issue is that Romney is in election mode and Obama has a Congress unwilling to pass any of his laws. If the situation was reversed (Rep white house, Dem congress) it would be equally as fucked up.", "\"You're entirely correct.  It's one of those \"\"broken window\"\" fallacies.   Have you ever witnessed the anger of   the good shopkeeper, James B., when   his careless son happened to break a   square of glass? If you have been   present at such a scene, you will most   assuredly bear witness to the fact,   that every one of the spectators, were   there even thirty of them, by common   consent apparently, offered the   unfortunate owner this invariable   consolation - \"\"It is an ill wind that   blows nobody good. Everybody must   live, and what would become of the   glaziers if panes of glass were never   broken?\"\" Frederic Bastiat's 1850 essay, \"\"That which is seen and that which is not seen\"\" is still the best and most beautifully-written of such explanations.   As you point out, a gain for the construction companies is more than offset by the loss of life and financial expenditure of the insurance companies.  Plus, it is never possible to quantify the entirety of the loss in terms of opportunities foregone (\"\"that which is not seen\"\").  People who were about to do incredible things but now gone.  Property, of any nature, no longer of use to build on or perform service. Any replacement comes at the expense of other opportunities.\"", "Cato is hardly an unbiased source, as they are a libertarian think-tank. They pretend a whole list of other important differences don't exist, and conveniently ignore the fact that Kansas switched to the Texas model and then experienced steep economic slowdown and budget shortfalls. Setting taxes is a process of balancing competing interests. High taxes can absolutely be damaging, but so can taxing too little. Both the libertarian and statist ideologies tend to lead to ruin.", "I definitely want it, all of my cash that i've accumulated goes into my brokerage but I just wanted to check that in can be done.  I just wanted to see if anyone knew anyone personally or anything like that because most of the time it's people e-bragging or bullshitting to make them seem like something.  I also wanted to see if it is still feasible with all of the algo trading and stuff that has been dominating the market versus an individual trader.  Thanks for your reply though, I like the analogy a lot.", "I think this article explains it pretty well: Contributions to a SEP are limited to   20% of your business  income (which is   business income minus half of your   self-employment tax), up to a maximum   of $45,000. With a solo 401(k), on the   other hand, you can contribute up to   $15,500 plus 20% of your business   income (defined the same way as   above), with a maximum contribution of   $45,000 in 2007. You can make an extra   $5,000 catch-up contribution if you're   50 or older", "Well the stated intended goal for the organization is to change the car market and they seem to have been very successful at that so far. I see where you're coming from, but I think you're using a different measuring stick than what is intended for their strategy.   They released all their patents. That should be a great indicator of what success means for them.", "\"Get him the book \"\"Total Money Makeover\"\" (http://www.amazon.com/Total-Money-Makeover-Classic-Financial/dp/1595555277/ref=sr_1_1?ie=UTF8&qid=1448904191&sr=8-1&keywords=total+money+makeover) and tell him to follow the baby steps. If he comes to you again or doesn't follow your advice, remind him to follow the baby steps. Repeat as needed.\""]}
+{"query": "Credit Card Approval", "corpus": ["Banks use quite a few parameters to arrive at the decision for card approval. The credit score is just one input. There are multiple other inputs it would source, for example total years in job, the number of years in current job, income streams, etc ... the exact formula is a trade secret and varies from Bank to Bank"], "neg": ["The stock had quite a run-up, so it was do to fall anyway. I would want it to fall further before I start buying shares. Best Buy will be around for the long term because people still need to see and feel the merchandise as well as get some good advice from the tech nerds in the store.  Circuit City got crushed, but Best Buy is the leader and will remain so. Online Commerce is growing like crazy, but the correctly-run brick and mortar stores will always be around.", "\"I'd be curious to understand where you live, with a condo costing nearly 3X the average home price in the US.  That said, if you are hell bent on this, money is loosening up. I am a real estate agent, and part of my distaste for the industry is the fact that it is the near opposite of financial fiduciary. I am responsible to be truthful and act in the best interest of my client. I am specifically not allowed to offer tax or financial advice. A client that told me she had a prequalification, only later shared that she's using a 3% down, FHA mortgage, and from what I see, getting in over her head.  In your case, look at the requirements for an FHA loan. I recommend 20% down, and the payment be less than 28% (Principal, interest, property tax) of monthly gross. The FHA allows as little as 3% down, with payment as high as 31%. In your case, $15K is 3%, and, depending on the other expenses for the house, the payment should be manageable.  If your 401(k) accounts offer matching, I'd deposit the amount to capture the match, no more, no less. Let me illustrate the power of matching - say the match is on your first $10,000 total, between the 2 of you. $10,000 deposited, is $20,000 in your retirement account, and you are just out of pocket $7500, as that's your net after tax. Now, the $20K in the account allows you to borrow half, $10,000 at a favorable rate for a 10 year payback. So, to your question of raiding your retirement accounts, I'd advise the opposite. A $10K withdrawal will cost $2500 in tax and $1000 penalty. Net $6500. Better to take the IRA, transfer it to the 401(k), and borrow 50%. Your $40K across the accounts will let you borrow $20K and keep the retirement savings going.  Last - I respect the answers that say \"\"don't,\"\" they are actually the right answers. Mine only applies if you won't listen to them. In effect, you've asked where to buy rope, and I'm just letting you know where the store is. It's the banks who are happy to sell you the rope to hang yourself.\"", "I like how companies' solution is basically to just have us work the damn register ourselves for free. Gas stations used to have people come out and pump your gas. Now that would just seem creepy and unnecessary. In 20 years, kids will think the same thing of cashiers.", "Let's have a look at Who must send a tax return: You’ll need to send a tax return if, in the last tax year: And we're done. It doesn't matter that your tax will come out to zero - you still need to TELL them this, otherwise how are they going to know? 'Person liable for zero tax who doesn't send their tax return' and 'Person liable for a million quid of tax who doesn't send their tax return' look the same...", "\"I think you have to go back to [this HBR article](https://hbr.org/2014/09/profits-without-prosperity) to really understand:  TLDR: Buybacks boost CEO pay and hurt the long term value of companies. But I'm not convinced that they're \"\"the root of inequality\"\"   \"\"Consider the 449 companies in the S&amp;P 500 index that were publicly listed from 2003 through 2012. During that period those companies used 54% of their earnings—a total of $2.4 trillion—to buy back their own stock, almost all through purchases on the open market. Dividends absorbed an additional 37% of their earnings. That left very little for investments in productive capabilities or higher incomes for employees.\"\"  \"\"Why are such massive resources being devoted to stock repurchases? Corporate executives give several reasons, which I will discuss later. But none of them has close to the explanatory power of this simple truth: Stock-based instruments make up the majority of their pay, and in the short term buybacks drive up stock prices. \"\"  \"\"Trillions of dollars that could have been spent on innovation and job creation in the U.S. economy over the past three decades have instead been used to buy back shares for what is effectively stock-price manipulation.\"\"  \"\" Most are now done on the open market, and my research shows that they often come at the expense of investment in productive capabilities and, consequently, aren’t great for long-term shareholders.\"\"  \"\"Research by the Academic-Industry Research Network, a nonprofit I cofounded and lead, shows that companies that do buybacks never resell the shares at higher prices.\"\"  \"\"Many academics have warned that if U.S. companies don’t start investing much more in research and manufacturing capabilities, they cannot expect to remain competitive in a range of advanced technology industries. \"\"  Specific examples:  \"\"Pharmaceutical drugs.  In response to complaints that U.S. drug prices are at least twice those in any other country, Pfizer and other U.S. pharmaceutical companies have argued that the profits from these high prices—enabled by a generous intellectual-property regime and lax price regulation—permit more R&amp;D to be done in the United States than elsewhere. Yet from 2003 through 2012, Pfizer funneled an amount equal to 71% of its profits into buybacks, and an amount equal to 75% of its profits into dividends. In other words, it spent more on buybacks and dividends than it earned and tapped its capital reserves to help fund them. The reality is, Americans pay high drug prices so that major pharmaceutical companies can boost their stock prices and pad executive pay.\"\"  \"\"Nanotechnology.  Intel executives have long lobbied the U.S. government to increase spending on nanotechnology research. In 2005, Intel’s then-CEO, Craig R. Barrett, argued that “it will take a massive, coordinated U.S. research effort involving academia, industry, and state and federal governments to ensure that America continues to be the world leader in information technology.” Yet from 2001, when the U.S. government launched the National Nanotechnology Initiative (NNI), through 2013 Intel’s expenditures on buybacks were almost four times the total NNI budget.\"\"\"", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.recode.net/2017/7/14/15968746/artificial-intelligence-ai-federal-government-public-sector) reduced by 85%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Senator Maria Cantwell, D-Wash., just drafted forward-looking legislation that aims to establish a select committee of experts to advise agencies across the government on the economic impact of federal artificial intelligence.  &gt; Other than a few economic impact and policy reports conducted by the Obama Administration - led by former U.S. Chief Data Scientist DJ Patil and other tech-minded government leaders - this is the first policy effort toward moving the U.S. public sector past acknowledging its significance, and toward fully embracing AI technology.  &gt; AI meant for U.S. government use should be defined as a network of complementary technologies built with the ability to autonomously conduct, support or manage public sector activity across disciplines.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6n8qmp/artificial_intelligence_can_make_americas_public/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~166623 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*: **government**^#1 **technology**^#2 **sector**^#3 **U.S.**^#4 **people**^#5\"", "Security Analysis(very difficult for beginners )& Intelligent Investor by Benjamin Graham. All about(book series by McGraw) on Stocks,Derivatives,Options,Futures,Market Timings. Reminiscence of a Stock Operator (Life of jesse Livermore). Memoirs , Popular Delusions and Madness of the Crowds by Charles Mackay. Basics of Technical analysis includig Trading Strategies via Youtube videos & Google. Also opt for Seeking alpha free version to learn about portfolio allocation under current scenario there will be few articles as it will ask for premium version if you love it then opt for it. But still these books will do."]}
+{"query": "How does one typically exit (close out) a large, in-the-money long put option position?", "corpus": ["\"The question is, how do I exit? I can't really sell the puts because there isn't   enough open interest in them now that they are so far out of the money. I have about $150K of funds outside of this position that I could use, but I'm   confused by the rules of exercising a put. Do I have to start shorting the stock? You certainly don't want to give your broker any instructions to short the stock! Shorting the stock at this point would actually be increasing your bet that the stock is going to go down more. Worse, a short position in the stock also puts you in a situation of unlimited risk on the stock's upside – a risk you avoided in the first place by using puts. The puts limited your potential loss to only your cost for the options. There is a scenario where a short position could come into play indirectly, if you aren't careful.  If your broker were to permit you to exercise your puts without you having first bought enough underlying shares, then yes, you would end up with a short position in the stock. I say \"\"permit you\"\" because most brokers don't allow clients to take on short positions unless they've applied and been approved for short positions in their account. In any case, since you are interested in closing out your position and taking your profit, exercising only and thus ending up with a resulting open short position in the underlying is not the right approach. It's not really a correct intermediate step, either. Rather, you have two typical ways out: Sell the puts.  @quantycuenta has pointed out in his answer that you should be able to sell for no less than the intrinsic value, although you may be leaving a small amount of time value on the table if you aren't careful.  My suggestion is to consider using limit orders and test various prices approaching the intrinsic value of the put.  Don't use market orders where you'll take any price offered, or you might be sorry. If you have multiple put contracts, you don't need to sell them all at once. With the kind of profit you're talking about, don't sweat paying a few extra transactions worth of commission. Exercise the puts.  Remember that at the other end of your long put position is one (or more) trader who wrote (created) the put contract in the first place. This trader is obligated to buy your stock from you at the contract price should you choose to exercise your option.  But, in order for you to fulfill your end of the contract when you choose to exercise, you're obligated to deliver the underlying shares in exchange for receiving the option strike price. So, you would first need to buy underlying shares sufficient to exercise at least one of the contracts.  Again, you don't need to do this all at once.  @PeterGum's answer has described an approach. (Note that you'll lose any remaining time value in the option if you choose to exercise.) Finally, I'll suggest that you ought to discuss the timing and apportioning of closing out your position with a qualified tax professional. There are tax implications and, being near the end of the year, there may be an opportunity* to shift some/all of the income into the following tax year to minimize and defer tax due. * Be careful if your options are near expiry!  Options typically expire on the 3rd Friday of the month.\""], "neg": ["Does your company offer matching on 401(k) deposits? Are you depositing at least to the match? If not, that should be priority one.  Kill the card, never pay that kind of interest. Ever. Why are you paying 5%? The 30 year rate is 4% right now, and even if you pay some closing costs, you'll recoup the money quickly.  In general, borrowing to invest is a losing game. I agree, get rid of the HELOC as well. If you refine to 15 years, you can get 3.5%, and in 16 years won't regret the decision.", "You can explore the scenarios in which it is better to rent or to buy using this application: http://demonstrations.wolfram.com/BuyOrRentInvestmentReturnCalculator/ In the possibly unlikely scenario shown below, at the term of the mortgage (20 years) the tenant and the buyer have practically the same return on investment.  At this point the tenant's savings would be sufficient to buy a house equivalent to the buyer's, and this would be the advisable course of action (based on the figures alone).", "Vikram was protecting American’s interest from European/British suckers, now the stocks will have a roller cost ride. American Investors be careful in investing in this stock, Europeans CEO will fund bad assets in Europe and suck up American investors money out of our economy. Why always innocent American have to lose because of corrupt FDIC suckers. I am sure they are colluded with European bad assets owners and cheaters. GOD bless CitiBank, it is on the path to bankruptcy.", "I came to US as an international student several years ago, and I have also experienced the same situation like most of the international students in finding ways to build credit history. Below I list out some possible approaches you may want to consider: I. Get a student job at campus (recommended) I think the best way is to get a student job in university, say a teaching assistant or student helper. In this case, you can be provided with a social security number and start to build your own credit history. II. Get credit card You can also consider to apply for a credit card. There are indeed some financial institutions that can provide credit cards for international students with no or limited credit scores requirement, say Discover and Bank of America. However, it is relatively hard to get approved, simply because hey may put more restriction in other aspects. For example, you may be required to keep sufficient bank balance above several thousand dollars during a period of time, or you should prove that you have relatives with citizenship in US who can provide your financial aid if needed. III. Apply for a loan (recommended) Getting a loan product is another alternative to get out of this difficult situation, but most of people don’t realize that. There are some FinTech start-ups in United States that specifically focus on international students’ loan financing. One representative example is Westbon (Westbon ), an online lending company that specializes in providing car loan for international students with no SSN or credit history. I once used their loan product to finance a Honda Accord, and Westbon reported my loan transaction records to US credit bureau during my repayment process. Later when I officially got my SSN number, I found my credit history has been automatically synchronized and I don’t have to start from all over again. It never be an easy journey for international students to build credit history in United States. What approach you should make really depends on you own situation. I hope the information above can be useful and good luck for your credit journey!", "Russia was the sole country to mention in Inartificial words that terrorists came from Pakistan. Kadakin aforementioned, asking national capital to place a halt to cross-border terror. Russia is the 1st major great power to use the term of “Surgical Tears”. It was more horrible than the killings in James Wan’s SAW, yet everyone stood to watch, some in excitement and others in tears but all with cameras capturing the images from several angles to upload on social media.", "All of the most successful people I know work more than they need to, and either their employers reward them properly, or their businesses flourish. I'm pursuing my finance degree, and I expect 70-80+ hour weeks, because it's more or less required to move up in a company.   I'll save my 9-5 days for after I have kids.", "I have had my card blocked at home only rarely. One occasion comes to mind - I had bought something fairly large online late at night. No sooner had I clicked Purchase than my phone rang - the bank was asking had I actually just spent [$amount] at [$online store]? I said yes and that was that. A little later I made another purchase late at night on a different card. It went through, but when I tried to use the card the next day for something small in a store, it was declined. Embarrassed, I used a different card then called the bank. They said they had put the card on hold because of the online purchase for a large amount, even though they had let the purchase go through. They hadn't called me because it was late at night, and they hadn't given themselves any reasonable mechanisms to compensate for that (like calling me the next morning, emailing me, or the like) they'd just blocked the card. We had what you might call a frank and open exchange of views on the matter.  Not all banks use the same strategies or software. I suggest: Far and away the simplest thing is just to have more than one card so that these declines are a momentary hiccup you might forget by the time you and your Rolex are out of the store."]}
+{"query": "Bank denying loan after “subject-to” appraisal: What to do?", "corpus": ["I'm not sure about your first two options.  But given your situation, a variant of option three seems possible.   That way you don't have to throw away your appraisal, although it's possible that you'll need to get some kind of addendum related to the repairs.   You also don't have your liquid money tied up long term.  You just need to float it for a month or two while the repairs are being done.  The bank should be able to preapprove you for the loan.   Note that you might be better off without the loan.  You'll have to pay interest on the loan and there's extra red tape.   I'd just prefer not to tie up so much money in this property.   I don't understand this.  With a loan, you are even more tied up.  Anything you do, you have to work with the bank.  Sure, you have $80k more cash available with the loan, but it doesn't sound like you need it.  With the loan, the bank makes the profit.  If you buy in cash, you lose your interest from the cash, but you save paying the interest on the loan.  In general, the interest rate on the loan will be higher than the return on the cash equivalent.   A fourth option would be to pay the $15k up front as earnest money.  The seller does the repairs through your chosen contractor.  You pay the remaining $12.5k for the downpayment and buy the house with the loan.  This is a more complicated purchase contract though, so cash might be a better option.   You can easily evaluate the difficulty of the second option.  Call a different bank and ask.  If you explain the situation, they'll let you know if they can use the existing appraisal or not.  Also consider asking the appraiser if there are specific banks that will accept the appraisal.  That might be quicker than randomly choosing banks.   It may be that your current bank just isn't used to investment properties.  Requiring the previous owner to do repairs prior to sale is very common in residential properties.  It sounds like the loan officer is trying to use the rules for residential for your investment purchase.  A different bank may be more inclined to work with you for your actual purchase."], "neg": ["no offense, but clicking through to that guys blog and fund page he seems like a charlatan and a snake oil salesman. It's not surprising that he doesn't like asset manager software because he himself is an asset manager. the software is trying to replace him.  He doesn't make money by beating the market... he makes money by convincing others that he can... he is exactly the type of person that the original article is warning against investing with.", "Another route if IB becomes a fleeting career for you would be to go into M&amp;A/Advisory at an accounting shop and steer towards the PE side of the business. Then when you are sick of grinding it out or you get a sweetheart offer (plenty of friends have gotten them) from a PE shop do that. You could also stay at a B4 or national and stay on partner track. You might not become a millionaire in the first couple of years, but you'll be a multi by the time you're done.  Also, as others have said, skip B-school for now. You will get nothing out of it without prior experience, and if you stay in Chicago finance you'll need to attend an M7 MBA program to go anywhere. B-school is more about the networking relationships you'll get out of it more than anything you will learn in a book.", "I don't carry cash at all unless I know I'm going somewhere which requires it - this includes going to the corner shop for some milk or going to other countries for a week. Cards are easier for me - if a merchant wants my business they will take my money through whatever means they can. I don't think etiquette comes into it.", "First, currencies are not an investment; they are a medium of exchange; that is, you use currency to buy goods and services and/or investments. The goods and services you intend to buy in your retirement are presumably going to be bought in your country; to buy these you will need your country's currency. The investments you intend to buy now require the currency of whatever country they are located in. If you want to buy shares in Microsoft you need USD; if you want shares in BHP-Billiton you need AUD or GBP (It is traded on two exchanges), if you want property in Kuwait you need KWD and if you want bonds in your country you need IDR. When you sell these later to buy the goods and services you were saving for you need to convert from whatever currency you get for selling them into whatever currency you need to buy. When you invest you are taking on risk for which you expect to be compensated for - the higher the risk you take the better the returns had better be because there is always the chance that they will be negative, right down to losing it all if you are unlucky. There is no 100% safe investment; if you want to make sure you get full value for your money spend it all right now! If you invest overseas then, in addition to all the other investment risks, you are adding currency risk as well. That is, the risk that when you redeem your investments the overseas currency will have fallen relative you your currency. One of the best ways of mitigating risk is diversification; which allows the same return at a lower risk (or a higher return at the same risk). A pure equity portfolio is not diversified across asset classes (hopefully it is diversified across the equities). Equities are a high risk-high yield class; particularly in a developing economy like Indonesia. If you are very young with a decades long investment horizon this may be OK but even then, a diversified portfolio will probably offer better rewards at the same risk. Diversifying into local cash, bonds and property with a little foreign equities, bonds and property will serve you better than worrying about the strength of the IDR. Oh, and pay a professional for some real advice rather than listening to strangers on the internet.", "FICO is a financial services company, whose customers are financial services companies.  Their products are for the benefit of their customers, not consumers. The purpose of the credit score system is two-fold.  First, the credit score is intended to make it easy for lending institutions (FICO's customers) to assess the risk of loans that they make.  This is probably based on science, although the FICO studies and even the FICO score formula are proprietary secrets. The second purpose of the credit score is to incentivize consumers into borrowing money.  And they have done a great job of that.  If you think you might need a loan in the future, perhaps a mortgage or a car loan, you need a credit score.  And the only way to get a credit score is to start borrowing money now that you don't need.   Yes, someone with a good income and a long history of paying utility bills on time would be a great credit risk for a mortgage.  However, that person will have no credit score, and therefore be declared by FICO as a bad credit risk.  On the other hand, someone with a low income, who struggles, but succeeds, to make the minimum payment on their credit card, would have a better credit score.  The advice offered to the first person is start borrowing money now, even though you don't need it. I'm not anti-credit card.  I use a credit card responsibly, paying it off in full every month.  I use it for the convenience.  I don't worry at all about my credit score, but I've been told it is great.  However, there are some people that cannot use a credit card responsibly.  The temptation is too great.  Perhaps they are like problem gamblers, I don't know.  But FICO and the financial services industry have created a system that makes a credit card a necessity in many ways.  These are the people that get hurt in the current system.", "Are you saying none of the gas tax goes to reduce emissions.  Gas tax supplement trains, buses and other low emission transportation.  I know there isn't a tax on how much emissions you emit depending on how you burn the gas.  Since there are more and less efficient ways of burning gas.", "Let's drive worker wages down farther by only using the cheapest labor worldwide.  Don't worry!  This is a natural part of a healthy economy!  /s  Our view of a healthy economy needs to change to include the health of the people in that economy."]}
+{"query": "Will getting a new credit card and closing another affect my credit?", "corpus": ["\"Several events will always result in a reduction of your score, including: These will show up in the short term, but I don't think it's worth $40 per year in perpetuity to avoid this. These aren't serious \"\"black marks\"\" in the same category as missing payments, carrying too much debt, or foreclosures/evictions, etc. These effects are designed to signal issuers when someone acquires a large amount of credit in a very short period of time, which may indicate a greater risk. If your credit is good and you are using your other cards responsibly, closing the card (given the annual fee) would not cause me great concern if it were me. Since you are so much better of a risk than you likely were in college, you can also call Capital One, ask to speak with a supervisor, and ask them to drop the fee and increase your credit limit. They should be able to easily verify that you meet the requirements for other types of preferred cards they offer, and they should be willing to offer you improved terms rather than losing your business. It is very possible they simply haven't re-evaluated your risk since you initially applied. Also, remember that these types of effects determine only a portion of your overall score. Activity is also a major component. Rather than leaving an unused card open for history and debt-to-limit purposes only, I would also recommend having some minimum level of activity, such as an automatic bill payment, on each card you carry. The effect of using your cards over time will have a significant positive effect on your score. Best of luck!\""], "neg": ["i would check out why other people make good money on the market when they invest but when i do it the economy goes into a recession. am i the only real person in the world and everyone is a simulation? is it black magic? is it the universe telling me to earn my money in other ways?", "A lot of jobs, if not most, just don't require any meaningful education or training.  They just need somebody to show up and do something that takes 15 minutes to learn.  Anywhere from picking fruit, retail, or feeding a machine.  What do you do with those jobs?  Just because a person is educated or trained, doesn't mean those jobs don't need to be performed or will magically pay more.", "\"My revised, bottom-line advice: offer to send a 2nd payment (preferably in the form of money order or cashier's check) for the difference you are agreeing to pay. I cannot imagine any reason why they would object to this - there is no fee to cash a check, there's less risk of error, and less work involved. Alternatively, offer to send a new check only once the other has been returned. Don't issue one more full-amount check while the other is still outstanding. There is a good reason not to accept partial payment by them, which is that accepting a partial payment of a debt comes with a varieties of strings attached depending on the nature of the debt (such as with evictions, court processes may need to be restarted, etc). They likely want to avoid such a situation - but this does not provide any support for why they can't just take a second payment and then cash it all at once as a single, full settlement of the debt. In a perfect world, you could skip all the non-sense by simply having your bank put a stop-payment on the old check before sending a new one. Unfortunately, this might not work with 100% accuracy - but in your case if the \"\"partial payment\"\" is a significant amount of money to you, I'd go ahead and spend the $20-40 to put in the order now as an extra safety on them not doing what they claim, if for some incredibly stupid reason you can't handle this with a 2nd payment instead of one single full one. It turns out banks have lots of surprising and stupid rules, like stop payments on a check expiring in 6 months (and they may even cash stale checks over a year old), no guarantee of a stop being successful, etc. The real rule is: they might cash the check unless you close the account. Sigh - this is one of many reasons I never, ever use checks. I am not aware of any law that requires a check to be physically returned if requested, or proof or destruction provided, or anything like that. It's a large part of the reason why we have the ability to stop payment on a check, and so void it through the bank without having any physical access to the check - but this process is spotty and imperfect, and cannot be relied upon. You can request them to do whatever you like, like void it and send it back, or destroy it, and they can just refuse - or say they'll do it and then just not do it, and you have no real useful recourse. The main goal should be to avoid losing money if someone \"\"accidentally\"\" (or intentionally) cashes both checks. So you can ask, or demand (refuse to pay until they return the check), etc - and they can respond more or less any way they want. As a final piece of future advice, consider no longer using checks for purposes like this. Switch to using something like a cashier's check or money order offered by your bank, which (by their very nature) takes the money out of your account immediately, severs all ongoing connection to your bank account, and is effectively like cash with the added benefit of a paper trail. Keep the stub and and receipt from the cashier's check/money order, in case it is lost or they claim they didn't get the money.\"", "Defined benefit pension funds will typically target treasuries + a spread that depends on how well funded the plan is and the duration of the liabilities. So for example, if a DB fund is 90% funded (meaning assets are 90% of liabilities) and the liabilities have a duration of 20 years, they will target the 20 year treasury rate + a spread that will bring the plan to just over 100% funded in around 20 years. This spread will usually be much lower than 8% p.a. Obviously it's much more complicated than this, but hopefully this gives a general idea.", "Au début, vous allez acquérir un salaire organisé. De toute évidence, offrir un Rachat Vehicule En Panne à des mains changées pourrait présenter une procédure au sujet de laquelle vous ne recevriez pas d'argent pendant un temps formidable. Il est particulièrement standard que le nouvel acheteur vous demandera de remettre le bit ou si rien d'autre ne tente de le mordre en morceaux", "Well, this is going to be a highly subjective point and thus rather sterile, so I won't expend much time or effort as this is rather silly. I should also clarify my prior post to refer to both product and service quality.  Anyways, my picks are:  * 11. AT&amp;T   * 15. Verizon Communications   * 20. Citigroup * 40. Pfizer * 53. Best Buy    Anyways, I'm finished arguing for the sake of arguing.", "Your role sounds like accounting/bookkeeping. I worked in fp&amp;a for a REIT and my job was to forecast cash flows and support development managers who wanted to pitch projects to senior management. Occasionally, I helped analyze new acquisitions and every quarter we had to do valuations for covenant compliance on our loans.  Was a cool job but eventually left for capital markets role."]}
+{"query": "Does Technical Analysis work or is it just a pointless attempt to “time the market”?", "corpus": ["Technical Analysis in general is something to be cognizant of, I don't use a majority of studies and consider them a waste of time.  I also use quantitative analysis more so than technical analysis, and prefer the insight it gives into the market. The markets are more about predicting other people's behavior, psychology. So if you are trading an equity that you know retail traders love, retail traders use technical analysis and you can use their fabled channel reversals and support levels against them, as examples. Technical analysis is an extremely broad subject. So I suggest getting familiar, but if your historical pricing charts are covered in various studies, I would say you are doing it wrong. A more objective criticism of technical analysis is that many of the studies were created in the 1980s or earlier. Edges in the market do not typically last more than a few weeks. On the other side of that realization, some technical analysis works if everyone also thinks it will work, if everyone's charts say buy when the stock reaches the $90 price level and everyone does, the then stock will go higher. But the market makers and the actions of the futures markets and the actions of options traders, can undermine the collective decisions of retail traders using technical analysis."], "neg": ["Sorry, this is sensationalist bullshit. Escrow payments have been around forever - they're not specific to BofA or the mortgage bubble, they've probably been common practice for decades. It's a much easier way for many people to pay their taxes and insurance, and banks don't net any profit for doing this*. Rather, it's an easy way for them to keep tabs on whether homeowners have insurance or not - if a home is uninsured by the owner the bank will have to insure it on its own.   (* banks are entitled to collect some escrow overage - I think it's 8% - in the event that taxes or insurance are higher than expected, but that is still the homeowners money, and would be cashed out in a payoff.)", "Half of working age men out of the workforce aren't taking it for pain. They are taking it to catch a buzz. I STRONGLY believe that cannabis is a better answer. The amount you would have to smoke to lead to emphysema is ridiculous. That's what chain smokers get.", "\"MD-Tech answered: The answer is in your question: derivatives are contracts so are enforced in the same way as any other contract.  If the counterparty refuses to pay immediately they will, in the first instance be billed by any intermediary (Prime Broker etc.) that facilitated the contract. If they still refuse to pay the contract may stipulate that a broker can \"\"net off\"\" any outstanding payments against it or pay out using deposited cash or posted margins. The contract will usually include the broker as an interested party and so they can, but don't need to, report a default (such that this is) to credit agencies (in some jurisdictions they are required to by law). Any parties to the trade and the courts may use a debt collection agency to collect payments or seize assets to cover payment. If there is no broker or the counterparty still has not paid the bill then the parties involved (the party to the trade and any intermediaries) can sue for breach of contract. If they win (which would be expected) the counterparty will be made to pay by the legal system including, but not limited to, seizure of assets, enforced bankruptcy, and prison terms for any contempts of court rulings. All of this holds for governments who refuse to pay derivatives losses (as Argentina did in the early 20th century) but in that case it may escalate as far as war. It has never done so for derivatives contracts as far as I know but other breaches of contract between countries have resulted in armed conflict. As well as the \"\"hard\"\" results of failing to pay there are soft implications including a guaranteed fall in credit ratings that will result in parties refusing to do business with the counterparty and a separate loss of reputation that will reduce business even further. Potential employees and funders will be unwilling to become involved with such a party and suppliers will be unwilling to supply on credit. The end result in almost every way would be bankruptcy and prison sentences for the party or their senior employees. Most jurisdictions allow for board members at companies in material breach of contract to be banned from running any company for a set period as well. edit: netting off cash flows netting off is a process whereby all of a party's cash flows, positive and negative, are used to pay each other off so that only the net change is reflected in account balances, for example: company 1 cash flows netting off the total outgoings are 3M + 500k = 3.5M and total incomings are 1.2M + 1.1M + 1.2M = 3.5M so the incoming cash flows can be used to pay the outgoing cash flows leaving a net payment into company1's account of 0.\"", "\"Especially when the anti-piracy campaigns try to guilt folks about \"\"stealing money from the artists\"\" - ads run by the folks who are far more guilty of doing exactly that.   Even the huge name bands make most of their money from concerts (though Ticketmaster is working on that). Why do you think the average multi-platinum career path includes \"\"create own record label\"\"?\"", "\"Wait, so if you have more money you get to follow \"\"unpopular rules\"\"? That sounds even worse than what we have today.  And you didn't answer my question about how private courts and private security companies would be held accountable.\"", "It matters because that is the requirement for the 83(b) selection to be valid. Since the context is 83(b) election, I assume you got stocks/options as compensation and didn't pay for them the FMV, thus it should have been included in your income for that year. If you didn't include the election letter - I can only guess that you also didn't include the income. Hence - you lost your election. If you did include the income and paid the tax accordingly, or if no tax was due (you actually paid the FMV), you may try amending the return and attaching the letter, but I'd suggest talking to a professional before doing it on your own. Make sure to keep a proof (USPS certified mailing receipt) of mailing the letter within the 30 days window.", "Most cooperative banks are insured upto Rs 1,00,000/- .  It depends on what is the current status of the Bank and withdrawal of the funds would be based on the decision taken by the administrator. There maybe no interest payable, it would again be decided by the administrator."]}
+{"query": "New company doesn't allow 401k deposits for 6 months, what to do with money I used to deposit?", "corpus": ["$9000 over 6 months is great, I'd use it for long term savings regardless of the 401(k) situation. There's nothing wrong with a mix of pre and post tax money for retirement. In fact, it's a great way to avoid paying too much tax should your 401(k) withdrawals in retirement push you into a higher bracket. Just invest this as you would your other long term money."], "neg": ["Những nữ tiếp viên này bắt đầu công việc của họ bằng cách chờ đợi trong một phòng đặc biệt. Khi khách hàng cần, “má mì” sẽ đưa khách vào phòng đặc biệt này và bắt các “em út” đứng thẳng, xếp thành hai hàng cho khách thỏa mắt chọn lựa.", "I think increasing funding to public colleges are an -okay- thing to do.  Certainly it is better than the current system which guarantees student loans to benefit the bankers.  So, we're talking about two different kinds of subsidies: one directly for schools and one for bankers.  While ideally, I'd like to see no government involvement whatsoever, I can compromise as long as bankers are bearing the full risk of their student loans.  The student loan system is what is bubbling up tuition prices, very similar to what happened in housing.", "There was a market in medieval life but there were so many restrictions on it plus there were a lot of elements that undermined the market.  For one thing you were not free to pursue any line of work.  The Surfs were tied to the land and bound to surrender their work to the lords.  In the cities the guilds controlled who could work doing what.  So there was no free market for labor.  The Guilds also controlled prices so I wouldn't call it a free market in any sense.", "STEM activities which mean Science Technology Engineering and Math are the entire buzz in education. Kids enjoy finding out how things work out through hands-on projects, fun and educators love knowing that they are also preparing their students for their tech future. In this program, participants of STEM For Kids program will learn and know how to make a basic computer programs &amp; codes for games etc. Get more details on hands-on projects on STEM For Kids at: https://gamedesignsummitforkids.wordpress.com/2017/09/25/hands-on-projects-on-stem-for-kids-2/", "\"I read an account of why the U.K. didn't end up with the euro as its currency in David M. Smick's great book The World Is Curved: Hidden Dangers to the Global Economy. Chapter 6 of the book is titled \"\"Nothing Stays the Same: The 1992 Sterling Crisis.\"\"  Here's a very brief excerpt; emphasis mine: [...] As this story shows, such   blindness to the realities of a   changing world can be very dangerous.   In this case, the result was the   brutal collapse of the British pound,   which explains why the British people still use their own currency, the   pound or sterling, and not the euro.   The events that unfolded in the autumn   of 1992 were totally unforeseen, yet   they reshaped the European monetary   world and represent a phenomenon that   continues to impact global economies. [...] Smick's account of the events around 1992 runs about 28 pages.  Here's my version, in a nutshell: At the time, Britain was part of the European Exchange Rate Mechanism, or ERM. The belief in Europe was that by uniting currencies under a common mechanism, Europe could gain influence in international financial policy largely dominated by the United States.  The ERM was a precursor to monetary union.  The Maastricht Treaty would eventually create the European Union and the euro. Britain joined the ERM later than other nations, in 1990, and after some controversy. Being part of the ERM required member nations to agree to expand and contract their currencies only within certain agreed upon limits called currency bands. Due to the way this had been structured, Germany's strong position placed it at the top of the system. At some point in 1992, Germany had raised interest rates to curb future inflation.  However, Britain wanted Germany to cut rates – Britain was not in as enviable a position, economically speaking, and its currency was under pressure.  The currency band system would put Britain in a tighter spot with Germany raising rates. Enter George Soros, the Hungarian billionaire, a.k.a. \"\"the man who broke the Bank of England.\"\"  Soros took a huge short position against the Sterling. He believed the Sterling was overvalued relative to the German deutsche mark, and Britain would be forced to devalue its currency and realign with respect to the ERM.  Other traders followed and also sold the Sterling short. With much pressure on the currency, the Bank of England had to buy up Sterling in order to maintain its agreement under the ERM.  Of course, they needed to borrow other currencies to do this.  Soon the BoE was in over its head defending the Sterling, realizing the exchange rate it needed to maintain under the ERM simply wasn't sustainable. Britain was forced to withdraw from the ERM on Black Wednesday, September 16th, 1992. And so, Britain does not use the euro today – and any talk of doing so is politically controversial.  Therefore I wouldn't bet on Britain adopting the euro any time soon – too many of the players are still in politics and remember 1992 well.  I think if Britain adopting the euro is ever to happen, it will be when the memory of 1992 has faded away. BTW, George Soros made off with more than US$1 billion.  Soros is a very smart guy.\"", "It sucks for them, but it sounds like they brought it on themselves. They didn't hire an attorney to correct their entirely misguided non-response to the problem, then proceeded to make every mistake in the noob book.  I 'kinda' feel sorry for them, even though they seemed to run their business in a completely unprofessional manner. If there's any truth in that rambling story, it sounds like they've managed to work themselves into an 'impossible to win' position.", "Paying on time is the most critical factor. Paying ahead on the loan will not help you from a credit score POV, but it will not hurt you either. In general, to maintain a good credit history, don't bother focusing on credit scores. Frankly, there is very little reason for you to even know what your score is. Just do the following: Lenders want to deal with people with long histories of paying debts back on time."]}
+{"query": "Will a Barclaycard Visa help me in building up credit score?", "corpus": ["Payment history is probably the most significant contributor to your credit score.  Having a solid history of making, at least the minimum, payments on time will have a positive impact on your credit score.  Whether or not this specific transaction means anything to that equation is up for debate.   If you have no credit lines now and 0% for 18 months on a computer makes sense to you, then yes, making this purchase this way and paying on time will have a positive impact on your credit score.  Paying interest doesn't help your credit score.  Repay this computer before the 18 month period ends, then be sure to pay your balance in full every month thereafter."], "neg": ["I have read this at least a dozen times, and watched several documentaries on it, but this is the clearest explanation yet. Thank you.  I had not really considered the possibility that the fed is not the evil monster it's usually frame as before. Now I'm not sure how bad it is due to these conflicting viewpoints. The worst case I have heard against it (repeatedly) is that it's a privately owned corporation. And that it's for-profit. What is that about?", "Please post your comment to my blog's comment section where it is more accessible to those who are interested in this specific topic and our discussion.  I will respond over there later today when I am finished work. Thanks!", "Are you just turning in applications? Are you cold calling/emailing and trying to get a hold of managers and finding out about positions? Have you sent any cover letters to people?   Also, does your resume look aesthetically pleasing and is well organized? Are your skills highlighted well?  I feel like it can be pretty tough to get a job if you didn't get one right out of school.", "\"As an investor, I try to interpret the suits as an attempt to in some way influence the actions of the company - and not, usually, as a serious legal threat (or as likely to lead to serious legal consequences). My (shallow) understanding (as a non-lawyer) is that the requirements for a lawsuit to be filed as class-action suit are (relatively speaking) easier to meet when the company is publicly traded - the shareholders are more easily described as a \"\"class\"\". So it's more common for lawsuits that involve stock holders for large, publicly traded companies to be registered as class action suits. Class action suits include a requirement for some advertising and notifications (so all members of the class become aware of the suit, and can decide whether to participate). So, these types of suits can be started with various goals in mind, goals which might be achieved without the suit ever going anywhere - including to gain some publicity for a particular point of view, or to put pressure on the company to perform particular actions. In most cases, though, they are the result of misunderstandings between the various parties with an interest in how the company is run - shareholders, directors and/or executive officers. For most cases, the result of the suit is a more in depth sharing of information between the parties involved, and possibly a change in the plans/actions of the company; the legal technicalities differ from case to case, and, often, the legal consequences are minor.\"", "Check your calculation of A**. I was able to duplicate their calculations using excel. Make you sure have accounted for all the terms, it can be easy to be one off. They are making a guess at the interest rate which will be wrong, then they are adjusting it to see how wrong it is, then making another adjustment. They will repeat until they see no movement in the guesses.", "\"no, good questions my friend.  when did you do this rollover? if it was this year, your firm should have forms that you can fill out to \"\"undo\"\" the roth conversion - only earnings on your investments will be taxed, and everything gets rolled over to a traditional IRA. not fun for tax filing but...  you can also leave them as is and pay the taxes (usually only a good option if it's a low income year for the filer).  i would consult your tax advisor regardless in this situation.\"", "According to the study attempted, we gloat of an abnormal state of customer satisfaction regarding quality, cost-viability, time-bound conveyance and the papers essayed are unique, one of a kind and thoroughly researched with proper references. We offer essay composing services, dissertation writing services according to the customer particulars at moderate costs. Profoundly qualified essay writers with post-graduate and doctoral degrees form essays on different fields, subjects and themes."]}
+{"query": "Merchant dispute with airline over missed flight, and which credit cards offer protection?", "corpus": ["You have no grounds for a refund. The flight took off on time, and you chose not to be on board. The fact that the airline could not guarantee ahead of time that the flight would leave on time is not relevant. You can certainly try to dispute the charge with the airline, and it sounds like you have done so. The airline correctly indicates that your dispute is unfounded. You can call up your credit card company and explain the situation, and they may accept your dispute. However, I am not aware of any credit card that would reimburse you (that is, issue a chargeback) in this situation. I'm not trying to be unsympathetic. It sucks that you felt you could not rely on the airline, and are now out some money. Fundamentally, though, this was your choice. The airline would be obligated to reimburse you the cost of your flight, or book you on another flight, if the flight was cancelled due to bad weather or other issues, but they owe you nothing if the flight took off on schedule."], "neg": ["I know this can be confusing because you tend to think of money being worth the face value. So let's eliminate that for the sake of an example that will be easier to understand. Let's say your friend loaned you rock worth $10 today. He expects you to pay him back an identical rock whenever you can. Now let's also assume that historically the price of rocks tends to go down every year. At some point you will need to buy a rock to pay your friend back. Because they keep getting cheaper, it costs less to buy the payback rock the longer you wait. Replace a dollar with a rock in the example and you have your answer. This is known as the time value of money. In reality, this is priced into the loan (via the interest rate) because the lender very much understands the math going on here. Also, it is more complicated because the longer you delay payment the more interest you pay (pebbles if you will) so it doesn't usually work to your advantage unless they underpriced the loan's interest rate.", "Yes, orders like this are very possible.  There are nearly endless possibilities for structuring a trade.  It all comes down to whether you have the money to make the trade at the find you find a counterparty.  If you don't, the order is cancelled. Trades like this happen all day long at Goldman, BAML, Merril, UBS, etc.  And on eBay.", "You can either write it off or pursue it. If you write it off I wouldn't do business with the client again, until they bring their balance owed to you back to zero.  If you pursue it, try to reach out to the client and find out why they are not paying what they owe you and try to work out a deal with them if they seem negotiable. If they aren't negotiable then you could take the issue to court, but you'll only be proving a point by then.", "In Singapore, this is sufficiently common that the Singapore IRS has a page on their website dedicated to informing employers of how to properly pay this under Responsibilites of an Employer.   Specifically, tax paid by employer is taxable income for the employee (as it's really the employee's responsibility), so they must pay tax for that tax.  A tax-on-tax is computed for the tax paid, which also would be owed by the employer if they were paying the full tax rate for the employee. As a clarification, this is not the employer being truly responsible for the employee's income; this is the employer compensating the employee further to offset their taxable income.  This is effectively a fringe benefit, although it may be particularly useful in countries where either tax evasion is common (and thus an employer must compete with employers willing to pay under the table) or where employers are competing with others in nearby countries with lower tax rates.  It is not the same thing as the employer making your income nontaxable, though, and has implications for your tax filing. Significantly, it is likely that if you have additional income beyond income from that employer, it is likely to be taxed at your highest tax rate, as the employer will likely calculate the tax due based on their income being the only income you have in that year. *Edit based on emphasis in question: I'm not from Singapore nor am I a lawyer, but based on my reading of the IRAS website, it looks like you do not have to file if you have no other source of income, because they have a No-Filing Service which takes income information from your employer automatically and generates a tax bill, which presumably would be fully paid in your case.  This only aplies if you have no other sources of income, however; you still have to file if you have other sources of income since your employer would not know about them. If you are eligible for this service, you should get a letter informing you as such.  They also have a tool to check your filing status on their website.", "\"Pay it off. If necessary, get a loan so you can pay it off; that's what refinancing is all about and your favorite bank or credit union would be happy to help you with this. If that isn't sufficient to make the car affordable you may need to sell it, take the loss, and learn from the experience. Sorry, but you made an agreement and it's up to you to find a way to meet your end of the bargain. (If you had decided you didn't like this loan within a few days of signing, you might have been able to back out under \"\"cooling off period\"\" laws. But those only allow a very limited time for reconsideration.)\"", "Because it's the longest running bull market in history. And the recent surge is based on speculation that taxes will be lowered and regulations will be lifted. I don't think either will happen. The republican agenda is basically done until 2018. They've wasted all their political capital on the healthcare debacle and the Russia investigation.", "\"&gt;\"\"You didn't lose your job, you just had temporary employment.\"\"  Same as back in the late 1990's (when unemployment was really low) -- a lot of people got jobs they really weren't qualified for; and were paid far more (at least on a scale relative to their co-workers) than they were really worth.  The sad thing about that is that they came to *believe* they were truly worth that amount of money.  The same with houses.  My home (bought in late 2000) increased in \"\"estimated market value\"\" by 75% (i.e. to 175% of it's previous sale price when I bought it) -- and the \"\"bubble\"\" around here wasn't anything like it was in other regions of the US; and of course, now it has (ostensibly) sunk back down to very nearly the price I paid for it.  The problem (for a LOT of people) with that is that -- even if they didn't buy during the peak bubble years -- they refinanced or HELOC'd based on that higher estimated value, and so ended up basically removing (and then spending) the lion's share of equity that they had built up in their house.  For others, it was much the same as the late 90's employment -- they came to \"\"believe\"\" that their house was worth XX% more -- and they have difficulty \"\"letting go\"\" of that illusory estimated market price.  So they are experiencing the \"\"wealth LOSS effect\"\" just as they once experienced a \"\"wealth effect\"\".  I was saved from those things because:   a) I realized that the price of houses is always \"\"at the margin\"\", and is never guaranteed by what the place cost, or what you have invested in it, or even what the owner or mortgage company *thought* it was worth; rather (when you go to sell) it will be determined by what the buyer(s) want/are capable of paying;   b) I was far more concerned with what my \"\"total cost of buying\"\" would be (including all of the interest paid on the mortgage) -- this led me to first of all only buy what I \"\"needed\"\" in a house (i.e. single guy = small place) and secondly to pay the whole thing off ASAP (which I did, *dramatically* lowering the total lifetime cost of the place);   And finally and probably MOST IMPORTANTLY (though in part due to \"\"b\"\" above):  c) It doesn't really matter to me whether the price goes up or down -- because I know that I will always need a place to live and that (generally speaking, due to overall market conditions) the prices of ALL houses will tend to go up/down together -- and though not necessarily in \"\"lock-step\"\" (there are always factors of neighborhood, local economy, housing trends, etc.); but still, should I desire to move, I will essentially be able to \"\"trade\"\" my house for a similar one in a similar market with only a small (6% to 10%) cost.  d) But I also know that if I move \"\"up market\"\" (attempt to move to an area/house that has a relatively higher demand/higher price) that I will then have to pay more or get an even smaller place (smaller home, less land, no garage/shop, etc); yet conversely if I for some reason decide to move \"\"down market\"\" (to an area/house with a relatively lower demand/price) I may be able to either pay less, or to get slightly *more* \"\"house\"\" (additional land, outbuildings, etc).  Note: I also took into account \"\"demographic changes\"\" when I bought -- and think I made the right choice (even though it hasn't \"\"played out\"\" yet) -- with the typical household actually becoming *smaller* (divorces, single parents, fewer kids, more retirees wanting to downsize, etc) I figured way back in 2000 that in 15-20-30 years (circa 2015..2045) the big \"\"McMansions\"\" would be aging and in huge oversupply, whereas smaller homes would be in relatively higher demand (and given things like \"\"smart growth planning\"\") probably in lesser supply... and so would be more likely to retain value.  Again, this hasn't \"\"played out\"\" yet (though there definitely ARE signs that it is starting), but I am also really not interested in selling... so it's a moot point at present. (And even if I am proved wrong, it will probably merely prove to be the loss of an \"\"upside\"\" and not an actual loss per se.)\""]}
+{"query": "Why does it take 3 days to do electronic transfers between banks? [duplicate]", "corpus": ["\"I was perplexed by this until a few days ago when it finally clicked in a meeting with our fraud and money laundering teams in work (I work on trading surveillance). Apparently fraud detection and prevention of money laundering are currently the biggest delayers when it comes to electronic transfer of funds, checking that the transferring party has the funds to transfer etc. takes no time at all. It takes some time for a bank user to \"\"release\"\" a funds transfer; once it has been initiated it is put into a queue to be reviewed as potentially fraudulent or money laundering activity. Almost every transaction has to be monitored for this from a legal standpoint. The compliance process can take multiple days. Once the process is complete the request also has to go through \"\"settling\"\" which is an end of day process whereby banks \"\"net off\"\" their customers' transactions with other banks and only pass the net value between them. This is an end of day process by nature so only happens once a day meaning that once all of the checks have occurred any transaction will take until the end of the day to crystallise for the bank and so get credited to their customers' accounts. Incidentally in the UK and Europe banks are moving to streamline this process through \"\"faster payment\"\" systems (that is the industry term for the technology) so that customers see the effect within a few hours (2 in the UK currently) and then the banks net off at the end of day as usual. This means reducing the time it takes to do the checks that have to be done using specialist software to flag transfers as potentially fraudulent or not and making banks' processes much clearer and faster.\""], "neg": ["You're certainly still responsible to pay what you owe the company given that: 1. for whatever reason, the recipient never received the checks. and 2. the money was credited back to you, albeit in a less than timely manner. However, if you take the time to explain the situation to the business, and show them proof that you sent the payments I would guess they would probably be willing to work with you on removing any late fees you have been assessed or possibly setting up a payment plan. Also, if you have been charged any overdraft or minimum balance fees by your bank while they held your money for the payments that was eventually credited back to your account, you might be able to get them to refund those if you explain what has happened. This is really a perfect example though of why balancing your checking account is as important today as it ever was.", "SEO and web design are undeniably an essential component, but they are always considered as separate entities. When a new website is being built, its design is carefully considered, whereas SEO is only seriously taken after the website is up and running. As a result, most websites are attractive but not search friendly! You increase conversions when your SEO and web design is in sync. Consult an SEO web design company to make a big difference while thinking about a new site SEO or Website Redesign SEO in whether or not your customers find you. Feel free to visit us at: http://www.nowsoft.org/", "The mechanism is allowing insertion of 3 butyl rubber seals in the window between the frame and the opening sash. It has an external seal, mid window, and inner seal. Due to its constructional make-up many non-tilt turn manufacturers are limited to one or two seals.", "Washington State doesn't have a state income tax for individuals, so unless you've got a business there's nothing to file. Find out more on their website.", "What will this mean for of Boost Mobile or Virgin Mobile USA which are prepaid MVOs that Sprint now owns?  I love my current setup and would hate to have to leave if prices keep going up or (cellular\\data) service keeps going down.", "Okay. Think this through. There's an average of 4 people working in a  McDonalds kitchen at one time. How many burgers would they have to sell every hour in order to (a) pay for the ingredients, power and rent on the building and (b) pay 60 (15*4 workers) dollars per hour?", "\"Here's what's going to happen: At the last minute, he's going to \"\"discover\"\" that for some reason first you must send him $10,000.  He'll tell you not to worry, as he's still going to send you $40,000... now $50,000. In fact, he's going to tell you that he'll send you $60,000 and tell you to keep the $10,000 as a \"\"finders fee\"\". Then you will send him, $10,000 and he will walk away with your $10,000.  You'll never hear from him again. This is a very common scam. The best way to avoid it is not to tell him you won't do it for IRS reasons. The best thing to do is to stop accepting email from him and (optionally) report him to law enforcement.\""]}
+{"query": "Why most of apple stock price since 10years have been gained overnight?", "corpus": ["\"I'll answer this question: \"\"Why do intraday traders close their position at then end of day while most gains can be done overnight (buy just before the market close and sell just after it opens). Is this observation true for other companies or is it specific to apple ?\"\" Intraday traders often trade shares of a company using intraday leverage provided by their firm. For every $5000 dollars they actually have, they may be trading with $100,000, 20:1 leverage as an example. Since a stock can also decrease in value, substantially, while the markets are closed, intraday traders are not allowed to keep their highly leveraged positions opened. Probabilities fail in a random walk scenario, and only one failure can bankrupt you and the firm.\""], "neg": ["Name one country that spend that much money in such short period to get out of recession.  You have to find some sub-saharan despot to match the number.  (no. japan ain't it. considering the massive surplus current account and trade balance.)  https://tradingeconomics.com/japan/current-account  https://tradingeconomics.com/united-states/current-account", "I'm not an extremist, I have rational normal delusional thoughts with no basis in reality that has me do things like cut off the tip of my sons penis at birth because I dont know why LOL, I'm normal!", "One of the most time-consuming activities performed in the Finance function involves the processing, categorisation and cost allocations of expenditure items. In a larger department this is a regular process requiring dedicated staff, and increases in intensity at period end, when it can often absorb additional resource.  The key objective of this process for the business is a fair and correct distribution of expense allocations for each business unit, so that true costs may be recorded and profitability accurately assessed. It is also important to be able to compare actual expense allocations with budgeted values, on a monthly and year-to-date basis, in order to spot issues and trends early and to support efficient cost control. https://www.accountagility.com/solutions/cost-allocation-and-expense-allocation/", "A single percentage figure makes little sense here as you are asking for a bunch of different things:", "There was a study last year -- it was all over the news -- that concluded that experiences, not stuff, is what makes people happy. The satisfaction from going on vacation lasts even after the holiday is long over. That new gadget only gives fleeting satisfaction. To that end, I recommend splurging on the affordable luxuries that give you a better experience. For example, I'm a big believer in paying the skycap a few dollars to check my bags at the curb rather than wait in line at the airport because I HATE airports. Valet parking is another affordable luxury when the alternative is circling a busy parking lot for 15 minutes. Pay for the better seats at the show. Get a room at the nicer hotel. Eat out a bit more often. I can't imagine willingly spending hours with customer support, though. They can have my $5.", "The Medicare deduction you see is a tax, not a monthly premium you are paying for your own Medicare coverage.", "Does any investor seek a specific short investing strategy? I think most people who fork their money over to money managers don't understand a whole lot about markets.  The S&amp;P is a good bench because it shows how you could just shove your money into an ETF for 6.96% real gains/annually. It's a great comparison."]}
+{"query": "Why doesn't change in accounts receivable on balance sheet match cash flow statement?", "corpus": ["\"I'm not an expert, but here is my best hypothesis. On Microsoft's (and most other company's) cash flow statements, they use the so-called \"\"indirect method\"\" of accounting for cash flow from operations. How that works, is they start with net income at the top, and then adjust it with line items for the various non-cash activities that contributed to net income. The key phrase is that these are accounting for the non-cash activities that contribute to net income. If the accounts receivable amount changes from something other than operating activity (e.g., if they have to write off some receivables because they won't be paid), the change didn't contribute to net income in the first place, so doesn't need to be reconciled on the cash flow statement.\""], "neg": ["The U.S. Minimum wage purchasing power peaked in 1968 with $8.68 (in 2016 dollars)...   Why are people advocating almost double? From what it sounds like...   Nobody has ever been able to rent a 2 bedroom apartment for minimum wage... Anywhere in the United States... EVER...", "\"Like all financial investments, the value of a bond is the present value of expected future cash flows.  The Yield to Maturity is the annualized return you get on your initial investment, which is equivalent to the discount rate you'd use to discount future cash flows. So if you discount all future cashflows at 6% annually*, you can calculate the price of the bond: So the price of a $1,000 bond (which is how bond prices are typically quoted) would be $1,097.12. The current yield is just the current coupon payment divided by the current price, which is 70/1,097.12 or 6.38% Question 3 makes no sense, since the yield to maturity would be the same if you bought the bond at market price Question 4 talks about a \"\"sale\"\" date which makes me think that it assumes you sold the bond on the coupon date, but you'd have to know the sale price to calculate the rate of return.\"", "Honestly, I think you are falling for a myth. Family business can also decide to go for short term maximum profit at the expense of long term. And shareholders can decide to look long term, just go to shareholder meetings and you will see everything. Its not so black and white.  For the rest I agree, except for anti-monopolly laws. In general, anti-monopolly laws only help create olligopollies/monopollies not removing them.", "The question is for your HR department, or administrator of the plan. How long must you hold the employee shares before you are permitted to sell? Loyalty to your company is one thing, but after a time, you will be too heavily invested in one company, and you need to diversify out. One can cite any number they wish, 5%, 10%. All I know is that when Enron blew up, it only added insult to injury that not only did these people lose their job, they lost a huge chunk of their savings as well.", "\"It's not either or.  Much of the time the value of the stock has some tangible relation to the financial prospects of the company. The value of Ford and GM stock rose when they were selling a lot of cars, and collapsed when their cars became unpopular. Other companies (Enron for example) frankly 'cook the books' to make it appear they are prospering, when they are actually drowning in debt and non-performing assets. So called \"\"penny stocks\"\" have both low prices and low volumes and are susceptible to \"\"pump and dump\"\" schemes, where a manipulator buys a bunch of the stock, touts the stock to the world, pointing to the recent increase in price. They then sell out to all the new buyers, and the price collapses.  If you are going to invest in the stock market it's up to you to figure out which companies are which.\"", "I think either one would allow for lower pricing tiers as a merchant. I am at 2.5 on my main account.   $0 to $3,000 2.9% + $0.30 $3.20 fee on a $100 sale  $3,000+ to $10,000 2.5% + $0.30 $2.80 fee on a $100 sale $10,000+ 2.2% + $0.30 $2.50 fee on a $100 sale $100,000+ Call 1-888-818-3928", "1. Baby boomers homes ending up in the hands of the bank.   2. Millennials can't afford houses bc of school debt/cost of living increases  3. Slow move away from major cities to cheaper areas  4. Real estate boom from foreign investors developing all these luxury homes/condos  Add them all up prices crash again"]}
+{"query": "How to automate the tracking of ratios and other values for a set of stocks or ETFs?", "corpus": ["Spreadsheets need not be static, they can pull data from the web.  This article describes the method you seek."], "neg": ["That's what I have been trying to do.  I do every practice test after each chapter and if I do great then on tot he next.  If not, back to reading it again. What I have been seeing a lot on the new CSC test's is less math and more memorization.  So IIROC mandate questions, derivatives, define a foreign bond etc.", "I'm answering in a perspective of an End-User within the United Kingdom. Most stockbrokers won't provide Real-time information without 'Level 2' access, however this comes free for most who trade over a certain threshold. If you're like me, who trade within their ISA Holding each year, you need to look elsewhere.  I personally use IG.com. They've recently began a stockbroking service, whereas this comes with realtime information etc with a paid account without any 'threshold'. Additionally, you may want to look into CFDs/Spreadbets as these, won't include the heavy 'fees' and tax liabilities that trading with stocks may bring.", "The NPS is launched by The Government of India with a lot of hope. But it has not been taken off as it was expected due to some reasons. Though PFRDA is working for the betterment of the product, still there are disadvantages of the product, which I feel are: 1. The liquidity is an issue for NPS. If you are 30 years age and started investing for NPS you need to wait for another 30 years for withdrawal of money. 2. Though there is option of partial withdrawal, it's not so easy during requirement. 3. You need to invest in a government approved annuity fund which is mandatory. 4. The 20% of the maturity amount is still taxable if you withdraw it lump sum. So, you should not invest in NPS only for the tax saving purpose.", "\"I really like the author/speaker making the \"\"diamond\"\" analogy -- that there is no shortage of diamonds, you just have to be willing to pay the asking price.  Seems like in addition that that (the desire for a \"\"bargain\"\"), AND again as the author speaker highlighted, the fact that managers want everyone \"\"fully trained/experienced\"\" -- combines with the idiotic use/abuse of badly designed pseudo-expert applicant screening software (apparently implemented on the same \"\"idiot manager/HR\"\" model that I saw in practice a decade or more ago already) that makes them (stupidly) claim that there is no one to hire.  *Which really just all comes down to BAD hiring &amp; BAD management practices.*\"", "Yes, automatic rate increases are typical in my experience (and I think it's very greedy, when it's based on nothing except that your lease is up for renewal, which is the situation you are describing). Yes, you should negotiate. I've had success going to the apartment manager and having this conversation:  Make these points: Conclude: I am not open to a rate increase, though I will sign a renewal at the same rate I am paying now. This conversation makes me very uncomfortable, but I try not to show it. I was able to negotiate a lease renewal at the same rate this way (in a large complex in Sacramento, CA).  If you are talking to a manager and not an owner, they will probably have to delay responding until they can check with the owner. The key really is that they want to keep units rented, especially when units are staying empty. Empty units are lost income for the owner. It is the other empty units that are staying empty that are the huge point in your favor.", "&gt;What is your prediction for the next 12 months of the stock market?  Not good. I'm not seeing any of the factors that contributed to what happened in 2008 change, which suggests, imho, that the market is still really unstable and prone to wild fluctuation and crashes. If you like risk perhaps that's okay, but for most investors it's a nightmare. Austerity seems to be winning out in government reaction to economic problems instead of stimulus, which is only going to shrink demand across the board. If you can find something for which there is a hungry consumer base willing and able to pay, maybe that's a good direction to go in, but those are more and more rare these days. I'm almost completely withdrawn from the market, save for my 'fun stocks', investments I've made not to make money but just to toy around with, and my Apple investments, which defy logic. And Netflix, which I support on principle.   Last year was a good year for investing in healthcare, but I'm not sure how that's going to pan out this year.", "Yes, there's a way. I actually wrote a blog post about it. Its a new service from the IRS which allows you pulling your account online. IRS also has an instruction page just for this case here."]}
+{"query": "Is a “total stock market” index fund diverse enough alone?", "corpus": ["You're missing the concept of systemic risk, which is the risk of the entire market or an entire asset class. Diversification is about achieving a balance between risk and return that's appropriate for you. Your investment in Vanguard's fund, although diversified between many public companies, is still restricted to one asset class in one country. Yes, you lower your risk by investing in all of these companies, but you don't erase it entirely.  Clearly, there is still risk, despite your diversification. You may decide that you want other investments or a different asset allocation that reduce the overall risk of your portfolio. Over the long run, you may earn a high level of return, but never forget that there is still risk involved. bonds seem pretty worthless, at least until I retire According to your profile, you're about my age. Our cohort will probably begin retiring sometime around 2050 or later, and no one knows what the bond market will look like over the next 40 years. We may have forecasts for the next few years, but not for almost four decades. Writing off an entire asset class for almost four decades doesn't seem like a good idea. Also, bonds are like equity, and all other asset classes, in that there are different levels of risk within the asset class too. When calculating the overall risk/return profile of my portfolio, I certainly don't consider Treasuries as the same risk level as corporate bonds or high-yield (or junk) bonds from abroad.  Depending on your risk preferences, you may find that an asset allocation that includes US and/or international bonds/fixed-income, international equities, real-estate, and cash (to make rebalancing your asset allocation easier) reduces your risk to levels you're willing to tolerate, while still allowing you to achieve returns during periods where one asset class, e.g. equities, is losing value or performing below your expectations."], "neg": ["Don't all of the major bitcoin processors limit the risk to basically zero for the large multinationals that choose to accept bitcoin? I haven't been involved recently, but I know when bitpay and coinbase were starting, whatever bitcoin you received was automatically transferred to USD at the current rate, unless you opted out and chose to keep the bitcoin.", "Keep in mind a good lawyer will have the contract cover the five D's: Its really best to lay these things out ahead of time.  I watched, first hand, two friends start a business.  When they were broke and struggling the worked very well together.  Then the money started rolling in.  Despite exceeding their dreams they were constantly at each other's throats fighting and bickering over stupid stuff.  In the end, because they had decent legal docs, they both were able to pull money out of the business.   Had that not been worked out they would have destroyed the business so that no one would have profited.", "The optimal time period is unambiguously zero seconds.  Put it all in immediately.  Dollar cost averaging reduces the risk that you will be buying at a bad time (no one knows whether now is a bad or great time), but brings with it reduction in expected return because you will be keeping a lot of money in cash for a long time.  You are reducing your risk and your expected return by dollar cost averaging. It's not crazy to trade expected returns for lower risk.  People do it all the time.  However, if you have a pot of money you intend to invest and you do so over a period of time, then you are changing your risk profile over time in a way that doesn't correspond to changes in your risk preferences.  This is contrary to finance theory and is not optimal.  The optimal percentage of your wealth invested in risky assets is proportional to your tolerance for risk and should not change over time unless that tolerance changes. Dollar cost averaging makes sense if you are setting aside some of your income each month to invest.  In that case it is simply a way of being invested for as long as possible.  Having a pile of money sitting around while you invest it little by little over time is a misuse of dollar-cost averaging. Bottom line: forcing dollar cost averaging on a pile of money you intend to invest is not based in sound finance theory.  If you want to invest all that money, do so now.  If you are too risk averse to put it all in, then decide how much you will invest, invest that much now, and keep the rest in a savings account indefinitely.  Don't change your investment allocation proportion unless your risk aversion changes. There are many people on the internet and elsewhere who preach the gospel of dollar cost averaging, but their belief in it is not based on sound principles.  It's just a dogma. The language of your question implies that you may be interested in sound principles, so I have given you the real answer.", "Rich tax evaders are entitled leeches who claim extraordinary results enabled by their community/city/state/republic as wholly their own.  They violate the social contract that asks members to pay their share of the cost, as determined by tax code, for public goods they enjoy.  They refuse to contribute toward improvement and maintenance of infrastructure that magnify fruits of labor and investment.  If they find fault with the way the military is run, they should get politically involved.  If they just don't want to pay taxes, they should move elsewhere and renounce their US citizenship.  I don't see what's heroic about tax evaders.", "Little pisses me off more than knowing I worked my ass off for shitty employers for decades to enrich lazy rich fuckers who have continuously turned the screws of oppression on me.  They need to pay.  Why would additional tax breaks inspire an uber rich person to make legitimate investments in the greater economy if they already have so much cash they don't do anything but inflate the stock market?  Stupid economics.  When a person with needs has money they spend it on needs until their needs are met and bolster the economy.  The majority with constant worry about money with no hope for relief in sight while richies get preferential treatment is mean and cowardly economics.  Does anyone really wonder why there is so much hatred, violence, suicide, addiction, disenfranchisement...?", "The money your tenants spent on repairs and maintenance that is otherwise your responsibility is considered rent paid to you (and deductible to the extent you can deduct maintenance expenses, provided you have documentation etc etc). The money your tenants spent on utilities, which is their responsibility anyway, is not considered rent paid to you. Since in your question you seem to be mixing both together, it is hard to accept a claim that the additional $300 spent on utilities and maintenance is enough to bring the rent to the FMV level. Especially since the transaction is between related persons, it may bring additional scrutiny of the IRS.", "Ask your bank or credit union. Mine will let me issue recurring payments to anyone, electronically if they can, if not a check gets mailed and (I presume) I get billed for the postage."]}
+{"query": "How do share dilution scams make money?", "corpus": ["\"For this to work, those who control the dilution must also control their salaries because the only way for them to be paid off when it's the corporation itself selling is to gain access to the proceeds. When a corporation sells newly issued equity, the corporation itself owns the money.  To at least have the appearance of propriety, the scammers must be paid those proceeds.  Both actions imply that the board is captured by the scammers. There are many corporations that seem to do this even with persistently large market capitalizations. The key difference between this and pump-and-dump is that its a fraudulent group of investors selling in this case instead of the corporation itself. A detailed simple example Corporations are mandated by law to be little oligarchies; although, \"\"republic\"\" is now becoming more appropriate with all of the new shareholder rights.  A corporation is controlled at root by the board of directors who are elected by the shareholders.  The board has no direct operational control, as that is left to the \"\"king\"\", the CEO; however, the board does control what everyone wants access to: the money. Board members have all sorts of legal qualitative mandates on how to behave, and they've functioned fairly decently efficiently over the long run, but there are definitely some bad apples. Boards are somewhat intransigent since it's difficult to hold board elections, and usually only specific board members are put up for election by a shareholder vote, so a bad one has the potential to really get stuck in there.  Once a bad one is in there, they don't care because they know it will be tough to get them out, so they run roughshod over the company's purse. Only the board can take action on major funding such as the CEO's operating budget, board compensation, financing, investment, etc, some with shareholder approval, some without.  The corporation itself owns all of those assets, but the board controls them. In this example, they scheme with most likely the top executive, but a rubber stamp top executive could allow a lower rung to scheme with the board, but the board is always constant until the law is changed. Because there's no honor amongst thieves, the board votes which can require some combination of executive and shareholder approval are taken very close together: sell shares, increase salaries to key executive schemers, increase board compensation.  The trusting shareholders believe this is in the best interests of the company at large so go along. So the money flows from existing & new shareholders to the corporation now controlled by a malicious board and then finally to the necessary malicious executive and the vital malicious board.\""], "neg": ["Also I don't need to put up as much money, and since I am a college student, that allows me to conserve capital, but still diversify into that market. I am still reading up on them before I jump in, but these securities fascinate me.", "Most of the bankruptcy is due to taking [or building over a period of time] a loan that one cannot service, if the interest rates rise, then the amount of money to repay the loan increases, when one doesnt pay the revised amount and keeps paying less, the over all debt keeps shooting through the roof ... a lower interest rate means that one can continue to pay the same amount ... and few missed payments do not cause as much as damage as it does when the rates are high.", "First, you can look up the property tax of the building you are in for an exact number. Go to you town's tax office or look at Zillow. You need to claim the rent as income, but will take all expenses as well as depreciation on half the building. The numbers may well work in your favor, especially as a resident landlord. I still own a rental in the next state, but it's 2 hour away, so I'm paying pros to do the simplest things. On site, you can handle all maintenance and save that way.  If the cash flow looks like it's better than what you have right now, it might be time to buy. Without seeing the numbers I can't point out what you might be missing.", "Yes millennials are your problem... Do your damn job and make your business better or leave.  I am a millennial who used to go to BWW all the time when I was in college, but now I realize the wings are always dry no matter where I go... Make the food better", "\"Be careful here: If ACME were in California, I would pay taxes on USD 17,000 because I   had revenue of 20,000 and expenses of 3,000. To CALIFORNIA. And California taxes S-Corps. And, in addition, you'd pay $800 for the right of doing business in the State. All that in addition to the regular Federal and State taxes to the State where you're resident. Suppose that ACME is in Britain (or anywhere else for that matter). My   revenue and expenses are the same, but now my money has been earned   and my expenses incurred in a foreign country. Same thing exactly. Except that you'll have to pay taxes to the UK. There may be some provision in the tax treaty to help you though, so you may end up paying less taxes when working in the UK than in California. Check with a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) who won't run away from you after you say the words \"\"Tax Treaty\"\". Does it even make sense to use my S-Corporation to do business in a   foreign country? That should be a business decision, don't let the tax considerations drive your business.\"", "Cash has zero value until it is transformed into something material.  Cash hoarders realize no improvement in their lifestyle by gaining more cash than they need.  If corporations are already so flush with cash they only inflate the stock market, why would further tax breaks improve anything?  An inflated stock market only improves income for very few.  People who need money will spend it and put it back into circulation.  People will not hoard cash if they know more will show up regardless of their ability to perform.  Less financial pressure and less resentment of the rich for their preferential treatment would create a more positive attitude among the population and improve productivity.  A happier work force is a more productive work force.  People should only work part time anyway so they can have a life outside of work to enjoy their lives while they have the health to do it.  Slaving your life away until you can't do the things you always wanted to do does not improve a person's outlook.  Life according to me.  Was a reduction in unemployment compensation, medicare, medicade and SNAP payments included in the study?  There may be a reduction in spending on crime and addiction as well.", "\"Yes and no.  Losing high-paying jobs to other countries does take money out of the economy.  I have read a few times that this is a small contribution to the hard times \"\"Main Street\"\" is currently going through.  Compared to the 2008 crisis and its effects, this is probably fairly small but is still a negative influence on the economy.  If the outsourcing continues unabated, I believe the effects on both the economies and competitiveness of the western nations will become more pronounced.  However, I do see the pendulum swinging back so we'll get back some (but not all) of the lost jobs and wages.  Where we'll land I can't dare predict.  This is just my opinion, of course.  Swing by for a beer someday and we can talk some more :)\""]}
+{"query": "Are there any statistics that support the need for Title Insurance?", "corpus": ["There seems to be no such information available. What is available is that number of claims are high and the Title Insurance companies have gone bankrupt as per the wikipedia article In 2003, according to ALTA, the industry paid out about $662 million in claims, about 4.3% percent of the $15.7 billion taken in as premiums. By comparison, the boiler insurance industry, which like title insurance requires an emphasis on inspections and risk analysis, pays 25% of its premiums in claims. However, no reference to the relationship between when claims are made and when policies are issued is found. As of 2008, the top three remaining title insurers all lost money, while LandAmerica went bankrupt and sold its title business to Fidelity http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Title_insurance#Industry_profitability The amount of premium received and claim made can be got from some of the companies balance sheet. For Fidelity its at http://www.investor.fnf.com/releasedetail.cfm?CompID=FNT&ReleaseID=363350 The article in here mentions the claims ratio as 5%. Refer http://www.federaltitle.com/blog/title-insuance-qaa"], "neg": ["I thought about this some more. Going to a top business school can help you network with entrepreneurs who would like to join you in starting your firm.  But remember there is no single path to success in life. Moreover, life is what you make of it with your own hard work.", "\"Basically, these guys break all your eggs then try to make an omelet.  Your lender(s) must really believe that you have no ability to pay before they'll settle, which generally entails not paying them until your creditworthiness is in the tank.  Bankruptcy laws exist for a reason.  If your credit is in the tank, you can't make your payments and you're shopping to settle your debts, it's not likely a bankruptcy would worsen your situation; in fact, quite the opposite.  But, people have hugely negative feelings toward bankruptcy and don't want to be called a \"\"deadbeat\"\", these services prey on those people.\"", "We have an interactive game &amp; mental workout set in a real, physical location that challenges you to decode &amp; decrypt your way out of a locked room. The West Palm Beach Escape Rooms are an adventure inside four walls an escape from the ordinary world. You should find an escape rooms WPB adventure in Florida right here. If you laugh at our jokes or appreciate the oddball clues I've left around the rooms.  Each Room available to attempt in escape room  features its own unique theme, challenges and props. The escape rooms South Florida is a fun and interactive real-life game experience, excellent for you.", "As you can see by his username this guy works in IT.  I will explain for those who aren’t in the industry.  In IT demand for employees has never been higher.  It is crazy right now. This means it is hard to get talent, particularly good talent which can be many times more productive than bad ones.  Now Amazon is a tech company fundamentally.  What many may not realize is Amazon is also the world’s largest hosting platform too.  For example, Reddit and Netflix are on their systems.  So they aren’t just a store, they do a lot of everyone else's tech too.  This means they need a shit-tonne of good tech and related people.  So the location will likely hinge on where the can find good staff.  However, as OP just said Amazon has a terrible reputation in the industry.  So this makes this even more difficult as everyone hates them and no one will move for them, and they need a lot of good people which are in high demand elsewhere.  This is what their decision will rest on.  Tax breaks and all are perks, but they need to find 50,000 experienced employees to fill this thing, everything else is secondary.", "No, you cannot write off your time.  Only money or goods are eligible for donation.1 and 2", "1. It was the late 1960's to the 1970's. 2. It was completely media hype and mostly present in popular literature. 3. It was never a widespread conjecture among the scientific community or the scientific literature of the time. Between 1965 to 1979, [7 articles predicted cooling and 44 predicted warming.](http://journals.ametsoc.org/doi/pdf/10.1175/2008BAMS2370.1)  Even though most articles predicted warming, only the ones that predicted cooling got media attention.", "Maryland treats income from pensions and annuities in the same manner that the federal government treats such income. Consequently, pensions and annuities can be subject to Maryland's income tax. The resident booklet for Maryland income tax filers states on page 4: Line 1d. Enter on line 1d the total amount of pension, IRA,   and annuities reported as income on lines 15b and 16b of your   federal Form 1040, or lines 11b and 12b of your federal Form   1040A. Line 1 of Maryland's tax return represents total taxable income, before deductions, exemptions, and adjustments. Line 16b of federal Form 1040 represents the taxable portion of your FERS annuity. Consequently, the federally taxable portion of your FERS annuity is also subject to Maryland's state income tax. The taxable portion of FERS annuities should be recorded on the 1099-R you receive. If it's not, IRS pub 721 records how to calculate the taxable portion of FERS annuities. Maryland does, however, allow filers to exclude up to $29,200 of the taxable portion of their pension income in 2015 from taxable income if: a. You were 65 or over or totally disabled, or your spouse was   totally disabled, on the last day of the tax year, AND b. You included on your federal return taxable income received   as a pension, annuity or endowment from an “employee   retirement system” qualified under Sections 401(a), 403 or   457(b) of the Internal Revenue Code. [A traditional IRA, a   Roth IRA, a simplified employee plan (SEP), a Keogh plan, an   ineligible deferred compensation plan or foreign retirement   income does not qualify.] You mention receiving SS disability, so you may be eligible for that exclusion. Regarding what kinds of disabilities qualifies for those exclusions, Maryland states that: To be considered totally disabled, you must have a mental or physical impairment which prevents you from engaging in substantial gainful activity. You must expect the impairment to  be of long, continued or indefinite duration or to result in your death. You must attach to your return a certification from a qualified physician stating the nature of your impairment and that you are totally disabled. If you have previously submitted a physician’s certification, attach your own statement that you are still totally disabled and that a physician’s certification was submitted before. If you feel you would qualify for that exclusion (and have the required supporting evidence), fill out the relevant table and include the result on line 10 of your Maryland tax return. In the future, to avoid a large state tax bill due to inadequate withholding on pension funds, OPM provides a web service which allows you to specify state tax withholding amounts on pension distributions."]}
+{"query": "How To Assign Payments Received Properly In GnuCash?", "corpus": ["\"When I receive a check from a customer whom I previously sent an invoice, I go to the customer report for that customer, click on the link \"\"Invoice\"\" for that invoice, then click on the Pay Invoice button (very far right side). I then do a customer report and see that there is no balance (meaning all the invoices have been paid). I don't process invoices using the same method you do.  Instead I go to Business -> Customer -> Process Payment.  From there I can select the applicable customer, and a list of unpaid invoices will come up.  I've never experienced the issue you've described. On a related topic: are you posting your invoices?  From experience that has caused issues for me; when you post the invoice it should show up in your Accounts Receivable (or whichever account you've designated), and after you process the payment the A/R should go down accordingly.  When posting your invoice, you specify which account it gets posted to:  So that account should show a balance once you have posted it:  Then, when a client pays you, your cash will go up, and A/R will go down.\""], "neg": ["&gt; The United States has more Nobel prize winners than any other country by a long shot.   We also have the third largest population in the world, and the highest GDP in the world by far. We spend more on defense then the next 7 countries together. We spend more on [health care per capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_total_health_expenditure_per_capita) than any other nation in the world. We also have the [highest expenditures as a percent of GDP](http://data.worldbank.org/indicator/SH.XPD.TOTL.ZS?year_high_desc=true) than any other nation. Needless to say we spend a LOT on health care also.   The point being if we *DIDN'T* have the most nobel peace prize winners, with all the money we spend on R&amp;D, then there would be some serious issues.   &gt; We have arguably (in spite of the fda) the best medical services in the world.   Again, you need to travel. While, yes, we spend more on health care than any other nation, and we do have arguably the best health care services in the world... that is mostly only true if you are very wealthy.   When you break it down on results per dollar spent, the US doesn't even break the top 20. When you break it down on infant mortality, and life expectancy, we have been on a backward slide for a while now (although those rates improved for the short while that the ACA has been in effect, as have the net increase in costs). At the end of the day, the cost of health care has grown 3X faster than inflation, and 20X faster than the average income for over 30 years now. So, no, [health care in this country is not the best to the average person](http://www.pbs.org/newshour/rundown/health-costs-how-the-us-compares-with-other-countries/).   And yes, Space X has been able to estimate a savings of $300M less... Commercial does a great job of expanding on the research and knowledge that has come from government sponsored R&amp;D. You see that in every modern technological advancement - from the internet, cellular phones, GPS, medical procedures, etc. There are so many modern inventions that have sprung from government patents and government research programs.", "\"Write means sell to open.  It is called that because options writers are creating (i.e. writing) new contracts. No such thing as \"\"reading\"\" an option.\"", "Proof of funds for funding firms are used to determine if you have any money before they lend to you. (determine risk of lending to you if you defaulted) If you came in with 10 million dollars, the firms will turn a blind eye to any money laundering regulations and just lend to you.", "&gt;In April, President Xi Jinping announced that the government would build a new city designed to siphon people and businesses from Beijing's crowded center and serve as a model for urban development for the next thousand years.   Anyone who thinks they can do urban planning that would fit for the next 50 years is border line crazy, but 1000 years is full insanity.", "It's the result of many companies now outsourcing production to the same contractors.  It's easy to see in electronics (Foxconn, Blackberry Playbook/KindleFire, etc) and happens in other industries as well.  As our communication technology increased over the last century, it became easier and easier to contract out production.  Now it is easy to choose any supplier/contractor in the globe for the production of your product.  As suppliers/contractors begin to optimize and specialize, they become the dominant solution for their sector.  This then leads to that product uniformity, which is close to working very nicely as a term.", "Quite a bit as in, $100K+? If you're a sole operator, not sure what constitutes a real likelihood that a risk of liability will materialize, and in need of a lot of up front financing, I am genuinely concerned that you're going to a lay a giant egg on this one. What is it your business is going to be doing? I don't really want to give a free consultation, but I'm worried you're either misunderstanding something or about to make a mistake, and I don't want to see that happen.", "\"If by way of thinking you mean an evidence based belief system, then I think you should be swayed to abandon ideology in favour of evidence because it will make the world a better place.   Why are you so opposed to changing your world view in light of evidence? What bad thing will happen to you if you change a position? You made the \"\"dogshit\"\" claim about quality of care and you based it on pure ideology. Reality does not agree with your claim. What bad thing will happen to you if you say \"\"I might need to re-evaluate my belief in what is the best system\"\"\""]}
+{"query": "Why would a central bank or country not want their currency to appreciate against other currencies?", "corpus": ["I wrote about the dynamic of why either of a lower or higher exchange rate would be good for economies in Would dropping the value of its currency be good for an economy? A strong currency allows consumers to   import goods cheaply from the rest of   the world.  A weak currency allows   producers to export goods cheaply to   the rest of the world.  People are   both consumers and producers.    Clearly, there have to be trade-offs. Strong or weak mean relative to Purchasing Power Parity (i.e. you can buy more or less of an equivalent good with the same money). Governments worrying about unemployment will try and push their currencies weaker relative to others, no matter the cost.  There will be an inflationary impact (imported inputs cost more as a currency weakens) but a country running a major surplus (like China) can afford to subsidise these costs."], "neg": ["\"It's not a touch phone - but it has the trackpad instead of the trackball and it's got the QWERTY keyboard. The phone also runs on RIM's OS7 software.   It is VERY light and sleek. The old blackberry phones look like bricks next to it. I'm pretty sure the battery makes up 3/4 of the weight in the phone.   Along with the normal BB security - you can encrypt the memory card and device memory with a 250 character key randomly generated. You need to do both \"\"Device Password and Device Key\"\" to have the strongest encryption/security. The phone also has a firewall. You can set up VPN's with the phone if necessary too.   The App world is getting better - but if you have a blackberry your probably not looking for apps.   Basically, I'm pretty impressed with it and I have always loved Blackberry. I'll take it over the iphone or android any day!   Sprint has the Blackberry Curve 9350's. The other models are 9360 and 9370. Not sure who else carries the new phones.\"", "The biggest hedge funds seem to be copying the large mutual fund company strategy.  Launch many funds.  Take positions with high beta to the sector or asset class that is the focus of the fund.  Wait and see which asset classes outperform. (For Och-Ziff: Their massive bullish bet on credit!)  Promote the outperforming funds and their portfolio manager to gullible investors.", "I probably can, but I realized I also do have a commission sheet from the month of June which shows how much I made in just commissions, and then I could tell them I also get my 300 a week salary. Do you think that would suffice?", "Other than the exchange risk, one more thing to consider is interest rate risk and the returns you are generating from your money. If it is lying around in a current account with no interest then it is rational to keep it where you intend to stay(US or AUS). Now if your money is working for you, earning interest or has been invested in the market then it seems reasonable that you should put it where it earns the maximum for you. But that comes with a rider, the exchange risk you may have to bear if you are converting between the currencies. Do the returns earned by your money cancel out the FX rates moving up and down and still leave you with a positive return, compared with what you would earn if your money was where you stayed. Consider the below scenarios Do evaluate all your options before you transfer your money.", "There should be no problem getting a mortgage from a bank with 3 years in business. They are going to use the average of the last 2 years of taxable profits to determine your income though. I think the key words here are taxable profits and this is where the problem typically comes in for most self employed folks. Many times self employed people will have soft losses and deductions that make their income seem lower than it really is (or unreported income).  It has nothing to do with your business plan, or your relationship with the bank unless it is a small community bank or credit union.", "So you'd prefer someone else to do your work for you? Someone figure out who's the bad guy, and figure out how to punish them? You are too busy filling your Jeep and drinking your latte to actually be a responsible member of society? It is attitudes like that which lead to tyranny. How can you trust those in power, if you have no idea whats right or wrong?", "If you had purchased the land directly from your NRI account in your name [with power of attorney] in your wife's name, it would have been very simple to get the funds back. Whenever you sell the land, transfer the funds into NRO account. From NRO account you can repatriate back USD 1 Million. A CA certificate is required detailing the purpose and that tax is paid on the funds, talk to your bank and it should be easy. The gains will be taxable in India as well as in the US. You can claim rebate to the extent of taxes paid in India."]}
+{"query": "How can I calculate how much an option would be worth after X days if the underlying stock changed by +/- $Y?", "corpus": ["\"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.\""], "neg": ["As long as we remember that debt is the only option when the government has to borrow their money at interest or take it from taxes. When taxes don't cut it, we borrow. Ever wondered why the government doesn't just spend money into the economy instead of borrowing at interest?", "Bottom line is our system is broken.  For three years running I am 0% return with over 600k in.  Yet, the 401k admin institution charges us all enormous fees that most aren't even aware exist.  A helpful tip is to also check out your expense ratios and learn how those work as well so you know how much you are paying in hidden fees.", "I worked in a lab that designed micro machines to more rapidly conduct biological tests. These sorts of devices which collect data could easily do what several lab technicians and doctors can do in a short amount of time.   People should always be on the move and willing to learn new skills.", "Why does it seem so many companies lose so much money before going out of business?  If the reason for a company being there is gone, why not just wind it down?  If I were a shareholder, I'd want management to make as much money as they can out of their declining business and return that money to shareholders so they can invest in new companies that are digital-native.", "Nobody outside of the credit scoring agencies know exactly what goes into the scoring formula. That said, I don't think there is any evidence that keeping a fixed loan (car or mortgage) open is necessary to keep its effect on your score. It doesn't improve your utilization ratio like an open revolving credit line would. And depending on the exact details of how your specific lender reports the loan, it might appear detrimental to your debt-to-income ratio.  I would simply pay it off.", "(a) 5 funds for $15K is not too many or too few ? A bit high as I'd wonder if you've thought of how you'll rebalance the funds over time so you aren't investing too much in a particular market segment. I'd also question if you know what kinds of fees you may have with those funds as some of Vanguard's index funds had fees if the balance is under $10K that may change how much you'll be paying. From Vanguard's site: We charge a $20 annual account service fee for each Vanguard fund with   a balance of less than $10,000 in an account. This fee doesn’t apply   if you sign up for account access on Vanguard.com and choose   electronic delivery of statements, confirmations, and Vanguard fund   reports and prospectuses. This fee also doesn’t apply to members of   Flagship®, Voyager Select®, and Voyager Services®. So, if you don't do the delivery this would be an extra $100/year that I wonder if you factored that into things here. (b) Have I diversified my portfolio too much or not enough ? Perhaps I   am missing something that would be recommended for the portfolio of   this kind with this goal. Both, in my opinion. Too much in the sense that you are looking at Morningstar's style box to pick a fund for this box and that which I'd consider consolidating on one hand yet at the same time I notice that you are sticking purely to US stocks and ignoring international funds. I do think taxes may be something you haven't considered too much as stocks will outgrow most of those funds and trigger capital gains that you don't mention at all. (c) If not my choice of my portfolio, where would you invest $15K   under similar circumstances and similar goals. What is the goal here? You state that this is your first cash investment but don't state if this is for retirement, a vacation in 10 years, a house in 7 years or a bunch of other possibilities which is something to consider. If I consider this as retirement investments, I'd like pick 1 or 2 funds known for being tax-efficient that would be where I'd start. So, if a fund goes down 30%, that's OK? Do you have a rebalancing strategy of any kind? Do you realize what taxes you may have even if the fund doesn't necessarily have gains itself? In not stating a goal, I wonder how well do you have a strategy worked out for how you'll sell off these funds down the road at some point as something to ponder.", "\"If you sold the stock for a profit, you will owe tax on that profit. Whether it is taxed as short-term or long-term capital gains depends on how long you held the stock before selling it. Presumably you're going to invest this money into mutual funds or something of that sort. Those may pay dividends which can be reinvested, and will grow in value (you hope) just as the individual stock shares would (you hope). Assuming the advice you've been given is at all reasonable, there's no need for buyer's remorse here; you're just changing your investing style to a different point on the risk-versus-return curve. (If you have to ask this question, I tend to agree that you should do more homework before playing with shares in individual companieS ... unless you're getting thess shares at employee discount, in which case you should still seriously consider selling them fairly quickly and reinvesting the money in a more structured manner. In a very real sense your job is itself an \"\"investment\"\" in your employer; if they ever get into trouble you don't want that to hit both your income and investments.)\""]}
+{"query": "Is housing provided by a university as employer reported on 1040?", "corpus": ["To answer your question directly, this is a taxable benefit that they are providing for you in lieu of higher wages. It is taxable to the employee as income and through payroll taxes. It is taxable to the employer for their half of the payroll taxes."], "neg": ["I agree that the cause of the crash can make a huge difference in the effect on the bond market. Here's a few other possibilities: All that to say that there's no definitive answer as to how the bond market will respond to an equity crash.  Bonds are much more highly correlated to equities lately, but that could be due to much lower interest rates pushing more of the risk of bonds to the credit worthiness of the issuer, increasing correlation.", "I still Love reddit to pieces, I’ve been here for well over 11 years. I love that it’s no longer just geeks talking to geeks,.   But, even the geeky subs are filled with inane comments now. They need a filter for “Inane sub-thread.” I’m thinking about writing a Machine Learning plug-in for Chrome that removes them. I just don’t have the time right now. I would make it FOSS so someone can rewrite it for other browsers, and the reddit team could use it.", "&gt; Why are you bringing in Hillary or Obama?   Because if you are against Trump, you must(!) be for Hillary or the DNC or both.  &gt; My argument was that Mitch McConnell and congress killed it.  Even if it's true, it's what Trump wanted, what he would have done, what he has done, and the GOP did it, for him.   All this, despite the wishes of the DNC, Obama and Hillary. Am I right? yes or no?   &gt; How can I ... take President Trump seriously  Because it seems that you are not opposed to anything that Trump does.  Ok!!!!! Tell me of something that Trump did that you do agree to or do not like. Let's go this route!", "\"I second what \"\"powercow\"\" and \"\"Osetic\"\" said.  I switched away from Wells Fargo to Patelco (Pacific Telephone Company, i'm in the bay area).  They are world's better.  My biggest issue with WF was the overdrafts, how much they charged, and the way in which they processed incoming transactions (which they are being sued in a class action for, btw).  I had my new account setup so it could never overdraft, it would just decline.  In my first month with Patelco, I ordered checks.  When that charge processed, it dipped my account into the negative due to it being an internal CU charge and their system not performing all the checks/balances first.  They called me about 24hrs after it happened to let me know:  * How sorry they were * That they would refund me the amount of the checks * That they added $10 on top of the refund to ensure I understood it was a mistake * If there was anything else they could do to make the situation right  And like others here, I have shorter lines, more helpful tellers, a more inviting atmosphere, oh and free coffee.  You gotta find a better CU, yo\"", "Put yourself in this position - if you had no debts and no investments, would you borrow money at those rates to invest in the stock market?  If no, then pay off the debts.  If yes, then keep them.", "\"It's easy to sell things when you have a panicking misinformed and ignorant viewer base. The sky is falling because obama is a socialist muslim fascist commie, the dollar is going to collapse!!! Now a word from our sponsors cash for gold and investment companies.  Ads really do work though  http://news.illinois.edu/news/12/0119junkfoodbans_KathyBaylis.html  They don't make the sale, but they plant the idea. The next time you need, the first thing that comes to your mind will be what you've been given more exposure to and sounds familiar. The brain is not great at remembering \"\"source\"\" information for things that are not of interest but it still remembers. When you have a choice between product A or product B, you will choose the one that sounds more familiar. You will not remember if you think it sounds more familiar because of a friend recommendation or because of an Ad you heard passively 3 weeks ago. Incidentally, this is how politics work as a whole. The most familiar candidates almost always end up being the last to battle it out. People don't even consider or research the ones they hadn't heard of.\"", "wait..what? Big pharma and the insurance industry basically wrote huge portions of the ACA and the democrats pushed it through.  Stop being so partisan. Americans are getting f***ed by these two industries, and if you think EITHER party is unaffected by their bribe money, you are sorely mistaken."]}
+{"query": "What is today's price of 15 000 Euro given 15 years ago?", "corpus": ["\"With no written agreement in place, the \"\"right\"\" rate is whatever both parties can agree to. I could argue that I could have invested the money in S&P 500 index funds and made about 9% annually over the last 15 years and the 15,000 would have been over 40,000.  The \"\"fair\"\" rate would be whatever rate of return could have been expected from whatever your father would have done with the money otherwise - keep it in a bank account, pay off debt, invest in the market, start a business, whatever.  Your father has the benefit of hindsight to know what would have been a good use of the funds over 15 years. Using the rate of inflation results in effectively a zero-percent loan in real interest terms (meaning no profit was made, just accounting for the time value of money). Both parties need to either decide on an amount or equivalent rate, or decide if squeezing the other for a few thousand Euros is worth the strife.\""], "neg": ["NeoSize XL is one such regular penis extension item that contains intense natural fixings whose adequacy and viability in the zone of penis developments are uncommon. Before taking the this product you should take the medical consult neosize xl how to use. Buy You can buy a NeoSize XL supplement,  easy and fast from our online store. Through this product, you can achieve the better result and more money you can save.", "If you are looking e-mail marketing services in USA, Saleglue provides e-mail marketing services in USA . E-mail marketing is perform of seanding business massgae classically to a group of people, using email. Every email send to a possible or present customer could be considered email marketing. http://www.saleglue.com/", "You're still confused. The first guy in the thread said  &gt; All sounds nice for consumers, but you're not mentioning the biggest drawback- the tight stranglehold on supply the taxi industry keeps.  You then said  &gt; That stranglehold is because of the small margins in the business.  Then I said  &gt; So medallions are limited (in some cities) because margins are small? That doesn't make much sense.  Then you said  &gt; Other way around.  So, your claim is that the taxi industry keeps a tight strangehold on supply because there are small margins in the business. Then, you say that margins are small because medallions are limited. That is a circular argument.", "An investment trust is quoted just like a share. You just compare what you paid (your book cost) with its current share price, not the NAV, as a trust's price can be at a premium greater than the actual share price or a discount.", "Network.  Network.  Network.  I got a job out of college on the buy side from being an intern. An Alum I found through networking said they had an extra desk on the floor and told me to come spin my wheels until I found a job. Three months later, that job was on their fixed income desk.   It's rare, but it can absolutely happen", "\"I had experience working for a company that manufactures stuff and giving products to the employees. The condition was to stay employed for a year after the gift for the company to cover its cost (I think they imputed the tax), otherwise they'd add the cost to the last paycheck (which they did when I left). But they were straight-forward about it and I signed a paper acknowledging it. However, in your case you didn't get a product (that you could return when leaving if you didn't want to pay), but rather a service. The \"\"winning\"\" trip was definitely supposed to be reported as income to you last year. Is it okay for them to treat me differently than the others for tax purposes? Of course not. But it may be that some strings were attached to the winning of the incentive trip (for example, you're required to stay employed for X time for the company to cover the expense). See my example above. Maybe it was buried somewhere in small letters. Can they do this a year after the trip was won and redeemed? As I said - in this case this sounds shady. Since it is a service which you cannot return - you should have been taxed on it when receiving it. Would the IRS want to know about this fuzzy business trip practice? How would I report it?  Here's how you can let them know. Besides now understanding the new level of slime from my former   employer is there anything else I should be worried about? Could they   do something like this every year just to be annoying? No, once they issued the last paycheck - you're done with them. They cannot issue you more paychecks after you're no longer an employee. In most US States, you are supposed to receive the last paycheck on your last day of work, or in very close proximity (matter of weeks at most).\"", "Makes sense so long as you can afford it while still maintaining at least six months living reserves. The sooner you own outright a decreasing asset the better which should be considered when selecting your loan term. However, with today's low rates and high performing stock market you may want to consider allowing that money to be put to better use. It all depends how risk adverse you are. That emotional aide of this decision and emotions have value, but only you can determine what that value is. So - generally speaking, the sooner you own an asset of decreasing value the better off you are, but in exceptionally low interest rate environments such as today there are, as mentioned, other things you may want to consider. Good luck and enjoy your new ride. Nothing better then some brand new wheels aye."]}
+{"query": "Lease vs buy car with cash?", "corpus": ["If you are talking straight dollars then leasing is always a losing proposition when compared with purchasing. The financial workings of leasing are so confusing that people don’t realize that leasing invariably costs more than an equivalent   loan. And even if they did, the extra cost is difficult to calculate.   Still, many people can’t afford the higher payments of a typical loan,   at least not without putting a substantial amount down. If payments   are an issue, consider buying a lower-cost vehicle or a reliable used   car. http://www.consumerreports.org/cro/2012/12/buying-vs-leasing-basics/index.htm If you are talking about convenience, lifestyle, ability to purchase a car you could not pay for outright, then you will have to evaluate that."], "neg": ["\"Well if they offer free shipping that would be one thing and regardless if they raise the total cost that will likely result in fewer sales.  Of course, I'm not sure what the alternatives are for \"\"elderly people who live hundreds of miles from a pharmacy.\"\"\"", "\"You can hire a good CPA for a really low price.  They can advise you on how to do exactly what you said and many other aspects of your business.  Mine does this as a courtesy with the filing of my taxes.  And the filing of my taxes is not all that much.  It is great value for the money. Recently I had to make a decision that is a potential audit situation and can go badly if not properly documented.  It was not hard to document (with the CPA's help), but now that it is so I don't lose mental energy on if I am going to get \"\"caught\"\" by the IRS.  Let them come, I have the necessary documentation. Beyond the IRS, I really like the documentation that you are trying to put behind this loan.  Having this in writing helps smooth this potentially bad situation between you and the BIL.  I would go above and beyond writing conditions and contingencies down in order to keep this relationship happy.  With these kinds of things, cover the applicable 5 \"\"Ds\"\" of partnership agreements: However, I would add another:  Boom.  What happens if your business takes off?  Perhaps there should be a clause to retire the loan prior to you expanding beyond a certain level. Please understand I am not suggesting that any of these bad things are going to happen to you (except the Boom, I really hope that happens to you), but it is a way to communicate contingent actions if one of the risks of small business materializes.  Having agreements ahead of time helps avoid crisis.\"", "It really is important to consider the safety of the audience and performers in any event. There should be a team of medics who are on standby to give first aid when needed. It is good that there are companies who offer the services of first aid professionals these days.", "If you will leave the money invested for a good long while (years) then dividend paying stocks would be appropriate. There are many that pay yields of 3 to 4 percent, which you can take as income or reinvest to compound the growth. There is a lot of good analysis of stocks (and mutual funds that specialize in dividend paying stocks) at Morningstar.com", "Is legacy software pretty standard across the board for trading firms and bulge bracket banks?   I was surprised to learn how old the internal software the place I'm interning at is. Chalk it up to me being young.  Thanks!", "The answer for this question varies from person to person. However most cards give lousy rewards percentage-wise. Take a look at where your money is being spent each month (say with a tool like mint.com), and seek out a card that rewards you in categories where you already spend a lot of money.  Many people here have suggested cards with high gas rebates, and that's great if you drive more than anything else. However, the important thing is to pick what benefits you most.", "&gt; A real choice to opt out would not require you to move.  Okay, let's imagine a system that gives you this freedom. Let's say people in the US can chose one of five governments to represent them.  How do you see the military being funded in this scenario?"]}
+{"query": "What happens when the bid and ask are the same?", "corpus": ["This question is impossible answer for all markets but there are 2 more possibilities in my experience:"], "neg": ["\"No. Fake news are lies and baseless claims where simple verifiable facts and logic can show them as such.  For example: \"\"Russians colluded with Trump to win the elections\"\".  Let's see: in July 2016 Trump won the GOP debate and was nominated by the GOP against 13 other career GOP politicians. And then he won the elections in November 2016.  Facts? Yes or no?  Are you saying that since July, the Russian managed to rig and twist the elections result for the choice, Trump, in November?  Or is it, for example, Hillary cheating on debate questions given to her by fake-news CNN, questions that Trump handled easily? If my son did such a thing on a test in 1st grade, he will be expelled from school.  [Here's you weekly doze of fake news and why they are fake news](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6tjcin/your_weekly_dose_of_fake_news/)\"", "\"To answer your first two questions: according to IRS pub 696 \"\"Contributions to an HSA\"\" section: Rollovers A rollover contribution is not included in your income, is not   deductible, and does not reduce your contribution limit. Archer MSAs and other HSAs.   You can roll over amounts from Archer   MSAs and other HSAs into an HSA. You do not have to be an eligible   individual to make a rollover contribution from your existing HSA to a   new HSA. Rollover contributions do not need to be in cash. Rollovers   are not subject to the annual contribution limits.   You must roll   over the amount within 60 days after the date of receipt. You can make   only one rollover contribution to an HSA during a 1-year period. Note. If you instruct the trustee of your HSA to transfer funds directly to   the trustee of another HSA, the transfer is not considered a rollover.   There is no limit on the number of these transfers. Do not include the   amount transferred in income, deduct it as a contribution, or include   it as a distribution on Form 8889, line 14a. (italics mine) So if you transfer the money yourself, you can only do it once per year, but there are no limits to when or how many times you can instruct the old HSA trustee to transfer funds directly to the new trustee.\"", "\"And now it is at about $3. Many times \"\"skeletons\"\" are bought and inflated for various reasons. Some are legitimate (for example a private business merging into a defunct but public corporation to avoid wasting resources on going public), some are not (mainly pump-and-dump scams that are using \"\"skeletons\"\"). I don't know what was the case here (probably speculation based on the new marijuana laws in the US), but clearly the inflated price was completely unjustified since it went crashing down.\"", "Replace your own brake pads Disc brake pads are usually snap-in replacement parts. YouTube has tons of videos showing how to do it. Find one with a car similar to your own. And it cannot be over-emphasized... Keep up on the routine maintenance. You can look up the schedule on your car manufacturer's website.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-06/-voluntary-tax-plan-as-expected-fails-miserably-in-norway) reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; &amp;quot;The tax scheme was set up to allow those who want to pay more taxes to do so in a simple and straightforward way,&amp;quot; Finance Minister Siv Jensen said in an emailed comment.  &gt; The government responded by aggressively cutting taxes and tapping into the country&amp;#039;s massive wealth fund for the first time.  &gt; Ironically, it was Store, whose net worth is $8 million, who prodded the government into action by complaining earlier this year that he had ended up paying less taxes under the current administration.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6m0s27/liberals_dont_want_to_pay_for_their_hobbies_they/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~162232 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*: **government**^#1 **taxes**^#2 **pay**^#3 **tax**^#4 **more**^#5\"", "Apple's specialty is UX.  It's an incredibly talented UX company, both software and hardware wise.  It's also talented at convincing it's fanbase that anything they release is required to live.  Apple fanboys would buy a car just to get the Apple logo somewhere on it.", "NUGT and DUST are opposites - DUST is a 'bear' (tracks 3x the inverse) and NUGT is a 'bull' (tracks 3x the actual).  So if NUGT is much higher, sounds like people are betting on Gold (or specifically, on the NYSEARCA Gold Miners Index).   When this Investopedia article was written in July 2016, the volumes were reversed: DUST traded ~18m and NUGT traded ~7m.  Just differences in stock market activity."]}
+{"query": "Who should pay taxes in my typical case?", "corpus": ["Once you turn 18 you should open an account in your own name and transfer the assets there. Currently your mom is the one responsible as far as the IRS cares with respect to taxes as it is her name on the account. The taxes due will be based on your mom's tax rate. As a good child you can reimburse your mom for the taxes that she has to on your behalf. Also legally that money currently belongs to her. Any legal judgement against your mom can claim that money and it is not available for using as an asset by you on credit applications and such. A better solution would have been for your mom to open a custodial account in your name. This way the money is still yours (you just don't have control of it until you turn 18). While probably not an issue here, the transferring of money between you and your mom (and then back) is considered a gift by the IRS. If the account was very well funded then you could run into having to deal with the annual gift limit and lifetime gift exclusion. Based on the clarification that the question is in reference to India: while I don't know the particulars of the law in India my advice of transferring the assets when you turn 18 still remains. The main difference that I would see been India and the US would be the gift tax / exclusions. Unless someone else knows otherwise I would still expect the law in India to see the current account as being the property of the mother."], "neg": ["Can I wire transfer money from the my NRO account in India to my checking account in the USA?  Yes you can. However there is some paperwork you need to follow. As per FEMA [Foreign Exchange Management Act], any transfer by individuals outside of India need the 15CA & 15CB form. The 15CB is from a CA to state that taxes have been paid on the funds being transferred. The limit is 1 million USD per year. Read more at Liberalized Remittance Scheme and here. Any limit on the amount and do I have to report this to IRS or any other legal formality? Assuming you were already declaring the funds held in Banks outside of US in your regular IRS filings, there is no other formality.", "They don't do anything you can't do yourself and they charge you money for it. And of course the only way they manage to negotiate the debt down is by not paying it for a while in the first place, have it referred to collections and then negotiating with the collectors. At that time, your credit rating (if you care about that at all) will have suffered a lot more damaged than it is from a few late payments. I would address the issue as to why you end up paying late first - it sounds to me like you're cutting the time left to pay to the bone and this turned around and bit you in the you-know-where. In case you are able to pay but not organised enough to do it on time, find a way to remind yourself to pay the bill a few days early for peace of mind. That won't do anything about the 28% interest but those might serve as an additional motivation to pay the debt off faster. Once you're back to showing regular on-time payments on your credit record, you might want to investigate transferring the balance to a cheaper card or negotiate the interest down (or both). If you genuinely can't pay after you've taken care of the essentials (food, shelter, transportation) then you don't need a third party to stop paying the credit card bill, you can do that yourself.", "I know this is beside the point, but part of the reason Europe can afford such a strong social safety net is because the USA provides substantial military support.  If the EU nations had to pay the full bill for their own defense, I wonder how that would effect those safety nets?", "You only pay VAT if you buy from a VAT-registered company; if they are not registered, you don't pay. So, thinking about your supplier, if they are VAT-registered they will charge you VAT, if they are not they won't. The buyer's status makes no difference, the seller doesn't get involved in whether the buyer is able to reclaim or not (based on their VAT-registered status).", "It wasn't that long ago that Tim Horton's was owned by Wendy's, another American fast food chain. The only reason Investment Canada would have to block a foreign takeover would be if it would risk Canadian jobs (which this one wouldn't) or risks putting an important Canadian resource in foreign hands (which this takeover also wouldn't).  Investment Canada has only blocked two foreign acquisitions of Canadian companies in the past 25 years.", "Hmm...  Oh.  I had to get the Amazon Underground (Android) app.  Now it looks like I can watch on my phone.  That's weird.  After reading more, this is the old Amazon app store, which I never reinstalled when I got my current phone.  People also manage to stream by casting their phone's screen.  Still not an elegant solution, but better than nothing.  I wonder why you need their app store to watch their video content.  I already have Amazon Music and Amazon Prime apps, seems silly to need the app store to watch video 0.o.", "\"For person A to be protected (meaning able to recover some or all of the money should the other party try to welsh on the deal), the two of them must have entered into a valid, binding contract where both parties acknowledge and agree to the debt and the terms. Such a contract is subject to the Statute of Frauds, a collection of laws governing contracts which is mostly borrowed from English common law. The basics are that in all cases, a \"\"contract\"\" is only formed when both parties agree, technically when one party accepts an offer made by the other party. Both the offer and acceptance must be made sincerely. For a contract, once entered, to be enforceable, proof of the contract's existence and terms must itself exist. Certain types of transactions (real estate, large amounts of money) require contracts to be in written form, and witnessed by a trusted third party (in most cases this party is required to be a notary public). And contracts must have a certain amount of quid-pro-quo; contracts that provide a unilateral benefit can be thrown out on a case-by-case basis. A contract that simply states that Person B owes Person A money, without stating what benefit Person A had provided Person B in return for the money (in this case A gives B the money to begin with), is unenforceable. The benefits must of course be legal on both sides; a contract to deliver 5 tons of cocaine will not be upheld by any court in any free country, and neither will any contract attempting to enforce hush money, kickbacks, bribery etc (though some toe the line; one could argue that a signing bonus is tantamount to bribery). In some cases even seemingly benign clauses, like \"\"escape clauses\"\" allowing one party a \"\"free out\"\", can make the contract unenforceable as they could be abused to the severe detriment of one party. There are also jurisdiction-specific rules, such as limits on \"\"finance charges\"\" for debts not owed to a \"\"bank\"\" (a bar, for instance, cannot charge 10% on an outstanding tab in the United States). This is HUGE for your example, because if Person A had specified an interest rate in excess of the allowed rate for non-bank lenders, not only will the contract get thrown out even though Person B agreed to the terms, but Person A could find themselves on the hook for punitive damages payable to Person B, FAR in excess of the contracted amount. Given that the agreement meets all tests of validity for a contract, if either party fails to perform in accordance with the contract, causing a loss or \"\"tort\"\" for the other party, the injured party can sue. Generally the two options are \"\"strict performance\"\" (the injuring party is ordered by the court to comply exactly with the terms of the contract), or payment of net actual damages and dissolution of the contract. In your example, if Person A had lent Person B money, strict performance would mean payment of the debt in the installments agreed, at the rate agreed; actual damages would be payment of the outstanding balance plus current interest charges (without any further penalty). Notice that it's \"\"net\"\" damages; if Person A was to issue the loan in installments, and missed one, causing Person B to suffer damages from the loss of expected cash flow directly resulting in their failure to pay according to the terms, then Person B's proven damages are subtracted from A's; very often, the plaintiff in a suit to recover money can end up owing the defendant for a prior failure to perform. There are further laws governing bankruptcy; basically, if the other person cannot satisfy the contract and cannot pay damages, they will pay what they can, and the contract is terminated with prejudice (\"\"no blood from a turnip\"\").\""]}
+{"query": "Is socialtrend.com or/and feelthetrend.com legitimate?", "corpus": ["\"It's called a \"\"Pyramid scheme\"\". Its illegal in almost every country of the Western world. You're not going to earn lifetime income, of course, and these things collapse pretty quickly. Most of the \"\"common folks\"\" don't return the investment, its the organizers who take the money. Sometimes they run, most times they end up in jail. The way these schemes work is that they pay the early \"\"investors\"\" from the fees paid by new \"\"investors\"\". As long as a steady stream of new people keep signing up and paying into it those who got in very early make money. The idea is based on the geometric procession of each new person signing up two or more people, and those people doing the same. Pretty quickly at that rate you need to sign up every human being on the planet to keep the new money flowing in to make it work, which obviously is not realistic. Ultimately a small % of the people (if they can stay out of jail) will make a big amount of money the vast majority of \"\"investors\"\" get stiffed.\""], "neg": ["Totally agree.   Autonomous cars can **increase margins** in the insurance industry since there will be fewer claims.   **for Geico - less administration and higher margins.  Buffet is probably ecstatic.**  Edit:  Not saying that this is in the best interests of the public, but if insurers can get away with it I'm sure they'll try.", "For gaining a better understanding of the Aluminum Oxide Import Data, the websites help you find out what is the assessed value of your product even before you place an order. Seair Exim Solution provides comprises HS code, Product Description, Bill of Loading Quantity, Country Name, and Port Name etc.", "Pick one stock (probably within Utilities) and know it well. Understand what it trades on (EV / EBITDA, P / E, P / Rev) and why. What are the typical margins for the industry? What are rev growth trends? What isn't priced in? I think studying one company deeply would be helpful  Other things to look at would be how your fund is structured, what it's benchmark is, voting structure, and how ideas are sourced  Good luck!", "This is the chart going back to the first full year of this fund.  To answer your question - yes, a low cost ETF or Mutual fund is fine. Why not go right to an S&P index? VOO has a .05% expense. Why attracted you to a choice that lagged the S&P by $18,000 over this 21 year period?  (And yes, past performance, yada, yada, but that warning is appropriate for the opposite example. When you show a fund that beat the S&P short term, say 5 years, its run may be over. But this fund lagged the S&P by a significant margin over 2 decades, what makes you think this will change?", "\"I'm a 35 year old man with an MSc Eng, I'd wager I've taken more statistics classes than you.  &gt;Ah, yet another true believer in the modern medicine religion, who says \"\"how dare your question one of the priests\"\".  Do you even realize how much of an extremist, stupid thing this is to say, you straw-man bearing retard?\"", "Anyone here who is upset by this or disagrees with Marc's comments please name a country that's majority black and half as prosperous. A country that doesn't have extreme poverty or violence. It's rude to say these things out loud, I know, but it's stupid and hypocritical to not at least accept facts in your mind. ps - I'm not white.    here is the father of genetics. http://www.independent.co.uk/news/science/fury-at-dna-pioneers-theory-africans-are-less-intelligent-than-westerners-394898.html", "I am also confused by what he says. The DJIA has not been at 900 for decades. However a $36 dividend is 4% per unit if you get $9 per unit per quarter. 2/3 of 4% is 6%,so that is inside his 7.5% to 5.5%. How much you have in dividend paying stocks vs. Bonds most often is a function of your age. For example, I have heard the advice of subtracting your age in years from 110 and that would be the percent you hold in dividend paying stocks. At age 30 you would have 80% in stocks. At age 60 you would be 50% in stocks. There are retirement funds that do this for you.  But the 'bottom line' all depends on your risk tolerance. I have a large tolerance for risk. So even though I am currently retired I only have 10% of my money in a 'safe' investment (ticker=PGF). It pays 5.5% per year.  The rest is in a leveraged junk bond fund (PHK) that pays 15.5% per year."]}
+{"query": "What are some factors I should consider when choosing between a CPA and tax software", "corpus": ["Largely it comes down to the complexity of your return (likely relatively simple if it's your first time filing) and your comfort level with using software. More complex returns would include filing business claims, handling stocks and investments, special return forms, etc.  One benefit to most of the software options out there such as TurboTax, HR Block, and Tax Slayer, are that they are free to use and you only pay when you're ready to file. You could give them a shot to see how easy/difficult they are and if you feel overwhelmed, then contact a CPA (whose time won't be free). Also remember that those HR Block seasonal places that open up are not CPA's, but are temps hired and trained to use the software that you would find online. You didn't indicate they were an option, but I like to point that out to those who might not know otherwise.  My opinion would be to use one of the online options because of cost and their ease of use. They also allow you to take your time and save your progress, so you can start using it and go ask questions/do research on your own time."], "neg": ["&gt; What IS criminal, is faking the loan paperwork and KNOWINGLY passing along fraudulently obtained loans.  Its pretty obvious that they would need to deceive the MBS buyers about the creditworthiness of the loans in order to sell them.  By knowingly targeting unsophisticated poor people to take large expensive loans, they were knowingly engaging in activity that is necessarily fraudulent from the top down.", "\"Also make sure you're listed on TripAdvisor, include good photos, and get your customers to leave positive reviews.  If you have more business than you can handle yourself, start hiring other drivers under the \"\"TrustyTukTuk\"\" brand.   As an aside, I've been to Siem Reap and seen Angkor Wat- highly recommended!\"", "When buying textbooks, make sure to compare the local bookstore to online prices. Also check out places to sell textbooks online, like Amazon.", "you *can* get the guys in india for pennies on the dollar, but then you get what you pay for. I was told on upwork that I didn't get picked because I was too expensive, but then he went on to say that their proposals are usually garbage and wanted to pay me a little to look them over and make sure they weren't full of shit.  Upwork should be called UpOffShoring.  wtf?", "The roofing situation is clear.  H2B visas distort the roofing labor market by reducing prevailing wages with lower-paid immigrant labor.  This allows companies to offer products at unnaturally reduced prices.  It would be unrealistic to try and run a business with local US-born labor, that's higher priced.  If your competitors can hire low-priced foreigners, you need to do it too (unless you can somehow find locals at the same price/quality/productivity).  If the H2B labor supply was cut off, then it's likely that no roofing companies could find labor for $17/hr.  They'd have to raise wages, take fewer jobs, or go out of business.  This would raise prices.    Customers wouldn't be happy, but they'd pay the price because they need roof work done.  All vendors prices would go up equally.  This process may take time.  There's a shortage.  Prices go up.  Wages go up.  Jobs become more desirable.  More workers get trained in the field, increasing the supply of labor.  This occurs until the labor supply is back in balance.  On a side note, this particular business owner sounds like they need better marketing.  If prospects want low priced work, they're going to get low-quality results.  If she wants to sell a premium roofing product, she needs to differentiate it from everyone else.  No customer spends more money just to support someone else's employees.  If she can only get penny-pinching customers, she needs to do penny-pinching work.", "Why Stocks go up and Down by William H Pike is a great source if you are looking to interpret statements for stock analysis. This book really starts from the beginning and clearly explains with a running example of a fake company.", "In a nutshell, not really.  That's the risk you take when you co-sign for someone.  The lender only made the loan because of the strength of your brother's credit, not your mother's, so his reputation (in the form of his credit rating) is going to take the hit because of his mother's behaviors. The one thing he can do is this:  The credit bureaus allow you to add a comment or explanation to your credit file which may be helpful, provided potential creditors read it, which is never a guarantee.  It's worth trying though, so suggest to him to look into it. Here's a link for him/you/anyone to look at that can help explain how this works and what effects it can have: Adding a comment to your credit file for negative items I hope this helps. Good luck!"]}
+{"query": "Getting over that financial unease? Budgeting advice", "corpus": ["\"Budgeting is a tool for planning, not for execution. It sounds like you don't have a problem BUDGETING (planning what to spend on what things) but rather with the execution of your plan. That is - living frugally. This is primarily an issue of self control and personal psychology - not an issue with the mechanics of budgeting and finance, which explains why the most popular personal finance \"\"gurus\"\" (Dave Ramsey, Suze Ormond) deal as much with your relationship to money and spending as they do with financial knowledge. There is no easy answer here, but you can learn to spend less. One helpful thought is to realize that whatever your current income is, someone in your community is currently making less than that and surviving. What would you do differently if your real, actual income was $100 or $200 less than it is currently. If your food budget is a concern, learn to cook cheaply. (Often, this is more healthy.) You mentioned schooling, so I assume you are on or near a college campus. Many colleges have all sorts of free-food opportunities. (I used to eat free vegetarian meals weekly at a Hare Krsna temple. Price of admission: listening to the monk read from the Bhagavad Gita.) Fast food is, of course, a complete no-no on low-budget living. It probably goes without saying, but just in case you haven't: cancel cable, get a cheap phone plan (Ting is excellent if available in your area), and otherwise see how you can squeeze a few dollars out of your bills. On the subject of frugality, I have found no book more enlightening than: Money Secrets of the Amish: Finding True Abundance in Simplicity, Sharing, and Saving\""], "neg": ["If you're in the 25% tax bracket, then you probably shouldn't be doing a Roth conversion right now.  You'd prefer to do Roth conversions when you can do so at a 15% rate.  You could contribute some of your current annual contributions to Roth directly, but even that isn't a great idea except to diversify your holdings. Odds are you won't be paying 25% average tax rate on your retirement, unless you're doing very well in your retirement account.  Odds are you'll be somewhere around 15%.  Converting at a 15% rate therefore is fine; basically, you'll have something like this, based on some assumptions (I'm making up dollars, brackets, etc.; obviously these will change): Doing this, you pay 0-15% tax on up to 75k, then pay 0 tax after that on the Roth (which you paid 15% tax on already).  Therefore, you don't end up paying more than 15% on any single dollar, and you pay less on the total sum.  But you also don't really want to be paying 25% on any of it, since that won't really help you out any and could hurt you (will hurt you, if you end up getting some of that 15% bracket income from the Roth). If you're in the 25% bracket now, then you probably are better off just keeping everything in regular IRA (unless you're expecting to be in the 28% bracket after retirement?).  Putting some in Roth isn't a terrible idea, just for diversification's sake, but it's probably going to cost you money unless tax rates rise dramatically (which they certainly could, though not as likely to rise on the 'middle class' 0-100k range).  They'd have to double for you to be worse off this way. And finally: do not ever withdraw from the 401k to pay taxes on a conversion. You're subject to a 10% penalty for doing that (as it's an early withdrawal) and also have to pay taxes on that withdrawal.  Ick.   For more information about when Roth makes sense, read site moderator JoeTaxpayer's Blog article on the subject, which explains this in great detail.", "\"Disney - Verb, the act of buying a large market share or company with the intent of mass producing its goods and services for maximum profit.  \"\"Thank goodness EA disneyed DraftKings. Now I can place bets on my Madden teams!\"\" ^/s, ^please ^don't ^sue ^me ^Disney.\"", "I appreciate your answering my questions instead of just downvoting.  I'm kinda losing respect for this sub by the minute.  I didn't imagine the government commandeering private fleets, rather there being rules in place for those corporations to handle evacuation situations.  I do see the potential complexity inherent in that endeavor, but it's by no means too complicated to carry out.", "\"You could end up with nothing, yes.  I imagine those that worked at Enron years ago if their 401(k) was all in company stock would have ended up with nothing to give an example here.  However, more likely is for you to end up with less than you thought as you see other choices as being better that with the benefit of hindsight you wish you had made different choices. The strategies will vary as some people will want something similar to a \"\"set it and forget it\"\" kind of investment and there may be fund choices where a fund has a targeted retirement date some years out into the future.  These can be useful for people that don't want to do a lot of research and spend time deciding amongst various choices.  Other people may prefer something a bit more active.  In this case, you have to determine how much work do you want to do, do you want to review fund reviews on places like Morningstar, and do periodic reviews of your investments, etc.  What works best for you is for you to resolve for yourself. As for risks, here are a few possible categories: Time - How many hours a week do you want to spend on this?  How much time learning this do you want to do in the beginning?  While this does apply to everyone, you have to figure out for yourself how much of a cost do you want to take here. Volatility - Some investments may fluctuate in value and this can cause issues for some people as it may change more than they would like.  For example, if you invest rather aggressively, there may be times where you could have a -50% return in a year and that isn't really acceptable to some people. Inflation - Similarly to those investments that vary wildly there is also the risk that with time, prices generally rise and thus there is something to be said for the purchasing power of your investment.  If you want to consider this in more detail consider what $1,000,000 would have bought 30 years ago compared to now. Currency risk - Some investments may be in other currencies and thus there is a risk of how different denominations may impact a return. Fees - How much do your fund's charge in the form of annual expense ratio?  Are you aware of the charges being taken to manage your money here?\"", "\"Their goals are not to maximize profits of the grocery store - but to maximize the profits of the grocery store *owners*.   If they were to show a substantial profit from the store, there would be many wanting to take their share - be it government tax-men or worker unions.    It is thus much better to operate stores that are \"\"barely breaking even\"\" and \"\"can't afford to pay increased wages\"\" while paying many times more for the goods from an overseas intermediate company that is willing to provide kickbacks to the right people in the tax heavens.\"", "Canadian food exports to Russia last year, mostly pork, amounted to only $260 million. So I think Canadian farmers will be able to find alternate markets without too much difficulty.considering total pork exports last years were over $3.2 billion  http://www.cbc.ca/news/world/russia-sanctions-show-putin-s-short-sighted-desperation-canada-says-1.2729821", "My guess is that it probably has more to do with the Husi food scandal in China. McDonald's restaurants in Beijing had so little inventory after removing their meat supply from Husi that they were only serving soda and french fries for about a week."]}
+{"query": "Ways to trade the Euro debt crisis", "corpus": ["Short the Pound and other English financial items.  Because the English economy is tied to the EU, it will be hit as well.  You might prefer this over Euro denominated investments, since it's not exactly clear who your counterpart is if the Euro really crashes hard.  Meaning suppose you have a short position Euro's versus dollars, but the clearing house is taken down by the crash."], "neg": ["\"That's right. It is the far right that have fought Medicare and single payer health insurance from the 70s.   Ronald Reagan famously recorded a LP deriding Medicare as the slippery slope to socialism.  Health insurance is a tool large corporations use to #1 keep employees frightened of losing their job and #2 discouraging employees from leaving their \"\"organization\"\" and starting a small business that will compete with them.  It is anything but a \"\"poorly\"\" thought out policy. If large corporations felt it was bad for business they would join the fight for single payer which would relieve them of one hell of an expense.  They could save Billions! but they don't because they want it this way. It must be worth a lot of money to them.\"", "Yes, you need to include income from your freelance work on your tax return.  In the eyes of the IRS, this is self-employment income from your sole-proprietorship business. The reason you don't see it mentioned in the 1040EZ instructions is that you can't use the 1040EZ form if you have self-employment income.  You'll need to use the full 1040 form.  Your business income and expenses will be reported on a Schedule C or Schedule C-EZ, and the result will end up on Line 12 of the 1040.  Take a look at the requirements at the top of the C-EZ form; you probably meet them and can use it instead of the more complicated C form. If you have any deductible business expenses related to your freelance business, this would be done on Schedule C or C-EZ. If your freelance income was more than $400, you'll also need to pay self-employment tax.  To do this, you file Schedule SE, and the tax from that schedule lands on form 1040 Line 57.", "I was looking for ideas on what the usual figures are in such positions. Something like market value, or other terms such as changing slab percentages in compensation. Not sure what the best practices are in this situation.  Not sure what you are referring to.", "Fidelity Investments offers Solo 401(k) plans without any management fees. The plan administrator is typically the employer itself (so, your business, or you as the principal manager). You (as the individual employee) are the participant.", "In day trading, you're trying to predict the immediate fluctuations of an essentially random system.  In long-term investing, you're trying to assess the strength of a company over a period of time. You also have frequent opportunities to assess your position and either add to it or get out.", "Bank and most Credit Union deposit accounts (including CDs) are guaranteed by the Federal government by the FDIC and NCUA, respectively.  Some state-chartered credit unions use private insurance, you'll want to be careful about storing lots of money in those institutions.", "Yes, it's possible and even common but it depends on your bank or broker. One of the main differences is that you might assume FX risk if your account is in EUR and you trade stock denominated in USD. You might also encounter lower liquidity or price differences if you don't trade on the primary exchange where stocks are listed, i.e. NYSE, Nasdaq..."]}
+{"query": "Prices go up and salary doesn't: where goes delta?", "corpus": ["\"Where goes the Delta? To the sea, of course.  Your question is very valid and for once, I think most of the answers are too involved into mechanical details and are badly missing the big picture.  At the risk of over simplifying things, let me try to describe the situation in broad strokes: Inflation: the volume of money grows faster than production (including services).  Deflation: production increase faster than the volume of money.  Imagine an economy with 10 products and $10. 1 product = $1. In an inflationary scenario, money available increase: $20 for 10 products. 1 product = $2.  In a deflationary scenario, money available decrease: $5 for 10 products. 1 product = $0.5.  So far, it's pretty textbook. Now onto the stuff that you don't usually read in textbooks: Time.  Say 10 people are attending an auction, each with $10 bucks. 10 items are for sale. $100 and 10 items. Item price is $10. Now, if just before opening the bidding, you go around and give each person $40, every one has $50. Each product sells for $50. That's the picture people have of inflation. Prices have increased, but everybody has more money, so it comes down to the same thing.  Now, let's bring this example closer to reality: You have to distribute $400, so the total amount of money is $500, which means that the normal price of each item should be $50. Now, imagine that instead of giving money to everyone at the same time, you started by giving $40 to 1 guy who was hanging out in front. The auction starts. While you go around distributing the money, the first guy manages to buy 2 items at $10 each. Now, there is $480 in the market, and only 8 items, making each item $60 on average. The next guy to get money manages to snap 2 items at $15. 6 items left and $450 in play. Each item now costs $75....and keep increasing in price as things move along. People who get the money early buy items under their real value, and people who get paid at the end pick up the tab, because by then, there are only a few items left. Back to reality, while inflation means that wages eventually increase (and they do), actual purchasing decrease for most people due to this simple trick. Employees are pretty much at the end of the chain. Income tax Another major source of \"\"signal loss\"\" is income tax. It works by brackets, as you certainly know. Simplifying again because I am lazy: Take a guy who earns $100. Pays no taxes. Can buy 100 products at $1 each. Now, put in some inflation... He earns $500. He pays $50 in taxes and can buy 90 products at $5 each. By the time he earns $10,000, he can only buy 50 products on account of income tax. So this is another area where you are bleeding purchasing power, and why income tax, which was originally presented as a tax for the ultra-rich is now a fact of life for most people (except the ultra-rich, of course).  Money as debt Next stop: Money itself. Money is created as debt in our society. At the risk of over-simplifying things again, let's say Bank A has $1000 in assets. In the fractional reserve system (our current system), Bank A can lend out many times over that amount. Let's say $9,000, for a total of $10,000 (much more in reality). And of course, it lends that money at interest. When bank A has made $10,000 available through 10% interest loans, the total amount of money has increased by $10,000, but when the loans are paid back, $11,000 must be paid to the bank, so the net result of the operation is that $1,000 get taken out of the market.  This system explains why almost all companies and governments have huge debts, and why most of the world's large companies belong to financial institutions of some kind, and why most of the world's wealth rest in very very few hands.  To fully answer your question and provide details and references and names, one would have to write a book or 5. There is a lot more than can be said on the subject, and of course, all the examples given here are extremely simplified, but I think they illustrate the key issues pretty well.  Bottom-line is that our system is designed that way. Our economic system is rigged and the delta bleeds out on automatic.\""], "neg": ["\"With regards to \"\"the stock market,\"\" there are actually two markets involved here: PRIMARY MARKET Value is created in the primary market where capital is exchanged for a residual interest in an opportunity.  As a theoretical example, if a person operating solo (or with a small team) were to discover or create a breakthrough product, such as an retro-aging pill, that person likely wouldn't have the financial means to fully capitalize on his new-found idea.  Others with more capital may also soon discover his idea or improve upon it and exploit it before he has a chance to. For a real life example, a person studying at a California university during the 1990s discovered a method to index internet webpages and was approached by some students after a talk on the subject.  He returned to his native southern Europe country seeking funds to develop the web-indexing business and failed to do so.  Two of the students that approached him found capital readily available from investors in their campus sphere; their business is today one of the biggest in the world.  They had exchanged part of their residual interest for capital to develop their business. The primary market of the stock market works mostly same in creating value.  It is also dependent upon the secondary market. SECONDARY MARKET The secondary market indicates the day-to-day value of an enterprise.  That market allows shareholders to manage their risk appetites and the enterprise's operators to execute their shareholders' interest for gains.  In most cases, a secondary market reference will be used for pricing a primary market issuance.  Without that reference, capital would be allocated less efficiently creating additional costs for all involved, issuers and investors. Consider what would happen if you sought to purchase a house and the mortgage lenders had no indication what the property was worth.  This would make capital very expensive or possibly deny you access to credit.  By having an indication, all involved are better off.  That is value creating. There are some large developed economies' equity markets, such as that in Germany, where many large enterprises stay privately held and credit financing, mostly from banks, is used.  The approach has proven successful as well. So why do some nations' financial markets still rely on capricious stock markets when private credit financing may do just fine in many cases?  It's largely a matter of national culture.  Countries such as the Netherlands, the UK and the US have long had active equity markets in continuous use that investors have trusted for centuries. CONCLUSION When leaders of an enterprise wish to grow the business to a large size with investment from the stock market, they aren't limited by the size of their banks' capital.  Those leaders and their prospective investors will rely on the secondary market to determine values.  In addition, if the leaders raise equity instead of debt capital, they are usually accorded more flexibility to take risks since shareholders usually have their own flexibility to transfer those risks to other investors if for any number of reasons they choose to do so. Stock markets create value in many other ways.  The above are the main ways.\"", "One of the main criticisms made by product companies (especially publishers) of Amazon.com is that it violates the price floors on various products. When Amazon routinely sells products at a heavily discounted price, the product companies feel that the product gets devalued. Amazon has often been accused of anticompetitive behavior, because other retailers cannot compete with their discounts.  It's interesting that this article makes the exact opposite claim --- that the product companies are the ones who are anticompetitive.", "\"I know of one practical difference between business checks (8\"\" check) and personal checks (6\"\" check) dealing with the paper check conversion rule to electronic debit.   The National ACH Association, created a rule that allows receivers of checks without an \"\"Auxiliary On-Us\"\" field, to convert your check into an electronic debit via the ACH network.  By default, 6\"\" checks (personal checks) do NOT have the AUX ON-US field, and are eligible to be converted to ACH debit. If you do not want your paper checks converted to ACH debits, then start using business checks with the AUX ON-US field populated.  You can use business checks for business or personal checking accounts. More information can be found below: http://www.deluxe.com/miscfiles/pdf/AuxOnUsField.pdf http://www.achrulesonline.org/\"", "You're exactly right. If I can under the law hire someone only for their musical taste (whether that is a smart move or not is irrelevant) I should also be able to do so based on religious choice.", "Well your caution is appreciated! I didn't even see it like that so thank you for pointing it out! I've been tying to read up on him and the company and things look legit but I'll still keep this info with me. Thank you again for watching out:)", "I'm not sure that you're considering all the options.   So you may not subtract $X from B, but you do compare NPV(B) to $Y.   Also, remember that we're not trying to figure out the return on B.  We're trying to figure out what to do next.  In terms of planning, the sunk cost is irrelevant.  But in terms of calculating return, A was a turkey.  And to calculate the return, we would include $X in our costs for B.  And for the second option, we'd subtract $X from $Y (may be negative).   Sunk costs are irrelevant to planning, but they are very relevant to retrospective analysis.  Please don't confuse the two.  When looking back, part of the cost for B will be that $X.  But in the middle, after paying $X and before starting B, the $X is gone.  You only have the building and have to make your decision based on the options you have at that moment.   You will sometimes hear $Y called the opportunity cost of B.  You could sell out for $Y or you could do B.  You should only do B if it is worth more than $Y.   The sunk cost fallacy would be comparing B to $X.  Assuming $Y is less than $X, this would make you not do B when it is your best path forward from that moment.  I.e. $Y < NPV(B) < $X means that you should do the project.  You will lose money (apparently that's a foregone conclusion), but you will lose less money than if you just sold out.   You should also do B if $Y < $X < NPV(B) or $X < $Y < NPV(B).  In general, you should do B any time $Y < NPV(B).  The only time you should not do B is if NPV(B) < $Y.  If they are exactly equal, then it doesn't matter financially whether you do B or not.", "One idea that I read among some of the many, many personal finance blogs out there is to create a niche website with good content and generate some ad revenue. The example the author gave was a website he'd made with some lessons to learn basic Spanish. Something as specific as that has a reasonable chance of becoming popular even if you never post new content (since you were looking for passive). The ad income won't be great, but it's likely to stay > 0 for a significant while."]}
+{"query": "What does “/” and “^” mean in ticker symbols? How to translate these symbols into yahoo?", "corpus": ["On NASDAQ the ^ is used to denote other securities and / to denote warrents for the underlying company. Yahoo maybe using some other designators for same."], "neg": ["Certainly. I'm afraid it was a bit of a rhetorical question. My point is that I personally don't care what a person is wearing so long as it covers the fleshy bits. I care more about the person's ideas when it comes to a leadership position.", "If it was me I would want to go with the state I am moving too. I'm not familiar with business law too much as I'm only a law student right now but I would guess it's a safer bet. There might be local state laws that could apply. If there are not any local regulations then they should still know all of the national regulations just the same.", "To stop worrying about the car engine, proper tuning of the car becomes essential. It makes sure timing and fuel consumption comes in line with the safety. Decide what type of use or performance is expected of the car. Select the platform and based on the budget get the car modification done.", "\"Why bother any more?  Max penalty if these guys are even paying their much publicized \"\"government \"\" penalties is pennies on the dollar to what they got from the illegal activity. And the governmental workers will all go back to their cush bank job afterwards with a bonus.\"", "Do you eat out much or go to coffee shops?  I add portions of my excess spare change to the tips/tip jars.  I make it a bit over the usual percentage to make up for the fact that it's, well, spare change...", "Previous to apply for a home loan, recognize the time of charges, punishment or fee charged by your lending company or bank for defaulting in monthly EMI. Know the dispensation accuse and in case a person decides to control their loan from current lender to a new lender, the present lender will charge consequence or fee for pre-closure of your loan.", "\"That wasn't really my point.  I was countering the attitudes that  1.  Landlords vs slumlords - somehow I doubt if the author lives in a real slum with a landlord that provides substandard housing.  Why call a landlord a derogatory name for providing you a place to live&gt;?  2.  The idea that the \"\"slumlords\"\" somehow conspired to artificially inflate, then deflate the quiet and lovely neighborhood.  Pretty ridiculous notion in my opinion.  Not to mention that buying a home in an area with abysmal schools doesn't seem to be a good idea if you have a \"\"gifted daughter\"\", unless you can afford to send her to private schools.\""]}
+{"query": "How is a Condominium / Apartment Building fiscally identified?", "corpus": ["In such cases, it has a EIN, like any business would. Even absent the rent you suggest, the condo should have reserve funds, similar to an individual's emergency account, only more codified as to level and flows. These funds should be earning interest."], "neg": ["\"The editorial highlights some reasonable reforms-- consistent and transparent pricing--- and then seemingly takes a left turn. This concept or \"\"cutting out the middle man\"\" is a fantasy born of a time when local doctors provided affordable but limited care to a limited population. It's been a hollow talking point perpetuated by industry lobby in response to single-payer proposals. Keeping health care between patient and doctor doesn't address the key reasons why health insurance exists in the first place.   The author suggests government-funded escrow accounts for those who can't afford the cost of healthcare. What about those just above the needs-tested cutoff? It seems that this approach disregards and therefore punishes the middle class. Must those with chronic illness become indigent before the government will assist in their care? The point of insurance is that when you get sick, you aren't left spending your life savings on medical care. Level and transparent pricing doesn't change the fact that certain treatments are still going to be expensive. The auto insurance comparison always frustrates me because people are not cars. If your car is breaking down every 30 miles, you can take out a loan and get a new car. A new body, not so much. Furthermore, every auto insurance claim raises your premium. All of this amounts to a tax on sick people.   Single payer or even Medicaid for all (who want it) means the government has enormous pool of patients (or consumers if you wish) with which to negotiate pricing. Do you really think St. XYZ Hospital is going to cut you, an individual, a deal for no reason? Where is the leverage? Particularly in the case of emergencies?  It isn't perfect, but politicizing and misconstruing the tragic case of a brain-dead infant does not strengthen your argument. Charlie Gard's case was not a matter of death panels; it was a matter of heartbroken parents in denial that their children was not going to get better. It's indeed an ethical quandary and no doubt a tragedy, but the hopelessness of the situation was not dictated by a heartless government but by health care professionals.   This is much more than I wished to say initially, but I am tired of seeing simplified fantasy being sold as panacea for what is an extremely complicated subject. Also, I'm not a public policy scholar, but I think I've done a better job than the author.\"", "I've never taken my 8 year old there, (he has been with friends parent's though) he saw right through their marketing bullshit and didn't like the food anyway - the tide is turning McDonalds, what are you going to do?", "The answer is very simple. Part of the luxury is having the cutting edge technology with the very latest features. The price premium is not just from increased build quality; it's simply a perception. Additionally, 10 years takes its toll on a car. The smooth suspension gets rougher over time, and all the little features start to break down. Part of the price of that car factors in the expense of expected repairs. That's true of every car, but the repairs are more expensive when there are lots of gadgets to break down, especially on imports.", "If you have income in the US, you will owe US income tax on it, unless there is a treaty with your country that says otherwise.", "Take The 20k and transfer it to the new employer 401k. You then can take a loan and accomplish the same thing. By the time you pay the tax and 10% penalty, that withdrawal will be worth just over half. The same half you can borrow out, pay yourself the interest and not lose out on 50 years of growth.", "S&amp;P 500 are a relatively small portion of the entire American economy. Any number of things could cause them to increase in value at a greater rate than total output.   For example, distribution of total spending could shift from the public sector to the private sector if government tax receipts and outlays were decreased. It's also possible the economy is becoming more centralized towards tech and industrial giants, with an increasing market share in the hands of fewer, larger companies.", "\"I'm sure that I can find enough people who would disagree with you on what you'd consider a decent movie to invalidate that argument.  edit: [2012](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/2012_(film\\)). \"\" It received generally mixed to negative reviews from critics and its wordwide theatrical revenue reached approximately $769 million.\"\" There was no shortage of bad movies, nor was their any shortage of bad movies that made millions. Indeed, one of the true signs of the coming apocalypse isn’t contained in the Mayan calendar but in the fact that \"\"2012\"\" made a ziggurat of money.\"\"\""]}
+{"query": "When shorting a stock, do you pay current market price or the best (lowest) available ask price?", "corpus": ["When you want to short a stock, you are trying to sell shares (that you are borrowing from your broker), therefore you need buyers for the shares you are selling.  The ask prices represent people who are trying to sell shares, and the bid prices represent people who are trying to buy shares. Using your example, you could put in a limit order to short (sell) 1000 shares at $3.01, meaning that your order would become the ask price at $3.01.  There is an ask price ahead of you for 500 shares at $3.00.  So people would have to buy those 500 shares at $3.00 before anyone could buy your 1000 shares at $3.01. But it's possible that your order to sell 1000 shares at $3.01 never gets filled, if the buyers don't buy all the shares ahead of you.  The price could drop to $1.00 without hitting $3.01 and you will have missed out on the trade. If you really wanted to short 1000 shares, you could use a market order.  Let's say there's a bid for 750 shares at $2.50, and another bid for 250 shares at $2.49.  If you entered a market order to sell 1000 shares, your order would get filled at the best bid prices, so first you would sell 750 shares at $2.50 and then you would sell 250 shares at $2.49. I was just using your example to explain things.  In reality there won't be such a wide spread between the bid and ask prices.  A stock might have a bid price of $10.50 and an ask price of $10.51, so there would only be a 1 cent difference between putting in a limit order to sell 1000 shares at $10.51 and just using a market order to sell 1000 shares and getting them filled at $10.50. Also, your example probably wouldn't work in real life, because brokers typically don't allow people to short stocks that are trading under $5 per share. As for your question about how often you are unable to make a short sale, it can sometimes happen with stocks that are heavily shorted and your broker may not be able to find any more shares to borrow. Also remember that you can only short stocks with a margin account, you cannot short stocks with a cash account."], "neg": ["If I were you, I would go to the bank right now, pay the $100 and close the account.  I would stop the bleeding first then consider the fallout later.   Do you own the account jointly with your partner(s) as a partner or does the partnership (a separate formal entity) own the bank account with you a named representative?  Those are two very different situations. If you're a joint owner, you're liable for the fees; along with your other partners in accordance with your partnership agreement.  You never closed yourself off the account and that's your problem. If the dissolved partnership owns the account, you're not personally liable for the fees.  You were never a personal owner of the account, now that the account is negative you don't magically become personally liable. The differences here are very nuanced and the details matter.  If this were a large amount of money I'd suggest you go see a lawyer.  Since this is about $100 I'd just pay it, make sure the account is closed, and move on.", "Regulated vs unregulated crypto makes sense - it seems like it's easier for government officials to simply enforce a blanket restriction on cryptocurrency transactions of all kinds than bother to make the distinctions between different types. I expect China's shutdown will be the first of many in terms of national governments on cryptocurrency.", "Big pharma lobbyists don't make final decisions on whether an Epipen generic gets approved.  The FDA does.  Keep your eye on the ball.  Unless you think the FDA is so useless that their decisions are entirely based on big pharma lobbyists?  That's an even bigger reason for abolishing the whole organization, isn't it?", "It sucks but sometimes you just have to flat out be an asshole to people. Ive told people to post that drivel on r/Occupywallstreet and leave it out of the business related forums where people actually know whats going on. Sucks but gets the job done. I would encourage you to check out r/finance and see what you think about our stuff.", "\"Yes, they have done the same thing many times, and almost every time it dies. Read the history of Ron Paul sponsored legislation. Note the phrase \"\"passed the House Oversight Committee this morning on a voice vote, with no vocal opposition\"\". That likely means no one cared to argue about it since they likely wanted to get to other issues. The final bill, like most others, will likley die.\"", "Is there anything here I should be deathly concerned about? A concern I see is the variable rate loans. Do you understand the maximum rate they can get to? At this time those rates are low, but if you are going to put funds against the highest rate loan, make sure the order doesn't change without you noticing it. What is a good mode of attack here?  The best mode of attack is to pay off the one with the highest rate first by paying more than the minimum. When that is done roll over the money you were paying for that loan to the next highest. Note if a loan balance get to be very low, you can put extra funds against this low balance loan to be done with it. Investigate loan forgiveness programs. The federal government has loan forgiveness programs for certain job positions, if you work for them for a number of years. Some employers also have these programs.  What are the payoff dates for the other loans? My inexact calculations put a bunch in about 2020 but some as late as 2030. You may need to talk to your lender. They might have a calculator on their website.  Why do my Citi loans have a higher balance than the original payoff amounts? Some loans are subsidized by the federal government. This covers the interest while the student is still in school. Non-subsidized federal loans and private loans don't have this feature, so their balance can grow while the student is in school.", "I'm not sure it's a great idea to help spread ideas about that way of thinking by putting that whole ideology in a Reddit title and then upvoting it.    I know the idea is presumable supposed to be to shame Marc Fabor, but if I was a racist who wanted to help spread this kind of vision of America, I would also upvote it because it's helping to promote a racist philosophy."]}
+{"query": "What's the best way to manage all the 401K accounts I've accumulated from my past jobs?", "corpus": ["I rolled mine over from the company I was at into my own brokerage house.  You can't roll them into a Roth IRA, so I needed to setup a traditional IRA. There is paperwork your old jobs can provide you.  I had to put in some mailing addresses, some account numbers and turn them in.  My broker received it, I chose what I wanted to invest it in and that was that.  No tax penalty or early withdrawal penalty.  The key to avoiding penalties is to have your past employers send the money directly to another retirement fund, not send a check to you."], "neg": ["You are already doing everything you can. If your employer does not have a 401(k) you are limited to investing in a Roth or a traditional IRA (Roth is post tax money, traditional IRA gives you a deduction so it is essentially pre tax money).  The contribution limits are the same for both and contributing to either adds to the limit (so you can't duplicate). CNN wrote an article on some other ways to save: One thing you may want to bring up with your employer is that they could set up a SEP-IRA.  This allows them to set a % (up to 25%) that they contribute pre-tax to an IRA for everyone at the company that has worked there at least 3 years.  If you are at a small company, maybe everyone with that kind of seniority would take an equivalent pay cut to get the automatic retirement contribution?  (Note that a SEP-IRA has to apply to everyone equally percentage wise that has worked there for 3 years, and the employer makes the contribution, not you).", "It's so that your total mortgage payment stays the same every month. Obviously, the interest due each month decreases over time, as part of the principal is paid off each month, and so if the proportion of interest and principal repayments were to stay the same then your first payment would be very large and your last payment would be almost nothing.", "As others said, there is no recovery from that being late. However, to fix your situation: You can do a Rollover of Funds from HSA 1 to HSA 2. Both my HSAs have that option right on their website; I log on to HSA 2 (the target), and request a rollover from HSA 1 (the source), for the desired amount (3000 for you); I guess most HSAs offer that; if not you can call them to start it. This has no tax or limit implications; it just moves money between equally qualified HSAs. You could also consider - while you do that - to roll over the complete content of HSA 1 and get rid of it (as it is 'hard to access'). There is no limit (so you can move a million if you have it there), and as said above, no tax implication, no limit violations, as long as the money goes from one HSA into another HSA with the same ownership.", "Something doesn't smell right:  &gt;The decline was driven largely by the plummeting stock market, which devastated Americans' portfolios and retirement accounts.  The stock market has been flat in real term since about 2000.  The only way you can say that people experienced lost wealth from the stock market is if you assume they all bought at the peak.", "Fiscal Year 2011 was a record-setting year for the SBA in total small business loan volume. While the economy may still be in recovery from the Great Recession, you can read about some Good News in my article from the December issue of Scotsman Guide. Don’t forget that unless an extension is granted, the refinance provision of the SBA 504 loan will expire in September 2012.", "We constantly hear that there are not enough trades-people to fill manufacturing roles. This is what happens when you offshore everything possible for the last 30 years. No one wants to go into a trade that will be offshored plus there are too few of those positions to apprentice in. Stop the boo-hooing big business, man-up and invest in some of your fellow citizens.", "Osx interface is not intuitive. Closing stuff doesn't even close it... also installing applications makes no sense. Dual booting is pointless if he is going to use excel most of the time is he really going to reboot when he doesn't want to work. Also why pay the premium for Mac if you are not gonna make use of it already half the time."]}
+{"query": "Can I deduct child's charitable deduction from my taxes?", "corpus": ["No, you may not deduct the charitable contributions of your children. The Nest covers this in detail: The IRS only allows you to deduct charitable contributions that you personally funded, whether the contribution was made in your name or in someone else's. If your child or dependent makes a donation to a charity, you are not allowed to claim it as a tax deduction. This is true even if your dependent does not claim the contribution on his own tax return because he opts for the standard deduction rather than itemizing or claims exemption. Now, had you constructed the transaction differently, it's possible you could've made the contribution in your child's name and thus claimed the deduction.  Allowance is technically a gift, and if she agrees to forgo allowance in exchange for you making a contribution, well, the IRS can't really complain (though they might try if it were a large amount!). Contributions in the name of someone else, but funded by yourself, are deductible: [Y]ou can deduct contributions you make in someone else’s name. So if you donated a certain amount of money to XYZ charity in your child’s name, for example, you would be able to deduct this amount on your taxes, as long as the deduction requirements are met. You will need to keep accurate records of the payment along with the receipt from the organization to prove you financed the donation."], "neg": ["There are a number of ways and it all depends on your concentration and range of skills (or skills you're willing to develop). As for involving your wife ... things that can be done locally for neighbours is always a good idea. The most important thing is not to spend too much time or cash on anything that will take a long time to pay off.  That excludes writing your own iPhone apps, for example, which would take long hours of development and much marketing (and luck) to be successful. Good luck and congrats.", "If you just need to fill out the basic forms. this post is really helpful and translates them to english as well as telling you which forms to fill out. http://www.toytowngermany.com/wiki/ELSTER . it really helped me out the last couple years. this year is of course tricky as i did some consulting back in the US and have to figure out the AUS form vs N AUS or what the deal is.  hope it helps", "Just playing devil's advocate: A falling stock price impairs the firm's ability to raise equity capital efficiently. In these times, additional regulatory capital requirements continue to be levied on the banks, and they are faced with raising capital inefficiently, which may impair their ability to pay their debt, which may lead to a ratings downgrade.", "This is the correct answer and is a concrete way to start to work on be legitimate problem of the income gap between the 1% and the rest of the population.  Ive tried, but never been able to justify the compensation earned by the fortune 100 CEOs.", "Having someone else paying you rent is always going to be the better deal financially. The question is, what does $450k buy in the neighborhood in which you want to live, vs $800k? I'm going to assume you can afford either option (buying a $450k home and not selling, or an $800k home and selling your current one) whether someone's paying you rent or not. Let's make up some numbers here; a $450k home, financed 80/20 (360k principal) at 4% for 30 years will cost you about $1720 in P&I payments per year (plus escrows such as RE taxes, PMI, and homeowners insurance where applicable). An $800k home financed 80/20 (640k principal) at 4% for 30yr will give you payments of about $3,055/mo before taxes and insurance. So, the worst case overall is that you buy a 450k home in the new neighborhood and are not, at any given time, collecting rent on the old property. That would (assuming the mortgage terms on both home loans were comparable) cost you $3440/mo and you'd be living in a $450k home in a neighborhood where 450k may not buy a home as nice as the one you moved out of. The question as I stated above is this; assuming you had a reliable tenant in your home for the entire remaining life of the loan on your current home, which is more acceptable to you: buying $450k of home (which might be a downgrade in sqft or amenities) and paying $2020 in P&I, or paying about a grand more ($3055/mo) for a much nicer home in the new location? Strictly from a money perspective, the renter is going to be the best option, IF you get reliable tenancy for the entire life of the mortgage on that house; you'll be paying $2020/mo for 30 years, which is $727,200, to end up with $950k of total home value (plus adjustments for actual home value appreciation/depreciation). That's the only way you'll come out ahead on any mortgage; have someone else pay most of it for you. If you don't rent, the $800k home will cost you $1,099,800, while two $450k homes will cost you $1,454,400. The percentage of home value over total payments for the 800k home would be 72% (you will have paid 137% of the value of the home), while you will have paid 153% of the value of two 450k homes.", "\"&gt;Quality control. The second generation is not consistent  &gt;Control on patent license to prevent theft.   Kind of sidesteps the \"\"no one replants seeds in agriculture\"\", doesn't it? And isn't the fact that the second generation's quality is not consistent the farmer's problem? Why need to enforce it contractually?   And what do you mean by patent theft? Is it theft if the farmer re-uses the seed to replant another harvest?  &gt;I take it that you get your information from activist blogs, because if you actually read that case you would know that Schmeiser was guilt of patent theft. The fact that you cite this case marks you as deeply uniformed about the ag industry  No, mate, no activist blogs. Go re-read my comment. I do give it away that the farmer is not squeaky clean as he tried to use the the seeds to advance his own developments. Which is patent theft.  But it doesn't take away the fact that he had a bunch of GMO canola that he didn't purposefully plant on his property. If he would have used those seeds to use in his developments unwittingly of them being Monsanto seeds, there should have been no claim of patent theft as he was just using what happened on his land. That's a big if, but the point stands.  And you keep on claiming I am uninformed despite the fact that I've refuted your first chiding that no farmer replants seeds. Doesn't really make for a shining example that you actually know what you are talking about.  &gt;Like I said, if your knowledge of the TPP is a high quality as your knowledge of agriculture....  I've read what I've read, and from a few sources. As I said, so far it's hearsay, but if you're so enlightened, please do let me know your sources.\"", "They are mutually exclusive.  Provided you meet the income limits you can contribute to both.  Employer match do not count toward the 18K.   On the other hand traditional IRA and Roth IRA are inclusive.  So if single and making having a MAGI under 118K, you could do the 18K of your own money into a 401(k), and $5,500 into a Roth. You can put in $23,500 of your own money with the employer match on top of that."]}
+{"query": "Why don't market indexes use aggregate market capitalization?", "corpus": ["\"They do but you're missing some calculations needed to gain an understanding. Intro To Stock Index Weighting Methods notes in part: Market cap is the most common weighting method used by an index.   Market cap or market capitalization is the standard way to measure the   size of the company. You might have heard of large, mid, or small cap   stocks? Large cap stocks carry a higher weighting in this index. And   most of the major indices, like the S&P 500, use the market cap   weighting method. Stocks are weighted by the proportion of their market cap to the total   market cap of all the stocks in the index. As a stock’s price and   market cap rises, it gains a bigger weighting in the index. In turn   the opposite, lower stock price and market cap, pushes its weighting   down in the index.  Pros Proponents argue that large companies have a bigger effect on the   economy and are more widely owned. So they should have a bigger   representation when measuring the performance of the market. Which is   true. Cons It doesn’t make sense as an investment strategy. According to a market   cap weighted index, investors would buy more of a stock as its price   rises and sell the stock as the price falls. This is the exact   opposite of the buy low, sell high mentality investors should use. Eventually, you would have more money in overpriced stocks and less in   underpriced stocks. Yet most index funds follow this weighting method. Thus, there was likely a point in time where the S & P 500's initial sum was equated to a specific value though this is the part you may be missing here. Also, how do you handle when constituents change over time? For example, suppose in the S & P 500 that a $100,000,000 company is taken out and replaced with a $10,000,000,000 company that shouldn't suddenly make the index jump by a bunch of points because the underlying security was swapped or would you be cool with there being jumps when companies change or shares outstanding are rebalanced? Consider carefully how you answer that question. In terms of histories, Dow Jones Industrial Average and S & P 500 Index would be covered on Wikipedia where from the latter link: The \"\"Composite Index\"\",[13] as the S&P 500 was first called when it   introduced its first stock index in 1923, began tracking a small   number of stocks. Three years later in 1926, the Composite Index   expanded to 90 stocks and then in 1957 it expanded to its current   500.[13] Standard & Poor's, a company that doles out financial information and analysis, was founded in 1860 by Henry Varnum Poor. In   1941 Poor's Publishing (Henry Varnum Poor's original company) merged   with Standard Statistics (founded in 1906 as the Standard Statistics   Bureau) and therein assumed the name Standard and Poor's Corporation.   The S&P 500 index in its present form began on March 4, 1957.   Technology has allowed the index to be calculated and disseminated in   real time. The S&P 500 is widely used as a measure of the general   level of stock prices, as it includes both growth stocks and value   stocks. In September 1962, Ultronic Systems Corp. entered into an agreement   with Standard and Poor's. Under the terms of this agreement, Ultronics   computed the S&P 500 Stock Composite Index, the 425 Stock Industrial   Index, the 50 Stock Utility Index, and the 25 Stock Rail Index.   Throughout the market day these statistics were furnished to Standard   & Poor's. In addition, Ultronics also computed and reported the 94 S&P   sub-indexes.[14] There are also articles like Business Insider that have this graphic that may be interesting: S & P changes over the years The makeup of the S&P 500 is constantly changing notes in part: \"\"In most years 25 to 30 stocks in the S&P 500 are replaced,\"\" said   David Blitzer, S&P's Chairman of the Index Committee. And while there   are strict guidelines for what companies are added, the final decision   and timing of that decision depends on what's going through the heads   of a handful of people employed by Dow Jones.\""], "neg": ["Get a credit card is NOT the answer. The reason people have a bad (or no) credit score is often because they're new to the country, have just turned 18, have previously fallen into arrears or are just bad with money. Getting a credit card is risky because, if you don't stay on top of your payments, it'll just damage your score even more.  Now, it sounds like I hate credit cards - but I don't, and they do have their benefits. But avoid them if possible because they can be more hassle than they're worth (ie, paying the credit back on-time, cancelling accounts when the interest comes in, moving money in and out of accounts). It's risky borrowing money from anywhere whether it's a payday lender, a bank, a credit card, etc., so use them as a last resort. If you've got your own income then that's amazing!, try not to live outside of your means and your credit score will look after (and increase) itself. It takes time to build a good credit score, but always make sure you pay the people you owe on time and the full amount. I'd stick with paying your phone provider (and any other direct debits you have setup) and avoid getting a credit card. I'd recommend Noddle to keep track of your credit score and read their FAQ on how to help build it. Unlike Experian, it's free forever so not quite as detailed... but Noddle are owned by CallCredit - one of the biggest Credit Reference Agencies in the UK so they should have the latest information on yourself. In conclusion, if you already have financial commitments like a mobile phone bill, gym membership, store cards, anything that gets paid monthly by direct debit... your credit score will increase (provided you pay the full-amount on time).   I hope this helps. PS. I don't work for any of the companies here, but I've been working in the finance sector (more specifically, short-term loans) for 3+ years now.", "You are implicitly making that assumption. It doesn't matter if the rich are taking and increasingly large percentage of the pie, as long as the size of the pie is growing fast enough that the absolute wealth of the poor is rising at a reasonable rate over time.  The correct and reasonable measure is to compare the wealth of the poor, today with the wealth of the poor in the past in terms of real buying power.  I understand what you're saying and I disagree with your analysis. I disagree that relative proportions have any meaningful impact of human well being.", "The initial and overnight margin requirements are set by the exchanges (who calculate them using the Standard Portfolio of Analysis of Risk, or 'SPAN' system), and positions are market to market according to these at the end of the trading session. To find these margin requirements you will need to consult the website of the exchange on which the contract you are trading is issued (i.e. if you're trading on the London Metal Exchange it's no good looking at the Chicago Mercantile Exchange's margin requirements as a previous answer suggests!). However, for positions entered and exited within the same day, the daytrade margin rate will apply. This is set by your broker rather than the exchange, and can be as little as 10% of the exchange requirement. You can find a useful comparison of different margin types and requirements in the article I have published here: Understanding Margin for Futures Trading.", "You are correct that you do not need to file under a certain circumstances primarily related to income, but other items are taken into account such as filing status, whether the amount was earned or unearned income (interest, dividends, etc.) and a few other special situations which probably don't apply to you.  If you go through table 2 on page 3 and 4 of IRS publication 501 (attached), there is a worksheet to fill out that will give you the definitive answer.   As far as the 1099 goes, that is to be filed by the person who paid you.  How you were paid (i.e., cash, check, etc., makes no difference).  You don't have a filing requirement for that form in this case. https://www.irs.gov/pub/irs-pdf/p501.pdf", "Uber should have crushed Lyft by being the first to market a long time ago. Instead they blew their lead by dumping all their money into   1. Warring with Google, which they will lose, and were always bound to lose, because nobody at Uber has ever heard of NDAs or sunk cost fallacies   2. Tolerating PR scandals until the point where customers actively sought out an alternative not because the product was bad, because Uber was in many ways a superior product, but because they saw Uber as a bad company. And it takes a lot to lose customers in that situation.   What a stupid company.", "\"It is possible and it depends on your strategy. As short selling interest rates are annual and levied monthly at a prorated rate. Interest rates are also low in general, with the exception of hard to borrow stocks. Therefore you can maintain a short position for weeks on end and notice nothing. Months even, if the position itself has already gained in your favor. There is no additional fee for opening the short position. Although some brokers have a \"\"locate\"\" fee, if it is hard to borrow the stock and they need to go find some shares to short. So you can do it as much as you like.\"", "So your solution is take all three away. Take illegals, felons and potheads out if the jobs that 20 years ago the potheads and felons filled.  Who exactly do you plan to fill those jobs with? The homeless? Who are all felons and potheads.  Or ok automation.  Fine but don't cry when society goes down the tubes because so many people are on the streets with no where to turn but crime/drugs. Then eventually in prison that you pay for.  It was your idea though that you support.  Sorry bud but I think it's your idea shooting yourself in the foot, literally."]}
+{"query": "Borrowing share with a covered call for short?", "corpus": ["No, if your stock is called away, the stock is sold at the agreed upon price. You cannot get it back at your original price. If you don't want your stock to be called, make sure you have the short call position closed by expiration if it is ITM.  Also you could be at risk for early assignment if the option has little to no extrinsic value, although probably not. But when dividends are coming, make sure you close your short ITM options. If the dividend is worth more than the extrinsic value, you are pretty much guaranteed to be assigned. Been assigned that way too many times. Especially in ETFs where the dividends aren't dates are not always easy to find. It happens typically during triple witching. If you are assigned on your short option, you will be short stock and you will have to pay the dividend to the shareholder of your short stock. So if you have a covered call on, and you are assigned, your stock will be called away, and you will have to pay the dividend."], "neg": ["The first and most important thing to consider is that this is a BUSINESS TRANSACTION, and needs to be treated as such. Nail down Absolutely All The Details, specifically including what happens if either of you decides it's time to move and wants to sell off your share of the property. Get at least one lawyer involved in drawing up that contract, perhaps two so there's no risk of conflict of interest. What's your recourse, or his, if the other stops making their share of the payments? Who's responsible for repairs and upkeep? If you make renovations, how does that affect the ownership percentage, and what kind of approval do you need from him first, and how do you get it, and how quickly does he have to respond? If he wants to do something to maintain his investment, such as reroofing, how does he negotiate that with you -- especially if it's something that requires access to the inside of the house? Who is the insurance paid by, or will each of you be insuring it separately? What are the tax implications? Consider EVERY possible outcome; the fact that you're friends now doesn't matter, and in fact arguments over money are one of the classic things that kill friendships. I'd be careful making this deal with a relative (though in fact I did loan my brother a sizable chunk of change to help him bridge between his old house and new house, and that's registered as a mortgage to formalize it). I'd insist on formalizing who owns what even with a spouse, since marriages don't always last. With someone who's just a co-worker and casual friend, it's business and only business, and needs to be both evaluated and contracted as such to protect both of you. If you can't make an agreement that you'd be reasonably comfortable signing with a stranger, think long and hard about whether you want to sign it at all. I'll also point out that nobody is completely safe from long-term unemployment. The odds may be low, but people do get blindsided. The wave of foreclosures during and after the recent depression is direct evidence of that.", "Your autograph analogy seems relevant to me. But it is not just speculation. In the long run, investing in stocks is like investing in the economy. In the long run, the economy is expected to grow , hence stock prices are expected to go up. Now in theory: the price of any financial instrument is equal to the net present value today of all the future cash flows from the instrument. So if company's earnings improve, shareholders hope that the earnings will trickle down to them either in form of dividends or in form of capital gain. So they buy the stock, creating demand for it. I can try to explain more if this did not make any sense. :)", "I'm hearing that I should maybe wait and see how things go at first as it is only a very small operation.   But if I moved into a side of the trade where I require staff, vehicles, and the likes then I would need to registed as a limited company.", "\"When I read the article I was pretty shocked to see \"\"codecademy\"\" listed as an actual recommendation.  That's like saying CEO's need to understand Mandarin, so they should eat Chinese take out for a couple of weeks.\"", "You're realizing the perils of using a DCF analysis.  At best, you can use them to get a range of possible values and use them as a heuristic, but you'll probably find it difficult to generate a realistic estimate that is significantly different than where the price is already.", "The two really aren't easily comparable - you have to look at cost of living.  sdg's calculations account for provincial and federal taxes in Canada, but elide state taxes in the US.  There's also sales taxes, which are usually higher in Canada, and property taxes, which tend to be higher in the US (from my experience).  You also have to include health insurance into your calculations, since that expense is included in your taxes in Canada.", "Welcome to eConCord Pro, the best graphic design company in Australia that offers a range of top quality graphic design, SEO, SMM and web development services at affordable pricing. Visit today and check out our plans, pricing and features!"]}
+{"query": "What is the effect of dividends on the futures price of an index", "corpus": ["A futures contract is based upon a particular delivery date.  In the case of a stock index futures contract is a cash settled futures contract based upon the stock index value at a particular point in time (i.e. this is when the final settlement is determined). In your example, the S&P 500 (SPX) is a price return index - that is, it is not affected by dividends and therefore dividends are not incorporated into the index value.  Dividends will affect the price of the constituent stocks (not necessarily by the same amount as the dividend) so they do have influence on the stock index value.  Since the dividends are known ahead of time (or at least can be estimated), this has already been factored into the futures price by the market. In terms of the impact of a dividend by AAPL, AAPL is approximaetely 3.6% of the index.  Apple pays out dividends 4 times a year (currently paying out $0.52 dividends).  Assuming the market is otherwise steady and AAPL drops by $0.52 due to the dividend and Apple is priced at around $105, this would result in a drop in the index of 0.0178% or around 0.35 points. Interesting fact:  There are some futures contracts that are based upon Total Return indexes, such as the German DAX and the above logic would need to be reversed."], "neg": ["No, the expense ratio would be something you wouldn't be charged. If you bought shares of the ETF long, then the dividends are usually reduced by the expense ratio if you wanted to know where to find that charge in general. You would have to make up for any dividends the underlying stocks as part of general shorting since the idea is that once you buy to put back the shares, it has to appear as if they weren't missing in the first place. No, the authorized participant would handle changes to the underlying structure if needed.", "Probably the biggest tax-deferment available to US workers is through employee-sponsored investment plans like the 401k.  If you meet the income limits, you could also use a Traditional IRA if you do not have a 401k at work.  But keep in mind that you are really just deferring taxes here.  The US Government will eventually get their due. :) One way which you may find interesting is by using 529 plans, or other college investment plans, to save for your child's (or your) college expenses.  Generally, contributions up to a certain amount are deductible on your state taxes, and are exempt from Federal and State taxes when used for qualifying education expenses.  The state deduction can lower your taxes and help you save for college for your children, if that is a desire of yours.", "Weren't these fuckers just given 120 billion euros? At this point they should probably stop fueling this shit and just let them burn. European tax payers aren't the only ones dealing with this. The American Federal Reserve is lending money to the banks and the ECB to help with this. I don't want to pay for ailing banks in my own goddamn country, let alone those on the other side of the world in a country I may never visit.", "This is exactly​ what it is, those rich suburanites live too far out of their current footprint for timely delivery service. Not anymore.   For example, in Georgia there are 5 Whole Foods in some of the most affluent neighborhoods in Metro Atlanta that Amazon Fresh currently does not service.", "\"there's a planet money podcast interview with him from a few years back that gives a good glimpse into the framework of his economic thoughts worth checking out.  he also wrote a book caller \"\"fault lines\"\" that is definitely worth the read.\"", "As soccer is one of the most popular game which is played worldwide so there are many companies used to manufacture the soccer ball. But the Best cheap soccer balls manufacture are as like the Adidas they are the main sponsor for the FIFA and the other game and their ball is very much popular among all soccer lovers. Nike is also one of the big sponsors for big events and there is lots of other brand also who used to manufacture the soccer ball.", "New Zealand Bank cannot directly ask Singapore Bank. They can approach courts in Singapore and request for funds. Given that amount is small, the cost for pursuing a court case in Singapore would be much higher and the Bank in New Zealand may have already written this off.  They may still have reported you as a defaulter, depending on various things, you may not get a Visa to travel back into New Zealand, or get one and get arrested once you land in New Zealand even during transit."]}
+{"query": "How can I escalate a credit dispute when the bureau “confirms” the item?", "corpus": ["\"I was I a similar position as you, and sometimes credit bureaus might be difficult to deal with, especially when high amounts of money are involved. To make the long story short, someone opened a store credit card under my name and made a charge of around 3k. After reporting this to the bureaus, they did not want to remove the account from my credit report citing that the claim was \"\"frivolous\"\". After filing a police report, the police officer gave me the phone number for the fraud department of this store credit card, and after they investigated, they removed the account from my credit. I would suggest to do the following: Communicating with Creditors and Debt Collectors You have the right to:  Stop creditors and debt collectors from   reporting fraudulent accounts. After you give them a copy of a valid   identity theft report, they may not report fraudulent accounts to the   credit reporting companies. Get copies of documents related to the   theft of your identity, like transaction records or applications for   new accounts. Write to the company that has the documents, and include   a copy of your identity theft report. You also can tell the company to   give the documents to a specific law enforcement agency. Stop a debt   collector from contacting you. In most cases, debt collectors must   stop contacting you after you send them a letter telling them to stop.   Get written information from a debt collector about a debt, including   the name of the creditor and the amount you supposedly owe. If a debt   collector contacts you about a debt, request this information in   writing. I know that you said that the main problem was that your credit account was combined with another. But there might be a chance that identity theft was involved. If this is the case, and you can prove it, then you might have access to more tools to help you. For example, you can file a report with the FTC, and along with a police report, this can be a powerful tool in stopping these charges. Feel free to go to the identitytheft.gov website for more information.\""], "neg": ["Agreed. In his current situation, I'd expect OP would find the most personally fulfilling use of his freedom to be spending his time (and not his money) helping people that he is able to help.  He mentioned he was a cop.  Maybe he'd have the insight needed to help get kids out of gangs.  Or, help improve relationships between cops and rough neighborhoods. Doesn't have to be a cop thing. That's just all I've got to work with.", "\"Rebalancing has been studied empirically quite a bit, but not particularly carefully and actually turns out to be very hard to study well.  The main problem is that you don't know until afterward if your target weights were optimal so a bad rebalancing program might give better performance if it strayed closer to optimal weights even if it didn't do an efficient job of keeping near the target weights. In your particular case either method might be preferred depending on a number of things: You can see why there isn't a generally correct answer to your question and the results of empirical studies might very wildly depending on the mix of assets and risk tolerance.  Still if your portfolio is not too complicated you can estimate the costs of the two methods without too much trouble and figure out if it is worthwhile to you. EDIT In Response to Comment Below: Your example gets at what makes rebalancing so hard empirically but also generally pretty easy in practice.  If you were to target 75% Equity (25% bonds?) and look at returns only for 30 years the \"\"best\"\" rebalancing method would be to never rebalance and just let 75% equity go to near 100% as equity has better long term returns.  This happens when you look only at returns as the final number and don't take into account the change in risk in your portfolio. In practice, most people that are still adding (or subtracting in retirement) to a retirement portfolio are adding (removing) a significant amount compared to the total amount in their portfolio.  In the case you discribe, it is cheaper (massively cheaper in the presence of load fees) just to use new capital to trade toward your target, keeping your risk profile.  New money should be large enough to keep you near enough your target.  If you just estimate the trading costs/fees in both cases I think you'll see just how large the difference is between the two methods this will dwarf any small differences in return over the long run even if you can't trade back all the way to your target.\"", "If your goal is to simply save money on shaving supplies, there are easier ways to do so.  If you are buying the latest Gillette multi-blade razor cartridge, then yes, you are spending a lot of money on razor blades. Consider switching to an old-fashioned double-edge safety razor.  Pick up a nice razor for $20 - $50 (I like my Merkur HD), then buy the blades for cheap.  I buy a 2 year supply of double-edge blades for less than $20. If you really want to turn in your man card and get your facial hair permanently removed, then it is really easy to calculate the payback time.  Just figure out what you are spending in razor blades, get a quote for lasering your face off, and compare.  If you are paying $10 a year for blades like I am, the payback time is going to be long. One more thought: remember, permanent means permanent.  This is comparable to a tattoo, except tattoos are easier to reverse.   Others have noted that the procedure isn't really permanent. What I understand from reading (I don't have firsthand experience) is that it is temporary in the sense that you will eventually need to start shaving again, but permanent in the sense that you will never be able to grow a proper beard again, if you wish. Basically, it is the worst of both worlds: it won't accomplish your goal of not having to shave anymore, but will make permanent changes to your face. The fact that you will need to shave again, even if only occasionally, affects your payback time calculation.", "Many (if not all) of these companies have former I-bankers in their corp dev groups.  The author's platform is one of many that can connect buyers and sellers directly. At the end of the day, if you are a buyer, do you have the resources and competence to conduct proper due diligence? Quite possibly.  As a seller, do you have the ability to understand industry dynamics and the ability to maximize your valuation? Doubtful.  Buy side M&amp;A has merit, but sell side M&amp;A has proven to deliver value to the majority of clients.", "I would like to open an art studio. Not necessarily a gallery, but a place where I can do animation, digital art, branding/logos, and freelance stuff. Also, do some filming there. So an art-production studio.  It's what I enjoy but I live in an area that is too rural for that kijnd of thing. But idk, it might work.", "Shares used to be paper documents, but these days they are more commonly held electronically instead, although this partly depends on what country you're in. But it doesn't make any significant practical difference. Regardless of their physical form, a share simply signifies that you own a certain proportion of a company, and are thus entitled to receive any dividends that may be paid to the shareholders. To sell your shares, you need a broker -- there are scores of online ones who will sell them for a modest fee. Your tax forms are entirely dependent on the jurisdiction(s) that tax you, and since you've not told us where you are, no one can answer that.", "\"Nothing necessarily has to \"\"benefit.\"\" Right now, what primarily drives demand for gold is its perceived use as a hedge against the inflation of fiat currency. I.e. when inflation strikes, the price of gold goes up rapidly. Thus, for a given currency, gold decreasing in price is almost always a signal that the currency is increasing in value. However, it may be that at some point in time people everywhere just decide that gold is no longer worth using as an inflation hedge, and thus the price collapses simply because demand collapsed. No corresponding \"\"benefit\"\".\""]}
+{"query": "Value of tokens bought at an older price", "corpus": ["\"You will make a profit in nominal dollars (or nominal units of whatever currency you used to buy the token).  Whether you'll make a profit in real dollars depends on inflation, and in practice whether it would be possible to sell your existing tokens to someone else for the new price. Suppose when the price was 50 U (50 \"\"units\"\", since you didn't specify a currency), you bought one token.  Today you can either spend 52 U for a token, and get a liter of milk, or you can spend your existing token (for which you paid 50 U) and get a liter of milk.  It looks like you are making a profit of 2 U by spending your token. However, whether that profit is real or illusory depends on what else you could do with the token.  For instance, suppose that, since the price of a token is now 52 U, you will have no trouble finding someone who wants to buy your token from you for 52 U.  If you sell your token for 52 U, you'll still only be able to buy 1 L of milk.  So if you measure your wealth in milk, you have made no profit: in the past you had a token representing 1 L of milk, and today you still have a token representing 1 L of milk. Suppose now that in the past, when a token cost 50 U, a hamburger also cost 50 U.  Suppose further that a hamburger now costs 52 U.  So you can sell your token for 52 U, but that 52 U will still only buy you one hamburger.  So, again, if you measure your wealth in hamburgers, your have made no profit.  In the past, you could have sold your token and bought a hamburger; today, you can still sell your token and buy a hamburger, and you'll have nothing left over, so you have gained nothing. If, on the other hand, the price of a hamburger today is still 50 U, then you call sell your token for 52 U, buy a hamburger for 50 U, and still have 2 U left over.  You have made a profit. What this all goes to show is that, in practice, the idea of \"\"profit\"\" depends on the overall economy, and whether you could exchange the currency units you have in your possession for a greater quantity of goods than you could in the past.  Whether this is possible depends on the relative changes in price of various goods.  In other words, if you get your money by selling Product A, and later you buy Product B, you may or may not make a profit depending on how the prices of the two products moved relative to one another. Also, in your hypothetical setup, the \"\"currency\"\" (the token) is directly linked to the value of a single good, so you can always at least get 1 L of milk for your token.  Most real currency is not bound to specific goods like your milk token, so it is possible for your currency to lose value in an absolute sense.  For instance, suppose you sell a book for $5.  The $5 is not a \"\"book token\"\" and you cannot rely on being able to exchange it for a book in the future; in the future, all books may cost $10, and the prices of all goods may rise similarly, so your currency will actually be worth less no matter how you try to use it.  This could happen with the milk token if the milkman announces that henceforth 1 L of milk will cost 2 tokens; your existing token suddenly loses half its value. In sum, it is easy to calculate whether you made a profit in currency units.  What is harder is to calculate whether you made a profit in \"\"real terms\"\" (often referred to as \"\"real dollars\"\" or \"\"inflation-adjusted dollars\"\", or the equivalent in your favorite currency).  The reason this is hard is because the idea of \"\"real dollars\"\" is fundamentally linked to the possibility of exchanging currency for goods (and services), and so it depends what goods you're buying.  Inflation statistics published by governments and the like use a \"\"basket\"\" of goods to approximate the overall price movements in the economy as a whole.\""], "neg": ["I read it. It's fair. But just because Mr. Buffett says that's not true, doesn't mean he's right. As you can see, he still isn't backing up claims with numbers.  &gt;Most of the evidence suggests they are semi-strong form efficient.  But that's not even the case. It doesn't say markets are 100% efficient, it says they reflect all *available* information. Which they almost always tend to do, especially ensured with HFT.  I think if you look into statistical analysis you'll find the trend 99.99% of traders lack access to any special information, making the markets effectively 100% efficient. Gains/losses are proportional to the amount of risk taken.  &gt;Now you've made a promise you can't keep, because I'm not very wrong. :)  I was a dick, I apologize. I still believe it, however. Have an upvote for the welcomed conversation, though.", "Why would I go to amazon at 9pm at night to buy 2-4 to fix a broken box spring? Or go to amazon to purchase a handful of the right size screw which I sit and measure with an extra screw I bring? (My last two trips)", "\"I'm not going to go guilting you about how I haven't had a vacation in 4 years, I've just had a completely different experience that makes me wonder how you've gotten screwed so many times.  Right after relocation, I was renting cars because mine hadn't been shipped yet. I show up at the DFW Avis counter, and trade my Camry in for my new \"\"standard sedan (Camry or Altima).\"\" Turns out, the Camry and the Altima have VASTLY different trims even though you pay the same for them. When I took the Altima back, I told the nice young lady behind the counter \"\"if I have to drive another Altima for a week, I'm going to blow my brains out, possibly IN the Altima.\"\"  Instant upgrade to the Charger.   Ever since, I've never missed with a policy of simply being nice to the agent.  Agent: Alright sir, your car is in space G15.  Me: I just have to ask, is G15 an Altima?  Agent: It's in the Camry/Altima class.  Me: But is it an Altima? Because I want to save myself the time and effort of walking to the spot, seeing that it's an Altima, and then walking back here to pay the difference to get something else.  Agent: It's an Altima... *types furiously*... Ok sir, I put you in D2 at no charge, I think you'll find it's not an Altima. (Another Charger)  Same situation landing in Sacramento, \"\"hey do you guys have a convertible available? It's Cali after all... I'll pay the difference.\"\" Free convertible upgrade.  Now, if you're driving an hour outside of DFW, it sounds like maybe you go to some out of the way places, and when you fly into Podunk Hollow they might only have one convertible in the whole place. But there's no way you book a sports car at DFW and wind up in a Kia.  Also, who flies in with 3 kids in tow and needs specifically a Tahoe? I just imagine that guy would probably catch a few more Tahoes if he would reserve something he's comfortable with (like the Santa Fe) and then asking the agent in person once he arrives. The kids look tired and miserable, his wife really doesn't want to ride around in a Santa Fe all week, and hey Mr. Agent, don't you have anything that rides a little better than a Santa Fe? My back is killing me after that flight...\"", "Sometimes I think it helps to think of the scenario in reverse. If you had a completely paid off car, would you take out a title loan (even at 0%) for a few months to put the cash in a low-interest savings account? For me, I think the risk of losing the car due to non-payment outweighs the tens of dollars I might earn.", "Excellent question for a six year old! Actually, a good question for a 20 year old!  One explanation is a bit more complicated. Your son thinks that after the Christmas season the company is worth more. For example, they might have turned $10 million of goods into $20 million of cash, which increases their assets by $10 million and is surely a good thing. However, that's not the whole picture: Before the Christmas season, we have a company with $10 million of goods and the Christmas season just ahead, while afterwards we have a company with $20 million cash and nine months of slow sales ahead.  Let's say your son gets $10 pocket money every Sunday at 11am. Five minutes to 11 he has one dollar in his pocket. Five minutes past 11 he has 11 dollars in his pocket. Is he richer now? Not really, because every minute he gets a bit closer to his pocket money, and five past eleven he is again almost a week away from the next pocket money On the other hand... on Monday, he loses his wallet with $10 inside - he is now $10 poorer. Or his neighbour unexpectedly offers him to wash his car for $10 and he does it - he is now $10 richer.  So if the company got robbed in August with all stock gone, no insurance, but time to buy new stock for the season, they lose $10 million, the company is worth $10 million less, and the share price drops. If they get robbed just before Christmas sales start, they don't make the $20 million sales, so they are $10 million poorer, but they are $20 million behind where they should be - the company is worth $20 millions less, and the share price drops twice as much. On the other hand, if there is a totally unexpected craze for a new toy going on from April to June (and then it drops down), and they make $10 million unexpectedly, they are worth $10 million more. Expected $10 million profit = no increase in share price. Unexpected $10 million profit - increase in share price.  Now the second, totally different explanation. The share price is not based on the value of the company, but on what people are willing to pay. Say it's November and I own 100 shares worth $10. If everyone knew they are worth $20 in January, I would hold on to my shares and not sell them for $10! It would be very hard to convince me to sell them for $19!  If you could predict that the shares will be worth $20 in January, then they would be worth $20 now. The shareprice will not go up or down if something good or bad happens that everyone expects. It only goes up or down if something happens unexpectedly.", "When your profits are increased from mass layoffs and reduced expenses (like r&amp;d) to appease investors, and not based on innovation, new market entry, or competitive advantage.  It's a short term quick win but puts the long term in jeopardy.", "\"If you own 1% of a company, you are technically entitled to 1% of the current value and future profits of that company. However, you cannot, as you seem to imply, just decide at some point to take your ball and go home. You cannot call up the company and ask for 1% of their assets to be liquidated and given to you in cash. What the 1% stake in the company actually entitles you to is: 1% of total shareholder voting rights. Your \"\"aye\"\" or \"\"nay\"\" carries the weight of 1% of the total shareholder voting block. Doesn't sound like much, but when the average little guy has on the order of ten-millionths of a percentage point ownership of any big corporation, your one vote carries more weight than those of millions of single-share investors. 1% of future dividend payments made to shareholders. For every dollar the corporation makes in profits, and doesn't retain for future growth, you get a penny. Again, doesn't sound like much, but consider that the Simon property group, ranked #497 on the Fortune 500 list of the world's biggest companies by revenue, made $1.4 billion in profits last year. 1% of that, if the company divvied it all up, is $14 million. If you bought your 1% stake in March of 2009, you would have paid a paltry $83 million, and be earning roughly 16% on your initial investment annually just in dividends (to say nothing of the roughly 450% increase in stock price since that time, making the value of your holdings roughly $460 million; that does reduce your actual dividend yield to about 3% of holdings value). If this doesn't sound appealing, and you want out, you would sell your 1% stake. The price you would get for this total stake may or may not be 1% of the company's book value. This is for many reasons: Now, to answer your hypothetical: If Apple's stock, tomorrow, went from $420b market cap to zero, that would mean that the market unanimously thought, when they woke up tomorrow morning, that the company was all of a sudden absolutely worthless. In order to have this unanimous consent, the market must be thoroughly convinced, by looking at SEC filings of assets, liabilities and profits, listening to executive statements, etc that an investor wouldn't see even one penny returned of any cash investment made in this company's stock. That's impossible; the price of a share is based on what someone will pay to have it (or accept to be rid of it). Nobody ever just gives stock away for free on the trading floor, so even if they're selling 10 shares for a penny, they're selling it, and so the stock has a value ($0.001/share).  We can say, however, that a fall to \"\"effectively zero\"\" is possible, because they've happened. Enron, for instance, lost half its share value in just one week in mid-October as the scope of the accounting scandal started becoming evident. That was just the steepest part of an 18-month fall from $90/share in August '00, to just $0.12/share as of its bankruptcy filing in Dec '01; a 99.87% loss of value. Now, this is an extreme example, but it illustrates what would be necessary to get a stock to go all the way to zero (if indeed it ever really could). Enron's stock wasn't delisted until a month and a half after Enron's bankruptcy filing, it was done based on NYSE listing rules (the stock had been trading at less than a dollar for 30 days), and was still traded \"\"over the counter\"\" on the Pink Sheets after that point. Enron didn't divest all its assets until 2006, and the company still exists (though its mission is now to sue other companies that had a hand in the fraud, get the money and turn it around to Enron creditors). I don't know when it stopped becoming a publicly-traded company (if indeed it ever did), but as I said, there is always someone willing to buy a bunch of really cheap shares to try and game the market (buying shares reduces the number available for sale, reducing supply, increasing price, making the investor a lot of money assuming he can offload them quickly enough).\""]}
+{"query": "Homeowners: How can you protect yourself from a financial worst-case scenario?", "corpus": ["Think about your priorities in life.  Everybody is a little different.  In my case I have a wife and child, so these are priorities for me, and you might have your own depending on your story. So if I lost my job, and I have no more money coming in (unemployment insurance runs out, savings depleted) then the bank can have the house.  I personally would probably drop the house long before it came to that point. The first thing you do is talk to your creditors and work out a deal.  At the same time I would stop paying for ALL unnecessary things (cable TV, extra cell phones, automobiles, leaving light bulbs on and turning the heat up over putting on a sweater).  If I can't get a good deal from the creditors, I would stop paying the mortgage, find a place to live (family, friends, cheap apartment) while the credit is still good. My advice is to get yourself setup while your credit is good and you have SOME money in the bank.  Waiting until the bank decides to foreclose is probably going to make your harder."], "neg": ["Why not yet phone up the old bank, or log onto the internet banking and do a transfer to the new account.    You may first need to transfer from the saving account to a current account with the same bank.  (I have never had a problem doing this, but I do live in the UK)", "Your question has an interesting mix of issues. ASAP and 3-4 years doesn't feel like the same thing. ASAP results in bad decisions made in haste. Four years of living very frugally can create a nice down payment on a house.      A car is only an investment for Uber drivers and those who are directly financially benefitting from a car's use. For everyone else, it's a necessary expense.  What I'd focus on is the decision of buying a plot of land. Unless this is a very common way to do it in your country, I don't recommend that order. Having land and then trying to finance the building of a house has far more complexity than most people need in their lives. In my opinion, the better way is to save the 20% down, and buy a new or existing home you can afford.  In the end, spending is a matter of priority. If you truly want to get out in the least time, I'd save every dime I can and start looking for a house that your income can support.", "Some credit unions also offer them and support Business banking as well. First Tech Credit Union is a great example. They also have the most security-oriented banking website I've seen to date. https://www.firsttechfed.com/ As a side note I've found that Credit Unions are a MUCH better deal for personal and business banking.", "\"+1 on all the answers above. You're in a great position and have the right attitude. A good book on the subject is A Random Walk Down Wall Street - well worth a read. Essentially, go for low tax paying in, low tax taking out approach (in the uk that's a SIPP or ISA), a low cost well diversified unit fund (like a Vanguard LifeStrategy 100), on a low cost platform (\"\"Annual Management Charge\"\" in be UK). Keep paying a regular amount and let compound interest take care of things. I'd also add that you should think about what lifestyle you would want at specific ages and work out what you need to save to achieve these - even though they are probably a long time in the future, it makes your goals \"\"real\"\". Read Mr Money Moustache for some ideas http://www.mrmoneymustache.com\"", "\"As somebody who works in the industry, this is the biggest fucking joke I've ever witnessed. The sad part is, if they have rich connections, they may actually get away with pulling in a few accounts.   \"\"We have good lawyers.\"\" bahahaha\"", "Excelsior motorcycle is the best two wheeler in the world. We provide all the motorcycle spare parts repair and maintenance services.  Our organization provides the great offer the Excelsior motorcycle spare parts. Therefore, we sell the online motorcycle spare parts. Excelsior took advantage of the popularity of the racing clubs and put competitions riders on the payroll. If you need any information on this motorcycle, then please get in touch with him on the website.", "Đó là cái nhìn đẹp của mái nhà trong phòng. Chúng tôi sử dụng vật liệu hiệu năng cao, hiệu quả về chi phí cho khách hàng.Trước hết bạn nên khảo sát các công ty phát triển sẽ mua từ bạn. Để đảm bảo rằng bạn đưa ra các giải pháp chất lượng, bạn phải lọc xuống một nhóm khách hàng cụ thể thach cao vinh tuong. Tập trung vào những cá nhân muốn cung cấp tài sản của họ, những người đang tìm kiếm nhà tuyệt vời để mua, và những người muốn một chuyên gia để cải tạo ngôi nhà của họ. Đây là những khách hàng tiềm năng có thể giúp bạn kiếm được nhiều hơn bạn mong đợi."]}
+{"query": "Which shareholders cause news-driven whole market stock swings?", "corpus": ["The people who cause this sort of sell-off immediately are mostly speculators, short-term day-traders and the like. They realize that, because of the lowered potential for earnings in the future, the companies in question won't be worth as much in the future. They will sell shares at the elevated price, including sometimes shares that they borrow for the explicit purpose of selling (short selling), until the share price is more reasonable. Now, the other question is why the companies in question won't sell for as much in the future: Even if every other company in the world looks less attractive all at once (global economic catastrophe etc) people have other options. They could just put the money in the bank, or in corporate bonds, or in mortgage bonds, or Treasury bonds, or some other low-risk instrument, or something crazy like gold. If the expected return on a stock doesn't justify the price, you're unlikely to find someone paying that price. So you don't actually need to have a huge sell-off to lower the price. You just need a sell-off that's big enough that you run out of people willing to pay elevated prices."], "neg": ["\"&gt; This is an idea that was actually put into place more than a 100 years ago, in 1896 and even before, when the first electric cars were introduced and they even built \"\"service stations\"\" for them so you can swap the batteries. [read it here]  &gt; Even electric cars made by Tesla are nothing new.  &gt; And recently, a company called \"\"Better Place\"\", in Israel, produced modern electric cars with automated and robotic service stations that will swap the batteries for them. Read about \"\"Better Place\"\".  &gt; Bottom line: nothing new here for more than 100 years.\"", "sorry, I didn't know how to do the thing about getting around a pay wall and I also couldn't find the article from a different source.  Me being me, I tend to look at it as spreading information either way, as unperfect as my own method is.", "You should talk to your bank and explain what happened.  Your bank may contact vendor bank to discuss the account, but really that is up to them.   Then you should contact your police department and report the fraud. Realistically, your chances of recovering any money is negligible.  I think your best chance is convincing your bank to work with vendor bank on a reversal(if it was a domestic transfer), although it is more likely that the vendor bank account is already empty and closed.", "Android has prime instant video since last month.   As a student I only pay $40/year so I can't complain about the price hike. I guess this will go up to $50 next year though... Still better than full price!", "Hey,  I'm majoring in a worthless field and do not expect to make much money. I've learned to find solace in the simple luxuries such as, heating,car ownership, food, warm food, meat,being able to exercise, have freedom,etc...  I'm trying to figure out what the minimum annual salary I can live on is. For example right now I'm in college and it costs $30,000 a year but I'm living *very* comfortably.    Why and how will this change in the future? Renting an apartment and supporting only myself, why can't I live comfortably on $30,000 in the future?", "\"We don't have a free market.  Furthermore, without fail, every example in history that approaches a free market produces an environment entirely consumed by corruption and immorality.  Humans, at the most basic level, are fundamentally incapable of sustaining a free market system that results in a generally \"\"good\"\" outcome for people.  I heard a story in a documentary about the financial crisis (which was prior left void of any meaningful regulation), at it's worst, and in private, the banking CEO's told Henry Paulson that they needed to be regulated because they were incapable of keeping themselves in check. That only came out at the most critical moment of the worst financial shit in recent history. No banking CEO will ever come close to admit such a statement today now that \"\"things are OK again.\"\"  That's how things work in real life, all people are just children. And you want our *health care* to be handled by those children?  In this analogy the government with their \"\"annoying\"\" regulations are like the adults... but Trump - so never mind, now even the adults are idiots, so we're basically just fucked.  Be careful what you ask for.\"", "I don't even know where to begin with how terrible this article is.  Fundamental analysis is about analyzing the profitability of a company, technical analysis is very much the crystal ball strategy that he makes out fundamental to be. This is just an advertisement for his garbage trading program"]}
+{"query": "What is a good open source Windows finance software", "corpus": ["Have you tried others on Wikipedia's list?"], "neg": ["\"A budget is a predetermined plan for spending allocated funds to a fixed set of categories according to a schedule. If by,  \"\"Keeping track of your money\"\" you mean you are only recording your spending to see on what it is being spent and when, then the answer is no.  A budget has constraints on three things: Schedule:  The mortgage has to be paid at the 1st of the month with a 2 day grace period. Amount: The mortgage payment is 1500.00 Category: The mortgage. Tracking your money would be as follows: 10/5/2016: $25 for a video game. 10/5/2016: $129.99 for two automobile tires. 10/6/2016: $35.25 for luncheon. I didn't like him! Why did I blow this money? 10/7/2016: nothing spent...yoohoo! 10/8/2016: Payday, heck yeah! I'm financially solvent YET AGAIN! How do I do it?! See the difference?\"", "According to this Q&A by a Houston law professor: The law, however, is not designed to interfere with an individual's right to stop payment on a valid check because of a dispute with someone. If he didn't deliver as promised, you do not owe the money and have the right to stop payment. Assuming that you had enough money in the bank to cover the check, stopping payment is not a crime. I found several other pages essentially saying the same thing.  All the usual disclaimers apply, I am not a lawyer, this is not legal advice, etc.  In particular, laws might vary by state. Basically, though, it doesn't seem there's any reason why you can't stop payment on the check just because you feel like it.  If you then provide a cashier's check for the payment, your ex-partner will not really have anything to complain about.  If you're worried about annoying him by doing this, that's a separate issue, but given the situation you describe, I don't see why you should be.  If you feel he is being a pain in the neck, feel free to be a pain in the neck right back and force him to accept the payment in the manner you decide, instead of allowing him to string you along. Note two things: obviously if you have reason to believe the guy will sue you, you should act with caution.  Also, I'm not suggesting withdrawing payment completely, only stopping the check and issuing a new payment that you don't have to wait on (e.g., cashier's check).", "\"The Fed didn't \"\"signal\"\" anything. They did not do any analysis. They merely took a pole of consumer opinion.   The article should have said \"\"Poll Shows Americans Believe they Are No Better Off than Five Years Ago.\"\" But that would be less exciting.\"", "This is obviously hearsay because I can't remember the sources at all, but I recall hearing that at that company's chains, they also would take the credit card fee out of the worker's tips. so if you used a card and there's a 2.5% fee, they'd take that amount out of your waiter's tips.  Isn't that nice?  Random citations that make it less hearsay:  http://blog.cleveland.com/pdextra/2008/09/some_restaurant_owners_say_its.html   http://blogs.citypages.com/food/2011/10/parasole_restaurants_dipping_into_tip_jar_taking_2_of_wait_staffs_credit_card_tips.php   http://www.tip20.com/restaurant-chain-drops-plan-taking-credit-card-fees-out-of-tips/38  &gt;The tip plan, first reported by the Arkansas Democrat-Gazette, called for passing along part of the debit and credit card fees — about 3 percent of tips on average. That would have meant a waiter would collect $19.40 out of a $20 tip.  http://www.care2.com/causes/restaurant-chain-takes-banking-fees.html   http://restaurants.about.com/b/2008/01/29/employer-takes-servers-tip-money-to-pay-for-credit-card-fees.htm", "Debt is no fun. Getting out of debt to replace it with more debt is no fun. In both cases, you are making an investment in your child's future. That's laudable, but there might be other ways to economize on the education costs. I prefer HELOC debt because I can deduct the interest (as you pointed out) and it usually allows re-borrowing if other cash-flow problems crop up. The downside of borrowing against your house is that your house could be foreclosed if you become insolvent, and you will lose your buffer if you max out the equity now. The same problem exists with a 2nd mortgage. The fact that you would still have a mortgage either way does make the option more attractive though (or less unattractive anyway).", "Probably the easiest way to invest in hotel rooms in the U.S. is to invest in a Real Estate Investment Trust, or REIT.  REITs are securities that invest in real estate and trade like a stock.  There are different REITs that invest in different things: some own office buildings, some residential rentals, some hold mortgages, and some are diversified in lots of different types of real estate.  There are also REITs that are exclusively invested in hotels. REITs are required to pay out at least 90% of their profits as dividends, and there are tax advantages to investing in REITs.   You can search for a REIT on REIT.com's Searchable Directory.  You can select a type (Lodging/Resorts), a stock exchange (NYSE), investment sector (equity), and a listing status (public), and you'll see lots of investments for you to consider.", "Shred it all.  You might want to keep a record going back at most a year, just in case.  But just in case of what?  What is a good idea is to have an electronic record.  It's a good practice to know how your spending changes over time.  Beyond that, it's just a fire hazard. The thing is, I know I'm right in the above paragraph, but I'm a hypocrite:  I have years' worth of paper records of all kinds.  I need to get rid of it.  But I have grown attached.  I have trucked this stuff around in move after move.  I have a skill at taking good care of useless things.  I've even thought of hiring somebody to scan it all in for me, so that I can feel safe shredding all this paper without losing any of the data.  But that's insane!"]}
+{"query": "How will my stock purchase affect my taxes?", "corpus": ["Assuming you are in the US, and are an average joe, the answer to your question is no. Investment costs do not reduce your taxable income for the year you make the investment. They do factor in to the cost basis of your investment and so will affect your taxes in the year you sell the investment. If you want to reduce your taxable income, you could contribute the $5000 to a traditional ira, or 401k, assuming you qualify. Depending on where the account is held, you may then be able to use that $5k to purchase stock in the company you are interested in. The stock would be held in your IRA or 401k account, and would be subject to more restrictions than a normal brokerage account."], "neg": ["Your employer's matching contribution is calculated based on the dollar amounts you end up putting in. The nature of your 401(k) contribution—whether pre-tax or Roth after-tax—doesn't matter with respect to how their match gets calculated, and their match always goes into a pre-tax account, even if you are contributing after-tax. The onus is on you to choose a contribution amount that maximizes your employer match regardless of the nature of your contribution. Maximizing your employer match using Roth after-tax contributions will eat up more of your annual gross salary, but as long as you are willing to do that then you won't leave free employer match money on the table. Roth after-tax contributions don't get the tax deduction inherent in a pre-tax contribution. The tradeoff is that you end up with less take-home pay per period if you contribute the same number of dollars on a Roth after-tax basis to your 401(k) as opposed to on a pre-tax basis. For instance, to make a maximum $18,000 Roth after-tax contribution to a 401(k), it's going to cost you a lot more than $18,000 of your annual gross salary to net the same $18,000 number. (On the flip side, the Roth money is worth more in retirement than pre-tax money, because it won't be subject to taxes then.) However, 401(k) plan contribution amounts are almost always expressed as a percentage of gross salary, i.e. in pre-tax terms, even when electing to make after-tax contributions! So when electing after-tax, one is implicitly accepting that the contribution will cost more than the percentage of gross salary, because you'll need to pay the tax on a gross amount that would yield the same number of dollars but as an after-tax amount.", "If he is dropping leaflets off, consider dropping them off on a Sunday as they won't get caught up with normal post and most of the family will be at home.   See if he can make more links with interior designers, builders etc who can supply work to each other from the jobs they are working on.  Looks like a boss van, good luck.", "\"I recently received a wire of more than $150K into one of my accounts. (Both sender and receiver accounts are US banking institutions.) My bank never contacted me to ask any questions. However, on my statement I noticed a charge called \"\"Analysis Service Charge\"\". I called the bank to ask them about this charge and was informed it was due to internal analysis for the wire transfer. They did this behind the scenes without needing to contact me. I can only assume that their \"\"analysis\"\" did not turn up anything suspicious, and if it had, perhaps they would have contacted me. I wouldn't worry about it even if you do receive a phone call and they ask a few questions. I'd advise to be completely honest; if you aren't doing anything wrong, you shouldn't have anything to worry about. Most likely they'd be calling you just to make sure you actually know about it and were expecting the money.\"", "Dollar General has wanted this forever. They got scared and made a sudden move when they saw Dollar Tree slide in.  But regardless, all three are in trouble. Walmart is looking to set up smaller shops to compete with the dollar stores, and that spells danger for the whole industry. Expect even more downward pricing, somehow.", "This is the thing - you will have to pretty much live it for the next ten plus years (far longer than you need for a PhD). You can become a heart surgeon in less. The question is if you don't make it all the way, would you still be happy?  If you have an interest in financial mathematics, then I would add that it isn't all Citigroup. There are plenty of other places in financial institutions (both large and small) that can be more interesting and possibly less demanding than actuarial work for less work.", "I have no idea about India, but in many countries there are companies that specialize in property management. This means they will take on the business of maintaining the properties, finding tenants, doing paperwork and background checks, collecting rents and evicting tenants if necessary. Obviously for this they require a fee, but essentially the owner gets to sit back and do nothing except collect a cheque every month. In my country some real estate agents are in this business as well, though for 20 apartments I would be looking for a specialized firm.", "I'm glad to hear that someone so senior in their organization has so much respect for the rest of the team. As a student, you often hear how finance is ultra competitive/aggressive. As someone that is very competitive and is also empathetic and mindful of how their words affect others, it's nice to see that preconception proven wrong.   Just had to share my thoughts. Best of luck!"]}
+{"query": "Why is Net Asset Value (NAV) only reported by funds, but not stocks?", "corpus": ["The (assets - liabilities)/#shares of a company is its book value, and that number is included in their reports. It's easy for a fund to release the net asset value on a daily basis because all of its assets (stocks, bonds, and cash) are given values every day by the market.  It's  also necessary to have a real time value for a fund as it will be bought and sold every day. A company can't really do the same thing as it will have much more diverse assets - real estate, cars, inventory, goodwill, etc.  The real time value of those assets doesn't have the same meaning as a fund; those assets are used to earn cash, while a fund's business is only to maximize its net asset value."], "neg": ["As Chris pointed out: If your expenses are covered by the income exactly, as you have said to assume, then you are basically starting with a $40K asset (your starting equity), and ending with a $200K asset (a paid for home, at the same value since you have said to ignore any appreciation). So, to determine what you have earned on the $40K you leveraged 5x, wouldn't it be a matter of computing a CAGR that gets you from $40K to $200K in 30 years? The result would be a nominal return, not a real return. So, if I set up the problem correctly, it should be: $40,000 * (1 + Return)^30 = $200,000 Then solve for Return. It works out to be about 5.51% or so.", "A home upgrade is akin to make your home wonderful- in terms of strength as well as appearance. Be it interior or exterior, both angles are distinguished, but connected with a thread. If the exterior is superb, then the interior should be second-to-none or vice-versa.", "No - we're having fun seeing how long you avoid providing a single example of something you claimed was so universal any single one should suffice. It seems you totally pulled that statement out of your ass and now are so stubborn that admitting it must impact your psyche in some amazing way. So stubborn that you both don't address your claim, admit it is wrong, and yet you call us names for asking you to back up your statement. This is fun.   You still have not listed an empire that did not purchase it's own debt. Your entire argument fails.", "That's very inconvenient if you ask me.  This is my opinion. Anytime I shop for shoes and even when I observe others, different shoes are tried on until one is bought. And I'm not talking about trying on couple pairs either.  Maybe others can guess what shoe will fit on their feet without trying them on.", "Jesus Christ, it's not just the income tax rate. It's all the other bullshit that he'd be required to provide to his employees that would reduce his net income from the business to a point that it is no longer worth his time and stress to deal with it.", "Ask the company if they can make an adjustment for the next paycheck. If they can't then do the following: Increase the number of Federal exemptions by 1. In 2014 a personal exemption reduces your apparent income by $3950.  If you are in the 10 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.10/26) or ~$15. The 13 Paychecks later change it back. If you are in the 15 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.15/26) or ~$23. Then 9 Paychecks later change it back If you are in the 25 % tax bracket and you are paid every two weeks you will see the amount of taxes withheld drop by ($3950*0.10/26) or ~$38. Then 5 paychecks later change it back. Remember the money isn't gone, it has just been transferred prematurely to the federal treasury.  You could also wait until you complete your taxes this spring, then see if you needed to make an adjustment to your exemptions. If you normally get a large refund then you should be increasing your exemptions anyway. If you are always writing a check to the IRS then you weren't getting enough withheld. Also make sure that payroll has the correct numbers. Most companies include the number of federal and state exemptions on the paycheck stub, or the pdf of the stub.", "see http://www.moneysavingexpert.com/travel/cheap-travel-money if you are in the UK wishing to go on holiday outside of the uk"]}
+{"query": "Question about MBS and how it pays", "corpus": ["A security is a class of financial instrument you can trade on the market.  A share of stock is a kind of security, for example, as is a bond. In the case of your mortgage, what happens: You take out a loan for $180k.  The loan has two components. a.  The payment stream (meaning the principal and the interest) from the loan b.  The servicing of the loan, meaning the company who is responsible for accepting payments, giving the resulting income to whomever owns it. Many originating banks, such as my initial lender, do neither of these things - they sell the payment stream to a large bank or consortium (often Fannie Mae) and they also sell the servicing of the loan to another company. The payment stream is the primary value here (the servicing is worth essentially a tip off the top).  The originating bank lends $180k of their own money.  Then they have something that is worth some amount - say $450k total value, $15k per year for 30 years - and they sell it for however much they can get for it.  The actual value of $15k/year for 30 years is somewhere in between - less than $450k more than $180k - since there is risk involved, and the present value is far less.  The originating bank has the benefit of selling that they can then originate more mortgages (and make money off the fees) plus they can reduce their risk exposure. Then a security is created by the bigger bank, where they take a bunch of mortgages of different risk levels and group them together to make something with a very predictable risk quotient.  Very similar to insurance, really, except the other way around.  One mortage will either default or not at some % chance, but it's a one off thing - any good statistician will tell you that you don't do statistics on n=1.  One hundred mortgages, each with some risk level, will very consistently return a particular amount, within a certain error, and thus you have something that people are willing to pay money on the market for."], "neg": ["Your local friendly mod here. I've been trying to quality-control by removing the most egregious of zerohedge posts. Please use the report button whenever you can - it really helps us notice posts that may be inflammatory/sensationalist!  What/Who do you define as scholarly? Or maybe - who do we don't regard as genuinely finance-y? Maybe we can start with a list of sites that are banned/frowned upon.", "In day trading, you're trying to predict the immediate fluctuations of an essentially random system.  In long-term investing, you're trying to assess the strength of a company over a period of time. You also have frequent opportunities to assess your position and either add to it or get out.", "1) Don't get an MBA yet. You should spend ~3-5 years in the industry first.  2) If you think you need Excel classes, you probably need Excel classes. Depending on what type of path you want to take, either learn financial modeling/forecasting or data analysis. Or both. There are a ton of free resources online to get yourself started. [Like this.](http://macabacus.com/)  3) If you need to, start in an ops/support role to build your network. These roles don't require a ton of industry experience, allow you to build your skill set, and (most importantly) allow you to network with people in the industry. I started off in a Market Risk support role at a major bank and now I'm working in front office finance. Just go above and beyond people's expectations, learn as much as possible, and keep an end game goal in mind.", "\"&gt; ...we conclude that the second wage increase to $13 reduced hours worked in low-wage jobs by around 9 percent...  Anyone know what the definition of \"\"low-wage\"\" is?  I am wondering how much of this 9% is low-wage workers being boosted out of the low-wage category.\"", "I don't see that this system is very effective at rewarding productivity, which (particularly in software) is an inherently difficult thing to judge. That's why we've traditionally relied on human managers to make judgments between personnel in regards to compensation.  But yeah, you bet I'm selfish. If I can get paid more than someone else for doing the same job, I'm going to do it. And I'd prefer to work somewhere that allows me to do that.", "We are the most world's largest entertaining corporate events in Escape rooms. We have fabulous entertaining activities for our clients. Our so many clients are very happy after coming here. You can make the rememberable events here with our corporate events broward county. It is a unique opportunity for  those people who want to make the special party in your budget and major events to entertainment. We are one of the finest service provider in  USA. It is the most way to spend the vacation here.", "\"I was able to attend an open discussion on Illinois pensions a few years back.  Dick Ingram, head of the Illinois Teacher's Retirement System spoke, as did a public employee union leader, Governor Quin's budget director and Christine Radogno who is a state lawmaker.  It was eye opening on many levels.  Some of the points that stick with me are:      * The state has never, over 30 years, followed standard practice and used an actuary to determine how much to put into the pension funds each year.  The legislators just pulled numbers out of the air each year.  As a result the pensions have never been properly funded.   The benefits are rich but, according to the people on this panel the main issue is this under funding.     * Some years the state declared a pension holiday and put nothing into the pension funds at all.  When this was brought up the largely union crowd started to turn on Radogno but she held up her hand, said she had voted against that and then commented that the unions all signed off on the pension holidays.  As one the crowd's heads turned to the union rep on the board.  He turned red and stared at the floor.     * 2/3 of the teacher's pension hole is for people already retired.  Changing benefits for current teachers will not help enough.     I asked Mr Ingram how much additional tax he would need to plug the hole in the system he manages.  He answered \"\"double\"\".  I asked for how long.  He said \"\"It doesn't work like that.  I'd need double the current amount forever.\"\"  I came away much better informed but deeply saddened.  Like 69% of the people polled, I want these teachers and public employee to get their money.  I just don't see how it can happen.\""]}
+{"query": "Split buying a house 3 ways. How do I approach this?", "corpus": ["\"Get everything in writing. That includes ownership %, money in, money out, who is allowed to use the place, how much they need to pay the other partners, who pays for repairs, whether to provide 'friends and family' discounts, who is allowed to sell, what happens if someone dies, how is the mortgage set up, what to do if one of you becomes delinquent, etc. etc. etc. Money and friends don't mix. And that's mostly because people have different ideas in their head about what 'fair' means. Anything you don't have in writing, if it comes up in a disagreement, could cause a friendship-ending fight. Even if you are able to agree on every term and condition under the sun, there's still a problem - what if 5 years from now, someone decides that a certain clause isn't fair? Imagine one of you needs to move into the condo because your primary residence was pulled out from under you. They crash at the condo because they have no where else to go. You try to demand payment, but they lost their job. The agreement might say \"\"you must pay the partnership if you use the condo personally, at the standard monthly rate * # of days\"\". But what is the penalty clause - is everything under penalty of eviction, and forced sale of the condo and distribution of profits? Following through on such a penalty means the friendship would be over. You would feel guilty about doing it, and also about not doing it [at the same time, your other partner loses their job, and can't make 1/3rd of the mortgage payments anymore! They need the rent or the bank will foreclose on their house!] etc etc etc Even things like maintenance - are the 3 of you going to do it yourselves? Labour distributed how? Will anyone get a management fee? What about a referral fee for a new renter? Once you've thought of all possible circumstances and rules, and drafted it in writing, go talk to a lawyer, and maybe an accountant. There will be many things you won't have considered yet, and paying a few grand today will save you money and friends in the future.\""], "neg": ["Aside from everyone else's explanation about bundling them with other mortgages, a buddy of mine who worked at a boutique lending group basically said that they KNOW these people can't pay the loans back and thus the bank will be able to take over ownership of the home.  Since **housing prices are guaranteed to go up**, they'll be able to make money once they re-sell the property.", "The company match is not earnings. My company deposits 5% of my income into my 401(k) and it appears nowhere except on the paperwork for the 401(k).  To be clear, it doesn't appear on any paystub or W2.", "\"&gt; its a more efficient way to use the whole cow  And if they add more stuff, then you can even use 150% of the cow! Love those unlabeled additives!  P.S. Ever heard of prions? CJD? Mad Cow Disease? \"\"Using the whole cow\"\" isn't always a good thing.\"", "\"When you have multiple assets available and a risk-free asset (cash or borrowing) you will always end up blending them if you have a reasonable objective function.  However, you seem to have constrained yourself to 100% investment.  Combine that with the fact that you are considering only two assets and you can easily have a solution where only one asset is desired in the portfolio.  The fact that you describe the US fund as \"\"dominating\"\" the forign fund indicates that this may be the case for you.  Ordinarily diversification benefits the overall portfolio even if one asset \"\"dominates\"\" another but it may not in your special case. Notice that these funds are both already highly diversified, so all you are getting is cross-border diversification by getting more than one.  That may be why you are getting the solution you are.  I've seen a lot of suggested allocations that have weights similar to what you are using. Finding an optimal portfolio given a vector of expected returns and a covariance matrix is very easy, with some reliable results.  Fancy models get pretty much the same kinds of answers as simple ones.  However, getting a good covariance matrix is hard and getting a good expected return vector is all but impossible.  Unfortunately portfolio results are very sensitive to these inputs.  For that reason, most of us use portfolio theory to guide our intuition, but seldom do the math for our own portfolio.  In any model you use, your weak link is the expected return and covariance.  More sophisticated models don't usually help produce a more reasonable result. For that reason, your original strategy (80-20) sounds pretty good to me.  Not sure why you are not diversifying outside of equities, but I suppose you have your reasons.\"", "\"Similar story.  I was in the market for an electric smoker.  By sheer luck, the exact unit I wanted went on a very good sale at Lowe's.  I checked online to see if the nearest Lowe's had any in stock.  The system showed only one in stock, and I knew it would go fast at that price, so I immediately ordered it for in-store pickup.  Several hours later, I still hadn't gotten the \"\"your pickup is ready\"\" email, so I called the 1-800 customer service line, and was basically told that it should be ready but that the stores often didn't do what needed to be done to trigger the final email.  I drove over to Lowe's, took my printed order confirmation in to the service desk, and was met with three staff members who acted like they had never heard of an online order before.  They discussed things amongst themselves, then engaged a manager, who was similarly flummoxed.  After 20 minutes of runaround, I was getting pretty agitated, and finally just walked over to the grill/smoker area, found the smoker, still on the shelf, took it back to the desk and told them that I was leaving.  They seemed OK with that.    I asked if they needed to check my printout, or scan the box, or get me a receipt, and they all agreed that they did not.  I walked out with no receipt, no proof of purchase (having given my printout to them earlier), and carrying merchandise that I picked myself, and they all seemed pretty happy that it had turned out that way.  Good fucking luck, Lowe's.  With service like that, you'll need it.\"", "The suffix represents the stock exchange the stock is traded on. N represents the New York Stock Exchange and O represents the Nasdaq. Sometimes a stock can be listed on more than one exchange so the suffix will give you an indication of which exchange the stock is on. For example the Australian company BHP Billiton Ltd is listed on multiple exchanges so is given a different suffix for the different exchanges (especially when the code is the same for each exchange). Below are a few examples of BHP:", "\"If you want your bank to pay $1 to a beneficiary Bob, then the service (no matter how implemented) needs to result in Bob's bank saying to Bob \"\"Hey, I owe you $1\"\".    The usual way how this is done consists of two parts - your bank needs to somehow tell Bob's bank \"\"hey guys, do us a favor and please give Bob $1 with a message from the sender\"\", and your bank needs to convince the other bank that they'll pay for (cover) that. This is the main source for the delays in international payments - there are thousands of banks, and most of possible pairs have no legal contact between themselves whatsoever, no bilateral agreements, no trust and no reasonable enforcement mechanism for small claims. If I'm Bob's bank, then a random bank from anywhere from Switzerland to Nigeria can send me an instruction \"\"give Bob $1, we'll make it up for you\"\", the SWIFT network is a common way of doing this. However, most likely I'm going to give Bob the money only after I receive the funds somehow, which means that they have given the money to some institution I work with. For payments within a single country, it often is a centralized exchange or a central bank, and the payment speed is then determined by the details of that particular single payment network - e.g. UK Faster Payments or the various systems used in USA. For international payments, it may require a chain of multiple intermediaries (correspondent banks) - for example, a payment of $1mm from Kazakhstan to China will likely involve the Kazakhstan bank asking their main correspondent in USA (some major bank such as Chase JPMorgan) to give the money to the relevant chinese bank's correspondent in USA (say, Citi) to then give the money to that chinese bank to then give the money to the actual recipient. Each of those steps can happen because those entities have bilateral agreements, trust and accounts with each other; and each of those steps generally takes time and verification. If you want all payments to happen instantly, then you need all institutions to join a single binding payment system. It's not as easy as it sounds, as it is a nightmare of jurisdiction - for example, if you'd want me (as Bob's bank) to credit Bob instantly, then the system needs to provide solid guarantees that I would get paid even if (a) the payer institution changes its mind, made a mistake or intentional fraud; (b) the payer institution goes insolvent; (c) the system provider gets insolvent. Providing such guarantees is expensive, they need to be backed by multi-billion capital, and they're unrealistic to enforce across jurisdictions (e.g. would an Iranian bank get recourse if some funds got blocked because of USA sanctions). The biggest such project as far as I know is SEPA, across most of Europe. Visa and MasterCard networks perform the same function - a merchant gets paid by the CC network even if the payer can't pay his CC bill or the paying bank goes insolvent.\""]}
+{"query": "Advantages/Disadvantages to refinancing online?", "corpus": ["If you can deal with phone calls instead of a face to face meeting, for the average person with an average refinance online tools just offer another way to shop for deals. For new mortgages, I think having a person you can meet face to face will avoid problems, but for just a simple refi, online is one of the places you should check. Compete your current mortgage company, your bank (hopefully credit union), a local broker or two and the online places. The more competition you have, the more power you have in making a good choice."], "neg": ["I never understand the mindset of infrastructure being paid for through private investment. On a municipal level it makes sense that development fees can help a city pay to replace a bridge that leads to the development or put in some new parks, but considering that infrastructure like rail lines and dams are the big concern, I don't really see private entities taking a big interest in them. It would've really helped Houston if private investment was funnelled into stormwater management while developing into a major suburban centre. Based on the evidence shown, those private investors didn't have major concerns for improving the city's infrastructure and just did what they had to in order to be allowed to put in their development.  Infrastructure belongs in the public sphere. Things like rail, highways, dams and coastal protection are in the public's best interest. What does a businessman have to gain by paying to electrify a rail line or put in new traffic signals at an intersection?", "This should get interesting. BEA is a chronic under-performer, poorly managed and shareholders are suffering and Paul Singer is looking out for his shareholders. David Li has incredible political and social influence in HK and China. Elliott does not stand a chance. Paul Singer wants David to bow out with two times BEA’s current book value, and everyone would win but David's ego is not calculated into this equation.", "Actually, I don't know if you remember, but the security pre 9/11 was pretty good. They had a vested interest in doing their jobs as they were hired by the airport and had deliverables that weren't nationalized from a monolithic organization that is guaranteed funds no matter what.  Having solid locking doors on the cockpit has now prevented future 9/11 attacks. Quite honestly, the odds of you being in a terrorist attack pre 9/11 were million s times less than getting into a car accident. So, no, I don't think 9/11 should be used opportunistically to drastically push an agenda via security theater that has no purpose other than to test the tolerance of the population for rights reduction.", "Online payment service providers should allow you to agree to payments from customers and secure your company against scams. To fight against innovative scammers, you need to take additional safety measures in defending your business. Improving your payment security should be a concern to website associated with scams", "Very little, as you expected. The CD locks the rate in, meaning you get the rate for sure. The savings account can change any day, so it could fall below the CD's rate. Chances are small, obviously, but it is theoretically possible. If you pay attention, if this happens, you could simply moving it to a CD then (if it is still offered). People with little understanding that want 'security' might be suckered into buying a CD; or there could be versions offered where all the interest comes on the last day (so you delay taxes).", "\"As a consumer, I guess \"\"yay\"\" is in order, but I have to side with the marketplace vendors on this one--it is just bad business to force this policy on sellers. Not everyone has the ability to eat the refund losses that Amazon does.\"", "frostbank.com is the closest thing I've found, so accepting this (my own) answer :) EDIT: editing from my comment earlier: frostbank.com has free incoming international wires, so that's a partial solution. I confirmed this works by depositing $1 (no min deposit requirement) and wiring $100 from a non-US bank. Worked great, no fees, and ACH'd it to my main back, no problems/fees. No outgoing international wires, alas."]}
+{"query": "Possibility to buy index funds and individual funds in a Canadian TFSA", "corpus": ["\"This page from the CRA website details the types of investments you can hold in a TFSA. You can hold individual shares, including ETFs, traded on any \"\"designated stock exchange\"\" in addition to the other types of investment you have listed.  Here is a list of designated stock exchanges provided by the Department of Finance.  As you can see, it includes pretty well every major stock exchange in the developed world. If your bank's TFSA only offers \"\"mutual funds, GICs and saving deposits\"\" then you need to open a TFSA with a different bank or a stock broking company with an execution only service that offers TFSA accounts.  Almost all of the big banks will do this.  I use Scotia iTrade, HSBC Invest Direct, and TD, though my TFSA's are all with HSBC currently.  You will simply provide them with details of your bank account in order to facilitate money transfers/TFSA contributions. Since purchasing foreign shares involves changing your Canadian dollars into a foreign currency, one thing to watch out for when purchasing foreign shares is the potential for high foreign exchange spreads.  They can be excessive in proportion to the investment being made.  My experience is that HSBC offers by far the best spreads on FX, but you need to exchange a minimum of $10,000 in order to obtain a decent spread (typically between 0.25% and 0.5%).  You may also wish to note that you can buy unhedged ETFs for the US and European markets on the Toronto exchange.  This means you are paying next to nothing on the spread, though you obviously are still carrying the currency risk.  For example, an unhedged S&P500 trades under the code ZSP (BMO unhedged) or XUS (iShares unhedged). In addition, it is important to consider that commissions for trades on foreign markets may be much higher than those on a Canadian exchange.  This is not always the case.  HSBC charge me a flat rate of $6.88 for both Toronto and New York trades, but for London they would charge up to 0.5% depending on the size of the trade.  Some foreign exchanges carry additional trading costs.  For example, London has a 0.5% stamp duty on purchases. EDIT One final thing worth mentioning is that, in my experience,  holding US securities means that you will be required to register with the US tax authorities and with those US exchanges upon which you are trading.  This just means fill out a number of different forms which will be provided by your stock broker. Exchange registrations can be done electronically, however US tax authority registration must be submitted in writing.  Dividends you receive will be net of US withholding taxes.  I am not aware of any capital gains reporting requirements to US authorities.\""], "neg": ["We've also had pretty freak weather throughout the US this past year doing quite a bit of damage.  If I recall correctly, there's been major flooding along the Mississippi River in Louisiana that's wiped out a good bit of rice farmland, serious drought throughout Texas (though that may be lessening of late), and a frost in Florida that took out a swath of the strawberry crop.  Now, maybe that's the sort of stuff that happens every year and people get by regardless, but still.", "One reason why you may have gotten this advice is that stocks have an expected real return over time, while commodities do not. Therefore, when gambling on individual stocks, odds are in your favor that they will ultimately go up over time. You may do better or worse than the market as a whole, but they will likely go up as the whole market, on average, rises over time. Commodities, on the other hand, have no expected real return. It is more zero-sum. In fact, after costs, a real loss should be expected on average, making gambling in here more risky.", "Taxing citizens on global income caused by tax inversion, not the cause of tax inversion.  If yourwebsite.com makes $1mil, and you pay yourwebsite.ca $1m for rights to the name, that's inversion.  Your company, and you, as the owner, have $1m income in Canada.  All of which came from US revenue.  I'm not saying the tax system is great or anything.  There just seems to be a miss understanding.", "&gt;Like TV, where the shows are worth nothing       I'm pretty sure people work on television shows and want to get paid.  I still don't understand the concept of immediate public domain for performances.  If I pony up to put on a production, why does the fact that that production was recorded make it free to everyone?", "I mean...Sure, tomatoes are fairly constant, but there is always innovation in supply chain, farming technology, etc. I'm not an expert in the grocery industry, but I would bet that there are many innovations to be made in organic, sustainable farming.  These are all reliant on a thriving grocery market. If there was a total monopoly there would be no incentive to improve how our groceries are produced or delivered.", "\"There really isn't any good ways that I'm aware of. (The exception is in New York or California, where hospitals must post prices.) The law sets price floors on many procedures by setting Medicare and Medicaid reimbursement rates. As a result, the \"\"list price\"\" for a given procedure is dramatically inflated, and various health insurers negotiate rates somewhere in the middle. I'd recommend talking to the business offices or financial counselors at medical groups that you do business with. Ask about \"\"self pay discounts\"\" or other programs appropriate for folks in your position.\"", "Since I have 10k in my account after down-payment, will I get a   good interest rate on the loan? When the bank considers your loan, they will see $70K. Regardless, they will want to see certain amount of savings that would allow you to continue paying your loan in case of an emergency, and $10K might not be enough. I was planning to put down 15%, but I have been told that I should buy   something called PMI to satisfy the rest 5% and if I take that my   interest will be more and sometimes, bank will not go for anybody who   pays less than 20%. Is that true? Yes. After downpayment + closing costs, how much money in the savings   accounts, is the bank looking for to say that I am a good buyer? Depends on the bank, my wild guess would be they're looking for several months' worth of loan payments (you should have ~6 months worth of savings for emergencies, regardless of loans)."]}
+{"query": "Under what circumstance will the IRS charge you a late-payment penalty for taxes?", "corpus": ["\"The IRS provides a little more information on the subject on this FAQ: Will I be charged interest and penalties for filing and paying my taxes late?: If you did not pay your tax on time, you will generally have to pay a late-payment penalty, which is also called a failure to pay penalty. Some guidance on what constitutes \"\"reasonable cause\"\" is found on the IRS page Penalty Relief Due to Reasonable Cause: The IRS will consider any sound reason for failing to file a tax return, make a deposit, or pay tax when due. Sound reasons, if established, include: Note: A lack of funds, in and of itself, is not reasonable cause for failure to file or pay on time. However, the reasons for the lack of funds may meet reasonable cause criteria for the failure-to-pay penalty. In this article from U.S. News and World Report, it is suggested that the IRS will generally waive the penalty one time, if you have a clean tax history and ask for the penalty to be waived.  It is definitely worth asking them to waive the penalty.\""], "neg": ["I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:  - [/r/talkbusiness] [Interview with AlWaleed bin Talal](https://np.reddit.com/r/talkbusiness/comments/78ekl2/interview_with_alwaleed_bin_talal/)  [](#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)", "\"I agree for the most part. I thought about them, I even thought about money supply and some others. But the point was mainly that businesses as a whole have been doing bad for not just this year or since 2008 but over a decade, not enough to account for inflation. This is grounds that the economy is in a recession, and will be. Bond's aren't really an investment in business as they are loaning money to the government on interest so they don't portray whether the economy is in recession or not.  The premise was that a recession is/has occurred, not that money cannot be made in a good portfolio.  Perhaps you didn't fully understand my last point, I don't believe gold and silver are the bubble. I believe the dollar is the bubble and it has been bursting since 2000. Commodity prices are merely a sign of the bursting bubble. Given that we're in recession, the only way to \"\"pull-out\"\" as it is apparent people have been doing for the past 10 years, is to buy real assets and that this creates a positive feedback loop into devaluing the dollar. Not everyone will pull out, but most will. For a long while the assets have had little exposure to the inflation of the dollar, and now it's catching up to the assets. Ergo assets are undervalued, they are not the bubble.\"", "From the letter you link: Our performance, relatively, is likely to be better in a bear market than in a bull market so that   deductions made from the above results should be tempered by the fact that it was the type of year when we   should have done relatively well. In a year when the general market had a substantial advance I would be well   satisfied to match the advance of the Averages. Putting those two sentences together, the word relatively means that his funds perform better than the market in bear markets and perform about the same as the overall market in bull markets. It does not mean that absolute performance is better in bear markets than bull markets. Later on he states  This policy should lead to superior results in bear markets and average performance in bull markets.", "The principal of the contribution can definitely be withdrawn tax-free and penalty-free. However, there is a section that makes me think that the earnings part may be subject to penalty in addition to tax. In Publication 590-A, under Traditional IRAs -> When Can You Withdraw or Use Assets? -> Contributions Returned Before Due Date of Return -> Early Distributions Tax, it says: The 10% additional tax on distributions made before you reach age 59½   does not apply to these tax-free withdrawals of your contributions.   However, the distribution of interest or other income must be reported   on Form 5329 and, unless the distribution qualifies as an exception to   the age 59½ rule, it will be subject to this tax. This section is only specifically about the return of contributions before the due date of return, not a general withdrawal (as you can see from the first sentence that the penalty doesn't apply to contributions, which wouldn't be true of general withdrawals). Therefore, the second sentence must be about the earnings part of the withdrawal that you must make together with the contribution part as part of the return of contributions before the due date of the return. If the penalty it is talking about is only about other types of withdrawals and doesn't apply to the earnings part of the return of contribution before the due date of the return, then this sentence wouldn't make sense as it's in a part that's only about return of contribution before the due date of the return.", "&gt;Well, at least you're honest about the fact that you're advocating robbery.  Unfortunately, morals can't pay medical bills.  &gt;How long do you think that'll work before people just say fuck it, and start pointing guns of their own?   Soon, I think.  &gt;That is how we became a country after all.  It's also how the welfare system emerged in the first place.", "Latest, worldwide is focus on secure energy underscores the need for re-evaluating all power alternatives, mainly the ones that are clean and renewable. because despite the fact that the worldwide economy is popping out of a current recession, oil prices are climbing and the call for alternative renewable assets is constantly developing. Indeed, the alternative energy marketplace is one of the few markets that have visible substantial increase at some stage in the recent recession of the ultimate two years. Brazil Renewable Energy resources are assets of strength that are continuously replenished. One thing is clear; the need for more efficient use of energy with the integration of renewable strength sources is present.", "I agree with the comments so far. Access doesn't equal ownership. There are also different levels of access. E.g. your financial advisor can have access to your retirement account via power of attorney, but only ability to add or change things, not withdraw. Another consideration is when a creditor tries to garnish wages / bank accounts, it needs to find the accounts first. This could be done by running a credit report via SSN. My guess is an account with access-only rights won't show up on such a report. I suppose the court could subpoena bank information. But I'm not an attorney so please check with a professional."]}
+{"query": "Saving for a non-necessity", "corpus": ["Total income - mandatory spending (ie bills) = discretionary income.  Make a budget and calculate how much discretionary income you have each pay period. Save some fraction of your discretionary income towards this purchase. Pull the trigger when you have enough saved.  By thinking this way, you ensure that the PS is robbing from movies, dining out, booze, etc instead of taking from rent money or the electric bill. Do not use debt to make this purchase. It would be wise to put off this purchase until you have a solid emergency cash reserve that can sustain you if life throws you a curve ball. You should also make sure to eliminate any bad debt, like credit card debt, before splurging on a new gaming console."], "neg": ["The government needs me to function. It can jail me, strip me of my property and life if it seems fit. It is absolutely accountable to you. I pay the salaries of the government officials.   The government needs its just amount to function properly because some people rely on the government the way the government relies on the people.   You're out of your mind if you think trickle down economics works. It doesn't at macro levels. That's why the country's worse off economically after supply side theories are implemented.   Would not having roads, schools, police forces be a better option?", "Well, yes it does, but just because the debt is trading at 80 cents on the dollar doesn't mean that the company can actually legally get away with paying only 80 cents on the dollar. They would have to come to an agreement with the debt holders first. And perhaps they could, but the more conservative approach is to use the book value of the debt.  Or what about debt that's trading at a premium to its face value, because, say, interest rates have come down relative to the time the debt was issued? The amount that the conpany owes to the debt holders hasn't suddenly gone up.", "This is what I, as a Canadian, keep saying.  What remains united about the USA? I see is divided ideas, diametrically opposed opinions, voting, spending habits, etc. The opposition to one side's ideas run so deep that families avoid talking about it with the other side, even though they're in the same family.  There are certainly differences of opinion in Canada as well, but it seems we still talk enough about most things that we can find some common ground to use moving forward.", "Markets react to future possibilities.  Trump has promises future possibilities of regulation and tax cuts .  As well as jobs coming back .  Who knows if he will deliver .  At this point in time , it doesn't matter", "In addition to the expatriation case already mentioned by Ben Miller, traders/investors are required to use mark-to-market accounting on certain investments.  These go by Section 1256 contracts due to the part of the law  that defines them.  Mark-to-market is also required on straddles (combination of a long and and a short position in equities that are expected to vary inversely to each other). Mark-to-market means that you have to treat the positions as if you closed them at their end-of-year market value (even if you still have the position across the new year).", "Full boiler service give you confidence that all the gas appliances are working properly. This service is very essential, if you own commercial places such as school, hostel, resort, fitness club and others, because you’ve to deal with numerous of customers, if your gas appliances are not working properly. Keep your gadget in good working order, save your money.", "its not against the rules anymore, ever since uber lost one of its many lawsuits, i think it was deemed to be in violation of certain state laws. With that said, it was a concession to drivers especially after uber cut rates to bare bones and drivers weren't making any money at all. really, tips just subsidize drivers lost income from rate cuts that uber used to kill competition over the years, drivers arent making anywhere near what they made using uber in 13/14/15 and the promises of increased ridership never panned out, not to mention the disasters that were uber pool, uber driverless (compounded by a rate cut at the same time making it look like an intimidation tactic to drivers), etc.  I drove for both only until i got the bonuses, job sucks, still find glitter in my car (its been 2 fucking years), and my cynicism was reaffirmed by the experience, I wouldn't mind if uber died and left lyft to pick at its decaying corpse. Hell, I wouldnt mind if Travis kal-whatever got hit by an ex uberdriver and left for buzzards to pick at his decaying corpse, guys a douche."]}
+{"query": "Valuing a company and comparing to share price", "corpus": ["There are books on the subject of valuing stocks. P/E ratio has nothing directly to do with the value of a company. It may be an indication that the stock is undervalued or overvalued, but does not indicate the value itself. The direct value of company is what it would fetch if it was liquidated. For example, if you bought a dry cleaner and sold all of the equipment and receivables, how much would you get? To value a living company, you can treat it like a bond. For example, assume the company generates $1 million in profit every year and has a liquidation value of $2 million. Given the risk profile of the business, let's say we would like to make 8% on average per year, then the value of the business is approximately $1/0.08 + $2 = $14.5 million to us. To someone who expects to make more or less the value might be different. If the company has growth potential, you can adjust this figure by estimating the estimated income at different percentage chances of growth and decline, a growth curve so to speak. The value is then the net area under this curve.  Of course, if you do this for NYSE and most NASDAQ stocks you will find that they have a capitalization way over these amounts. That is because they are being used as a store of wealth. People are buying the stocks just as a way to store money, not necessarily make a profit. It's kind of like buying land. Even though the land may never give you a penny of profit, you know you can always sell it and get your money back. Because of this, it is difficult to value high-profile equities. You are dealing with human psychology, not pennies and dollars."], "neg": ["As you can see by his username this guy works in IT.  I will explain for those who aren’t in the industry.  In IT demand for employees has never been higher.  It is crazy right now. This means it is hard to get talent, particularly good talent which can be many times more productive than bad ones.  Now Amazon is a tech company fundamentally.  What many may not realize is Amazon is also the world’s largest hosting platform too.  For example, Reddit and Netflix are on their systems.  So they aren’t just a store, they do a lot of everyone else's tech too.  This means they need a shit-tonne of good tech and related people.  So the location will likely hinge on where the can find good staff.  However, as OP just said Amazon has a terrible reputation in the industry.  So this makes this even more difficult as everyone hates them and no one will move for them, and they need a lot of good people which are in high demand elsewhere.  This is what their decision will rest on.  Tax breaks and all are perks, but they need to find 50,000 experienced employees to fill this thing, everything else is secondary.", "I use a bloomberg terminal daily, my biggest gripe is that 9 of 10 of the times you interact with the customer support they are utterly incompetent. I've heard them tell me their data team has gone home for the weekend far too many times at 12pm on a friday.", "It's legal. I have documentation to prove it. Also a location and phone number for said legal weed shop. On top of all that I trust my celeb friend implicitly. Why would she try to fuck me over?", "It's the physiological impact it has. If you took a loan to buy a home for $500k and you recently had it appraised for $450k you are more inclined to skip out on any home remodeling projects.   Also as ShakeyBobWillis pointed out it can be to your financial benefit to just walk away from an underwater mortgage. This creates even more glut in the marketplace.", "You fully support the free market.   Good for you. I support the worker over the corporation. What the fuck is the point of having a job(s!) which don't support you? You can go on and on about market equilibrium or whatever. Flat out I support raising the minimum wage. I support ending corporate welfare. I think this country has the means to support anyone willing to work as hard as her to make sure she and her kids have the very basics.   Define value for me.... Not everyone worships money or the 'free' market. I get what sub were on. Maybe you're a super practical person. But try and imagine you have her life. No life is not fair, slavery wasn't fair but humans tried to put an end to that. If you think it's ok for this to be how it is, we have nothing to speak further about.   And to your hypothetical- no I cannot come up with a number, congratulations. Bet if you went over to personal finance, gave them a location for this hypothetical, they would come up with a smaller range of numbers than you think. Also the argument that a teenager doesn't need to be paid a living wage is ridiculous. It's the exact argument that's been used to under pay women.   Maybe empathizing on this scenario is beyond you.", "You're talking about NQO - non-qualified stock options. Even assuming the whole scheme is going to work, the way NQO are taxed is that the difference between the fair market value and the strike price is considered income to you and is taxed as salary. You'll save nothing, and will add a huge headache and additional costs of IPO and SEC regulations.", "\"You've asked eleven different questions here.  Therefore, The first thing I'd recommend is this: Don't panic. Seek answers to your questions systematically, one at a time.  Search this site (and others) to see if there are answers to some of them.  You're in good shape if for no other reason than you're asking these when you're young. Investing and saving are great things to do, but you also have time going for you.  I recommend that you use your \"\"other eight hours per day\"\" to build up other income streams.  That potentially will get you far more than a 2% deposit. Any investment can be risky or safe.  It depends on both your personal context and that of the larger economy.  The best answers will come from your own research and from your advisors (since they will be able to see where you are financially, and in life).\""]}
+{"query": "Apartment lease renewal - is this rate increase normal?", "corpus": ["\"Should you negotiate? Yes, what harm can it possibly do? The landlord is unlikely to come back and say \"\"Because you tried to negotiate, I'm putting the rent up by 10% instead.\"\", or to evict a paying tenant merely because they tried to negotiate. Is the proposed rent increase \"\"normal\"\"? Yes. Landlords will generally try to get as high a rent as they can.\""], "neg": ["While I don't disagree with the other answers as far as CD laddering goes (at least in principle), three months CDs are currently getting much lower rates than money market accounts, at least according to http://www.bankrate.com.  A savings account is also more liquid than CDs. Bonds are another option, and they can generally be liquidated quickly on the secondary market.  However, they can go down in value if interest rates rise (actually this is true of CDs as well--there is a secondary market, though  I believe only for brokerage CDs?). Bottom line, A high yield savings account is likely your best best.  As others noted, you should think of your emergency fund as savings, not investment.", "Your specialty is a lack of versatility.  Why does yesterday's skillset entitle you to tomorrow's paycheck?  We're paying for seniority often times, but I've done much more work than those of older persuasion when I worked in programming.  They were lazy, most of them.  When you put a gen in a comfy chair, they get a fat ass and sometimes a head to match.", "\"Agreed.  &gt;Yes: Android is way more fragmented, and has many more \"\"shitty\"\" devices, but we're talking basic messaging here, not games or complicated shit.     Android is no longer as shitty as it used to be. Th latest versions of Android are just as clean and good as iOS.    Maybe it's me but Apple is getting desparate day by day. I really wonder if they are ever going to release another product as successful as the iPhone, iPad or MacBook.\"", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.reuters.com/article/us-usa-debt-mulvaney-idUSKBN1962BR?il=0) reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; WASHINGTON The White House has not settled on a plan for working with Congress to raise the federal debt limit, U.S. budget director Mick Mulvaney said on Thursday, even as the deadline loomed for the government to increase its borrowing authority.  &gt; The White House has sent mixed signals on how the debt limit should be handled by lawmakers.  &gt; Mulvaney, a conservative Republican, was well known for pushing to use the debt limit as leverage to get spending cuts during his time in Congress before he was tapped to be budget director.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6hh0dy/white_house_does_not_yet_have_plan_on_debt_limit/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~145260 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*: **debt**^#1 **limit**^#2 **Mulvaney**^#3 **Congress**^#4 **White**^#5\"", "There's only one real list that states what people think stock prices should be, and that's the stocks order book. That lists the prices at which stock owners are willing to buy stocks now, and the price that buyers are willing to pay.  A secondary measure is the corresponding options price. Anything else is just an opinion and not backed by money.", "\"The goal of the single-fund with a retirement date is that they do the rebalancing for you.   They have some set of magic ratios (specific to each fund) that go something like this: Note: I completely made up those numbers and asset mix. When you invest in the \"\"Mutual-Fund Super Account 2025 fund\"\" you get the benefit that in 2015 (10 years until retirement) they automatically change your asset mix and when you hit 2025, they do it again.   You can replace the functionality by being on top of your rebalancing. That being said, I don't think you need to exactly match the fund choices they provide, just research asset allocation strategies and remember to adjust them as you get closer to retirement.\"", "On topic of Healthcare needs, I think it depend on individual.  For example, my employer's dental plan offer PPO $34 per month and DMO $12 per month. I have my favor dentist that I have been going for years. He only accept PPO. I already had most of my dental works done so I only use him for teeth clean. He charge $100 without insurance and free with insurance. I can only use my insurance for teeth clean twice a year so $34x12 = $408 vs $200. If I go with DMO, I won't get to see my doctor and since I get my teeth once a year why not just save that money and go to my favor doctor instead the DMO doctors and if I need major dental works done which isn't immediate. I can go to Taiwan for dental works that is way cheaper than U.S.  I think if you're a healthy young man/women. You should put more money toward your retirement and only keep insurance for emergency. You can do a medical tourism mentioned in 60 minutes that can be more cost effective and those doctors are U.S. trained.  For older folks, a full Health care insurance is more needed than retirement. Just my two cents."]}
+{"query": "I thought student loans didn't have interest, or at least very low interest? [UK]", "corpus": ["From the description, you have a post-1998 income contingent loan. The interest rate on those is currently 1.5% but it has varied quite a bit in the last few years due to the formula used to calculate it, which is either the inflation rate (RPI), or 1% + the highest base rate across a group of banks - whichever is smaller. This is indeed really cheap credit compared to any commercial loan you could get, though whether you should indeed just repay the minimum depends on making a proper comparison with the return on any spare money you could get after tax elsewhere. There is a table of previous interest rates. From your description I think you've had the loan for about 4 years - your final year of uni, one year of working without repayments and then two years of repayments. A very rough estimate is that you would have been charged about £300 of interest over that period. So there's still an apparent mismatch, though since both you and I made rough calculations it may be that a more precise check resolves it. But the other thing is that you should check what the date on the statement is. Once you start repaying, statements are sent for a period ending 5th April of each year. So you may well not be seeing the effect of several months of repayments since April on the statement. Finally, there's apparently an online facility you can use to get an up to date balance, though the administration of the loans repaid via PAYE is notoriously inefficient so there may well be a significant lag between a payment being made and it being reflected in your balance, though the effect should still be backdated to when you actually made it."], "neg": ["For a complete eye test, Sydney CBD, get in touch with Personal Eyes Optometry - a specialist provider of professional eye care solutions and quality eyewear. Our services include comprehensive eye examinations by experts, retinal imaging examinations, as well as emergency eye care for clients. Book an appointment today!", "I wasn’t disagreeing with Trump’s plan.  I never said I did.  I don’t agree with Trump’s methods, though.  No irony here.  I want to come up with a solution everyone can agree on.  But what I’ve heard from Republicans and Democrats is a refusal to work together.  So I am trying to find solutions that bring people together.  What does Trump’s agenda have to do with it?  His agenda isn’t my goal set.  Edit:  Also, that link you posted was as one sided as everything else!  It was not what I am trying to accomplish!  You don’t work together by ignoring criticisms and proclaiming how great you’ve done.", "\"In *[United States vs. O'Hagan](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/United_States_v._O%27Hagan)* the Supreme Court established the precedent of interpreting SEC rule 10(b) using the \"\"misappropriation theory\"\". The theory establishes that:  &gt; misappropriating confidential information for securities trading purposes, in breach of a duty owed to the source of that information, gives rise to a duty to disclose or abstain.   You're correct that from a legal perspective the rules are anything but clear outside of company insiders. However, your own admission is consistent with what anyone in the securities industry knows is true - if you trade on material non-public information, you risk being charged.  I think most would conclude that it's unethical irrespective of the letter of the law. It damages the integrity and functioning of markets. Furthermore, if the law was clarified, I think it's highly unlikely it would state \"\"trading on material non-public information is permissible for anyone who is not a company insider\"\". Instead, I would expect it to be consistent with \"\"Trading on material non-public information is illegal. If in doubt, abstain.\"\" And this is exactly what the government officials should be doing - abstaining.\"", "It's an artifact of risk-neutral pricing, but the intuition is this:  A call option can be viewed as a levered equity position - meaning, you can get the same exposure by borrowing money and buying the stock.    Say you can buy some call options for $150 with a position delta of 1 (so it looks just like the stock).  You could also buy the stock outright for $1000 (by borrowing $850 at the risk-free rate and using your $150 cash).  If the risk-free rate rises, your cost of carry on the stock position increases.  In the case of the call option, the change in price can be viewed as the cost of *leverage* increasing.", "Typically the power of capitalized interest would work in your favor and you could carry the loan paying it down while investing the original sum which would earn interest. BUT you aren't going to get any sort of return to compare with 15% so pay off that loan immediately. Also contrary to popular belief (and reiterated here) paying off incurred balance on your credit card every month is responsible use of credit but it will not do much for your credit score. The score ultimately means your ability to pay your bills and most importantly your willingness to pay interest, i.e. revolving the borrowed money. At least in the consumer market where the product they want you to buy is paying monthly interest charges.", "\"If you're curious, here are my goals behind this silly madness You said it... The last two words, I mean...:-) If you're auditing your statements - why do you need to keep the info after the audit? You got the statement for last month, you verified that the Starbucks charge that appears there is the same as in your receipts - why keeping them further? Done, no $10 dripping, throw them away. Why do you need to keep your refrigerator owner's manual? What for? You don't know how to operate a refrigerator? You don't know who the manufacturer is to look it up online in case you do need later? Read it once, mark the maintenance details in your calendar (like: TODO: Change the water filter in 3 months), that's it. Done. Throw it away (to the paper recycle bin). You need the receipt as a proof of purchase for warranty? Make a \"\"warranty\"\" folder and put all of them there, why in expenses? You don't buy a refrigerator every months. That's it, this way you've eliminated the need to keep monthly expenses folders. Either throw stuff away after the audit or keep it filed where you really need it. You only need a folder for two months at most (last and current), not for 12 months in each of the previous 4 years.\"", "Massive spending cut (pension reform mostly) with a temporary tax increase. It has to be temporary because as /u/DrudgeBreitbart pointed out, taxes are already high in the state.   They really need to do away with flat income taxes permanently as well."]}
+{"query": "Can an ETF perform differently than its holdings?", "corpus": ["The Creation/Redemption mechanism is how shares of an ETF are created or redeemed as needed and thus is where there can be differences in what the value of the holdings can be versus the trading price. If the ETF is thinly traded, then the difference could be big as more volume would be where the mechanism could kick in as generally there are blocks required so the mechanism usually created or redeemed in lots of 50,000 shares I believe. From the link where AP=Authorized Participant: With ETFs, APs do most of the buying and selling. When APs sense   demand for additional shares of an ETF—which manifests itself when the   ETF share price trades at a premium to its NAV—they go into the market   and create new shares. When the APs sense demand from investors   looking to redeem—which manifests itself when the ETF share price   trades at a discount—they process redemptions. So, suppose the NAV of the ETF is $20/share and the trading price is $30/share. The AP can buy the underlying securities for $20/share in a bulk order that equates to 50,000 shares of the ETF and exchange the underlying shares for new shares in the ETF. Then the AP can turn around and sell those new ETF shares for $30/share and pocket the gain. If you switch the prices around, the AP would then take the ETF shares and exchange them for the underlying securities in the same way and make a profit on the difference. SEC also notes this same process."], "neg": ["Get a credit card is NOT the answer. The reason people have a bad (or no) credit score is often because they're new to the country, have just turned 18, have previously fallen into arrears or are just bad with money. Getting a credit card is risky because, if you don't stay on top of your payments, it'll just damage your score even more.  Now, it sounds like I hate credit cards - but I don't, and they do have their benefits. But avoid them if possible because they can be more hassle than they're worth (ie, paying the credit back on-time, cancelling accounts when the interest comes in, moving money in and out of accounts). It's risky borrowing money from anywhere whether it's a payday lender, a bank, a credit card, etc., so use them as a last resort. If you've got your own income then that's amazing!, try not to live outside of your means and your credit score will look after (and increase) itself. It takes time to build a good credit score, but always make sure you pay the people you owe on time and the full amount. I'd stick with paying your phone provider (and any other direct debits you have setup) and avoid getting a credit card. I'd recommend Noddle to keep track of your credit score and read their FAQ on how to help build it. Unlike Experian, it's free forever so not quite as detailed... but Noddle are owned by CallCredit - one of the biggest Credit Reference Agencies in the UK so they should have the latest information on yourself. In conclusion, if you already have financial commitments like a mobile phone bill, gym membership, store cards, anything that gets paid monthly by direct debit... your credit score will increase (provided you pay the full-amount on time).   I hope this helps. PS. I don't work for any of the companies here, but I've been working in the finance sector (more specifically, short-term loans) for 3+ years now.", "That's what i was afraid of. If I did decide to double major it is going to be extremely difficult to keep my grades up all while juggling a job, so it's something I have to think about.  After speaking to IB I'll see if it is for me. If not I was thinking about hedge fund or private equity. Guess we'll see. What other certifications should I keep in mind?  Thank you for all your advice!", "I can see other property owners being against it, because it would drive down the prices of their homes.  As it stands I think home pricing is a complete fucked up retarded system that mostly depends on your neighbors house values.  The whole things is a shambles.  EDIT: also any new owner of the property is responsible for back taxes I think.  That's also extremely fucked up.", "\"In addition to @MD-tech's answer: I'd distinguish between stock of a foreign company traded in local currency at a local exchange from the same stock traded in the foreign currency at a foreign exchange (and maybe with a foreign bank holding your accounts). The latter option will typically have higher variation because of exchange rate, and (usually) higher risks associated with possibility of recovery, (double) taxation and the possible legal difficulties @MD-tech mentions. Trading the foreign stock at a local exchange may mean that the transaction volume is far lower than at their \"\"home\"\" exchange. Holding stock of companies working in foreign markets OTOH can be seen as diversification and may lower your risk. If you only invest in the local market, your investments may be subject to the same economic fluctuations that your wage/employment/pension situation is subject to - it may be good to try de-correlating this a bit. Of course, depending on political circumstances in your home country, foreign investments may be less risky (though I'd suspect these home countries also come with a high risk of seizing foreign investments...)\"", "Yes, it is normal. I'm single & pay 32% in North Carolina. Single men & married people ask me all the time why it's so high and it gets frustrating having to explain to average people. I assume it's because I have no kids, live alone, don't own a house, am not in school, am not self employed etc. I've been at this job for 10 years and it's been over 30% since I can remember.", "They pay the most because they have the most money this sort of thing is highly misleading, and I hear it so often it is working, people pay no income tax because they have next to no income to tax the top 2% are getting a raw deal whilst the 0.001% end up paying only about 7% tax", "\"There was a time when government policy was actually pretty damn smart. There were a range of \"\"automatic stabilizers\"\" that kicked in when there was a recession and they had a fast and large impact.  It wasn't until Reagan that we started to chip away at those as well as go into a perpetual debt stimulus posture. These two actions helped to prime the system for an inevitable \"\"large\"\" shock.  Even now, after one of the longest expansions in history we're STILL running a substantial deficit. And as such the appetite to expand it when the next recession hits will be diminished (as it was during the great recession when we really needed 3 trillion in stimulus spending and got less than 1).\""]}
+{"query": "Home Valuation in a Dodgy neighborhood", "corpus": ["\"Bad areas are tough to value as a owner-occupied property, because the business model for being a slumlord is to rent apartments in absentia, usually to tenants receiving goverment subsidies such as Section 8 vouchers. The vouchers are based on a prevailing rent, which are often on par with nice suburban apartment complexes due to how that \"\"prevailing\"\" rate is calculated. So the value of the house is really an annuity calculation. You figure out the potential rental cash flow and apply whatever your local market premium is. The point is, doing an apples to apples comparison is going to be tough, and justifying the cost of repairs that aren't remediating health and safety issues probably won't be recoverable from a home valuation standpoint. A buyer would probably rip out your central air conditioner and sell it! If I were in your shoes, I'd look at the time horizon that you think you're going to be there and amortize the cost over that period. Assuming your mortgage is small and you're staying for about 5 years, spending $10k costs you about $170 a month. Your reward is a modern A/C and heating system. Compare that cost to the cost of moving and your desires and see if it's worth it to you.\""], "neg": ["Common financial advice is just that - it is common and general in nature and not specific for your financial needs, your goals and your risk tolerance. Regarding the possibility of a US market not going anywhere over a long period of time, well it is not a possibility, it has happened. See chart below:  It took 13 years for the S&P 500 to break through 1550, a level first reached in March 2000, tested in October 2007 (just before the GFC) and finally broken through in March 2013. If you had bought in early 2000 you would still be behind when you take inflation into account. If you took the strategy of dollar cost averaging and bought the same dollar value (say $10,000) of the index every six months (beginning of each January and each July) starting from the start of 2000 and bought your last portion in January 2013, you would have a return of about 35% over 13.5 years (or an average of 2.6% per year). Now lets look at the same chart below, but this time add some trend lines.  If we instead bought whenever the price crossed above the downtrend-line and sold whenever the price crossed below the uptrend-line (with the first purchase at the start of January 2000), we would have a return of 93% over the 13.5 years (or an average of 6.9% per year). Another more aggressive option (but manageable if you incorporate a risk management strategy) is to buy long when the price crosses the downtrend-line and sell your existing long position and sell short when the price drops below the uptrend-line. That is profiting both up-trending and down-trending markets. Again we start our buying at the start of January 2000. By shorting the index when the market is in a down-trend you could increase the above returns of 93% by another 54%, for a total return of 147% over 13.5 years (or an average of 10.9% per year). To conclude, using a simple long term strategy to time the markets may result in considerably higher returns than dollar cost averaging over the medium to long term, and I know which strategy would help me sleep better at night.", "If you dont want to pay for it, dont. But I think it's important to draw the distinction between one of the more thorough news sources and entertainment services. The former is investigating and reporting on matters of national interest while the latter allow you to binge watch.", "Not directly an answer to your question, but somewhat related: There are derivatives (whose English name I sadly don't know) that allow to profit from breaking through an upper or alternatively a lower barrier. If the trade range does not hit either barrier you lose. This kind of derivative is useful if you expect a strong movement in either direction, which typically occurs at high volume.", "When I log in to Schwab to look at these options it tells me there's only Adjusted Options available on these terms: Adjusted Options:   Multiplier: 100; Deliverable: 15 PTIE; Cash: ---- It does confirm your July Call quote price of $0.05 because the contract, though priced for 100 shares, will only deliver 15 shares.  Separately, looking at the company website for news there was a 7 for 1 Reverse Split announced on May 8, which is the culprit for this option adjustment and the seemingly nonsensical call price.", "\"ITIN's can be granted for deceased minors via Form W-7: Choose \"\"Dependent of U.S. citizen/resident alien\"\" as the reason for applying. You are required to write \"\"DECEASED\"\" across the top of the form, and you will have to provide a birth certificate and potentially other supporting documentation.  The directions are not super clear for this use-case, but I've found that IRS support for ITIN is pretty easy to work with. The directions also have offices/numbers for overseas help, which I'd wager will be better able to assist with your scenario. Edit: I made a poor assumption on answering that the original returns filed were rejected but had been filled out properly, when filing with a deceased dependent without an SSN you typically write 'DIED' in the spot for the dependent's SSN. If the original returns were not filed this way, and accompanied by supporting documentation (record of live birth and record of death), then it may be best to start there, but it sounds like you already got bounced around and had it suggested that the lack of a number was an issue.\"", "\"The first thing you should do is write a letter to the collection company telling them that you dispute all charges and demand, per section 809 of the Fair Debt Collection Practices Act, that they immediately validate and confirm any and all debts they allege you owe. You should further request that that they only communicate with you by mail. Section 809 requires them to examine the legal documents showing you allegedly owe a debt and they are required to send this to you. This all creates a useful paper trail. When you send the letter, be sure to send it as certified mail with a return receipt. From your description, it doesn't sound like this will do anything, but it's important you do it within 30 days of them contacting you. This is because the law allows them to assume the debt is valid if you don't do it within 30 days of their initial contact. I recommend you speak with an attorney. Most states have a statute of limitation on debt of about 4 or 5 years. I don't know if that applies to courts though. Whatever you do, be very careful of the language you use when speaking with them. Always refer to it as \"\"the alleged debt,\"\" or \"\"the debt you allege I owe.\"\" You don't want them misconstruing your words later on. As far as proving you paid it, I would look through every scrap of paper I'd ever touched looking for it. If that proves fruitless, try going to the courthouse and looking through their records. If they're saying you didn't pay, that's a long shot, but still worth a try. You could also try bank records from that time, like if you have a Visa statement showing $276.17 paid to the Nevada Court or something like that. If all else fails, the law allows you to send the collector a letter saying that you refuse to pay the debt. The collection company then legally must stop contacting you unless it's to tell you they are suing you or to tell you they won't contact you again. I strongly advise against this though. Your best bet is going to be speaking with a qualified attorney. Edit: You should also pull your credit reports to make sure this isn't being reported there. Federal law gives you the right to have a free copy of each of your credit reports once every year. If it is being reported, send a certified letter with return receipt to each bureau which is reporting it telling them you dispute the information. They then are required to confirm the information. If they can't confirm it, they must remove it. If they do confirm it, you are legally entitled to put a statement disputing the information next to it on your credit report. I am not an attorney. This is not legal advise. You should consult an attorney who is licensed to practice law in your particular jurisdiction.\"", "US government budget is $3.8tn. Trump tax cut amounts to $200bn pa. That's 5% of the total budget. So even if all of the tax cut was paid for by firing people, which it won't because a good chunk will be paid for with bond issuance, you would have nowhere near 4 million redundancies. So I'm going to venture on a limb here and say that you just pulled these numbers out of your ass."]}
+{"query": "Dual Citizen British/US and online business taxes", "corpus": ["I see no reason why a US ID would be mandatory anywhere in the UK. I'm sure they have their own tax IDs in the UK. However, if the gallery requires US persons to submit US W-9 - then yes, you're covered under that requirement."], "neg": ["\"Nice try Amazon.  Logic is faulty here, \"\"The lower the price, the more books people will buy, and the more books people buy, the more they’ll read.\"\" is false because it just means people will have more money when buying from an online retailer or megastore like Walmart.  It doesn't mean they will read more and quite possibly can read less due to the lag time of shipping.  I don't go to independent bookstore, I have a library that I fund through property taxes and it's already paid for.  I don't read anymore than I do because I don't have all the time in the world to read.\"", "Given the global warming and pollution issues associated with burning fossil fuels and generating huge amounts of plastic, yes. It's much better than oil.   Battery tech is improving rapidly. Ceramics are becoming viable options in some cases. It's going to be a very interesting 10 years.", "\"One thing I would add to TTT's answer: One of the benefits of using an LLC for your business is right there in the name - \"\"limited liability\"\". It provides a level of protection for your personal assets should your business go bankrupt, get sued, and so forth. However, if someone can show that there's no real separation between your LLC's activities and your personal activities, then they can \"\"pierce the corporate veil\"\" and go after your personal assets. If this loan is really purely personal and not related to your business activities, you may create a paper trail that can later be used in this way. My advice would be to just avoid the whole thing and make the loan from personal funds. I don't see any upside to doing this out of the LLC funds.\"", "\"Go on a website that has real estate listings.  Find similar homes in the same neighborhood and list out the prices.  Once you have prices, pick out two with different prices and call the realtor of the more expensive listing.  Tell that realtor about the other listing and ask why their listing is more expensive.  Compare their answer to the home that you are considering buying.   For example, they may say that their house has a newly remodeled kitchen.  Does the house you are considering have a newly remodeled kitchen?  If so, then use the higher priced listing and throw out the cheaper one.  If not, use the cheap listing and throw out the expensive one.   Or they might say that the expensive house is in a better location than the cheaper house.  Further away from traffic.  Easier to get to the highway or public transportation.  If so, ask how the location compares to the house you are actually considering.  The realtor will tell you if the listings are comparable.   When I talk about \"\"similar homes,\"\" I mean homes that are similar in square footage, number of bedrooms, and number of bathrooms.  Generally real estate sites will allow you to search by all of these as well as location.   After all this, the potential seller may still turn you down.  If he really wanted to sell, he'd have suggested a price.  He may just be seeing if you're willing to overpay.  If so, he could turn down an otherwise reasonable offer.  How much he is willing to take is up to him.   Note that this would all be easier if you just bought a house the normal way.  Then the realtors would do the comparables portion of the work.  You might be able to find a realtor or appraiser who would do the work for a set fee.  Perhaps your bank would help you with that, as they have to appraise the property to offer a mortgage.   You asked if you can buy out a mortgaged house with a mortgage.  Yes, you can.  That's a pretty normal occurrence.  Normally the realtors would make all the necessary arrangements.  I'm guessing that a title transfer company could handle that.\"", "What is the question? Are you just trying to confirm that for self-employed, a Solo 401(k) is flexible, and a great tool to level out your tax rates? Sure. A W2 employee can turn on and off his 401(k) deduction any time, and bump the holding on each check as high as 75% in some cases. So in a tight stretch, I'd save to the match, but later on, top off the maximum for the year. To the points you listed - Your observation is interesting, but a bit long for what you seem to be asking. Keep in mind, there are 2 great features that you don't mention - a Roth Solo 401(k) flavor which offers even more flexibility for variable income, and loan provisions, up to $50,000 available to borrow from the account. My fellow blogger The Financial Buff offered an article Solo 401k Providers and Their Scope of Services that did a great job addressing this.", "Assuming you plan to buy a whole number of shares and have a maximum dollar value you intend to invest, it may be better to wait for the split if the figures don't quite work out nicely. For example, if you are going to invest $1,000 and the stock pre-split is $400 and the split is 2 for 1, then you'd buy 2 shares before the split unless you have an extra $200 to add. Meanwhile, after the split you could buy 5 shares at $200 so that you invest all that you intend. Aside from that case, it doesn't really make a difference since the split is similar to getting 2 nickels for a dime which in each case is still a total value of 10 cents.", "\"By the sounds of things, you're not asking for a single formula but how to do the analysis... And for the record you're focusing on the wrong thing. You should be focusing on how much it costs to own your car during that time period, not your total equity.  Formulas:  I'm not sure how well you understand the nuts and bolts of the finance behind your question, (you may just be a pro and really want a consolidated equation to do this in one go.) So at the risk of over-specifying, I'll err on the side of starting at the very beginning. Any financial loan analysis is built on 5 items: (1) # of periods, (2) Present Value, (3) Future Value, (4) Payments, and (5) interest rate.  These are usually referred to in spreadsheet software as NPER, PV, FV, PMT, and Rate. Each one has its own Excel/google docs function where you can calculate one as a function of the other 4. I'll use those going forward and spare you the 'real math' equations.  Layout: If I were trying to solve your problem I would start by setting up the spreadsheet  up with column A as \"\"Period\"\". I would put this label in cell A2 and then starting from cell A3 as \"\"0\"\" and going to \"\"N\"\". 5 year loans will give you the highest purchase value w lowest payments, so n=60 months... but you also said 48 months so do whatever you want.  Then I would set up two tables side-by-side with 7 columns each. (Yes, seven.) Starting in C2, label the cells/columns as: \"\"Rate\"\", \"\"Car Value\"\", \"\"Loan Balance\"\", \"\"Payment\"\", \"\"Paid to Interest\"\", \"\"Principal\"\", and \"\"Accumulated Equity\"\". Then select and copy cells C2:I2 as the next set of column headers beginning in K2. (I usually skip a column to leave space because I'm OCD like that :) ) Numbers: Now you need to set up your initial set of numbers for each table. We'll do the older car in the left hand table and the newer one on the right. Let's say your rate is 5% APR. Put that in cell C1 (not C3). Then in cell C3 type =C$1/12. Car Value $12,000 in Cell D3. Then type \"\"Down Payment\"\" in cell E1 and put 10% in cell D1. And last, in cell E3 put the formula =D3*(1-D$1). This should leave you with a value for the first month in the Rate, Car Value, and Loan Balance columns. Now select C1:E3 and paste those to the right hand table. The only thing you will need to change is the \"\"Car Value\"\" to $20,000. As a check, you should have .0042 / 12,000 / 10,800 on the left and then .0042 / 20,000 / 18,000 on the right.  Formulas again: This is where spreadsheets become amazing. If we set up the right formulas, you can copy and paste them and do this very complicated analysis very quickly.  Payment The excel formula for Payment is =PMT(Rate, NPER, PV, FV). FV is usually zero. So in cell F3, type the formula =PMT(C3, 60, E3, 0). Obviously if you're really doing a 48 month (4 year) loan then you'll need to change the 60 to 48. You should be able to copy the result from cell F3 to N3 and the formula will update itself.  For the 60 months, I'm showing the 12K car/10.8K loan has a pmt of $203.81. The 20K/18K loan has a pmt of 339.68.  Interest The easiest way to calculate the interest is as =E3*C3. That's (Outstanding Loan Balance) x (Periodic Interest Rate). Put this in cell G4, since you don't actually owe any interest at Period 0.  Principal If you pay PMT each month and X goes to interest, then the amount to principal is \"\"PMT - X\"\". So in H4 type =-F3 - G3. The 'minus' in front of F3 is because excel's PMT function returns a negative amount. If you want to, feel free to type \"\"=-PMT(...)\"\" for the formula that's actually in F3. It's your call.  I get 159 for the amount to principal in period 1.  Accumulated Equity As I mentioned in the comment, your \"\"Equity\"\" comes from your initial Loan-to-Value and the accumulated principal payments. So the formula in this cell should reflect that. There are a variety of ways to do this... the easiest is just to compare your car's expected value to your loan balance every time. In cell I3, type =(D3-E3). That's your initial equity in the car before making any payments. Copy that cell and paste it to I4. You'll see it updates to =(D4-E3) automatically. (Right now that is zero... those cells are empty, but we're getting there) The important thing is that as JB King pointed out, your equity is a function of accumulated principal AND equity, which depreciates. This approach handles those both.  Finishing up the copy-and-paste formulas I know this is long, but we're almost done.  Rate // Period 1 In cell C4 type =C3.  Payment // Period 1 In cell F4 type =F3.  Loan Balance // Period 1 In cell E4 type =E3-H4. Your loan balance at the end of period is reduced by the principal you paid. I get 10,641.  Car Value // Period 1 This will vary depending on how you want to handle depreciation. If you ignore it, you're making a major error and it's not worth doing this entire analysis...  just buy the prettiest car and move on with life. But you also don't have to get it scientifically accurate. Go to someplace like edmunds.com and look up a ballpark. I'm using 4% depreciation per year for the old (12K) car and 7% for the newer car. However, I pulled those out of my ass so figure out what's a better ballpark.  In G1 type \"\"Depreciation\"\" and then put 4% in H1. In O1 type \"\"Depreciation\"\" and then 7% in P1. Now, in cell D4, put the formula =D3 * (1-(H$1/12)).  Paste formulas to flesh out table As a check, your row 4 should read 1 / .0042 / 11,960 / 10,641 / 203.81 / 45 / 159 / 1,319. If so, you're great. Copy cells C4:I4 and paste them into K4:Q4.  These will update to be .0042 / 19,883 / 17,735 / 339.68 / 75 / 265 / 2,148.  If you've got that, then copy C4:Q4 and paste it to C5:C63. You've built a full amortization table for your two hypothetical loans. Congratulations.  Making your decision I'm not going to tell you what to decide, but I'll give you a better idea of what to look at. I would personally make the decision based on total cost to own during that time period, plus a bit of \"\"x-factor\"\" for which car I really liked.  Look at Period 24, in columns I and Q. These are your 'equities' in each car. If you built the sheet using my made-up numbers, then you get \"\"Old Car Equity\"\" as 4,276. \"\"New Car Equity\"\" is 6,046. If you're only looking at most equity, you might make a poor financial decision.  The real value you should consider is the cost to own the car (not necessarily operate it) during that time... Total Cost = (Ending Equity) - (Payment x 24) - (Upfront Cash).  For your 'old' car, that's (4,276) - (203.81 * 24) - (1,200) = -1,815.75 For the 'new' car, that's (6,046) - (339.68 * 24) - (2,000) = -4,106.07.  Is one good or bad? Up to you to decide. There are excel formulas like \"\"CUMPRINC\"\" that can consolidate some of the table mechanics, but I assumed that if you're here asking you would have gotten stuck running some of those.  Here's the spreadsheet: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheet/ccc?key=0Ah0weE0QX65vdHpCNVpwUzlfYjlTY2VrNllXOS1CWUE#gid=1\""]}
+{"query": "Outstanding car bill, and I am primary but have not driven it for 2 years", "corpus": ["Sounds like you need to contact your ex and sort it out. If you have co-signed the loan, changes are you are equally responsible even if on party chooses not to pay, then the bank will come after the other one. If you no longer wish to be part of the arrangement and your ex still wants the car, she will have to buy you out of the car and become fully responsible for the liability."], "neg": ["\"The answer to your question depends very much on your definition of \"\"long-term\"\". Because let's make something clear: an investment horizon of three to six months is not long term. And you need to consider the length of time from when an \"\"emergency\"\" develops until you will need to tap into the money. Emergencies almost by definition are unplanned. When talking about investment risk, the real word that should be used is volatility. Stocks aren't inherently riskier than bonds issued by the same company. They are likely to be a more volatile instrument, however. This means that while stocks can easily gain 15-20 percent or more in a year if you are lucky (as a holder), they can also easily lose just as much (which is good if you are looking to buy, unless the loss is precipitated by significantly weaker fundamentals such as earning lookout). Most of the time stocks rebound and regain lost valuation, but this can take some time. If you have to sell during that period, then you lose money. The purpose of an emergency fund is generally to be liquid, easily accessible without penalties, stable in value, and provide a cushion against potentially large, unplanned expenses. If you live on your own, have good insurance, rent your home, don't have any major household (or other) items that might break and require immediate replacement or repair, then just looking at your emergency fund in terms of months of normal outlay makes sense. If you own your home, have dependents, lack insurance and have major possessions which you need, then you need to factor those risks into deciding how large an emergency fund you might need, and perhaps consider not just normal outlays but also some exceptional situations. What if the refrigerator and water heater breaks down at the same time that something breaks a few windows, for example? What if you also need to make an emergency trip near the same time because a relative becomes seriously ill? Notice that the purpose of the emergency fund is specifically not to generate significant interest or dividend income. Since it needs to be stable in value (not depreciate) and liquid, an emergency fund will tend towards lower-risk and thus lower-yield investments, the extreme being cash or the for many more practical option of a savings account. Account forms geared toward retirement savings tend to not be particularly liquid. Sure, you can usually swap out one investment vehicle for another, but you can't easily withdraw your money without significant penalties if at all. Bonds are generally more stable in value than stocks, which is a good thing for a longer-term portion of an emergency fund. Just make sure that you are able to withdraw the money with short notice without significant penalties, and pick bonds issued by stable companies (or a fund of investment-grade bonds). However, in the present investment climate, this means that you are looking at returns not significantly better than those of a high-yield savings account while taking on a certain amount of additional risk. Bonds today can easily have a place if you have to pick some form of investment vehicle, but if you have the option of keeping the cash in a high-yield savings account, that might actually be a better option. Any stock market investments should be seen as investments rather than a safety net. Hopefully they will grow over time, but it is perfectly possible that they will lose value. If what triggers your financial emergency is anything more than local, it is certainly possible to have that same trigger cause a decline in the stock market. Money that you need for regular expenses, even unplanned ones, should not be in investments. Thus, you first decide how large an emergency fund you need based on your particular situation. Then, you build up that amount of money in a savings vehicle rather than an investment vehicle. Once you have the emergency fund in savings, then by all means continue to put the same amount of money into investments instead. Just make sure to, if you tap into the emergency fund, replenish it as quickly as possible.\"", "$500 for just 32gigs. Little saddened by that. So want one though! Food or Nexus 10...food or Nexus 10...Maybe I'll get lucky and find one someone 'lost' at a bar ;) That's the 'hip' way to give away tech these days!", "Ở đây, bạn có thể mong đợi nhiều hơn từ thạch cao SMY, chúng tôi sản xuất vật liệu nhất cho mái nhà trông bên trong nội thất đẹp. Nếu bạn có cảm giác rằng nhà riêng của bạn xuất hiện trước đó, chúng tôi sẽ cải tạo nó cho bạn và lắp đặt các hình thức rèm, sơn và trần. Chúng tôi đang ở tuyến đầu của availing sự phân chia tuyệt vời mà tran thach cao có thể đảm bảo hoạt động kinh doanh dễ dàng, bổ sung giá trị và tăng cường tính riêng tư. Đội ngũ nhân viên của chúng tôi sẽ ủng hộ bạn ở nhiều lựa chọn thay thế có sẵn theo ý của bạn và bạn sẽ hoàn toàn được thông báo thêm và am hiểu.", "Look, the fact is that Kyrie was never going to be the main guy.  No matter what you do, when you're on a LeBron team, you are second fiddle.  I know some people such as yourself will say that kyrie is ruining his legacy by leaving but without him, Cleveland aren't the heavy east favorites they were.  Now, I am a sucker for D Rose, so this may be the first time I root for anybody in a Cleveland jersey but we'll get to see just how important kyrie was to that team this season.", "\"ECI is relevant to non-resident aliens who are engaged in trade or business in the US. For that, you have to be present in the US, to begin with, or to own a business or property in the US. So the people to whom it is relevant are non-resident aliens in the US or business/property owners, not foreign contractors.  From the IRS: The following categories of income are usually considered to be   connected with a trade or business in the United States. You are considered to be engaged in a trade or business in the United States if you are temporarily present in the United States as a   nonimmigrant on an \"\"F,\"\" \"\"J,\"\" \"\"M,\"\" or \"\"Q\"\" visa. The taxable part of any   U.S. source scholarship or fellowship grant received by a nonimmigrant   in \"\"F,\"\" \"\"J,\"\" \"\"M,\"\" or \"\"Q\"\" status is treated as effectively connected   with a trade or business in the United States. If you are a member of a partnership that at any time during the tax year is engaged in a trade or business in the United States, you   are considered to be engaged in a trade or business in the United   States. You usually are engaged in a U.S. trade or business when you perform personal services in the United States. If you own and operate a business in the United States selling services, products, or merchandise, you are, with certain exceptions,   engaged in a trade or business in the United States. For example,   profit from the sale in the United States of inventory property   purchased either in this country or in a foreign country is   effectively connected trade or business income. Gains and losses from the sale or exchange of U.S. real property interests (whether or not they are capital assets) are taxed as if you   are engaged in a trade or business in the United States. You must   treat the gain or loss as effectively connected with that trade or   business. Income from the rental of real property may be treated as ECI if the taxpayer elects to do so.\"", "\"&gt;You also have to plan around finding chargers.  How is that different from planning around gas stations?  Tesla has the superchargers all along freeways for long trips.  For everyday driving, you plug it in at home. So there's a lot less \"\"planning around\"\" anything.\"", "Uhuh. And if I go to the Sushi bar 10 minutes before they close, they'll give me their stale rolls 50% off. Will CNBC right on article on that tip from me?  Its just a stupid article."]}
+{"query": "What part of buying a house would make my net worth go down?", "corpus": ["Buying a house can definitely make your net worth go down because there are expenses involved (interest expense, closing costs, taxes, maintenance, etc.). So unless the house appreciates in value enough to offset these things, you will see a drop in your net worth from buying a house. More specifically it can have a negative impact on your net worth, since changes in your net worth are the cumulative result of all your inflows and outflows of money."], "neg": ["\"Well that book in particular isn't a how to book. He goes on to tell people to find their \"\"why\"\" about doing it, and it all falls into place. If you really want a how to, then check out Carlton Sheets.  His sage advice may be a little bit of bunk, but that's how the game is played. If you want to be a part of the game, that's great, everyone is entitled to follow their dreams. Some will build their dreams on what they believe is right, and others will build their dreams on what they think is right. (Now which one of those persons used their cat as a business partner?)\"", "Tax regulations vary from country to country - some permitting more deductions, some less - but here are a few guidelines. As regards the home-office: As regards the deductions: Think of it like this: in order to have space for a home-office you needed a bigger home.  That leads to increased rates, heating, insurance and so on.  Many tax regulators recognise that these are genuine expenses.  The alternative is to rent a separate office and incur greater expenses, leading to increased deductions and less overall tax paid (which won't finance the deficit). The usual test for deductions is: was the expense legitimately incurred in the pursuit of revenue?  The flexibility permitted will vary by tax authority but you can frequently deduct more than you expected.", "You don't necessarily change your calculated profit margins and posted prices, but you advertise and offer price matching.  Two out of three consumers may still pay the posted Best Buy price, while the knowledgeable third consumer that did their research will receive the matched price.  Their profit on that third customer will be lower than it was for the other two, but currently they don't get anything from that third customer at all since they just order online.  Meanwhile, now that they're in the store, they may buy a few movies or a power strip.", "So... Does that mean we're leading up to a huge economic boom where the majority of people have paid off a significant amount of their debt, so that they now have more available money and credit to spend, which would turn into a domino effect of more people buying pushing the economy up enough to encourage even more people to buy?", "As of 2015, there were 1,650 IHOP restaurants in 50 states and the District of Columbia, as well as in Bahrain, Canada, Dubai (UAE), Guatemala, Kuwait, Mexico, Puerto Rico, Saudi Arabia, The Philippines and the U.S. Virgin Islands.  So 25 is 1.5% of 1650. So they closed less than 2% of their stores.  Applebees apparently has over 2000 restaurants. So 100-120 is 5-6% of their stores.", "\"Yes, and the math that tells you when is called the Kelly Criterion. The Kelly Criterion is on its face about how much you should bet on a positive-sum game. Imagine you have a game where you flip a coin, and if heads you are given 3 times your bet, and if tails you lose your bet.  Naively you'd think \"\"great, I should play, and bet every dollar I have!\"\" -- after all, it has a 50% average return on investment.  You get back on average 1.5$ for every dollar you bet, so every dollar you don't bet is a 0.5$ loss. But if you do this and you play every day for 10 years, you'll almost always end up bankrupt.  Funny that. On the other hand, if you bet nothing, you are losing out on a great investment.  So under certain assumptions, you neither want to bet everything, nor do you want to bet nothing (assuming you can repeat the bet almost indefinitely). The question then becomes, what percentage of your bankroll should you bet? Kelly Criterion answers this question.  The typical Kelly Criterion case is where we are making a bet with positive returns, not an insurance against loss; but with a bit of mathematical trickery, we can use it to determine how much you should spend on insuring against loss. An \"\"easy\"\" way to undertand the Kelly Criterion is that you want to maximize the logarithm of your worth in a given period.  Such a maximization results in the largest long-term value in some sense. Let us give it a try in an insurance case. Suppose you have a 1 million dollar asset.  It has a 1% chance per year of being destroyed by some random event (flood, fire, taxes, pitchforks). You can buy insurance against this for 2% of its value per year.  It even covers pitchforks. On its face this looks like a bad deal.  Your expected loss is only 1%, but the cost to hide the loss is 2%? If this is your only asset, then the loss makes your net worth 0.  The log of zero is negative infinity.  Under Kelly, any insurance (no matter how inefficient) is worth it.  This is a bit of an extreme case, and we'll cover why it doesn't apply even when it seems like it does elsewhere. Now suppose you have 1 million dollars in other assets.  In the insured case, we always end the year with 1.98 million dollars, regardless of if the disaster happens.  In the non-insured case, 99% of the time we have 2 million dollars, and 1% of the time we have 1 million dollars. We want to maximize the expected log value of our worth.  We have log(2 million - 20,000) (the insured case) vs 1% * log(1 million) + 99% * log(2 million). Or 13.7953 vs 14.49.  The Kelly Criterion says insurance is worth it; note that you could \"\"afford\"\" to replace your home, but because it makes up so much of your net worth, Kelly says the \"\"hit it too painful\"\" and you should just pay for insurance. Now suppose you are worth 1 billion.  We have log(1 billion - 20k) on the insured side, and 1%*log(999 million) + 99% * log(1 billion) on the uninsured side. The logs of each side are 21.42 vs 20.72.  (Note that the base of the logarithm doesn't matter; so long as you use the same base on each side). According to Kelly, we have found a case where insurance isn't worth it. The Kelly Criterion roughly tells you \"\"if I took this bet every (period of time), would I be on average richer after (many repeats of this bet) than if I didn't take this bet?\"\"  When the answer is \"\"no\"\", it implies self-insurance is more efficient than using external insurance.  The answer is going to be sensitive to the profit margin of the insurance product you are buying, and the size of the asset relative to your total wealth. Now, the Kelly Criterion can easily be misapplied.  Being worth financially zero in current assets can easily ignore non-financial assets (like your ability to work, or friends, or whatever).  And it presumes repeat to infinity, and people tend not to live that long. But it is a good starting spot. Note that the option of bankruptcy can easily make insurance not \"\"worth it\"\" for people far poorer; this is one of the reasons why banks insist you have insurance on your proprety. You can use Kelly to calculate how much insurance you should purchase at a given profit margin for the insurance company given your net worth and the risk involved.  This can be used in Finance to work out how much you should hedge your bets in an investment as well; in effect, it quantifies how having money makes it easier to make money.\"", "\"Yes, but it's also this. \"\"Investors in stocks these days are expecting far too much, and I'm going to explain why. That will inevitably set me to talking about the general stock market, a subject I'm usually unwilling to discuss. But I want to make one thing clear going in: Though I will be talking about the level of the market, I will not be predicting its next moves\"\". He can, and does, make two unrelated points\""]}
+{"query": "Form 1042-S for foreign resident and owner of trade account", "corpus": ["As you have indicated, the 1042-S reflects no income or withholding.  As such, you are not required to file a US tax return unless you have other income from the US.  Gains on stocks are not reported until realized upon sale. FYI, your activity does not fit the requirements of being engaged in a trade or business activity.  While the definition is documented in several places of the Code, I have attached Publication 519 which most accurately represents the application to your situation as you have described it. https://www.irs.gov/publications/p519/ch04.html#en_US_2016_publink1000222308"], "neg": ["Robinhood does offer premium products that they charge for-I suspect we will see more of that in the future. They do not change the bid/ask spread as some have said because they have to give you the NBBO.", "Yes not yet. I mean it's obviously not going to keep at this pace forever but it is funny to see the overreacting of people. It's not just about being able to buy things with bitcoin it's about the tech.  It's already up 126 dollars from the time you posted the gif.", "There are rules and regulations as to how the credit card information must be stored, and I assume Square adhere to these rules. The point is that the barber doesn't need to see your credit card at all, and doesn't have to keep its number for keeping tabs, you only share the information with Square and they remit payments to everyone else. This is very similar to Paypal, Amazon and Google checkout systems, except that Square combine it with physical card processing.", "In the case of HP, in the early to mid 1990's they had done really well, but by the late 90's the board and shareholders wanted to see even more profits thanks to the internet boom. They ousted their CEO Platt, who rose through the HP ranks, brought in Fiorina who was from AT&amp;T (old Long Distance AT&amp;T not the SBC/Cingular one we have now), who over-promised and never delivered and basically forced HP in buying Compaq which nearly destroyed HP.  The only reason why HP is still around today is thanks to its business line of workstations and printers. The company made many bad decisions during Fiorini tenure which was amazing that anyone trusted her, but I'm guessing she was great at hissy fits. Somehow she has made a name for herself and is now trying politics and her type of leadership fits perfectly with the current republican party.", "Because that is not at all what you said. Very simple.  PS. You can always use more data. You never have perfect or enough data. So you point is akin to water is wet... it is not like you discussed why the data we have is not appropriate", "\"Remember that the rental market and the property market are markets.  For any given location and level of quality, if it were a clearly superior choice to buy over rent, then more people would buy, and less would rent, driving prices down for rentals.  The value of \"\"owning\"\" as opposed to paying rent and never owning is priced into that, at least at locations and levels of quality where owning is a possibility (and that is nearly always a possibility, even at very low levels of quality). This is true even disregarding your personal circumstances, unless you're looking in an area that has a lot of people like you (San Francisco, perhaps).  Given your personal circumstances, you have strong incentives to be on the renting side, unless there are major pressures on the housing market that cause property to be far cheaper than it should.  This was true in 2009-2011, but is mostly not true anymore (though some areas have yet to fully come out of the crash).\"", "I'm surprised nobody else has suggested this yet: before you start investing in stocks or bonds, buy a house. Not just any house, but the house you want to live in 20 years from now, in a place where you want to live 20 years from now - but you also have to be savvy about which part of the country or world you buy in. I'm also assuming that you are in the USA, although my suggestion tends to apply equally anywhere in the world. Why? Simple: as long as you own a house, you won't ever have to pay rent (you do have to pay taxes and maintenance, of course). You have a guaranteed return on investment, and the best part is: because it's not money you earn but money you don't have to spend, it's tax free. Even if the house loses value over time, you still come out ahead. And if you live abroad temporarily, you can rent out the house and add the rent to your savings (although that does make various things more complicated). You only asked for options, so that is mine. I'll add some caveats. OK, now here are the caveats:"]}
+{"query": "How to find SEC filings that are important to stock market", "corpus": ["10-Q is the quarterly report, and accordingly is filed quarterly. Similarly, 10-K is the annual report. 8-K is a general form for notification of material events. It is filed every time a material event is required to be reported to the shareholders. It may accompany the periodical reports, but doesn't have to. It can be filed on its own. If you're only interested in the financial statements, then you should be looking for the 10K/10Q forms. SEC will tell you when the forms were filed (dates), but it won't tell you what's more material and what's less. So you can plot a stock price graph on these dates, and see what was deemed more material by the investors based on the price fluctuations, but be prepared to find fluctuations that have no correlation to filings - because the market as a whole can drag the stock up or down. Also, some events may not be required to be reported to SEC, but may be deemed material by the investors. For example, a Cupertino town hall meeting discussing the zoning for the new AAPL HQ building may be deemed material by the investors, based on the sentiments, even if no decision was made to be reported to SEC."], "neg": ["Good Afternoon all,  My first time posting in this community as I am in need of some advice or insight into Bank Of America Merrill Lynch.  For my interview I have to prepare a 10 minute presentation with a further 10 minutes of questions afterwards. The presentation should consist of 3 points; 1) What do you see as BOAML’s strengths and weaknesses over its competitors 2) Why do you want to work at BOAML and why have you chosen to apply for this particular division? (The role I am applying for is a Systems Operations Analyst role)  3) What are going to be the key challenges of joining BOAML? (I have never worked in the industry before-previous experience in catering and retail).  Mostly looking for advice on point one as I am finding research somewhat difficult to come buy in terms of products and services (mainly just different statistics at the moment)  Any advice would be greatly appreciated!", "&gt;I want a president who is going to look out for the little guys.  Obama certainly wouldn't be your man then. Consider his insurance, and wall street ties; he's not for the little guy; he may say he is, but his actions and policy are obviously not for them.    Also, consider that you can be a CEO of a one man shop, and in fact, alot of start-ups begin this way.   What about them? Are they not 'little guys' - the ones willing to take the risk, spend their own money, and create jobs in local economies, or must we be dependent on the government for everything from regulating how much soda we drink to what healthcare plans we can or cannot use?", "NO.  The legislation requires the landlord to deposit it in a bank.  Check out pages 7-10 of the linked document.  There is no mention of interest. The second clause, I believe, is probably for large landlords who hold hundreds of thousands of dollars of security.   http://www.legislature.mi.gov/documents/publications/tenantlandlord.pdf Q4 Once collected, what must the landlord do with the security deposit?   The landlord must either: a) Deposit the money with a regulated financial institution (e.g.,   bank), OR b) Deposit a cash bond or surety bond, to secure the entire deposit,   with the Secretary of State. ( Note: If the landlord does this, he or   she may use the money at any time, for any purpose.) The bond ensures   that there is money available to repay the tenant’s security deposit", "\"You're confused. This has nothing to do with taxes. It has to do with screwing people out of profit-sharing.  The shell company pays bogus/hyper-inflated fees to the parent company, who pays taxes on them.  That way, the contract with the shell company that says \"\"you get 5% of the profits\"\" now means nothing.\"", ". Mr. Bernstein says he has never seen such an extreme bet on economic catastrophe. ”This portfolio is a half-step away from a cellar-full of canned goods and nine-millimeter rounds,” he says.  -- The question is, will he keep to this strategy if he becomes president?", "\"This answer is somewhat incomplete as I don't have definitive conclusions about some parts of your question.  Your question includes some very specific subquestions that may best be answered by contacting the investment companies you're considering. I don't see any explicit statement of fees for TIAA-CREF either.  I suggest you contact them and ask. There is mention on the site of no-transaction-fee funds (NTF), but I wasn't able to find a list of such funds.  Again, you might have to ask. Vanguard also offers some non-Vanguard funds without transaction fees.  If you go the Vanguard page on other mutual funds you can use the dropdown on the right to select other fund companies.  Those with \"\"NTF\"\" by the name have no transaction fees. Scottrade also offers NTF funds.  You can use their screener and select \"\"no load\"\" and \"\"no transaction fee\"\" as some of your filters. You are correct that you want to choose an option that will offer a good lineup of funds that you can buy without transaction fees.  However, as the links above show, Vanguard and TIAA-CREF are not the only such options.  My impression is that almost any firm that has their own funds will sell them (or at least some of them) to you without a transaction fee.  Also, as shown above, many places will sell you other companies' funds for free too.  You have plenty of options as far as free trades, so it really depends on what funds you like. If you google for IRA providers you will find more than you can shake a stick at.  If you're interested in low-cost index funds, Vanguard is pretty clearly the leader in that area as their entire business is built around that concept.  TIAA-CREF is another option, as is Fideltiy (which you didn't mention), and innumerable others.  Realistically, though, you probably don't need a gigantic lineup of funds.  If you're juggling money between more than a handful of funds, your investment scheme is probably needlessly complex.  The standard advice is to decide on a broad allocation of money into different asset classes (e.g., US stocks, US bonds, international stocks, international bonds), find a place that offers funds in those areas with low fees and forget about all the other funds.\"", "I'm no expert, but this is my understanding.  Not necessarily. For example, the Canadian dollar has jumped up recently because people are expecting a rate hike at the central bank this week some time. That is, the Canadian dollar is being traded for more because people expect that the currency will be harder to get later. This deflation (or decelerated inflation) is being priced in before it even happens.  For inflation to propagate through an entire domestic supply chain of a good or service takes time. Raises aren't tied to inflation, nor the price of a Big Mac or price of a movie ticket or toaster that has been sitting on the shelf for a month.  The price of the good in foreign currency will however hit the export as soon as it crosses the border."]}
+{"query": "Trustable, official sources on holdings, purchases and sales by finance academics/professionals?", "corpus": ["You won't be able to know the trading activity in a timely, actionable method in most cases. The exception is if the investor (individual, fund, holding company, non-profit foundation, etc) is a large shareholder of a specific company and therefore required to file their intentions to buy or sell with the SEC. The threshold for this is usually if they own 5% or greater of the outstanding shares. You can, however, get a sense of the holdings for some of the entities you mention with some sleuthing. Publicly-Traded Holding Companies Since you mention Warren Buffett, Berkshire Hathaway is an example of this. Publicly traded companies (that are traded on a US-based exchange) have to file numerous reports with the SEC. Of these, you should review their Annual Report and monitor all filings on the SEC's website. Here's the link to the Berkshire Hathaway profile. Private Foundations Harvard and Yale have private, non-profit foundations. The first place to look would be at the Form 990 filings each is required to file with the IRS. Two sources for these filings are GuideStar.org and the FoundationCenter.org. Keep in mind that if the private foundation is a large enough shareholder in a specific company, they, too, will be required to file their intentions to buy or sell shares in that company. Private Individuals Unless the individual publicly releases their current holdings, the only insight you may get is what they say publicly or have to disclose — again, if they are a major shareholder."], "neg": ["If you have kids, there are also 529 funds to consider. They aren't pre-tax, but do have tax advantages. If your employer doesn't have a 401k, chances are they don't offer Health Savings Accounts, but that is another thing to look at.", "Rapid injection molding is not the solution of all problems. It is not possible to shorten all processes by this technique. There are certain things which are out of the trajectory of this technique. It does not matter that if you have endless recourses and put a lot of effort, some process will take time.", "Two of their children were adopted from an orphanage in Addis Ababa, Ethiopia. My brother and his wife would rather have 4 kids raised with a high level of care in relative poverty than fewer kids raised in wealthier circumstances. I'm sure if she worked full-time and the kids attended school it would be better for them financially, but they consider homeschooling to be hugely beneficial.  Staying out of poverty is a higher priority for my wife and I, which is why we work in offices and haven't had any children yet.", "You're completely right. They absolutely have an interest in these things. That's why we should reign in Washington, strip it of its power to play favorites.  If government is allowed to stack the deck, its the people who end up losing. How often do politicians really fulfill their campaign promises? Rarely, if ever.", "well, i was a kid when they shot the president through the head and his brains flew out into his wife's lap.    I'm saying this for my own sanity and perspective, not to dramatize myself.  at the same time, please don't misunderstand me as minimizing the creepiness of whats happening currently", "ING Direct does this. Also, have you heard of Mvelopes?  It's a subscription-based service, but it's pretty simple to use, and it lets you have as many envelopes as you want.  You're not limited to five.", "\"My question boiled down: Do stock mutual funds behave more like   treasury bonds or commodities? When I think about it, it seems that   they should respond the devaluation like a commodity. I own a quantity   of company shares (not tied to a currency), and let's assume that the   company only holds immune assets. Does the real value of my stock   ownership go down? Why? On December 20, 1994, newly inaugurated President Ernesto Zedillo   announced the Mexican central bank's devaluation of the peso between   13% and 15%.  Devaluing the peso after previous promises not to do so   led investors to be skeptical of policymakers and fearful of   additional devaluations. Investors flocked to foreign investments and   placed even higher risk premia on domestic assets. This increase in   risk premia placed additional upward market pressure on Mexican   interest rates as well as downward market pressure on the Mexican   peso.  Foreign investors anticipating further currency devaluations   began rapidly withdrawing capital from Mexican investments and selling   off shares of stock as the Mexican Stock Exchange plummeted. To   discourage such capital flight, particularly from debt instruments,   the Mexican central bank raised interest rates, but higher borrowing   costs ultimately hindered economic growth prospects. The question is how would they pull this off if it's a floatable currency.  For instance, the US government devalued the US Dollar against gold in the 30s, moving one ounce of gold from $20 to $35.   The Gold Reserve Act outlawed most private possession of gold, forcing   individuals to sell it to the Treasury, after which it was stored in   United States Bullion Depository at Fort Knox and other locations. The   act also changed the nominal price of gold from $20.67 per troy ounce   to $35. But now, the US Dollar is not backed by anything, so how do they devalue it now (outside of intentionally inflating it)?  The Hong Kong Dollar, since it is fixed to the US Dollar, could be devalued relative to the Dollar, going from 7.75 to 9.75 or something similar, so it depends on the currency. As for the final part, \"\"does the real value of my stock ownership go down\"\" the answer is yes if the stock ownership is in the currency devalued, though it may rise over the longer term if investors think that the value of the company will rise relative to devaluation and if they trust the market (remember a devaluation can scare investors, even if a company has value). Sorry that there's too much \"\"it depends\"\" in the answer; there are many variables at stake for this.  The best answer is to say, \"\"Look at history and what happened\"\" and you might see a pattern emerge; what I see is a lot of uncertainty in past devaluations that cause panics.\""]}
+{"query": "Does Warren Buffett really have a lower tax rate than his secretary?", "corpus": ["\"The scenario you mention regarding capital gains is pretty much the core of the issue. Here's a run-down from PolitiFact.com that explains it a bit. It's important to focus on it being the tax rate, not the tax amount (which I think you get, but I want to reinforce that for other readers).  Basically, most of Buffett's income comes from capital gains and   dividends, income from investments he makes with the money he already   has. Income earned by buying and selling stocks or from stock   dividends is generally taxed at 15 percent, the rate for long-term   capital gains and qualified dividends. Buffett also mentioned that some of the \"\"mega-rich\"\" are hedge fund   managers \"\"who earn billions from our daily labors but are allowed to   classify our income as 'carried interest,' thereby getting a bargain   15 percent tax rate.\"\" We don't know the taxes paid by Buffett's secretary, who was mentioned   by Obama but not by Buffett. Buffet's secretary would have to make a   high salary, or else typical deductions (such as the child tax credit)   would offset taxes owed. Let's say the secretary is a particularly   well-compensated executive assistant, making adjusted income more than   $83,600 in income. (Yes, that sounds like a lot to us, too, but   remember: We're talking about the secretary to one of the richest   people in the world.) In that case, marginal tax rates of 28 percent   would apply. Then, there would be payroll taxes of 6.25 percent on the   first $106,800, money that goes to Social Security, and another 1.45   percent on all income, which goes to Medicare. The secretary’s overall   tax rate would be lower than 28 percent, since not all the income   would be taxed at that rate, only the income above $83,600. Buffett, meanwhile, would pay very little, if anything, in payroll   taxes. In the New York Times op-ed, Buffett said he paid 17.4 percent   in taxes. Thinking of the secretary, it gets a little complicated,   given how the tax brackets work, but basically, people who make   between $100,000 and $200,000 are paying around 20 percent in federal   taxes, including payroll and income taxes, according to an analysis   from the nonpartisan Tax Policy Center. So in this case, the secretary's rate is higher because so much of   Buffett's income comes from investments and is taxed at the lower   capital gains rate. Here's Buffet's original Op-Ed in the NYT for those of you that aren't familiar.\""], "neg": ["The Trinity study looked at 'safe' withdrawal rates from retirement portfolios. They found it was safe to withdraw 4% of a portfolio consisting of stocks and bonds. I cannot immediately find exactly what specific investment allocations they used, but note that they found a portfolio consisting largely of stocks would allow for the withdrawal of 3% - 4% and still keep up with inflation. In this case, if you are able to fund $30,000, the study claims it would be safe to withdraw $900 - $1200 a year (that is, pay out as scholarships) while allowing the scholarship to grow sufficiently to cover inflation, and that this should work in perpetuity. My guess is that they invest such scholarship funds in a fairly aggressive portfolio. Most likely, they choose something along these lines: 70 - 80% stocks and 20 - 30% bonds. This is probably more risky than you'd want to take, but should give higher returns than a more conservative portfolio of perhaps 50 - 60% stocks, 40 - 50% bonds, over the long term. Just a regular, interest-bearing savings account isn't going to be enough. They almost never even keep up with inflation. Yes, if the stock market or the bond market takes a hit, the investment will suffer. But over the long term, it should more than recover the lost capital. Such scholarships care far more about the very long term and can weather a few years of bad returns. This is roughly similar to retirement planning. If you expect to be retired for, say, 10 years, you won't worry too much about pulling out your retirement funds. But it's quite possible to retire early (say, at 40) and plan for an infinite retirement. You just need a lot more money to do so. $3 million, invested appropriately, should allow you to pull out approximately $90,000 a year (adjusted upward for inflation) forever. I leave the specifics of how to come up with $3 million as an exercise for the reader. :) As an aside, there's a Memorial and Traffic Safety Fund which (kindly and gently) solicited a $10,000 donation after my wife was killed in a motor vehicle accident. That would have provided annual donations in her name, in perpetuity. This shows you don't need $30,000 to set up a scholarship or a fund. I chose to go another way, but it was an option I seriously considered. Edit: The Trinity study actually only looked at a 30 year withdrawal period. So long as the investment wasn't exhausted within 30 years, it was considered a success. The Trinity study has also been criticised when it comes to retirement. Nevertheless, there's some withdrawal rate at which point your investment is expected to last forever. It just may be slightly smaller than 3-4% per year.", "(1) Not literally every person...this screams that you don't know what you are talking about. There is literally no one on my team that puts it behind their name nor any of my friends from my MBA program.  (2) They aren't as I just proved to you in 3 minutes  (3) Your advice is complete and utter shit.   (4) As I have already articulated:   (A) undergrads know shit, those that have zero experience and an MBA know less than shit.  (B) Learning advanced concepts without knowing anything about the real world won't help him, he won't be able to apply anything he has learned.   (C) He loses any opportunity to reset his career or recruit into a high level position based on some asshole's advice on the internet.   (D) He will command a higher wage exiting MBA with work experience instead of likely taking more debt that he needs to.   (E) he gets to deal with hiring managers like me that will grill him on why he thought it was a good idea to do his MBA directly after undergrad with no work experience.   I might sound like a dick - but I'm not the one handing out shitty advice that highlights how inexperienced you are.", "\"BobbyScon's answer really covers this, but perhaps isn't sufficiently explicit.  Reason 1 of the quotation is the largest, by far: Get an Immediate Tax Deduction, but Give Later: You get the tax deduction when the foundation is funded, then make your charitable gifts over time. Having a \"\"personal\"\" foundation means that you make donations whenever it is appropriate from a personal finance point of view, but then actually perform the charitable giving in a time that is convenient. So you fund the foundation on Dec. 31, say; that gets the money out of your hands, and out of your taxable income, for the prior tax year.  Then you're not required to do anything else with that money until a time and place where it's convenient to you. In many cases, they set it up not as a foundation but as a Donor Advised Fund.  These are of late becoming extremely popular among the wealthy, largely the ease of setting them up and the above. The other major advantage of a Donor Advised Fund is simplicity in tax season: you have exactly one charitable donation recipient, with one receipt (or one set of them if you donate over time).\"", "&gt;The correct solution is to...  I dont think there is a correct solution.  However, Id like to see major reform with financial aid recipient selection.  Right now the programs pretty effectively select the **worst** students.  it should be treated as an investment instead.  If the goal is to produce productive members of society, they should aim to produce productive members of society.  Require an essay on long term goals, career path, etc.  Look at past performance strongly (some, but not too much emphasis on HS grades, more on outside interests/activities, etc) and, most importantly, how that past performance will serve them in the field they are trying to get into.  Obviously put extra subsidies on things like education. Somebody who may be incapable of graduating with an accounting degree could still get an education degree with close to a 4.0.  If we turn too many dummies away from education, we wont have enough teachers.  Have a 30 minute interview with all of the finalists to determine their chances of having a positive return on society (through taxes paid over their lives, value added to the community, etc) and decide from there.  Make sure to focus on people with a passion for their industry.  Parental income should have almost no impact except for the ultra rich whose parents bring home an income of half a mil or something like that.  Edit:  I forgot to make this post relevant to the OP.  The schools that people are applying to should be a major factor.  Dont waste money sending people to schools that are a bad match (for profit schools, schools without a strong program in their intended degree).  Also, put a lot of negative emphasis on things like art majors.  There is no reason for the gov't to send some idiot to art school if they arent an absolute star.  I go to a lib art school and I dont know a single art or theater major that has found more success through attending a 4 year program than they could have just using those 4 years to improve themselves and to hunt down their (pipe)dream job.", "&gt; If you aren't ivy league you have no hope of getting on wall st in front office.  BB associate here coming in to confirm this.  Front office wall st is comprised of 2 types of people.    1* Tier 1 (Ivy, 4.0 UChicago, London School of Econ, 4.0 NYU, etc)  undergrads who didn't make it into HF's and are looking for exp so they can move into HF realm.  These are usually interns from junior/sr summer that are now on 2 year analyst rotation programs (usually 4 rotations of 6 months).  2* MBA/MS and CFA Charterholders with past experience in capital markets.  This means they have already been working at a BB whether it was in relationship management or middle office.", "Hey desquinbnt &amp; pontsone, I had an explanation written up about Share and Bond evaluation and in which, one share evaluation technique utilizes the P/E ratio - hence I explained it. Have a read, if you'd want me to go more in depth, let me know! :)  http://letslearnfinance.net/2012/06/09/introduction-to-bonds-and-share-valuation/", "If the stock has dropped from $10 to $2 and now is range trading between $2 and $3, and you were not able to sell your shares earlier, then I would no be holding on to them now. As soon as the price hit $3 sell them. After you have sold them and you noticed the stock still range trading one strategy you could apply is to go long after the price bounces off the $2 support placing a stop just below $2, then as the price moves up you trail your stop up with the price. As it starts getting close to $3 tighten your stop. If it keeps range trading and bounces off the resistance at $3 and you get stopped out, you can either go short and reverse the process or wait for it to bounce off the support at $2 again. One word of warning though, the longer a stock range trades, the bigger the outbreak out of the rage (either up or down) will be, that is the reason why you should first wait for confirmation that the price has bounced off support/resistance before opening a position, and secondly why you should use a stop loss to get you out instead of just selling when it hits $3, because if it breaks through $3 you can continue profiting as it moves up."]}
+{"query": "Where to park money low-risk on interactivebrokers account?", "corpus": ["\"The standard low-risk/gain very-short-term parking spot these days tends to be a money market account.  However, you have only mentioned stock. For good balance, your portfolio should consider the bond market too. Consider adding a bond index fund to diversify the basic mix, taking up much of that 40%. This will also help stabilize your risk since bonds tend to move opposite stocks (prperhaps just because everyone else is also using them as the main alternative, though there are theoretical arguments why this should be so.) Eventually you may want to add a small amount of REIT fund to be mix, but that's back on the higher risk side. (By the way: Trying to guess when the next correction will occur is usually not a winning strategy; guesses tend to go wrong as often as they go right, even for pros. Rather than attempting to \"\"time the market\"\", pick a strategic mix of investments and rebalance periodically to maintain those ratios. There has been debate here about \"\"dollar-cost averaging\"\" -- see other answers -- but that idea may argue for investing and rebalancing in more small chunks rather than a few large ones. I generally actively rebalance once a year or so, and between those times let maintainng the balance suggest which fund(s) new money should go into -- minimal effort and it has worked quite well enough.,)\""], "neg": ["Killer product descriptions that prompt deals aren't really difficult to compose. Notwithstanding what may be normal, once you know the condition and key fixings that make one up, you can take after a clear game plan of steps each time you create another for an item. But hiring a Professional is a better idea. You can get Amazon Product Description Writing Services from Mmf Infotech.", "This has been happening for a long time.  I know a lot of people are happy that they have a job where they only work 9-6.  Many white collar jobs have turned 9-5 into 9-6 and with no unions and high unemployment everyone just deals with it.", "Well I mean there's no perfect solution. Women being disadvantaged is just a result of biology, and there's only so much you can do. It's even possible that mandatory paternity is a net negative for society as a whole due to less productivity at the expense of greater equality.", "One reason for this is that many people don't simply allow their houses to rot and decay. If you're talking about a house built in 1980 and left vacant and unmaintained for 35 years, it probably will be in pretty poor shape.  But a homeowner generally wants to preserve their house and maintain it in good condition, so they invest in things like new roofs, siding, gutters, windows, paint, exterminators, new furnaces, hot water heaters, air conditioners, etc... All this stuff costs money (and for tax purposes, can often be factored into the cost basis of the house when it is sold), but it maintains the value of the property. A small hole in the roof may be fairly cheap to fix, but if left unrepaired, it could eventually cause much of the building to rot, making the structure near worthless. If a car slams into your living room, you don't generally leave it there; most people repair the damage.  It's not uncommon in some areas to have 100 year old houses (or 300+ year old houses in some countries) that were built well in the first place and have been well maintained in the interim.  People also renovate their homes, ripping out outdated construction and appliances and sometimes building new additions, decks, porches, etc... This also serves to make the property more attractive and increases its value.", "\"Actually, this is a pretty good analogy to certain types of stocks, specifically tech and other \"\"fad\"\" stocks. Around the turn of the century, there were a lot of \"\"Bobs\"\" buying tech stocks (like they would baseball cards), for tech stocks' sakes. That's what drove the internet and tech stock bubbles of high valuations. At other times, the tech stocks are bought and sold mainly by \"\"Steve's\"\" for business reasons such as likely (not merely possible) future appreciation, and command a much lower valuation.\"", "It is very important to take care of housing roof in certain time interval so as to avoid cracking and leaking in the roof, otherwise it may lead to the harm in future. The material should be taken to the reputed company which is loyal to its client and provide with super fine material which is guaranteed for years. Southmoreroofing will provide you all quality services that are needed for the maintenance of roof Perth.", "It depends on the bank and network. Banks are to provide outgoing data at the certain time for the processing by the central clearing house (the Federal Reserve system, for ACH), which then distributes incoming data back to the banks. All this has to be done between the closing of the business day and the opening of the next one. If the transaction hasn't completed the full path during that time - it will wait at the position it was stuck at until the next cycle - next night. That's why sometimes ACH transactions take more than 1 day to complete (if, for example, multiple Fed banks have to be involved)."]}
+{"query": "Which type of stock order would I use to sell a stock that hits a price or drops below it?", "corpus": ["A trailing stop will sell X shares at some percentage below the current market price.  Putting in this order with a 10% trailing stop when the stock price is $50 will sell the stock when it hits $45.  It's a market order at that point (see below). A stop order will sell the stock when it reaches a certain price.  The stop order becomes a market order when the magic price is hit.  This means that you may not sell it at or below your price when the order is executed.  But the stock will sell faster because the trader must execute. A stop limit order is the same as a stop order, except the stock won't be sold if it can't be gotten for the price.  As a result, the sell may not be executed. More information here."], "neg": ["\"As a minor you certainly can pay tax, the government wants its cut from you just like everyone else :-) However you do get the personal allowance like everyone else, so you won't have to pay income tax until your net income reaches £10,800 (that's the figure for the tax year from April 2015 to April 2016, it'll probably change in future years). Once you're 16, you will also have to pay national insurance, which is basically another tax, at a lower threshold. The current rates are £2.80/week if you are making £5,965 a year or more, and also 9% on any income above £8,060 (up to £42,385). Your \"\"net income\"\" or \"\"profits\"\" are the income you receive minus the expenses you have to support that income. Note that the expenses must be entirely for the \"\"business\"\", they can't be for personal things. The most important thing to do immediately is to start keeping accurate records. Keep a list of the income you receive and also the expenses you pay for hardware etc. Make sure you keep receipts (perhaps just electronic ones) for the expenses so you can prove they existed later. Keep track of that net income as the year goes on and if it starts collecting at the rate you'd have to pay tax and national insurance, then make sure you also put aside enough money to pay for those when the bill comes. There's some good general advice on the Government's website here: https://www.gov.uk/working-for-yourself/what-you-need-to-do In short, as well as keeping records, you should register with the tax office, HMRC, as a \"\"sole trader\"\". This should be something that anyone can do whatever their age, but it's worth calling them up as soon as you can to check and find out if there are any other issues. They'll probably want you to send in tax returns containing the details of your income and expenses. If you're making enough money it may be worth paying an accountant to do this for you.\"", "\"If I had to guess (since you provided little information about your loan repayment), I'd guess that you're on the \"\"Extended\"\" repayment plan for your $72k loan, and the \"\"Standard\"\" plan for your $30k loan. In general, there are 4 main kinds of student loan repayment plans This holds true for federal loans (Direct/Stafford/PLUS). Private loans may not have all of these options, or they may have more. Running your numbers, I get 300 payments of $500/mo at 6.8% interest for a $72,000 loan, and 120 payments of $345/mo at 6.8% interest for a $30,000 loan. Now, to address your issue of interest vs principal, you should notice that each month you pay, the interest payment is slightly lower, and the principal slightly higher. And if you make bi-weekly payments, you'll see that change a LITTLE bit more quickly (slightly smaller balance accruing interest for 14 days of the month) and you'll also pay slightly less over time.\"", "I'm in the same position as you. I've found YouTube to be a great resource, as well as reading things from outlets like the WSJ. Having a close friend in a target school studying finance also helps a ton, as I have someone to talk to casually about things, as well as ask questions.  Check out [this](https://www.youtube.com/playlist?list=PLUl4u3cNGP63B2lDhyKOsImI7FjCf6eDW) playlist on YouTube. I've seen the professor (Lo) mentioned more than once in articles in the WSJ. He's written some books too that I'd like to read. I haven't watched that whole playlist, but the first few videos are helpful.  Martin Shkreli's YouTube channel is a great resource. It's mentioned constantly on this sub. His finance lessons as well as his weekly podcast are great. I also like to listen to (via YouTube Red) talks given by execs like Ackman, Gray, Simons, Dalio, etc. [this](https://www.youtube.com/channel/UCVJalJNQWimC2zWrIHR_bSQ) channel uploads tons of interviews and talks that I find interesting. They can get repetitive, but I find it fun to listen to these guys.   You can also get a student membership to the American Finance Association for free. Academic papers are still way above my level, but if you really get into it, those could be fun.  You can subscribe to email newsletters for some free content. Almost Daily Grant's is a good one, the normal journal costs like 2k a year.   Feel free to message me.", "Plain and simple, go into business.  I was in the exact same boat as you 5 years ago. Was going to school to become a Pharmacist while working in a Dominick's pharmacy as a tech. Absolutely hated it and did not see myself standing behind that counter for the rest of my life. Not to mention that a pharmacists job will be one of the firsts in the medical field to be automated.   Left pharmacy school to start my business degree. Got a couple of sales jobs for the experience while completing my bachelors. Now I'm working in Chicago as a commercial real estate broker. The plan is to work in this for the foreseeable future, and then parlay this career into my own business ventures and real estate investing and build from there!", "No, it's not.  This could be a great question, but with no background, not so much. Do you live there now? For how long, and how much longer? You say investment, are you looking to live in it or rent it out?  I have nothing against China, but I'd not buy anywhere unless the price, location, and timing all were right.", "I get teh flight to quality arguement aka best of the dirty shirts philosophy, but I am talking realistically. And of course a 3% 10yr is worth more on the seconday market now that rates are at 1.65%.  That doesn't mean you buy the 1.65%", "At first guess, people have less and less disposable cash/income for a down payment which subsequently results in longer loan duration. I thought I recall reading an article not too long ago where average auto loan term was 70 something months and average new car is $30k+. That’s a lot of $$$ for a country where median household income is $50k."]}
+{"query": "Why would a company issue a scrip dividend and how will this issue affect me?", "corpus": ["Am I correct in understanding that a Scrip Dividend involves the issue of new shares instead of the purchase of existing shares? Yes. Instead of paying a cash dividend to shareholders, the company grants existing shareholders new shares at a previously determined price. This allows shareholders who join the program to obtain new shares without incurring transaction costs that would normally occur if they purchased these shares in the market. Does this mean that if I don't join this program, my existing shares will be diluted every time a Scrip Dividend is paid? Yes, because the number of shares has increased, so the relative percentage of shares in the company you hold will decrease if you opt-out of the program. The price of the existing shares will adjust so that the value of the company is essentially unchanged (similar to a stock split), but the number of outstanding shares has increased, so the relative weight of your shares declines if you opt out of the program.  What is the benefit to the company of issuing Scrip Dividends? Companies may do this to conserve their cash reserves. Also, by issuing a scrip dividend, corporations could avoid the Advanced Corporation Tax (ACT) that they would normally pre-pay on their distributions. Since the abolition of the ACT in 1999, preserving cash reserves is the primary reason for a company to issue scrip dividends, as far as I know. Whether or not scrip dividends are actually a beneficial strategy for a company is debatable (this looks like a neat study, even though I've only skimmed it).  The issue may be beneficial to you, however, because you might receive a tax benefit. You can sell the scrip dividend in the market; the capital gain from this sale may fall below the annual tax-free allowance for capital gains, in which case you don't pay any capital gains tax on that amount. For a cash dividend, however, there isn't a minimum taxable amount, so you would owe dividend tax on the entire dividend (and may therefore pay more taxes on a cash dividend)."], "neg": ["There are some important thing you need to understand about bonds, and how they work:  * A bond doesn't need an active market - like a stock, for example - to have value.    * Nonetheless, there exist active markets for all of these bonds.    * The purpose of buying these bonds was not to step in due to the absence of a market.  Rather, the purpose was to deliberately bid up the price of these bonds (ahead of the market), causing their price to rise and yields (interest rates) to drop.  * The Fed can hold any and all of these bonds to maturity, while receiving contractual payments all the while, and never sell a single bond back to the market.", "\"As an investor, I try to interpret the suits as an attempt to in some way influence the actions of the company - and not, usually, as a serious legal threat (or as likely to lead to serious legal consequences). My (shallow) understanding (as a non-lawyer) is that the requirements for a lawsuit to be filed as class-action suit are (relatively speaking) easier to meet when the company is publicly traded - the shareholders are more easily described as a \"\"class\"\". So it's more common for lawsuits that involve stock holders for large, publicly traded companies to be registered as class action suits. Class action suits include a requirement for some advertising and notifications (so all members of the class become aware of the suit, and can decide whether to participate). So, these types of suits can be started with various goals in mind, goals which might be achieved without the suit ever going anywhere - including to gain some publicity for a particular point of view, or to put pressure on the company to perform particular actions. In most cases, though, they are the result of misunderstandings between the various parties with an interest in how the company is run - shareholders, directors and/or executive officers. For most cases, the result of the suit is a more in depth sharing of information between the parties involved, and possibly a change in the plans/actions of the company; the legal technicalities differ from case to case, and, often, the legal consequences are minor.\"", "Fuck managerial accounting to death. Anywho, I'm not sure what they mean by the variance being higher or lower in the budget. Variance in principle is the discrepancy from a budget and actual.   I'll try to answer this from what I can see.    The budget variance in this problem is unfavorable for Busy Community Support, mostly caused by a significant underestimating of your salaries expense in the budget.", "So you don't have any trouble with FedGov dictating *national* labor and union-relation laws, and throwing out the differences between various states? Because *that's* the reason this administration is acting in this manner, it has very little to do with franchises; the end result is national dictatorship of wages, hours, and unions by the executive branch.  As the article says; if this policy is really what's necessary, why doesn't *Congress* implement it?", "\"The \"\"pure play\"\" would be using interest rate options.  http://www.cboe.com/Products/InterestRateOptionsSpecs.aspx\"", "Off the top of my head, a broker: While there are stock exchanges that offer direct market access (DMA), they (nearly) always want a broker as well to back the first two points I made.  In that case the broker merely routes your orders directly to the exchange and acts as a custodian, but of course the details heavily depend on the exchange you're talking about. This might give you some insight: Direct Market Access - London Stock Exchange", "As BrenBarn points out in his comment, the real values are inflation adjusted values using the consumer price index (CPI) included in the spreadsheet.  The nominal value adjusted by the CPI gives the real value in terms of today's dollars. For example, the CPI for the first month (Jan 1871) is given as 12.46 while the most recent month (Aug 2016) has a reported CPI of 240.45. Thus, the real price (in today's dollars) for the 4.44 S&P index level at Jan 1871 is calculated as 4.44 x 240.45 / 12.46 = 85.68 (actually reported as 85.65 due to rounding of the reported CPIs).  And similarly for the other real values reported."]}
+{"query": "Can I deduct personal loans or use them as tax “write offs?”", "corpus": ["You will have to write it off as an offset of capital gains or as bad debt against personal income, limited to $3k/ yr. Write off 3k this year, 2k next. Here's the tax code, you'll need to file a form 8949, link below. https://www.irs.gov/taxtopics/tc450/tc453 So, this requires that it is a loan, acknowledged by both you and the borrower, with terms of repayment and stated interest, as well as wording for late payments and time for delinquency.  The loan document doesn't have to be fancy, but it must show a reasonable intention of repayment to distinguish it from a gift.  Then send out a 1099c for cancellation of debt. This is a starting point, it's a good idea to run everything by your tax processional to make sure you're meeting the requirements for bad debt with your contact and payment communication."], "neg": ["\"It's a spin on the phrase \"\"making your money work for you\"\". before sending your money off to do the heavy lifting, you'll want to   have an emergency savings account of about six months of living   expenses stored in cash. Basically, he is saying before you start to invest make sure you have sufficient emergency savings.\"", "I think legitimate companies and patent trolls have been suing and licensing and participating in patent land grabs for years and years now. I don't think there's any CEO out there that reads the latest Apple news and realizes they could have been doing this all along.", "[Image](https://imgs.xkcd.com/comics/impostor.png)  [Mobile](https://m.xkcd.com/451/)  **Title:** Impostor  **Title-text:** If you think this is too hard on literary criticism, read the Wikipedia article on deconstruction\\.  [Comic Explanation](https://www.explainxkcd.com/wiki/index.php/451#Explanation)  **Stats:** This comic has been referenced 237 times, representing 0.1445% of referenced xkcds.  --- ^[xkcd.com](https://www.xkcd.com) ^| ^[xkcd sub](https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd/) ^| ^[Problems/Bugs?](https://www.reddit.com/r/xkcd_transcriber/) ^| ^[Statistics](http://xkcdref.info/statistics/) ^| ^[Stop Replying](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=xkcd_transcriber&amp;subject=ignore%20me&amp;message=ignore%20me) ^| ^[Delete](https://reddit.com/message/compose/?to=xkcd_transcriber&amp;subject=delete&amp;message=delete%20t1_dkmt1yy)", "Definitely, Elon is someone to admire and he definitely deserves a lot of credit for what he accomplished.   Tesla is worth about $50B, but remember another contributing factor to its success: the USA government is paying $7,500 for every car they make and sell.", "Assuming constant velocity, inflation is caused by the difference between the growth in the money supply and growth in real output. In other words, this means that the money supply growing faster than output is expanding causes inflation to arise.", "The payments might be on time, but the aren't made the same numbers of days apart: The percentage of the daily payment for interest is decreasing, but the numbers of days wasn't constant.", "From an Indian tax point of view, this transaction is not taxable to you or your father."]}
+{"query": "Why would you sell your bonds?", "corpus": ["You sell any investment because you need to do something else with the money -- rebalance your investments, buy something, pay off a debt...."], "neg": ["Basically, yes. That doesn't mean that it's easy to do. The government provides a dividend tax credit since an individual takes on more risk to invest in dividend-paying corporations rather than trading their human capital for an income. Thus, for the most part, $1 earned from dividends is taxed much less than $1 earned from income or interest. Finally, note that foreign dividends are not eligible for the dividend tax credit, and are not preferentially taxed.", "I have read numerous accounts of this, and yes, it is criminal, but no, they can't figure out who did, though presumably the people handling the accounts were guilty of this. Mutant human [Angelo Mozilo](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Angelo_Mozilo)'s organization stands out as the worst offender in this regard with no trickery too extreme.  Ironically sourcing these particular accounts is difficult because of the sheer amount of material pertaining to subprime mortgages and fraud in general.", "Apple's specialty is UX.  It's an incredibly talented UX company, both software and hardware wise.  It's also talented at convincing it's fanbase that anything they release is required to live.  Apple fanboys would buy a car just to get the Apple logo somewhere on it.", "\"I would say to only bother keeping the ones you know you'll use for itemized deductions. This includes any unreimbursed business expenses and vehicle licensing fees. There are a lot of other itemized tax deductions possible, but those are two common ones. Also, keep track of your business mileage (mileage before and after the trip, and commuting doesn't count as \"\"business mileage\"\"). You may also want to keep receipts of all out-of-state purchases if your state is one of those that tries to collect state tax on out-of-state purchases. Ensure your supported charities are 501(c)(3), and they'll give you a receipt at the end of the year. Don't bother keeping fast food or gas receipts (unless they're business expenses).\"", "It's perfectly legal for your brother to make a loan to you.  However those two transactions are separate.  If he defaults on the LC loan because you didn't pay him, it's his responsibility.  If you default on your loan with him, you've got big problems.  Money + family/friends = scary.", "\"Chance presented me with the opportunities. Hard work enabled me to be prepared to take those opportunities when presented. Had the opportunities that I did take not presented themselves I was very prepared to move on to the next ones. I always say, \"\"I have backup plans for my backup plan's backup plan.\"\"\"", "If you are inside of a ROTH IRA you are not getting taxed on any gain.  Dividends, distributions, interest payment, or capital gains are never taxed.  This, of course, assumes you wait until age 59.5 to do ROTH withdrawals on your gains."]}
+{"query": "What exactly is a wealth management platform?", "corpus": ["It's a tech buzzword. OK I'm being a bit glib.  A Wealth Management Platform is a software system designed to help people track their investment portfolios and research new investments.  Sometimes, trusts and small investment firms will use these platforms as well but they will often have more specialized separate systems for portfolio tracking and research. There is a large variety of platforms out there all trying to be the best platform for you... or someone else.  Some will have websites and be open to all with money and some will be applications and only target some types of investors.  Some will have robo-advising (Wealthfront), a human adviser (Merrill) or have none at all.  Some will have nice graphical tools to track your portfolio or great research tools or both (I try not to recommend products on this site).  Some can be designed to nudge you into their ideology (Vanguard). All, though, have a technology team behind them to make investing easier for you (or their investment advisers) or to sell you their products.  You get the picture."], "neg": ["While I agree that luck has something to do with it, most of the successful business owners also put in crazy long hours and submitted themselves to huge financial risk in order to get their businesses started.  I do not say this to mean there is no luck; there is always an element of luck. But you cannot get lucky if you aren't at the right place at the right time, and sometimes arriving at that place and trying to get lucky takes much more than people realize.  Edit: some people are interpreting this to say that only successful business owners work hard. This is not what I am saying.", "\"This question has been asked and answered before. Financially, owning a car will be more economical than leasing one in most cases. The reason for this is that leasing arrangements are designed to make a profit for the leasing company over and above the value of the car. A leasing company that does not profit off their customers will not be in business for long. This is a zero-sum game and the leasing customer is the loser. The lion's share of the customer losses are in maintenance and in the event of an accident or other damage. In both cases, leasing arrangements are designed to make a large profit for the owner. The average customer assumes they will never get into an accident and they underestimate the losses they will take on the maintenance. For example, if both oxygen sensors need to be replaced and it would have cost you $800 to replace them yourself, but the leasing company charges you $1200, then BOOM! you just lost $400. If the car is totaled, the customer will lose many thousands of dollars. Leasing contracts are designed to make money for the owner, not the customer. Another way leasing agents make money is on \"\"required maintenance\"\". Most leasing contracts require the leasor to perform \"\"required\"\" maintenance, oil changes, tire rotations, etc. Also, with newer cars manufacturers recalls are common. Those are required as well. Nearly nobody does this maintenance correctly. This gives the agent the excuse to charge the customer thousands of dollars when the vehicle is returned. Bills of $4000 to $6000 on a 3 year lease for failure to perform required maintenance are common. Its items like this that allow the leasing agent to get a profit on what looks like a \"\"good deal\"\" when the customer walked in the door 3 years previously. The advantage of leasing is that it costs less up front and it is more convenient to switch to a different car because you don't have to sell the car.\"", "Have you owned the stock for longer than 2015?  The stock appears to have grown in value since December 2014 from 72.85 to 73.5 which is about 0.89% growth in the year to date (2015).", "Distributions from an inherited IRA will be taxed as ordinary income and there are required minimum distributions for the inherited account. Assuming you were 55 at the time of your mother's death, your life expectancy according to the IRS is 29.6 years. Your required yearly distributions on $200,000 would be roughly $6800. For each year that you didn't withdraw that, you would owe a 50% penalty of the distribution amount (~$3400). That's probably better than the tax hit you would take if you pulled it all in as income in a 5 year window (ie. all right now since you're at the end of the window).", "You might consider calling the broker you invest with. At mine, you can see the room left to contribute each year in the TFSA. The CRA might just have old/bad data.", "Do we have a list of all of their predictions? Because 1. I predicted the last crash, whoop di doo 2. By default, on a planet of 7.3 billion, there will always be SOMEONE who predicts something right.  I've been reading about 'the person that nailed the last one predicting collapse tomorrow' since sometime in 2011...all those fuckers were wrong.", "FX is often purchased with leverage by both retail and wholesale speculators on the assumption daily movements are typically more restrained than a number of other asset classes. When volatility picks up unexpectedly these leveraged accounts can absolutely be wiped out. While these events are relatively rare, one happened as recently as 2016 when the Swiss National Bank unleashed the Swiss Franc from its Euro mooring. You can read about it here: http://www.reuters.com/article/us-swiss-snb-brokers-idUSKBN0KP1EH20150116"]}
+{"query": "Bid price… sudden Drop", "corpus": ["An option gives you the option rather than the obligation to buy (or sell) the underlying so you don't have to exercise you can just let the option expire (so long it doesn't have an automatic expiry). After expiration the option is worthless if it is out of the money but other than that has no hangover. Option prices normally drop as the time value of the option decays. An option has two values associated with it; time value and exercise value. Far out of the money (when the price of the underlying is far from the strike price on the losing side) options only have time value whereas deep in the money options (as yours seems to be) has some time value as well as the intrinsic value of the right to buy (sell) at a low (high) price and then sell (buy) the underlying.  The time value of the option comes from the possibility that the price of the underlying will move (further) in your favour and make you more money at expiry. As expiry closes it is less likely that there will be a favourable mood so this value declines which can cause prices to move sharply after a period of little to no revaluing. Up to now what I have said applies to both OTC and traded options but exchange traded options have another level of complexity in their trading; because there are fewer traders in the options market the size of trade at which you can move the market is much lower. On the equities markets you may need to trade millions of shares to have be substantial enough to significantly move a price, on the options markets it could be thousands or even hundreds. If these are European style options (which sounds likely) and a single trading entity was holding a large number of the exchange traded options and now thinks that the price will move significantly against them before expiry their sell trade will move the market lower in spite of the options being in the money. Their trade is based on their supposition that by the time they can exercise the option the price will be below the strike and they will lose money. They have cashed out at a price that suited them and limited what they will lose if they are right about the underlying. If I am not correct in my excise style assumption (European) I may need more details on the trade as it seems like you should just exercise now and take the profit if it is that far into the money."], "neg": ["\"You're missing the point. A \"\"skilled\"\" adult (however you want to define that) shouldn't have to compete with a teeneger. But I get it. Econ 101 supply and demand. The problem is \"\"economists\"\" are now saying that the supply side is the only one that maters and that if you just pump up supply demand will follow and thus we now have flippant idoitic policy! Resolve THAT. Please.\"", "&gt; From the IT managers perspective he has a budget of X dollars to allocate. When X dollars are spent that's it, he isn't allowed to spend any more.  The IT manager should not view his budget this way. A budget is a projection of future expenses. If some expenses turn out to be different from the projection, then either (a) you need your budget to account for this by having some slack in it or (b) you have to revisit your budget and change the plan.  Viewing a budget as a checking account is wrong. That's not how it actually works in the accounting department and by not understanding what accounting is doing, the IT manager is causing himself extra pain.", "I like using Mint.com to track my expenses.  It makes it very easy to watch my budget and monitor my spending.", "\"Like almost everything in economics, it's a tradeoff. Terms like \"\"good\"\" imply an absolute value. It *can* be good or bad depending on the circumstances, the exact amount it is being set to, and the importance of the things being traded off to different individuals, independent of their per-conceived personal opinion of minimum wage itself.\"", "It's not fucking rocket science. You cut taxes at the high income brackets, and it helps people in higher income bracket. Is this what counts for journalism these days?  I wish I could get my time back for reading this article.", "The price of the loan may be justified if you're considered a high-risk applicant for some reason (e.g. you're putting very little money in initial payment), and if it includes all the associated expenses. What is more relevant to your situation is that you're probably better off renting. Think about it: your $300'000 house will require some repairs in those 30 years (let's estimate those at $100'000). That means in 30 years you'll build $200'000 of equity spending $720'000 on it. Of course this assumes that the value of the house will remain constant. You're effectively be throwing away $520'000, or more than $1'400 a month. If you can rent a place for $1'400 a month or less, you'll build more equity by renting that place for 30 years and saving the excess money in a bank account. If you consider the interest that money in your bank account will earn you (e.g. 3% annually), you'll build more than $200'000 equity in 30 years even if you spend as much as $1'650 on your rent and save only $350 a month.", "\"Its more \"\"there could be a big market correction without vix going up\"\", though I suppose it might spike briefly if there's a sudden reversal. VIX is one of those things that doesn't feel like it is ever due for a change.\""]}
+{"query": "Why buy insurance?", "corpus": ["\"Because people are Risk Averse. Suppose that you own an asset worth $10,000 to you.  Suppose that each year, the asset has 1% chance of being stolen (or completely broken).  The expected value is 99% x 10,000 + 1% x $0 = $9,900. This is the average outcome if you do not buy insurance.  Now consider two mutually exclusive outcomes: 99% chance of keeping $10,000 and 1% chance of losing everything (expected value: $9,900)  100% chance of keeping $9,900 (expected value: $9,900)  Everyone would choose option 2, even though the expected values are the same.  Option 2 is an insurance that cost $100 (Actuarially fair, aka the odds are fair).  Now suppose the insurance costs $150 instead of $100 (despite that the bad probability is still 1%). You are faced with  99% chance of keeping $10,000 and 1% chance of losing everything (expected value: $9,900)  100% chance of keeping $9,850 (expected value: $9,850)  Some people would still choose option 2, even though the expected value is actually lower.  The $50 is called Risk Premium, which people are willing to pay in order to avoid uncertainty. The odds are unfair, but the Risk Premium has its value.  That being said, competition between insurance companies would drive down the premium until the insurance is close to actuarially fair, but they have cost to cover (sales, administration, etc), making the odds \"\"unfair\"\".\""], "neg": ["Hyperinflation doesn't mean armaggedon. There have been hundreds of fiat currencies that have ended in hyperinflation i.e. wiemar republic (which the germans fully recovered from in less than 10 years before trying to take over europe).   Most all pawn shops buy gold/silver, especially during hyperinflation will people be buying gold/silver. You can't have hyperinflation without demand of commodities going through the roof, that is the driver of inflation. When this happens you can be gauranteed people will buy your gold/silver.  In the Wiemar republic, some people bought gold/silver for 1/10,000,000 what they sold it for. But they still lost 99% of their value because the mark still devalued another 1,000,000 times. Because of this, many people aren't even looking to sell it, until they absolutely need it's value. I.e. it's a piggy bank.   The best way to deal with a gold/silver stash is to hide it, you can't steal what you can't find. There's a reason pirates are famous for burying their stuff, when they don't have the law on their side.", "It seems he has now been infected by the baby talk virus, which was cute about 16 years ago, but today, its just considered more shit talk from US politicians who have lost their grip on reality and imagine lying through their teeth and throwing in some well used terms like human rights and freedom and democracy will actually garner some support from some one naive enough in the world.  Hey Fucking Moron 2nd in command . . .make a speech about Israel and human rights and freedom of speech and media  Hey . .make a speech about shooting children in the face with shotguns in Indian occupied Kashmir.", "I had a similar situation a while ago, and here's what I learned: What are our options here to ensure that this company can't retry to take our money again via ACH? Close existing account and create a new one that has different account number? Yes. As a temporary solution keep ~$0 balance in the account so that their request for $840 can't be fulfilled? However, would our bank incur any fees because of insufficient funds each time the other company tries to charge us again? Bad idea. You may incur penalties for returned payment, or the bank may honor the payment and charge you overdraft fees. Provide to our bank the service termination notice that proves that we   are not in business with the other company anymore and effectively   block them. However, termination notice has only our signature Bank doesn't care. ACH withdrawal is akin to a check. The assumption is that the other side has entitlement. You can put stop payment once its processed and try to reverse it claiming fraud, but the end result will be #1: you'll end up getting a new account set up, while they try to recover the money. This is one of the reasons I'm reluctant allowing standing ACH authorizations any more. Generally, the American banking system is very much geared against the consumers, and in many ways is very retarded. In a more advanced countries (which is almost any other country than the US), the standing withdrawal authorization goes through your bank and can be revoked.", "\"From what I've heard in the past, debt can be differentiated between secured debt and unsecured debt.   Secured debt is a debt for which something stands good such as a mortgage on your house.  You have a debt, but that debt is covered by the value of an asset and if you needed to free yourself of the debt, then you could by selling that asset.   This is what is known as \"\"good\"\" debt.   Unsecured debt is debt that is incurred where the only thing that is available to pay it back is your income.  An example of this is credit card debt where you purchase something that couldn't be sold again to pay off the debt.   This is know as \"\"bad\"\" debt. You have to be careful about thinking that house debt is always \"\"good\"\" debt because the house stands good for it though.  The problem with that is that the house could go down in value and then suddenly your \"\"good\"\" debt is \"\"bad\"\" debt (or no longer secured).  Cars are very risky this way because they go down in value.  It is really easy to get a car loan where before long you are upside down.    This is the problem with the term \"\"good\"\" debt. The label makes it sound like it is a good idea to have that debt, and the risk associated with having the debt is trivialized and allows yourself to feel good about your financial plan.  Perhaps this is why so many houses are in foreclosure right now, people believed the \"\"good\"\" debt myth and thought that it was ok to borrow MORE than the home was worth to get into a house.  Thus they turned a secured debt into an unsecured debt and put their residence at risk by levels of debt they couldn't afford. Other advice I've heard and tend to agree with, is that you should only borrow for a house, an education and maybe a car (danger on that last one), being careful to buy a modest house, car etc that is well within your means to repay.   So if you do have to borrow for a car, go for basic transportation instead of the $40,000 BMW.  Keep you house payment less than 1/4th of your take home pay. Pay off the school loans as quickly as possible. Regardless of the label, \"\"good\"\" \"\"bad\"\" \"\"unsecured\"\" \"\"secured\"\", I think that less debt is better than more debt.   There is definitely such a thing as too much \"\"good\"\" debt!\"", "Voluntarily assuming a loan is a bad idea, especially for a non-investment purpose. It would be one thing to take on a loan to operate a business or buy a piece of capital equipment, like a machine that would make you money. Borrowing money to have a more luxurious house is foolish. The smart move is to buy a good quality home that will meet your needs for as little as possible. Having $800,000 leaves a quit a bit of leeway in that department. You don't say where you live, but if this occurred in my area (eastern Massachusetts) I would buy a house for $500,000 and then invest the remaining $300,000. If I lived in the California bay area, it might be necessary to spend the whole $800,000. Either way there should be no need to borrow money. Also, if you buy a house for cash, often you can get a substantially better deal than if you have to involve a bank. Not owing anyone money is a huge psychological advantage in business and in life in general. View being debt-free as a springboard to success and happiness.", "No. They do not. The American populace, myself included, does not understand the vast complexities of the mechanisms and institutions responsible for delivering dollars to the market.   If there's debt, then it must be ok because our paychecks get bigger and we can get money from the bank.   If it was a problem, it'd be taken care of.", "Did you buy near the bottom? Suppose you did then the price is still 16% below. 50% fall and then 40% increase leaves a 16% gap. So there could still be upside. However, it appears that you are talking about a small-cap that is volatile. I wouldn't hold it. I would take the money and invest elsewhere. If you have a lot of shares and brokerage is less then sell 60% now and the remaining 40% on either 10-15% jump in price or if it falls by 5% from now. Too risky to hold longer-term."]}
+{"query": "Taxes and withholding on unpaid salary", "corpus": ["As others have said, make sure you can and do file your taxes on a cash basis (not accrual). It sounds like it's very unlikely the company is going to issue you a 1099 for invoices they never paid you. So you just file last year's taxes based on your income, which is the money you actually received. If they do pay you later, in the new year, you'll include that income on next year's tax return, and you would expect a 1099 at that time. Side note: not getting paid is unfortunately common for consultants and contractors. Take the first unpaid invoice and sue them in small claims court. After you win (and collect!), tell them you'll sue them for each unpaid invoice in turn until they pay you in full. (You might need to break up the lawsuits like that to remain under the small claims limit.)"], "neg": ["Public debt and risk of currency devaluation are two very, very different things.  Until the BRICS are able to buy commodities on a significant scale using a market basket of their own currencies, the USD will remain one of the (if not the) safest currencies in the world.", "What makes it hard is that you're making this decision now, when you've already made decisions over the years going in a different route. I've noticed this recently w/some of my friends, that decisions, even small ones, over the years now come back to bite them b/c they didn't have a long term view. Now in early 30's they are constrained by choices throughout their 20's. Unfortunately, most people aren't equipped to make good decisions earlier, which hurts them later. So making such a change in lifestyle becomes harder.  So while it can be done, it's going to take some hard decisions. Just remember, children are a great reward, and a great sacrifice.", "\"Agreed, but going back to Amazon Prime itself, haven't you seen how the shipping charges are routinely just put into the price? Every non Prime item is $x plus $y for shipping. Then you see the Prime item listed for $(x+y) \"\"and free shipping!\"\". Just curious as to how you aren't more upset about that.\"", "If you think there is no complication in your application and you can easily satisfy all criteria you can do the process yourself without using any agent and save few thousand dollars. I have done myself. Another cost Chris forgot to mention is the medical examination cost which is mandatory. If your certificates and docs are non-English translation fees are quite high as well.  The immigration process is very bureaucratic and requires lot of supporting documents. As for living in Australia, Rent, Car and living expenses are high compared to US. But in Sydney and Melbourne you can rent near public transport, which isn't too bad (well not like Europe ). So having a car is not essential. Rent for a decent flat in these cities will be $300 - $350 p/w and you may have to pay 4-6 weeks as advance. You can get a lot of information from the dept. of immingration website.", "\"&gt; (NK and Iran with nuclear weapons, both say publicly \"\"death to America\"\").  Iran's nuclear facilities are under 24/7 inspections by the US and IAEA. The claim that Iran has a nuclear weapons program is US/Israeli propaganda -- pure and simple. Even all of our dozen-plus \"\"intelligence\"\" agencies state Iran has no nuclear weapons program.  North Korea likely has a half-dozen or so nukes.  But on the other hand, what would *you* do if the world's most aggressive, war-loving nation refuses to end the still-officially-ongoing Korean War?  North Korea has offered to end their nuclear weapons program, to re-join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and allow full UN inspections -- in exchange for the US ending the Korean War and giving non-aggression guarantees. We (the Bush administration) rejected that offer.\"", "\"The downside of the store card is that the \"\"deal\"\" for using the card is typically 6-12 months of \"\"no payments\"\" or \"\"no interest\"\". In reality, the \"\"deal\"\" is deferred payments/interest. The problem is, if you miss any payment, or fail to pay the computer off in full, you'll have to pay for the accrued interest -- at a rate typically 25% or higher. That means if you buy your computer for $1,000, and pay $999 at the end of 12 months, you may have to pay $250 in accrued interest. These cards can be great deals, just be really careful!\"", "How can I get quarterly information about private companies? Ask the owner(s).  Unelss you have a relationship and they're interested in helping you, they will likely tell you no as there's no compelling reason for them to do so.  It's a huge benefit of not taking a company public."]}
+{"query": "Stock portfolio value & profit in foreign currency", "corpus": ["I think this will do the trick:"], "neg": ["\"(Yes, I know this is a seven year old question.) Does this only apply to debts that were taken on during marriage  Yes or to all debts of both partners? No. The important thing to remember is that it's both debts and assets acquired during the marriage which are shared. This comes from the reality that men in the olden times were the ones in business, accumulating wealth, etc while the woman \"\"made the home\"\".  The working assumption was that the woman who made the home was an equal partner with the man, since he benefited from a good home, and she benefited from his income. The fact that pre-marriage debts and assets were not community property also protected the woman, because she was able to then take back her dowry and use that to support herself. (N.B. - I live in a CP state.)\"", "You never know when your upholstery or carpets can be in the need of Bunbury cleaning services, and this is exactly why you should always have our number handy. We, Chem-Dry Clean and Green, are like a doctor for your upholstery and carpet and you can give us a call anytime they are dirty.", "In the US, a surviving family member that inherits the entire property may also assume the mortgage.  If the new mortgagee fails to uphold the terms of the mortgage (i.e. make timely payments), the mortgagor can begin foreclosure proceedings.  There is generally no requirement to pay off the mortgage quickly. This is obviously the simple case where one person inherits the entire property. If the estate is split and no one person inherits the house, or if the house is left to a non-relative, things get more complicated.  Effectively in that case the house is either sold to pay off the mortgage or the inheritor needs to take out a new mortgage to pay off the old one.", "\"This is another version of an old scam -- \"\"let me have a check deposited in your account because I can't open one for some reason, and I'll share some of the money with you.\"\"  Here the scammer is promising to \"\"start a business\"\" with you as a way to gain your confidence and trust. The first danger sign is that you only know this person from online.  They are not someone you are friends with in the \"\"real\"\" world.  They could be anybody.   They used the name of a big company as a way to make what they're doing sound legitimate, but it's all a fraud.  They could be depositing a faked Exxon check into your account, which could land YOU in huge trouble. Here's the thing -- The only way Exxon (or any other company) can deposit money in a bank under someone's name is if that person provides the account and routing numbers to an account that already exists.  No company can just create an account in another person's name.  That's Hollywood movie stuff, but it's not how banking works.  To open an account, the bank would need identification on the account holder, so your \"\"friend\"\" already has an account if Exxon has allegedly deposited money.  Further, Exxon isn't going to take back money that has already been deposited.  In fact, they can't take it back.  If the account is in his name, they can't do anything to the account or with the account.   This is a situation you should run away from and never look back.  Nothing about this story sounds right or legitimate, but this is one of the oldest scams out there since the beginning of the Internet. You would be well advised to stay VERY far away from your supposed friend, because they're anything but your friend.  You are being SCAMMED.  Don't be a victim.  Stop communicating with this person immediately, and DON'T give them any personal information of any kind.  They're crooks! I hope this helps. Good luck!\"", "Looks like you don't want to participate in the consumerist rush but feel that you just have to do that too. First of all, you don't have to do what you don't want. Then there're researches showing that joy from a compulsive purchase only lasts for a short period of time and then you are left with a relatively useless item in your house. So it's one thing if you really wanted that cool full-electronic sewing machine (or whatever DIY item you might want) to be able to repair all the stuff and craft all the nice things you wanted, but it's another thing if you look at the item and can't decide whether you really need it. The latter scenario is you struggling with the consumerism rush. If you feel really happy and can save half of what you earn just save the difference - it won't hurt. Having a good sum of money saved is really helpful in many scenarios.", "\"I don't think you've mentioned which State you're in. Here in Ontario, a person who is financially incapable can have their financial responsibility and authority removed, and assigned to a trustee. The trustee might be a responsible next of kin (as her ex, you would appear unsuitable: that being a potential conflict of interest); otherwise, it can be the Public Guardian and Trustee. It that happens, then the trustee handles the money; and handles/makes any contracts on behalf of (in the name of) the incapable person. The incapable person might have income (e.g. spousal support payments) and money (e.g. bank accounts), which the trustee can document in order to demonstrate credit-worthiness (or at least solvency). For the time being, the kids see it as an adventure, but I suspect, it will get old very fast. I hope you have a counsellor to talk with about your personal relationships (I've had or tried several and at least one has been extraordinarily helpful). You're not actually expressing a worry about the children being abused or neglected. :/ Is your motive (for asking) that you want her to have a place, so that the children will like it (being there) better? As long as your kids see it as an adventure, perhaps you can be happy for them. Perhaps (I don't know: depending on the people) too it's a good (or at least a better) thing that they are visiting with friends and relatives; and, a better conversational topic with those people might be how they show your children a good time (instead of your ex's money). One possible way I thought of co-signing is if a portion of child/spousal support goes directly to the landlord. I asked the Child Support Services (who deduct money from my paycheck monthly to pay support to my ex) and they told me that they are not authorized to do this. Perhaps (I don't know) there is some way to do that, if you have your ex's cooperation and a lawyer (and perhaps a judge). You haven't said what portions of your payments are for Child support, versus Spousal support (nor, who has custody, etc). If a large part of the support is for the children, then perhaps the children can rent the place. (/wild idea) Note that, in Ontario, there are two trusteeship decisions to make: 1) financial; and 2) personal care, which includes housing and medical. Someone can retain their own 'self-care' authority even if they're judged financially incapable (or vice versa if there's a personal-care or medical decision which they cannot understand). The technical language is, \"\"Mentally Incapable of Managing Property\"\" This term applies to a person who is unable to understand information that is relevant to    making a decision or is unable to appreciate the reasonably foreseeable consequences of a    decision or lack of decision about his or her property. Processes for certifying an    individual as being mentally incapable of managing property are prescribed in the SDA (Substitute Decisions Act), and in the Mental Health Act.\"\" The Mental Heath Act is for medical emergencies (only); but Ontario has a Substitute Decisions Act as well. An intent of the law is to protect vulnerable people. People may also acquire and/or name their own trustee and/or guardian voluntarily: via a power of attorney, a living will, etc. I don't know: how about offering the landlord a year's rent in advance, or in trust? I guess that 1) a court order can determine/override/guarantee the way in which the child support payments are directed 2) it's easier to get that order/agreement if you and your ex cooperate 3) there are housing specialists in your neighborhood: They can buy housing instead of renting it. Or be given (gifted) housing to live in.\"", "&gt; You can't hire on the basis of religion, period.  That is false.  It is a general rule, but there are lots of exceptions.  For example, when hiring a pastor or any job where your religion is required to perform the job."]}
+{"query": "How do I calculate the dwelling coverage I need from the information I have?", "corpus": ["This is where an insurance agent is very useful. They will help you choose appropriate coverage, based on local rebuilding costs, the build quality of your house (higher quality or historic/semi-historic construction requires a different type of coverage), etc. They can also help advise you on things like the need for flood insurance, etc. Local rules can vary, and the local agent will know about them. For example, we found out that my home was in a semi-historic district, which requires using higher-cost materials for reconstruction. Also, our city separately licenses tradespeople, who tend to be unionized and thus more expensive. Had I just picked default coverages, I would have been in a pickle in the event of a loss."], "neg": ["Between the commodity slump in 2014, emerging markets producing huge amounts of cheap products and automation bringing down margins it's not so surprising that we see inflation on the low side of predictions. On top of that, central bank inflation targeting surely has an impact as well in weakening the Phillips curve relationship.", "And the vast majority of that, over 80%, is concentrated in just a small fraction of neighborhoods. Part of Baltimore's problem is precisely because it's so economically segregated, which is unfortunate. I lived in the Mount Vernon neighborhood for years, and I never once felt unsafe.  People need to grow a spine.", "\"TDAmeritrade, an online stock broker, provides banking services within their brokerage accounts. The service offers all of what you are looking for. HOWEVER, this service is only available for free with their \"\"Apex\"\" qualification.  Here is a tariff of their fees and services.\"", "There is one way to make money quickly. If you are married and both are over 50 and you can put money into a deductible IRA for 2014. The $5,500 contribution  and $1,000 catch-up per person would allow the family to make a contribution of $13,000. If they are in the 25% tax bracket the $3,250 drop in their taxes would allow them to get a $325 bonus from their tax software.  Of course they would have already had to be getting a refund before the IRA contribution, or the new refund and bonus would be smaller. They would have had to meet all the program rules. And they must have a combination of 401Ks and AGI to allow deductible contributions.  This would drastically shorten the initial loan period.", "Capping the upside while playing with unlimited downside is a less disciplined investment strategy vis-a-vis a stop-loss driven strategy. Whether it is less risky or high risky also depends on the fluctuations of the stock and not just long-term movements. For example, your stop losses might get triggered because of a momentary sharp decline in stock price due to a large volume transaction (esp more so in small-cap stocks). Although, the stock price might recover from the sudden price drop pretty soon causing a seemingly preventable loss. That being said, playing with stop losses is always considered a safer strategy. It may not increase your profits but can certainly cap your losses.", "No, Walmart does not rely on government support of workers. That is a very child like view of the matter. Let's not make these people out to be victims. If those workers are not earning enough at Walmart, they should be searching for work elsewhere, or other jobs to supplement their incomes. Nobody is forcing them to work there. This type of job is really best suited for a student, or a retired person, who aren't trying to support a family, etc.  Also, Walmart is only one of a million businesses who operate as a low-cost leader, and I guarantee you that you enjoy the low prices that these companies charge on a regular basis. And this makes you a hypocrite, really, because your purchases are supporting their way of doing business, which in turn leads to the low wages. So if you really want to go down the blaming road, we can blame you as well.  Now, having said that, I believe a living wage is a good thing, and I support legislation in favor of this as a solution to the problem, rather than trying to stifle the natural flow of business by singling out one company and blaming them. And doing this won't harm companies like Walmart; they will still operate just as usual, only *all the prices, at every low cost store* will increase as a result of the higher wages.", "&gt; Why are you against making sure their pensions are funded?  Pension actuarial analyst here:  Pensions can give employee's benefits for time worked long before the plan came into existence.  Those 'liabilities' are paid off over 30-40 years.  It's absolutely normal.  In addition, pension plans may also pay off increases in benefits, such as an early retirement window, over that same 30-40 years.  Pension funds use assumptions on future investment earnings to 'guess' their contribution.  Sometimes, they don't earn as much as they expect the plan to earn.  Sometimes, they try to keep contributions low *as an alternative to scrapping the plan entirely*.  So putting this all together:  if pension plans are instantly and always 100% funded?  You don't get pension plans, with defined and guaranteed retirement benefits.  You get plans where the employee defers their own money into accounts, with no particular guarantees at all.  And that's why we are fine with unfunded pensions.  Oh, by the way, the PBGC charges higher fees to covered pension plans that have more unfunded liability!  So if a company doesn't want to pay contributions, they have to pay more elsewhere.  It all evens out."]}
+{"query": "IRR vs. Interest Rates", "corpus": ["Yes, if your IRR is 5% per annum after three years then the total return (I prefer total rather than your use of actual) over those three years is 15.76%. Note that if you have other cashflows in and out, it gets a bit more complicated (e.g. using the XIRR function in Excel), but the idea is to find an effective annual percentage return that you're getting for your money."], "neg": ["One of the guys that started Rovio got investment from his wealthy uncle's company. They surely want to sell some of their 60% ownership, but claim they will be sticking around. With Rovio's pitch to re-emerge as a film studio (or that was one idea I read and Angry Birds was a hit), I wonder if this valuation matches what other film studios would be valued or are they just riding the wave of ridiculous tech valuations.", "&gt;Consider the following scenario. After a victory by the left-wing Syriza party, Greece’s new government announces that it wants to renegotiate the terms of its agreement with the International Monetary Fund and the European Union.   The election is on June 17th, but I don't see Syriza winning.", "I'm trying to get the numbers to work. I built a quick spreadsheet that allocated the lost time as stated against the overall pay increase, assuming 1.5x for more than 40 hours.   I can't find a reasonable number of hours worked where a 9% cut in hours outweighs the near 20% increase in wages.", "\"The simplest argument for overpayment is this: Let's suppose your fixed rate mortgage has an interest rate of 4.00%. Every £1 you can afford to overpay gives you a guaranteed effective return of 4.00% gross. Yes your monthly mortgage payment will stay the same; however, the proportion of it that's paying off interest every month will be less, and the amount that's actually going into acquiring the bricks and mortar of your home will be greater. So in a sense your returns are \"\"inverted\"\" i.e. because every £1 you overpay is £1 you don't need to keep paying 4% a year to continue borrowing. In your case this return will be locked away for a few more years, until you can remortgage the property. However, compared to some other things you could do with your excess £1s, this is a very generous and safe return that is well above the average rate of UK inflation for the past ten years. Let's compare that to some other options for your extra £1s: Cash savings: The most competitive rate I can currently find for instant access is 1.63% from ICICI. If you are prepared to lock your money away until March 2020, Melton Mowbray Building Society has a fixed rate bond that will pay you 2.60% gross. On these accounts you pay income tax at your marginal rate on any interest received. For a basic rate taxpayer that's 20%. If you're a higher rate taxpayer that means 40% of this interest is deducted as tax. In other words: assuming you pay income tax at one of these rates, to get an effective return of 4.00% on cash savings you'd have to find an account paying: Cash ISAs: these accounts are tax sheltered, so the income tax equation isn't an issue. However, the best rate I can find on a 4 year fixed rate cash ISA is 2.35% from Leeds Building Society. As you can see, it's a long way below the returns you can get from overpaying. To find returns such as that you would have to take a lot more risk with your money – for example: Stock market investments: For example, an index fund tracking the FTSE 100 (UK-listed blue chip companies) could have given you a total return of 3.62% over the last 3 years (past performance does not equal future returns). Over a longer time period this return should be better – historical performance suggests somewhere between 5 to 6% is the norm. But take a closer look and you'll see that over the last six months of 2015 this fund had a negative return of 6.11%, i.e. for a time you'd have been losing money. How would you feel about that kind of volatility? In conclusion: I understand your frustration at having locked in to a long term fixed rate (effectively insuring against rates going up), then seeing rates stay low for longer than most commentators thought. However, overpaying your mortgage is one way you can turn this situation into a pretty good deal for yourself – a 4% guaranteed return is one that most cash savers would envy. In response to comments, I've uploaded a spreadsheet that I hope will make the numbers clearer. I've used an example of owing £100k over 25 years at an unvarying 4% interest, and shown the scenarios with and without making a £100/month voluntary overpayment, assuming your lender allows this. Here's the sheet: https://www.scribd.com/doc/294640994/Mortgage-Amortization-Sheet-Mortgage-Overpayment-Comparison After one year you have made £1,200 in overpayments. You now owe £1,222.25 less than if you hadn't overpaid.  After five years you owe £6,629 less on your mortgage, having overpaid in £6,000 so far. Should you remortgage at this point that £629 is your return so far, and you also have £6k more equity in the property.  If you keep going: After 65 months you are paying more capital than interest out of your monthly payment. This takes until 93 months without overpayments. In total, if you keep up £100/month overpayment, you pay £15,533 less interest overall, and end your mortgage six years early. You can play with the spreadsheet inputs to see the effect of different overpayment amounts. Hope this helps.\"", "&gt; Walmart, home depot, and Costco will always have their place. I still buy a number of items in stores because Amazon can't compete with a 5 gallon bucket for 3 dollars, food prices/quality they haven't even begun to fathom how they will compete with, and general items like furniture that they can't ship for cheap.  You might be right, but Amazon's stated strategy *is* to compete with all those stores, and in all those markets. Most recently the purchase of wholefoods being part of their 'food prices/quality' strategy.", "There is not a permanent deficit. The budget was balanced when Reagan took office. He ran up a massive deficit. Clinton balanced the deficit he inherited. W then ran up a deficit again.  Obama inherited a trillion dollar deficit and reduced it to 400 billion. Now it is going to go up again. I am seeing a pattern here.", "Sorry man, for most finance jobs you are to old for an entry level positions. Firms would much rather give it to a guy fresh out of college (and there are plenty of them) then a 27 year old with no relevant experience.  That being said, there are some areas in finance that are less strict about this, so if you are willing to start at the bottom with a bunch of 22 year olds you have a chance."]}
+{"query": "How long do wire transfers take?", "corpus": ["The experience I have with wire transfers is from Australia to the US. These transfers can take up to 5 business dates (i.e. a whole week including the non-business days of the weekend). I would have thought intra-European transfers would be quicker, given how behind most US (regional) banks are in their electronic transfers. However, I don't think you should be worried just yet."], "neg": ["Does your current firm have a United States office or affiliate? That's the easiest route asking for a transfer or reassignment.   Super competitive for more senior positions with a direct transfer but you can have a shot a junior positions that you can then advance since you have some experience.", "You're in a good spot: making good money with prospects for that to continue for the foreseeable future. Even if/when you quit dancing nursing pays quite well. Leaving all that money in a savings account is a mistake. At a minimum: Open an IRA account at any of the discount brokers (Schwab, Fidelity, etc). Roth is fine to start, once your taxable income goes up consider switching to a traditional IRA. Max out your IRA every year. Invest in low-fee index funds. There are frankly too many options these days, but an S&P 500 Index fund is almost never a mistake. Open a regular taxable investment account where you can invest additional money. Leave some cash/savings for emergencies. But if you do #3 you can always sell some investments in a cash emergency. Yes, it may lose money in the short term, but given your steady income, not a huge concern. I think if you read all the investment advice out there, you'll see a familiar theme along these lines. Your nest egg will grow considerably when you invest.", "You are very right.  I just had to get a cheap and transparent political jab in there. Thank you.  I tell my republican family members that Clinton DIDN'T SCREW THINGS UP, but he actually did by relaxing borrowing standards for home purchases, which led to something very dark in my recent past, lol....", "\"I have personally known a family in the hills of Southern Oregon, US who lived off the electricity grid. As far as being \"\"possible\"\" yes, but easy is a certain no.  This family was very dedicated to the point of living without grid electricity.  A special built home of native field stones, careful alignment with the sun, location within the valley.  I would assume that making a normal home be off the electric grid is much more difficult.  Not impossible, but pretty darn hard.\"", "If you do the financing, get a large down payment and make a short loan.  Do not expose yourself to risk with a 30 year note, and get some major money up front so the buyer has some skin in the game and will continue to make payments.", "There are lot of options. I personally avoid keeping money in bank accounts and invest in one of the funds. It's just my personal opinion, you can ask your Ulamas", "\"In general, if you can afford to replace something, you are able to \"\"self-insure\"\".  You really want to understand a little of the statistics before you can make a generic call, but my rule of thumb is that insurance via \"\"extended warranty\"\" is rarely a good deal.  Here is a simple expected value math formula you can apply (when the > is true, then you should buy it): replacement cost x likelihood of using warranty % > cost of insurance You can then back-compute, what is the likelihood that I'd need to lose this item to break even?  Given your numbers: $2000 x Y > $350 or Y > (350/2000) or Y > 17.5% So if you think there is a 17.5% or greater chance that you'll need to have you system replaced (i.e. not just a simple fix) AND (as Scott pointed out) you'll be able to actually use the replacement warranty then the applecare is a good purchase.  Note, this only applies to items you can replace out-of-pocket without significant burden, because if you didn't have the $10k to replace your car, it wouldn't matter if the insurance wasn't such a good deal (especially if you need the car to get to work, etc.) So the obvious question is: \"\"Why would a for-profit company ever offer insurance on something they are statistically likely to lose money on?\"\"  The obvious answer is \"\"they wouldn't,\"\" but that doesn't mean you should never buy this type of insurance, because you may have statistically significant circumstances. For instance, I purchased a $40 remote helicopter as a gift for my children.  I also paid the $5 for a \"\"no questions asked\"\" warranty on it because, knowing my kids, I knew there was a nearly 100% chance they would break it at least once.  In this case, this warranty was well worth the $5, because they did break it!  Presumably they make money on these warranties because most of the purchasers of the plan are more attentive (or too lazy to make the claim) than in this case. Edit note: I incorporated Scott's comment about likelihood of being able to utilize the warranty into a combined \"\"likelihood of using warranty\"\" term.  This term could be broken up into likelihood of needing replacement x likelihood of actually getting company to replace it I didn't do this above because it makes it a little harder to understand, and may not be a major factor in all cases, but you can definitely add it after the fact (i.e. if there's only a 90% chance Applecare will pay out at all, then divide the 17.5% by 0.9 to get 19.4% likelihood of needing the replacement for it to be cost effective). More complete formulas can be derived also (including terms for full replacement costs vs repair costs and including terms for \"\"deductible\"\" type costs or shipping), but I'm trying to keep things relatively simple for those who aren't statistics nerds like I am.\""]}
+{"query": "I'm an American in my mid 20's. Is there something I should be doing to secure myself financially?", "corpus": ["First of all, make sure you have an emergency fund.  Ideally this should be at least 6 months of living expenses in an easily accessible place. Do you have any credit card debt, school debt, or other debt?  Work towards becoming debt free, especially of higher interest debt and debt on things that are only depreciating (cars, for example).  If you have extra income, consider putting it towards debt. If you currently have access to a 403b, you should begin investing immediately.  If not, look into a Roth IRA.  The community has provided suggestions for good places to get one.  With a Roth IRA you take post-tax income money and invest it into this retirement account and when you reach retirement age you get it and all the interest as tax-free income.  You can't withdraw the principal until retirement age.  You should put up to the legal limit into a retirement account - if you can't do this at first work towards this goal. After an emergency fund, becoming debt free, and fully funding your retirement, save for goals such as a house or other things you are working towards. The exact order of doing these things might vary, but in general you need the emergency fund first."], "neg": ["Hi, finance degree holder here.  Graduated in 2012, been working in retail ever since. Almost went homeless twice. Unless you know for sure 100% that you want to go to grad school and/or get a few (expensive) certifications, the only shot at gainful employment you have is in insurance sales. Or at major firms if you're close to a big city.  Ymmv, and a lot depends on the area, but I didn't exactly have a good time.", "Mutual funds are only traded once per day, while other securities can be traded any time during the day. Mutual funds are actually a collection of other things that have value, such as stocks. The price of a mutual fund is calculated at the end of the day after the market closes by looking at how much the collection of things changed in value during the day.", "Wealth Generators Reviews which are putting allegations upon this company by calling it as a scam or web of MLM concept should at first go through the company's profile and understand the true vision and the products of the companies. Wealth Generators has interesting products to help the people earn money with the help of expert trading and stock market tips and advice. Wealth Generators is not a typical MLM tonic which will make you rich overnight. It is a place for strategy seekers and the persons who are really willing to make more money through their hard earned capital. The company specializes in stock market trading and to promote the awareness of trading, it is using some MLM type concept so that the maximum people get benefited after availing the subscription program of the newsletters and financial management tools which have been designed and developed by the veterans of the financial market and the trading experts.  Wealth Generators Reviews mentioned by some trade persons who have suffered loss due to adopting the improper strategy and not following the guidelines as described in the materials of the company are deviating some people from participating in wealth generation programs being offered by this company. We would like to make you clear that Wealth Generators is not demanding your money. It is just only charging you on the behalf of the guidance services provided to you to let you have a good income while trading in the global fluctuating market scenario. We at Wealth Generators offer learning subscription packages in a reasonable charge.", "\"I recently moved out from my parents place, after having built up sufficient funds, and gone through these questions myself. I live near Louisville, KY which has a significant effect on my income, cost of living, and cost of housing. Factor that into your decisions. To answer your questions in order: When do I know that I'm financially stable to move out? When you have enough money set aside for all projected expenses for 3-6 months and an emergency fund of 4-10K, depending on how large a safety net you want or need. Note that part of the reason for the emergency fund is as a buffer for the things you won't realize you need until you move out, such as pots or chairs. It also covers things being more expensive than anticipated. Should I wait until both my emergency fund is at least 6 months of pay   and my loans in my parents' names is paid off (to free up money)? 6 months of pay is not a good measuring stick. Use months of expenses instead. In general, student loans are a small enough cost per month that you just need to factor them into your costs. When should I factor in the newer car investment? How much should I   have set aside for the car? Do the car while you are living at home. This allows you to put more than the minimum payment down each month, and you can get ahead. That looks good on your credit, and allows refinancing later for a lower minimum payment when you move out. Finally, it gives you a \"\"sense\"\" of the monthly cost while you still have leeway to adjust things.  Depending on new/used status of the car, set aside around 3-5K for a down payment. That gives you a decent rate, without too much haggling trouble. Should I get an apartment for a couple years before looking for my own   house? Not unless you want the flexibility of an apartment. In general, living at home is cheaper. If you intend to eventually buy property in the same area, an apartment is throwing money away. If you want to move every few years, an apartment can, depending on the lease, give you that. How much should I set aside for either investment (apartment vs   house)? 10-20K for a down payment, if you live around Louisville, KY. Be very choosy about the price of your house and this gives you the best of everything. The biggest mistake you can make is trying to get into a place too \"\"early\"\". Banks pay attention to the down payment for a good reason. It indicates commitment, care, and an ability to go the distance. In general, a mortgage is 30 years. You won't pay it off for a long time, so plan for that. Is there anything else I should be doing/taking advantage of with my   money during this \"\"living at home\"\" period before I finally leave the   nest? If there is something you want, now's the time to get it. You can make snap purchases on furniture/motorcycles/games and not hurt yourself. Take vacations, since there is room in the budget. If you've thought about moving to a different state for work, travel there for a weekend/week and see if you even like the place. Look for deals on things you'll need when you move out. Utensils, towels, brooms, furniture, and so forth can be bought cheaply, and you can get quality, but it takes time to find these deals. Pick up activities with monthly expenses. Boxing, dancing, gym memberships, hackerspaces and so forth become much more difficult to fit into the budget later. They also give you a better credit rating for a recurring expense, and allow you to get a \"\"feel\"\" for how things like a monthly utility bill will work. Finally, get involved in various investments. A 401k is only the start, so look at penny stocks, indexed funds, ETFs or other things to diversify with. Check out local businesses, or start something on the side. Experiment, and have fun.\"", "Yeah, hugely telling that it took 1500+ cancellations from one number before they noticed? None of their metrics or reports flagged this before? I've never used Lyft because that pink mustache is just ridiculous and looks amateur. This company seems to have a lot of gaps going on.", "That's how it's always been??  Oh wow you have to actually major in something useful to make a living?   There are a ton of things you can major in and make a great living. What's dumb is kids taking on 100k+ in loans to go to a private college when they could've gone to a state school or done 2 years at a community college.", "We are mostly .NET C#. I'm not trying to sound like a big shot but generally, to work in finance as a software engineer, you have to be good at what you do. More specifically, I work on developing the inside tools for our traders and mutual/hedge fund managers to manage the business. I work on benchmark, asset, and valuation analysis tools. Technologies I use on a daily basis are C#, SQL, JavaScript, JQuery, MVVM (and other design patterns), HTML5, and more specialized unit testing tools. If you have any more questions, feel free to ask or pm."]}
+{"query": "What is the fair value of a stock given the bid and ask prices? Is there such a relationship?", "corpus": ["None of the above. The fair value is a term used to describe an analytical result of projecting the company's future dividends and profits into a present value.  Such estimates are published by the likes of Morningstar, S&P and Value Line.  It is quite common for a stock to trade well above or below such estimated fair values."], "neg": ["\"If it is planned, then one can get a Bankers Check payable overseas; if destination is known. 1.) What will happen to the money? It will eventually go to Government as escheating. Unlcaimed.org can help you trace the funds and recover it. 2.) Will the banks close the accounts?   3.) After how much time will the banks close the accounts? Eventually Yes. If there is no activity [Note the definition of activity is different, A credit interest is not considered as activity, a authentic phone call / correspondence to change the address or any servicing request is considered activity] for a period of One year, the account is classified as \"\"Dormant\"\". Depending on state, after a period of 3-5 years, it would be inactive and the funds escheated. i.e. handed over to Government. 4.) Is there anything else to do? Any ideas? Before leaving? Try keeping it active by using internet banking or credit / debit cards linked to the account. These will be valid activities.  5.) Is there any way to send a relative to the US with any kind of paper of power, to unfreeze the accounts? 6.) The banks say they would need a power of attorney, but does that person actually need to be an attorney in the US, or can it simply be   a relative WITH a paper (a paper that says power of attorney) or what   is a power of attorney exactly, is it an actual attorney person, or   just a paper? 7.) Is there any other way to unfreeze the accounts? Although I can confirm first hand; I think there would be an exception process if a person cannot travel to the Bank. It could even be that a person is in some remote state, not well etc and can't travel in person. I think if you are out of country, you could walk-in to an US embassy and provide / sign relevant documents there and get it attested. Although for different purpose, I know a Power of Attorney being created in other country and stamped / verified by US embassy and sent it over to US. This was almost a decade back. Not sure about it currently.\"", "\"My feeling is that you're basically agreeing to throw away a bucket of money for a lesson that doesn't have to cost a penny. Like another commenter said, you're putting the cart before the horse.  I once asked a similar question to a seasoned investor, though I wasn't in the position to toss my hard-earned cash into the well yet. He told me that the difference between the winners and losers is that the winners don't need the money. I'm not trying to say that there's a \"\"rich keep getting richer ...\"\" component here, while schlubs like me get nada.  The real nugget of wisdom he offered was that if anyone wants to do well as investors, we must invest in a way that we're not dependent on the money we have in the market. Instead, manage risk carefully so that you don’t get swept up in the emotional highs and lows.  For you, what I applaud is that you're willing to do your research first. And part of that should be anticipating how you will handle the anxiety when you put your money in at the wrong time or get out a little later than you should.  What I understand now is that you don’t need to be wealthy to “not need the money.” You just need to invest smartly and leave your emotions out of it.\"", "There are different types and designs of clutch bags available on the web. Clutch Bags provide all kinds of bags online at an affordable price. Our best popular product is Clutch purse,  which is made in the USA.Purses were generally used in religious ceremonies,  then later were more commonly used for carrying money and valuables. Clutches come in a huge variety of shapes, makes, and styles, all of which can vary between brands and seasons.", "\"Rather than automating it, why not just create a listing that you maintain and display on your site yourself?  That way you don't have to give out credentials or anything else. It also presents a bit of a marketing opportunity.  You could group contributors by the size of their contributions and thank them publicly.  For example, maybe your top contributors could be members of the \"\"Heroes Club\"\", and you could come up with jazzy names for other groups.  It's a way of publicly acknowledging their contributions in a way that they appreciate, and perhaps it motivates others to up their own contributions to get into one of the more prominent groupings.  It becomes a competitive \"\"one-upsmanship\"\" thing, if that makes sense. I understand your desire to be transparent, and that's admirable, but see the marketing and public relations opportunity it brings to you as well. I hope this helps. Good luck!\"", "There are companies who sell data gleaned in aggregate from credit card providers to show how much of what category of product is sold online or offline, but that data is not cheap.  1010data is one such data aggregator we are talking to right now. Haven’t seen pricing yet but I expect 6 figures to access the data", "\"Hah!  In so far as the financial sector isn't making money off the government, then I would say it is truly \"\"financed through the financial sector\"\".  The financial sector doesn't operate at a loss, which is what you are suggesting here.  They aren't paying the government to have roads and power and plumbing and water, etc.    The financial sector is paying because they make more money back.  You want to admit who is paying to have roads and water and power and plumbing, etc?  Every person who gets a paycheck or owns a house is.  Not big money.  Ordinary people.  Taxes and Tariffs, and printing money pays for all of this.  We, the tax payer, aren't seeing a financial reimbursement for our expenses on these projects.  But Big Money is.  Our reimbursement is:  Roads, Power, plumbing, Police, Fire Departments.  Which means we are the consumers buying products.  Big Money is the middle man making bucks off the system.  Perhaps Big Money is necessary, but now it is out of control, and needs to be held accountable.\"", "Unfortunately this is something that should have been determined prior to the book tour. Your tax advisor or accountant could have assisted you in making sure you collected the documentation you needed.  You are going to have to sit down with your advisor with the documentation you have and determine what you can prove."]}
+{"query": "Options for the intelligent but inexperienced", "corpus": ["\"Some thoughts on your questions in order, Duration: You might want to look at the longest-dated option (often a \"\"LEAP\"\"), for a couple reasons. One is that transaction costs (spread plus commission, especially spread) are killer on options, so a longer option means fewer transactions, since you don't have to keep rolling the option. Two is that any fundamentals-based views on stocks might tend to require 3-5 years to (relatively) reliably work out, so if you're a fundamental investor, a 3-6 month option isn't great. Over 3-6 months, momentum, short-term news, short squeezes, etc. can often dominate fundamentals in determining the price. One exception is if you just want to hedge a short-term event, such as a pending announcement on drug approval or something, and then you would buy the shortest option that still expires after the event; but options are usually super-expensive when they span an event like this. Strike: Strike price on a long option can be thought of as a tradeoff between the max loss and minimizing \"\"insurance costs.\"\" That is, if you buy a deeply in-the-money put or call, the time value will be minimal and thus you aren't paying so much for \"\"insurance,\"\" but you may have 1/3 or 1/2 of the value of the underlying tied up in the option and subject to loss. If you buy a put or call \"\"at the money,\"\" then you might have only say 10% of the value of the underlying tied up in the option and subject to loss, but almost the whole 10% may be time value (insurance cost), so you are losing 10% if the underlying stock price stays flat. I think of the deep in-the-money options as similar to buying stocks on margin (but the \"\"implied\"\" interest costs may be less than consumer margin borrowing rates, and for long options you can't get a margin call). The at-the-money options are more like buying insurance, and it's expensive. The commissions and spreads add significant cost, on top of the natural time value cost of the option. The annual costs would generally exceed the long-run average return on a diversified stock fund, which is daunting. Undervalued/overvalued options, pt. 1: First thing is to be sure the options prices on a given underlying make sense at all; there are things that \"\"should\"\" hold, for example a synthetic long or short should match up to an actual long or short. These kinds of rules can break, for example on LinkedIn (LNKD) after its IPO, when shorting was not permitted, the synthetic long was quite a bit cheaper than a real long. Usually though this happens because the arbitrage is not practical. For example on LNKD, the shares to short weren't really available, so people doing synthetic shorts with options were driving up the price of the synthetic short and down the price of the synthetic long. If you did actually want to be long the stock, then the synthetic long was a great deal. However, a riskless arbitrage (buy synthetic long, short the stock) was not possible, and that's why the prices were messed up. Another basic relationship that should hold is put-call parity: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Put%E2%80%93call_parity Undervalued/overvalued options, pt. 2: Assuming the relationship to the underlying is sane (synthetic positions equivalent to actual positions) then the valuation of the option could focus on volatility. That is, the time value of the option implies the stock will move a certain amount. If the time value is high and you think the stock won't move much, you might short the option, while if the time value is low and you think the stock will move a lot, you might buy the option. You can get implied volatility from your broker perhaps, or Morningstar.com for example has a bunch of data on option prices and the implied components of the price model. I don't know how useful this really is though. The spreads on options are so wide that making money on predicting volatility better than the market is pretty darn hard. That is, the spread probably exceeds the amount of the mispricing. The price of the underlying is more important to the value of an option than the assumed volatility. How many contracts: Each contract is 100 shares, so you just match that up. If you want to hedge 100 shares, buy one contract. To get the notional value of the underlying multiply by 100. So say you buy a call for $30, and the stock is trading at $100, then you have a call on 100 shares which are currently priced at $10,000 and the option will cost $30*100=3,000. You are leveraged about 3 to 1. (This points to an issue with options for individual investors, which is that one contract is a pretty large notional value relative to most portfolios.)\""], "neg": ["\"You do realize the financial state of most older airliners, or the top guys has dramatically decreased since 2001. In fact many are on the verge of collapsing all together, American took a 3-4% drop to their overall gains this last quarter. The security measures have in itself added another problem to the entire air industry and just created a larger stigma as to why flying in US airports is bollocks.    If you think the US state department asked the airlines anything, you must be a little off on your politics. Anything NSA has their hands on won't ever ask cooperating parties what they think. Which again has been a dramatic reason as to why so many \"\"security\"\" orientated implementations since 2001 have been nothing but an extreme drain on already wobbly financial situations.   This tax could be the straw that breaks the camels back and some airliners may fold under or just stop going to those locations and charge more for international flights.\"", "(more like 10 years ago, but that's beside the point) Save, save, save! Both in the notion of squeezing as much value as you can out of every purchase and the notion of putting money away in a savings account.", "I'd stick with 20% down. Truth is - we don't know enough about you. Are you single and staying that way? How is your retirement savings doing? As others asked, any other debt? You can put 20% down, take a breath and see how it's going. I did just that, the 20%. We then had a baby, and 5 nanny-years to pay for. When she was gone, all that money went to the mortgage, and after refinancing (with no points no closing) we have 7 years to go. Just under 20 years beginning to end. During that time we've saved for college (just about fully funded) and for retirement (both with matched 401(k) accounts).  Remember, if you lose your job, a house with a lower mortgage means nothing when there's still the next payment due. But that cushion of cash can be handy.", "I can't address Indian law but US law has no problems with you having savings accounts in India.  Furthermore, there are no tax consequences from paying off the student loan. However there is big problem here--while the US has no rules against foreign bank accounts it has reporting rules that you certainly have violated (if you hadn't violated them you wouldn't be asking the question.) 1)  Those foreign bank accounts must be listed on your tax return. 2)  Those foreign bank accounts must be listed on a PDF that's filed with the (Financial Crimes Enforcement Network.  (Yes, it's very stupid they need identical information sent to two different departments.) 2)  The interest you earned on that bank account is income that should have been reported on your return. As for what to do about it--this is the realm where you get professional help.  As for the outcome--since you didn't set out to cheat they have a much less harsh system set up.  Expect to amend your 2012 and 2013 returns (and 2014 if you've already filed it), pay interest and late-payment penalties on the additional tax caused by the interest and pay a penalty of 5% of the highest total value of the accounts. Since the discovery of large amounts of money being hidden from the taxman in Swiss bank accounts Congress has gone 1000# gorilla about it and been pressuring foreign banks to cough up the details on any US-citizen or US-resident depositors.", "It is more easier if you select a Broker in India that would allow you these services. The reason being the broker in India will follow the required norms by India and allow you to invest without much hassel. Further as the institution would be in India, it would be more easy for resolving any disputes. ICICI Direct an Indian online broker allows one to trade in US stocks. For more details refer to ICIC Direct. Reliance Money also offers limited trading in US stocks. Selecting a Broker in US maybe more difficult as your would have to met their KYC norm's and also operate a Bank account in US. I am not aware of the requirements. For more details visit ICICI Direct website. Refer to http://www.finance-trading-times.com/2007/10/investing-in-us-stocks-and-options.html for a news article. TDAmeritrade or Charlesschwab are good online brokers, however from what I read they are more for US nationals holding Social Security. Further with the recent events and KYC norms becoming more stringent, it would be difficult for an individual [Indian Citizen] to open an account directly with these firms.", "Yeah man, was basically just screwing around.  Day-trading stocks is a bit different for me.  I usually trade options.  Taking a bit getting used to.  Not to mention, I probably lost a good bit on spreads.  I made all market orders lol.", "WHAT? That is just no true. I lived in Philadelphia, London and Brussels and I can tell you, the prices were almost double in Philly for groceries store. Even at Wallmart, I wont talk about Trader Joe, Whole Foods, acme..."]}
+{"query": "Who owned my shares before me?", "corpus": ["The answer in theory is yes. The answer in reality is no. Let me explain: Combine all of these lists and perhaps you could get a complete record."], "neg": ["I guess I didn't fill in all the holes at first, but what I'm implying with this system is that the company bonds would be the currency of the territory, as monetary policy would be decentralized and be replaced by competing money supplies that firms and individuals would be free to choose from and switch between at any time, whether they prefer an easy or tight monetary policy at any given moment.  At this point, the bonds would be the most liquid thing around, as you could repay your bonds in the bonds of another, and any one of these bonds could be used to pay taxes.  It's a scenario I've been working out because I see the drawbacks of centralized money laid out by F.A. Hayek in Denationalization of Money, but I don't think a gold standard would be sufficient in today's world.    (Most of the scenarios I've planned this out in assume the scenario of a perfect competition market, where all firms breakeven with expenses, and the role of researcher and developer is taken up by the government, so life improvements can still occur over time.)", "The Database For Business help companies gain control over their existing data and keep secure with cost effective database cleansing and enrichment. We verify the main services of a company, cleanse, and append any sales and marketing database. It is a trustable directory in the Dubai company list, main resulting clean database leads to improved campaign response and greater for your sales and marketing campaigns. It is one of most business directories in Dubai, because we have the latest technology of database service at the affordable price.", "To supplement existing answers: the appraised value does not necessarily represent the net amount the bank could actually recover with a foreclosure. Let's look at it from the point of view of the bank.  Suppose the property appraises at $200,000 and they do what you want: loan you $200,000 with the property as collateral.  Now suppose a short time later, you quit paying the mortgage and they have to foreclose.  Can the bank get their $200,000 back? An appraisal is only an estimate; nobody can predict perfectly how much a property will sell for.  Maybe the appraiser missed something significant, and the property will only fetch $180,000. Even if the appraisal was accurate when it was made, property values may have dropped in the meantime.  Maybe a sudden economic crisis is driving real estate prices down across the board.  Maybe interest rates have spiked.  Maybe the county has changed the zoning regulations to locate a toxic waste dump next door to the property.  In any of these cases, the property may again fetch well under $200,000. Maybe the condition of the property has changed.  Perhaps you trashed the place and it will take $30,000 to clean it up.  (People have a tendency to do things like that when they get foreclosed.) If the bank wants to get full market value for the property, they will incur the usual costs of selling a property: paying a real estate agent's commission, painting, renting furniture to stage the property, and so on.  This will eat into the net amount they actually get from the sale. It may take some time (perhaps months) for a property to sell at its full market value.  During this time, the bank is out $200,000.  That's money they would rather be loaning out at interest to someone else, so this represents lost income. Foreclosing a mortgage is a fairly complicated procedure.  The bank has to pay its staff, including lawyers, for a significant number of hours to get the foreclosure done.  There will be court filing fees and so on.  If you refuse to leave, they may have to get the sheriff to evict you; that has a fee as well.  If you fight the foreclosure, that racks up even more legal fees.  This too eats into the net proceeds from the sale. So if the bank loans you the full $200,000, they stand a pretty significant risk of not getting all of it back, after expenses.  You can understand that risk may not be worth the interest they would get from you on the extra $40,000. On the other hand, if they loan you only 80% of the property's appraised value ($160,000), they effectively shift that risk onto you.  Should you default on the loan, and they foreclose, all they have to do is sell the property for $160,000 or a little bit more.   That shouldn't be too hard, even if it is not freshly painted or a bit trashed.  They probably don't need to hire a real estate agent: just hold a quick auction, maybe first calling up a few investors who might be interested in flipping it.  If it happens to sell for more than the outstanding principal of the loan, plus the bank's costs, then they will pay you the difference; but they have no incentive to make that happen, and every incentive to just get it sold quick.  So any difference between the property's true value and the actual sale price now represents a loss to you first, not to the bank. So you can see why the bank would rather not loan you the full value of the property.  80% is a somewhat arbitrary figure but it cuts their risk by a lot.", "I don't even think that much is true, in a downturned market we see deflation. Things go on sale, prices drop, that's deflation. But the elephant in the room is that the gov't can't let deflation happen or their debt becomes harder to pay off. So after/during a downturn the government goes into hyperinflation mode.  To me, gold/silver aren't a hedge against the dollar they are a hedge against the inevitable decline of the dollar which isn't going to stop until we change monetary policy.  Graph the dollar's value in the past 100 years, it's the biggest crash in history. Now ask yourself if the dollar was a stock, would you want to own it with that record? 100 years of declination. Sell your dollars, find a real currency.", "Proportional is good, but we don't need redistribution. The market mechanism does that on its own when it's free. The bailouts of the banks and auto industry should have shown that the only thing stopping a major, but poorly run business from bankruptcy (and having its assets redistributed) is government intervention.  Maybe the change will light a fire under complacent companies and they'll start earning their profits again, or maybe they'll fail. There's no way to know ahead of time, but with no legal barriers to entry, the playing field will be fair again.", "The drive is on to make the minimum wage $15/hr.  I am concerned that we shouldn't set our standards so low and allow company's like Walmart to normalize low wages. In 1981 when I got out of high school, my first real job before college paid me $8.00/hr which is inflation adjusted to $21.44/hr today.", "Get oven dried firewood which is easy to stoke and makes less smoke. Choose from wide variety of firewood based on your usage. There is a different variety for stoves, fireplaces and for other day to day activity. The firewood supplied is sustainable, more wood gets replanted. Oven –dried firewood is more beneficial than kiln dried as it has 20% less moisture content that makes it easy to ignite, boiler ready and produces less smoke."]}
+{"query": "I am trying to start a “hedge fund,” and by that, I really just mean I have a very specific and somewhat simple investment thesis that I want to", "corpus": ["\"Kudos for wanting to start your own business.  Now let's talk reality. Unless you already have some kind of substantial track record of successful investing to show potential investors, what you want to do will never happen, and that's just giving you the honest truth. There are extensive regulatory requirements for starting any kind of public investment vehicle, and meeting them costs money.  You can be your own hedge fund with your own money and avoid all of this if you like.  Keep in mind that a \"\"hedge fund\"\" is little more than someone who is contrarian to the market and puts their money where their mouth is.  (I know, some of you will argue this is simplistic, and you'd be right, but I'm deliberately avoiding complexity for the moment) The simple truth is that nobody is going to just give you their money to invest unless, for starters, you can show that you're any good at it (and for the sake of it we'll assume you've had success in the markets), and (perhaps most importantly) you have \"\"skin in the game\"\", meaning you have a substantial investment of your own in the fund too.   You might have a chance at creating something if you can show that whatever your hedge fund proposes to invest in isn't already overrun by other hedge funds.  At the moment, there are more mutual and hedge funds out there than there are securities for them to invest in, so they're basically all fighting over the same pie.  You must have some fairly unique opportunity or approach that nobody else has or has even considered in order to begin attracting money to a new fund these days.  And that's not easy, trust me. There is no short or easy path to what you want to do, and perhaps if you want to toy around with it a bit, find some friends who are willing to invest based on your advice and/or picks.  If you develop a track record of success then perhaps you could more seriously consider doing what you propose, and in the meanwhile you can look into the requirements for laying the foundations toward your goal. I hope you don't find my answer cruel, because it isn't meant to be.  I am all about encouraging people to succeed, but it has to start with a realistic expectation.  You have a great thought, but there's a wide gulf from concept to market and no quick or simple way to bridge it. Here's a link to a web video on how to start your own hedge fund, if you want to look into it more deeply: How To Legally Start A Hedge Fund (From the Investopedia website) Good luck!\""], "neg": ["\"You are a teacher with income. Presumably, between you and your spouse-to-be, more than $5500. That's all that matters. Unless, of course you make \"\"too much money\"\" (i.e. $184K or over). That's another story.  The actual deposit can be from any source. The example we often give is that a teenager with legitimate income can have a Roth, up to the income or $5500, whichever is lower, funded by gifts from a parent, or from savings. They don't need to turn over the money they made.  The money you are getting is a gift, and it's your money to do what you wish.\"", "What's the answer for the lightbulb question?   For the short a put on IBM question, obviously you could answer that you're bullish on the stock, but couldnt you further elaborate by asking for the maturity?  I guess you could also talk about option strategies such as covered puts.  What's a good answer to that question?", "&gt; just allow injured parties to sue for damages!  The legal system isn't based on ethics or morals, it's based on who can make the best argument. Big business' have a lot more resources and lawyers than you or I could ever hope to have.", "There is no accounting reason that it should be different, there are likely psychological reasons that it should be, however. Assuming that you live in a western country with good banking regulation, you likely have deposit insurance or a similar scheme.  Here in Canada we are covered up to $100,000 in a single account with various limitations.  At least my rainy-day account plus savings is nowhere near that, so I'm good to go. That said, however, having a large lump of money in an account you regularly use may tempt you more than you can stand.  That iPad, car, home improvement, etc., might be too easy to buy knowing you have relatively easy access to that money. So it really becomes a self-discipline question. Good Luck", "Yea, people just don't get it. This is how much it costs to run and promote events. The reason Ticketmaster exists as a so-called monopoly is because local/regional promoters were getting killed by poor attendance on too many shows. So Ticketmaster came into existence because they were spreading the losses/profits of individual shows across the national spectrum. Additionally, bands started to ask for more and more money (in the form of upfront guarantees), and this has worsened since CD sales have collapsed and touring is their primary form of income.", "A lot of us state I want money on the internet however how would you obtain money on the internet? Difficult which rare money on the internet if you want money on the internet. This site does not have any credit check needed money money together with sequel money as well as fantastic deals. Should find out if experts require regarding some money on the internet.", "Here is my perception of the situation, obtained from reading Degiro's Client Agreement. If Degiro shuts down, it will notify you about the fact at least one month in advance, and you will have enough time to order a transfer of your positions to a different broker. If Degiro shuts down unexpectedly, your assets will remain to be held at SPV, a separate legal entity which Degiro uses to hold the financial instruments belonging to the clients. Since SPV does nothing else but holding the assets, it is very unlikely that something bad will happen with it on its own. With some help from Degiro and/or the regulator (AFM) you should be able to transfer your assets from SPV to a different custodian and broker and thus regain control over them. If you have a non-Custody account, you have slightly higher chances of losing your assets, because Degiro can borrow your securities held at SPV. If both the client for whom Degiro borrowed a security and Degiro itself go bankrupt at the same time, the lent security will not be returned to SPV, there will arise a shortage, which will be proportionally distributed among the accounts of the clients holding this particular security. However, then the investor compensation scheme should kick in and help you recover up to 20000 EUR of your losses."]}
+{"query": "How to calculate cost basis for stock bought before a company spinoff? (USA)", "corpus": ["Your brokerage account statement should report the Questar cost basis adjusted for the spinoff (and would have done so starting the day the spinoff happened), shifting the portion of it over to your shiny new QEP stock based on the opening price. At what price did you buy into Questar? The Questar IR site also has a document with more detail."], "neg": ["\"Companies normally do not give you X% of shares, but in effect give you a fixed \"\"N\"\" number of shares. The \"\"N\"\" may translate initially to X%, but this can go down. If say we began with 100 shares, A holding 50 shares and B holding 50 shares. As the startup grows, there is need for more money. Create 50 more shares and sell it at an arranged price to investor C. Now the percentage of each investor is 33.33%. The money that comes in will go to the company and not to A & B.   From here on, A & C together can decide to slowly cut out B by, for example: After any of the above the % of shares held by B would definitely go down.\"", "&gt; Why are you bringing in Hillary or Obama?   Because if you are against Trump, you must(!) be for Hillary or the DNC or both.  &gt; My argument was that Mitch McConnell and congress killed it.  Even if it's true, it's what Trump wanted, what he would have done, what he has done, and the GOP did it, for him.   All this, despite the wishes of the DNC, Obama and Hillary. Am I right? yes or no?   &gt; How can I ... take President Trump seriously  Because it seems that you are not opposed to anything that Trump does.  Ok!!!!! Tell me of something that Trump did that you do agree to or do not like. Let's go this route!", "And then there is the issue of people who actually don't intend to reduce the size of their loan. They only want to pay the interest, so their debt with the bank remains constant. If you are upside down, it means you will not have the financial means to remove the debt. If, for some reason, you are no longer able to pay the bank, you might lose the house. After that you will have no house, but you still have a debt with the bank.", "I will never tip an Uber driver unless it's something seriously extraordinary. I've used it for a while and still do and the prices are the same. I've talked to many, many drivers and they all talk about the money they make and the hours they work. No thanks, there's no way I'm going to start doing that all the sudden and I'm not going to feel guilty for not either. This was a big part of why I liked Uber in the first place.", "G spread - you have a 5.5 year bond, you take your yield minus the yield on the 5.5y point (interpolated) of the benchmark sovereign curve. Think of G = Government.      I Spread - same as G Spread but you use the relevant Swap Curve. E.g. USD bond, compare against the USD Swaps curve. I = interpolated.      Z Spread - stands for zero volatility curve spread. You strip the swaps curve to get zero rates (i.e. Zero coupon rates for each tenor), then find the constant spread on top of each part of the curve's zero rates to arrive at your bond's yield.      In G and I Spread, you're basically discounting the bond's cash flows using one rate (i.e. The interpolated yield on the curve). With Z Spread, you're discounting using the entire portion of the curve that's relevant to your bond's maturity.", "&gt;It's called lacking empathy and compassion.  Or people like to keep their hard earned money. Don't paint somebody as greedy for trying to keep what they have earned.   &gt;Until you've walked a mile in another person's shoes, it's hard to know what they've gone through and what they battle.  Everybody faces their own challenges in life, successful people don't let them become excuses.", "I think that Westerners often overestimate how much influence the West has over developing countries, like those in Africa, and that there are a million other factors that most of the Western public simply doesn't see.   Yes, agricultural production has increased significantly because of Western (and Eastern) demand, which calls more children into laboring in those fields, because *that's just how it's always been done* in those cotton-producing countries. Of course, more business also means more income for those farmers, who you can bet your bottom dollar would ask consumers to buy MORE of their cotton, and not less.  Higher incomes leads to many other positives for the local and national economy, families, individuals and, yes, those children. That's not to say that schooling wouldn't be preferable to child labor, but (1) that's not ultimately our decision, and (2) that makes a quite questionable assumption that decent, affordable, accessible schooling even exists there.   So my assessment is that Western demand for cotton is a positive for the kids in Burkina Faso. What's more, I will guarantee you that even with all the failings and unpleasant parts of the world cotton commodity trade, Burkinabe cotton farmers would agree."]}
+{"query": "In what ways can a public company ask for money?", "corpus": ["\"There are many different methods for a corporation to get money, but they mostly fall into three categories: earnings, debt and equity.  Earnings would be just the corporation's accumulation of cash due to the operation of its business. Perhaps if cash was needed for a particular reason immediately, a business may consider selling a division or group of assets to another party, and using the proceeds for a different part of the business. Debt is money that (to put it simply) the corporation legally must repay to the lender, likely with periodic interest payments. Apart from the interest payments (if any) and the principal (original amount leant), the lender has no additional rights to the value of the company. There are, basically, 2 types of corporate debt: bank debt, and bonds.  Bank debt is just the corporation taking on a loan from a bank. Bonds are offered to the public - ie: you could potentially buy a \"\"Tesla Bond\"\", where you give Tesla $1k, and they give you a stated interest rate over time, and principal repayments according to a schedule. Which type of debt a corporation uses will depend mostly on the high cost of offering a public bond, the relationships with current banks, and the interest rates the corporation thinks it can get from either method. Equity [or, shares] is money that the corporation (to put it simply) likely does not have a legal obligation to repay, until the corporation is liquidated (sold at the end of its life) and all debt has already been repaid. But when the corporation is liquidated, the shareholders have a legal right to the entire value of the company, after those debts have been paid. So equity holders have higher risk than debt holders, but they also can share in higher reward. That is why stock prices are so volatile - the value of each share fluctuates based on the perceived value of the entire company.  Some equity may be offered with specific rules about dividend payments - maybe they are required [a 'preferred' share likely has a stated dividend rate almost like a bond, but also likely has a limited value it can ever receive back from the corporation], maybe they are at the discretion of the board of directors, maybe they will never happen. There are 2 broad ways for a corporation to get money from equity: a private offering, or a public offering. A private offering could be a small mom and pop store asking their neighbors to invest 5k so they can repair their business's roof, or it could be an 'Angel Investor' [think Shark Tank] contributing significant value and maybe even taking control of the company. Perhaps shares would be offered to all current shareholders first. A public offering would be one where shares would be offered up to the public on the stock exchange, so that anyone could subscribe to them. Why a corporation would use any of these different methods depends on the price it feels it could get from them, and also perhaps whether there are benefits to having different shareholders involved in the business [ie: an Angel investor would likely be involved in the business to protect his/her investment, and that leadership may be what the corporation actually needs, as much or more than money]. Whether a corporation chooses to gain cash from earnings, debt, or equity depends on many factors, including but not limited to: (1) what assets / earnings potential it currently has; (2) the cost of acquiring the cash [ie: the high cost of undergoing a public offering vs the lower cost of increasing a bank loan]; and (3) the ongoing costs of that cash to both the corporation and ultimately the other shareholders - ie: a 3% interest rate on debt vs a 6% dividend rate on preferred shares vs a 5% dividend rate on common shares [which would also share in the net value of the company with the other current shareholders].  In summary: Earnings would be generally preferred, but if the company needs cash immediately, that may not be suitable. Debt is generally cheap to acquire and interest rates are generally lower than required dividend rates. Equity is often expensive to acquire and maintain [either through dividend payments or by reduction of net value attributable to other current shareholders], but may be required if a new venture is risky. ie: a bank/bondholder may not want to lend money for a new tech idea because it is too risky to just get interest from - they want access to the potential earnings as well, through equity.\""], "neg": ["Which begs the question how do you weed out those that are poor at handling money or would waste it versus those that know what to do with it? Just throwing it in the wind to anyone seems wasteful. Are there qualifications? I didn’t see that part.", "No.  You will already have paid taxes on the gift you give to your wife, so there will be no tax savings.", "Her current competence or incompetence and how she got the job is perfectly relevant. Obviously, and should be looked into in depth.  What isn't relevant is her studies 25 years ago. A 25-year-old Masters in computer security would be just as irrelevant, as the industry has changed drastically since that time.", "\"I think the question can be answered by realizing that whoever is buying the stock is buying it from someone who can do the same mathematics. Ask your son to imagine that everyone planned to buy the stock exactly one week before Christmas.  Would the price still be cheap?  The problem is that if everyone knows the price will go up, the people who own it already won't want to sell.  If you're buying something from someone who doesn't really want to sell it, you have to pay more to get it.  So the price goes up a week before Christmas, rather than after Christmas. But of course everyone else can figure this out too.  So they are going to buy 2 weeks before, but that means the price goes up 2 weeks before rather than 1 week.  You play this game over and over, and eventually the expected increased Christmas sales are \"\"priced in\"\".  But of course there is a chance people are setting the price based on a mistaken belief. So the winner isn't the person who buys just before the others, but rather the one who can more accurately predict what the sales will be (this is why insider trading is so tempting even if it's illegal).  The price you see right now represents what people anticipate the price will be in the future, what dividends are expected in the future, how much risk people think there is, and how that compares with other available investments.\"", "The link provided by DumbCoder (below) is only relevant to UK resident investors and does not apply if you live in Malaysia.  I noticed that in a much older question you asked a similar question about taxes on US stocks, so I'll try and answer both situations here. The answer is almost the same for any country you decide to invest in.  As a foreign investor, the country from which you purchase stock cannot charge you tax on either income or capital gains. Taxation is based on residency, so even when you purchase foreign stock its the tax laws of Malaysia (as your country of residence) that matter. At the time of writing, Malaysia does not levy any capital gains tax and there is no income tax charged on dividends so you won't have to declare or pay any tax on your stocks regardless of where you buy them from. The only exception to this is Dividend Withholding Tax, which is a special tax taken by the government of the country you bought the stock from before it is paid to your account. You do not need to declare this tax as it his already been taken by the time you receive your dividend. The rate of DWT that will be withheld is unique to each country.  The UK does not have any withholding tax so you will always receive the full dividend on UK stocks.  The withholding tax rate for the US is 30%.  Other countries vary. For most countries that do charge a withholding tax, it is possible to have this reduced to 15% if there is a double taxation treaty in place between the two countries and all of the following are true: Note: Although the taxation rules of both countries are similar, I am a resident of Singapore not Malaysia so I can't speak from first hand experience, but current Malaysia tax rates are easy to find online. The rest of this information is common to any non-US/UK resident investor (as long as you're not a US person).", "Considering I'm putting 30% down and having my father cosign is there   any chance I would be turned down for a loan on a $100k car? According to BankRate, the average credit score needed to buy a new car is 714, but they also show average interest rates at 6.39% for new-car loans to people with credit scores in the 601-660 range. High income certainly helps offset credit score to some extent.  Not every bank/dealership does things the same way. Being self-employed you'd most likely be required to show 2 years of tax returns, and they'd use those as a basis for your income rather than whatever you have made recently. If using a co-signer, their income matters. Another key factor is debt to income ratio, if too much of someone's income is already spoken for by other debts a lender will shy away. So, yes, there's a chance, given all the information we don't know and the variability with lender policies, that you could be turned down for a car loan. How should I go about this? If you're set on pursuing the car loan, just go talk to some lenders. You'll want to shop around for a good rate anyway, so no need to speculate just go find out. Include the dealership as a potential financing option, they can have great rates. Personally, I'd get a much cheaper car. Your insurance premium on a 100k car will be quite high due to your age. You might be rightly confident in your earning potential, but nothing is guaranteed, situations can change wildly in short order. A new car is not a good investment or a value-retaining asset, so why bother going into debt for one if you don't have to? If you buy something in cash now, you could upgrade in a few years without financing if your earning prediction holds and would save quite a bit in car insurance and interest over the years between.", "So, *exactly* as I had posited:  The perfect medium for theft.  Somebody has to discover your address, and track it from there.  It's like saying private key encryption is easy to break; all you need is the private key and it all unfolds."]}
+{"query": "Medical Bill Consolidation", "corpus": ["There are definitely ways to retroactively consolidate medical bills -- there's an entire industry of companies offering debt consolidation (many of which are scummy/predatory, be careful! See https://www.consumer.ftc.gov/articles/0150-coping-debt and some decent articles at http://blog.readyforzero.com/are-there-legitimate-debt-consolidation-loans and http://blog.readyforzero.com/how-to-find-a-reputable-debt-consolidation-company). In general, what you are looking to do is take out a loan, possibly at a better interest rate than whatever you are being charged currently, and pay off the medical bills. If you are not paying interest on the medical bills and are just being allowed to spread out the payments, you are already golden and should just put up with the ups and downs. If you have any equity in a home, take out a home equity loan or line of credit, pay off your medical bills. Rates are still great right now. Even if you have no home equity to tap, if you have a steady job you might be able to get a nice small loan from a local bank or peer-to-peer lending site. Do your homework and only work with reputable companies, especially if doing things online."], "neg": ["From you question I understand that you are not an Indian citizen, are staying in India, and transferring your funds for your living / expenses in India. There is no limit on such transfers and the amount is not taxed.   The tax comes into picture if you are treated as a resident in India from a tax perspective. Even then the tax is not because you have transferred the funds into India, but the policy of taxing global income. The article at http://www.pwc.in/en_IN/in/assets/pdfs/foreign-nationals-working-in-india.pdf should give you more inputs.", "So ummm did you know there's a film coming out? Something about some religious cult in the future and an insurgency or something, they all fight with laser swords. I wonder how they get the news out about that?  You are getting hit by ads, you just don't think they're ads. That's cool, I do too. Everyone does.   You're on reddit as well, there's a shitload of advertising content on here.", "I'd have a good look at how much anonymity an LLC offers in your state - as far as I'm aware this varies from state to state. Out here in NV an LLC owner's privacy is supposedly fairly well protected, but in other states, not quite as much. Also keep in mind that while the LLC offers some protection (and I'm a big advocate of this sort of structure if you're taking larger risks that might have a big impact on your overall personal finances), this might not apply to financing. A lot of banks tend to require an LLC's owner to guarantee loans to an LLC once they go over a certain amount or even in general. Do some research in this area because the LLC would be worth less as a protective shield to you if you're on the hook for the full amount of the loans anyway.", "US government bonds and bonds issued by companies with a safe track record and consistently high ratings, for the past years, by credit agencies. But the time line of your investment, which is quite short, maybe a factor of choosing the right bonds. If you are not going to touch the money then CD maybe an option or an interest bearing savings account.", "You're losing money. And a lot of it. Consider this: the inflation is 2-4% a year (officially, depending on your spending pattern your own rate might be quite higher). You earn about 1/2%. I.e.: You're losing 3% a year. Guaranteed. You can do much better without any additional risk. 0.1% on savings account? Why not 0.9%? On-line savings account (Ally, CapitalOne-360, American Express, E*Trade, etc) give much higher rates than what you have. Current Ally rates are 0.9% on a regular savings account. 9 times more than what you have, with no additional risk: its a FDIC insured deposit. You can get a slightly higher rate with CDs (0.97% at the same bank for 12 months deposit). IRA - why is it in CD's? Its the longest term investment you have, that's where you can and should take risks, to maximize your compounding returns. Not doing that is actually more risky to you because you're guaranteeing compounding loss, of the said 3% a year. On average, more volatile stock investments have shown to be not losing money over periods of decades, even if they do lose money over shorter periods. Rental - if you can buy a property that you would pay the same amount of money for as for a comparable rental - you should definitely buy. Your debt will be secured by the property, and since you're paying the same amount or less - you're earning the equity. There's no risk here, just benefits, which again you chose to forgo. In the worst case if you default and walk away from the property you lost exactly (or less) what you would have paid for a rental anyway. 14 years old car may be cheaper than 4 years old to buy, but consider the maintenance, licensing and repairs - will it not some up to more than the difference? In my experience - it is likely to. Bottom line - you think you're risk averse, but you're exactly the opposite of that.", "Supply and demand for a particular bond may be such that the market price exceeds the par value for the bond at maturity. This is when you get a negative yield. Especially when volatility is high, people will actually pay money to park it in treasuries for an amount of time. But when compared to a > 25% vol in the equities market over that same period, taking a 5% or less hit doesn't sound nearly as bad!", "\"Does he need to file a tax return in this situation? Will the IRS be concerned that he did not file even if he received a 1099? No. However, if you don't file the IRS may come back asking why, or \"\"make up\"\" a return for you assuming that the whole amount on the 1099-MISC is your net earnings. So in the end, I suspect you'll end up filing even though you don't have to, just to prove that you don't have to. Bottom line - if you have 1099 income (or any other income reported to the IRS that brings you over the filing threshold), file a return.\""]}
+{"query": "401k Rollover - on my own or through my financial advisor?", "corpus": ["Call up vanguard and tell them you want to do a rollover.  They walk you through the process.  Spend some time on reading up on asset allocation and benefits of indexing.   1.5% every year is steep and what do you have in return?  The advisor's word that he'll make it up.  How much did he manage to return during the last lost decade?   It's a lose-win situation.  He'll get his 1.5% no matter how the market does but that's not the deal you are getting. Go with Vanguard.  You are already thinking correctly - diversification, rebalancing, low cost!"], "neg": ["The psychology around money is the subject of a lifetime of study.  Your observations are not uncommon.  The market daily fluctuation is out of our control. Hopefully, by the time the 1% volatility impacts you by say $1,000, you'll have grown accustomed to it, so when the 1% is then $10,000, you won't lose sleep. The difference between the $1000 up/down and the $3 sandwich is simple - one is in your control, the other isn't.  When you're out, you need to try to cut down on the math, it will only bring you unhappiness. You're paying for the socializing and can't let the individual items on the check bother you. I'm at the point in my life when I prefer a more expensive restaurant meal that I can't make at home to a moderate one that I'd make myself. For me, that logic works, and it's not keeping us home. Funny how my own sense of value for the dollar pushes me to a more expensive experience, but one that I'll enjoy.  By the way - eBay has done an amazing thing, it's created a market for you to sell your stuff, but it's also pulled everyone's collection of junk out for sale. Books I thought might be worth selling go for $1-$2 plus shipping. It's not worth my time or effort, and I need to just break the emotional ties to 'stuff.' I box them up and bring them to the library for their sale. If that picture frame isn't antique, throw it out or have a yard sale.  This may be right on track to your question or a complete tangent....", "Did you read the second paragraph?  **The program was designed to loot the defeated Germany's intellectual assets and impede its ability to compete in the postwar political and economic spheres while giving a boost to the nations conducting it. Though unacknowledged at the time, the T-Force mission also included preventing advanced Nazi technology from falling into the hands of the Soviet Union—destroying whatever could not be seized and hauled away before Soviet troops arrived. As such, T-Force activities can be seen as the beginning of the Cold War. Operations in Germany were often heavy-handed, and sometimes amounted to kidnapping. Publicly available information on the unit's activities remains scarce.**", "The growth of Panamanian economy and the fact that Panama has become an important regional investment center has required that Kraemer &amp; Kraemer. As attorneys acquire considerable experience in multidisciplinary practices. We are the top most Law firm in Panama. You need to ensure that you pick top Panama law offices that comprehend the interchange between the laws of Panama and your nation of origin.", "There may be more, but a good starting point would be the ecoENERGY Retrofit Grants and Incentives.  Natural Resources Canada's ecoENERGY Retrofit program provides financial support to implement energy-saving projects. There are different application processes for homes, commercial and institutional buildings and industrial facilities. Together we can reduce energy-related greenhouse gases and air pollution, leading to a cleaner environment for Canada. Also, there was a temporary home renovation tax credit about a year back, but that no longer exists and nothing has replaced it yet.", "Many of the Bitcoin exchanges mimic stock exchanges, though they're much more rudimentary offering only simple buy/sell/cancel orders.  It's fairly normal for retail stock brokerage accounts to allow other sorts of more complex orders, where once a certain criteria is met, (the price falls below some $ threshold, or has a movement greater than some %) then your order is executed.  The space between the current buy order and the current sell order is the bid/ask spread, it's not really about timing.  Person X will buy at $100, person Y will sell at $102.  If both had a price set at $101, they would just transact.  Both parties think they can do a little bit better than the current offer.  The width of the bid/ask spread is not universal by any means.  The current highest buy order and the current lowest sell order, are both the current price.  The current quoted market price is generally the price of the last transaction, whether it's buy or sell.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.abc.net.au/news/2017-06-30/bilnd-recruitment-trial-to-improve-gender-equality-failing-study/8664888) reduced by 79%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Blind recruitment means recruiters cannot tell the gender of candidates because those details are removed from applications.  &gt; In a bid to eliminate sexism, thousands of public servants have been told to pick recruits who have had all mention of their gender and ethnic background stripped from their CVs. The assumption behind the trial is that management will hire more women when they can only consider the professional merits of candidates.  &gt; Professor Hiscox said he discussed the trial with the ABS and did not consider it a rigorous or randomised control trial, warning against any &amp;quot;Magic pill&amp;quot; solution.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6kpwlj/study_more_men_hired_in_genderblind_job/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~157123 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*: **trial**^#1 **candidate**^#2 **public**^#3 **women**^#4 **more**^#5\"", "\"Not to be a downer...but: Another thing to consider is an update to your \"\"accounts document\"\". By that I mean, your list of banks, account numbers, insurance policies, access information, etc. I'm told that keeping this information up to date and attached to your will can make a lot of things go far smoother in the event of an untimely passing. I should probably get on that myself...\""]}
+{"query": "What does quantitative easing 2 mean for my bank account?", "corpus": ["QE2 will mean that there are about $500 billion dollars in existence which weren't there before. These dollars will all be competing with the existing dollars for real goods and services, so each dollar will be worth a little less, and prices will rise a little. This is inflation. You can probably expect 1.5%-2% annual inflation for the US dollar over the next several years (the market certainly does in the aggregate, anyway). This is in terms of US-based goods and services. QE2 will also reduce the amount of other currencies you can get for the same dollar amount. The extent to which this will occur is less clear, in part because other currencies are also considering quantitative easing. Your long-term savings should probably not be in cash anyway, because of the low returns; this will probably affect you far more than the impact of quantitative easing. As for your savings which do remain in cash, what you should do with them depends on how you plan to dispose of them. The value of a currency is usually pretty stable in terms of the local economy's output of goods and services - it's the value in international trade which tends to fluctuate wildly. If you keep your savings in the same currency you plan to spend them in, they should be able to maintain their value decently well in the intermediate term."], "neg": ["I don't think that you totally get it.  From the article: &gt;What if you created a website that printed out emails, texts or photos from your computer, Facebook or Instagram and mailed them for you in the plain white envelopes these institutions favored?", "In practice the IRS seems to apply the late payment penalty when they issue a written paper notice.  Those notices typically have a pay-by date where no additional penalty applies.  The IRS will often waive penalties, but not interest or tax due, if the taxpayer presses the issue.", "Let's say they paid you: $300K a year or $3M...would that change your tune?   I've seen the upper end of Hollywood types be absolutely horrid to great people and they will gladly suck it up.  Reason: 1) there is little choice--low percentage of success, 2) All or nothing environment and 3) there is a huge line of people who would kill to have this abusive job.", "Laser hair removal isn't permanent, you have to have several sessions to get all of the hair, each session costing hundreds. And then it may only last a few years before you have hair growing back again. It's not worth the money unless you have such a large amount that you can throw away several thousand. As others have said, either buy blades in bulk or get a straight razor. They will be much more economical in both the short term and long term.", "You shouldn't technically be able to over pay. I have some share dividends set to pay into my account but one of them took me over the limit so the payment was diverted to another account and they sent me a letter. Pretty sure they would do this with any payment.", "Mervis Diamonds specializes in diamond engagement rings and wedding bands, diamond studs, and much more. With their roots at diamond mines in South Africa, they maintain strong relationships and import all their own diamonds. Every stone they have has been hand selected by Zed Mervis for superior Cut and brilliance.", "yeah, I was going to say that if your internship ends and you have no other option, you might as well take it for the experience and the chance to stay in the company until something more suited to your educational background comes along. Or you may actually like sales..."]}
+{"query": "Tax exemptions for US stocks held in a Candian account", "corpus": ["The dividend tax credit is not applicable to foreign dividend income, so you would be taxed fully on every dollar of that income. When you sell a stock, there will be a capital gain or capital loss depending on if it gained or lost value, after accounting for the Adjusted Cost Base. You only pay income tax on half of the amount earned through capital gains, and if you have losses, you can use them to offset other investments that had capital gains (or carry forward to offset gains in the future).  The dividends from US stocks are subject to a 15% withholding tax that gets paid to the IRS automatically when the dividends are issued. If the stocks are held in an RRSP, they are exempt from the withholding tax. If held in a non-registered account, you can be reimbursed for the tax by claiming the foreign tax credit that you linked to. If held in a TFSA or RESP, the withholding tax cannot be recovered. Also, if you are not directly holding the stocks, and instead buy a mutual fund or ETF that directly holds the stocks, then the RRSP exemption no longer applies, but the foreign tax credit is still claimable for a non-registered account. If the mutual fund or ETF does not directly hold stocks, and instead holds one or more ETFs, there is no way to recover the withholding tax in any type of account."], "neg": ["\"While JoeTaxpayer gave a very insightful answer, and clearly the best answer, let me break it down really simple for you. Talk with a good to great property management company. Given that you will be out of state, you will need one anyway.  A good one is worth their cost, a great one even better.   They will tell you what the \"\"market will bear\"\" on renting your place and the expected costs.  From there you can make an intelligent decision.   Have you had any experience in running rental properties?  I am going to assume not, and as such you should have professionals as part of your team.   More than likely you will have to put money in to sustain this property as a rental.  It is just how the numbers tend to work out.\"", "\"Before we all argue about his pricing, blah blah - let me explain to you how he absolutely fleeced consumers under the guise of helping them.  JCPenney had a handful of sales strategies:  * 40% off  * 50% off  * Buy one, get one for $0.01  * Buy one, get one for $0.99  * 60% off  * Green tag clearance (where things were up to 90% off discounted prices; items as low as $0.97)  What he did was basically eliminate all of the different kind of sales and just discount a straight 40%.  Meaning that before, when you were \"\"screwed\"\", the worst you would do is their \"\"everyday low pricing\"\" today. If you went in and bought at their worst 40% sale, you got exactly what he offers you right now. If you were lucky and went in at a better time, you actually saved more, generally around 50% with BOGO-type of stuff.  Not only that, he killed coupons. This is where you could really rake. You would:  * Save money with your JCP card  * $10 off orders of $25  * $10 off orders of $30  * $10 off orders of $50 / $15 off $75 / $25 off $100  Again, these all varied, but you could stack coupons on top of savings.  Shoppers (like me) stopped going there because the savings ceased to exist. We're not stupid, but he played us like we were and he counted on people's outrage of sales to dupe them. As you can see by the scheme I've shown, you not only saved more before, but way more. And the argument that it's better now is patently false because their prices are identical to their worst sale without any coupons.  Why do you think the red stickers go over the price? Because they want to hide it. The same items at Kohls have the sticker from Union Bay or whoever on it. It's all the same MSRP. It's just that he tried to fool the shoppers he didn't have with false outrage, but alienated the rest of the shoppers who look at their receipt.\"", "I guess I should put it this way.   I'm ok with a minimum wage . . . and I'm ok with raising it over time and gradually but people who try to argue that it should be a living wage are insane and don't truly understand the full ramifications that that entails.", "If you hold a future plus enough cash collateral it is economically equivalent to owning the underlying asset or shorting the underlying asset. In general financial assets such as stock indices have a positive expected return - that's the main difference between investing and gambling. There's nothing that special about futures, they are just another contractual form of asset ownership.  Well, one difference is that regulations or brokerages allow individual investors more leverage with options and futures than with straight borrowing. But this is more a regulatory issue than a conceptual issue with the securities themselves. In theory regulators or brokers could require you to hold enough collateral to make a future equivalent to buying the underlying.", "OP, I'd wait until you see the itemized list. And then go from there.   From the sound of it, it seems that the repairs is pretty major. I'd double check the lease contract to see if there were any clauses/term that made the tenant responsible. This could be from appliances to repairs.", "\"The simplest argument for overpayment is this: Let's suppose your fixed rate mortgage has an interest rate of 4.00%. Every £1 you can afford to overpay gives you a guaranteed effective return of 4.00% gross. Yes your monthly mortgage payment will stay the same; however, the proportion of it that's paying off interest every month will be less, and the amount that's actually going into acquiring the bricks and mortar of your home will be greater. So in a sense your returns are \"\"inverted\"\" i.e. because every £1 you overpay is £1 you don't need to keep paying 4% a year to continue borrowing. In your case this return will be locked away for a few more years, until you can remortgage the property. However, compared to some other things you could do with your excess £1s, this is a very generous and safe return that is well above the average rate of UK inflation for the past ten years. Let's compare that to some other options for your extra £1s: Cash savings: The most competitive rate I can currently find for instant access is 1.63% from ICICI. If you are prepared to lock your money away until March 2020, Melton Mowbray Building Society has a fixed rate bond that will pay you 2.60% gross. On these accounts you pay income tax at your marginal rate on any interest received. For a basic rate taxpayer that's 20%. If you're a higher rate taxpayer that means 40% of this interest is deducted as tax. In other words: assuming you pay income tax at one of these rates, to get an effective return of 4.00% on cash savings you'd have to find an account paying: Cash ISAs: these accounts are tax sheltered, so the income tax equation isn't an issue. However, the best rate I can find on a 4 year fixed rate cash ISA is 2.35% from Leeds Building Society. As you can see, it's a long way below the returns you can get from overpaying. To find returns such as that you would have to take a lot more risk with your money – for example: Stock market investments: For example, an index fund tracking the FTSE 100 (UK-listed blue chip companies) could have given you a total return of 3.62% over the last 3 years (past performance does not equal future returns). Over a longer time period this return should be better – historical performance suggests somewhere between 5 to 6% is the norm. But take a closer look and you'll see that over the last six months of 2015 this fund had a negative return of 6.11%, i.e. for a time you'd have been losing money. How would you feel about that kind of volatility? In conclusion: I understand your frustration at having locked in to a long term fixed rate (effectively insuring against rates going up), then seeing rates stay low for longer than most commentators thought. However, overpaying your mortgage is one way you can turn this situation into a pretty good deal for yourself – a 4% guaranteed return is one that most cash savers would envy. In response to comments, I've uploaded a spreadsheet that I hope will make the numbers clearer. I've used an example of owing £100k over 25 years at an unvarying 4% interest, and shown the scenarios with and without making a £100/month voluntary overpayment, assuming your lender allows this. Here's the sheet: https://www.scribd.com/doc/294640994/Mortgage-Amortization-Sheet-Mortgage-Overpayment-Comparison After one year you have made £1,200 in overpayments. You now owe £1,222.25 less than if you hadn't overpaid.  After five years you owe £6,629 less on your mortgage, having overpaid in £6,000 so far. Should you remortgage at this point that £629 is your return so far, and you also have £6k more equity in the property.  If you keep going: After 65 months you are paying more capital than interest out of your monthly payment. This takes until 93 months without overpayments. In total, if you keep up £100/month overpayment, you pay £15,533 less interest overall, and end your mortgage six years early. You can play with the spreadsheet inputs to see the effect of different overpayment amounts. Hope this helps.\"", "I am also confused by what he says. The DJIA has not been at 900 for decades. However a $36 dividend is 4% per unit if you get $9 per unit per quarter. 2/3 of 4% is 6%,so that is inside his 7.5% to 5.5%. How much you have in dividend paying stocks vs. Bonds most often is a function of your age. For example, I have heard the advice of subtracting your age in years from 110 and that would be the percent you hold in dividend paying stocks. At age 30 you would have 80% in stocks. At age 60 you would be 50% in stocks. There are retirement funds that do this for you.  But the 'bottom line' all depends on your risk tolerance. I have a large tolerance for risk. So even though I am currently retired I only have 10% of my money in a 'safe' investment (ticker=PGF). It pays 5.5% per year.  The rest is in a leveraged junk bond fund (PHK) that pays 15.5% per year."]}
+{"query": "What is buying pressure?", "corpus": ["\"Buying pressure is when there are more buy orders than sell orders outstanding.  Just because someone wants to buy a stock doesn't mean there's a seller ready to fill that order.  When there's buying pressure, stock prices rise.  When there's selling pressure, stock prices fall. There can be high volume where buying and selling are roughly equal, in which case share prices wouldn't move much. The market makers who actually fill buy and sell orders for stock will raise share prices in the face of buying pressure and lower them in the face of selling pressure.  That's because they get to keep the margin between what they bought shares from a seller for and what they can sell them to a new buyer for.  Here's an explanation from InvestorPlace.com about \"\"buying pressure\"\": Buying pressure can basically be defined as increasingly higher demand for a particular stock's shares. This demand for shares exceeds the supply and causes the price to rise. ... The strength or weakness of a stock determines how much buying or selling interest will be required to break support and resistance areas. I hope this helps!\""], "neg": ["Some examples where an HOA is a positive thing: 1) Amenities: Maybe it is professionally maintained landscaping at the front of the subdivision, or a playground, or community pool. An HOA provides a convenient way to have things like that and share the costs among all the people who benefit. 2) Legal Advocacy: I live in a neighborhood (rural) without an HOA. My neighbor decided to start an auto-repair shop on his property which was CLEARLY a violation of the covenants. There isn't really a Government body you can report them to that will swoop in and make them stop a neighbor from destroying your property values even if they signed an agreement when they bought it to the contrary. You need to hire a lawyer and sue them and that costs money and time. Also, in many cases if you wait too long they can get an exception grandfathered in because no one raised an issue about it. An HOA exists to watch for this kind of thing and nip it in the bud rather than making homeowners have to hassle with the time/expense. 3) Independence: Assuming no HOA, and assuming you are okay with suing your neighbor over violating a covenant. That makes for a very uncomfortable situation between you and that neighbor. Having a neutral 3rd party take action on your behalf anonymously can greatly help that situation. It's not all about making people ditch their basketball goals, or garden gnomes. They also protect you from other obnoxious stuff like junky mobile homes in high-end neighborhoods, the guy who blocks half the street permanently with his RV/Boat parked on the curb, three foot tall grass that is an eyesore and a fire hazard, a taco stand opening in your neighbors garage,  etc.", "Purchase capital asset (deductible expense). Sell capital asset next year, then use the proceeds of the sale to pay your employees.  Unless you buy in a quickly gentrifying area you'll have a fair amount of unrecoverable expenses like closing costs, repairs, etc that you won't make up with an increase in property value. Plus property taxes, utilities, etc. And who knows how quickly you can sell the place, might end up with a bloated useless asset and no money to pay employees. And in an audit an asset purchased with no actual use to the business will get disallowed.  Either retain the earnings and take the tax hit, or make a deal with your employees to pre pay them their next year's salary. Of course if you fire someone or they quit good luck getting the overpaid portion back.", "\"You most definitely can appeal the county's appraisal of your property.  How to do so, and your odds of success will vary widely by your location, but I have successfully appealed the valuation on one of my rental properties. I asked my realtor to provide me with recent sales of comparable homes in the neighborhood & provided them along with my appeal as evidence of what I felt a reasonable valuation should be.  One of three things will happen: 1) Your appeal will be accepted, 2) It will be denied, or 3) you will be asked to come in & plea your case in front of the county assessor. In my case, the county accepted my appeal without needing to testify. Look around your county assessor's website ... you will probably be able to find the form necessary for filing an appeal.  If not, give them a call & they'll tell you the procedure. The county generally uses a simplistic statistical model to do their valuations. Little to no human time is spent reviewing your home's value, so it's quite possible for their valuation to be unreasonable.   An appeal can take a bit of time & paperwork, but can definitely be worth the effort if the county's valuation is way off. Hope this helps! @mhoran_psprep Your point is well taken that in practice the relationship between sales prices & tax assessments is a bit more tenuous. The waters get muddy when property values have a large swing (like the past 5 years). When tax assessor's started seeing large drops in property values during the recession (and consequent drops in their budgets), I'm sure there was considerable pressure to prevent wholesale decreases in tax valuations. It's politically easier to \"\"prop-up\"\" falling valuations than to raise tax rates.  However, the fact remains that the models that assessors use in determining property values are based on sales history - thus, I believe (and have found) that recent sales can be a persuasive piece of evidence in a property tax assessment appeal.\"", "Not sure if serious or not, but i'll bite. First of all the service you are purchasing is the access to credit card, which runs on a network supplied by financial institutions. Secondly credit card is an optional fee, taxes are mandatory (unless you are a crook).", "Then we should create a derivative that allows people to bet on the bond failing, and package tons of them into securities, which you can swap for cash. You're swapping a bet on someone defaulting on their credit... Swapping a credit default... Hmm... I don't see this going wrong in any way.", "Electronics dropshippers will offer you an tremendously big selection of digital merchandise at wholesale selling   prices.What ever type of electronic items you are searching for, and regardless if you desire to promote them inside   of your store, on your own web page or on eBay you'll discover what you are on the search for the following.", "\"You mean \"\"Greece has asked China for loans\"\" and China might've taken them seriously.    In no way does that transition into any sort of reasonable expectation that China buy up European debt.  Much less buy it up and then ignore it for a while, which is obviously what Europe is hoping for.\""]}
+{"query": "How do I claim HST compensation on my personal Ontario income taxes?", "corpus": ["\"Your income and expenses for the business should be independent of HST. That is, if you charged somebody 100 + 13 HST, you have revenue of 100. You're going to send the 13 to the government later, it's not part of your revenue. If you go out and buy something for 10 + 1.30 HST, you record 10 as an expense. You're going to take the 1.3 off the 13 you would have sent the government, it's not part of your expenses. And so on.  I am not sure what you mean by \"\"HST compensation\"\" but if it came from the government, and it needs to be declared as income, there will be information to that end in the letter that comes with the cheque. (For example, if they pay you interest on your refund, the letter reminds you to include that money in next year's income.)\""], "neg": ["Centre For Laptops offer very reliable laptop services for all types of brands of laptops and computers by the trained personnel. Centre For Laptops provides best Lenovo Laptops Repairs In Gurugram. Centre For Laptops use the latest methods of diagnosing to find the hardware and software issues. For more details, Visit: http://centreforlaptops.com/", "\"The editorial highlights some reasonable reforms-- consistent and transparent pricing--- and then seemingly takes a left turn. This concept or \"\"cutting out the middle man\"\" is a fantasy born of a time when local doctors provided affordable but limited care to a limited population. It's been a hollow talking point perpetuated by industry lobby in response to single-payer proposals. Keeping health care between patient and doctor doesn't address the key reasons why health insurance exists in the first place.   The author suggests government-funded escrow accounts for those who can't afford the cost of healthcare. What about those just above the needs-tested cutoff? It seems that this approach disregards and therefore punishes the middle class. Must those with chronic illness become indigent before the government will assist in their care? The point of insurance is that when you get sick, you aren't left spending your life savings on medical care. Level and transparent pricing doesn't change the fact that certain treatments are still going to be expensive. The auto insurance comparison always frustrates me because people are not cars. If your car is breaking down every 30 miles, you can take out a loan and get a new car. A new body, not so much. Furthermore, every auto insurance claim raises your premium. All of this amounts to a tax on sick people.   Single payer or even Medicaid for all (who want it) means the government has enormous pool of patients (or consumers if you wish) with which to negotiate pricing. Do you really think St. XYZ Hospital is going to cut you, an individual, a deal for no reason? Where is the leverage? Particularly in the case of emergencies?  It isn't perfect, but politicizing and misconstruing the tragic case of a brain-dead infant does not strengthen your argument. Charlie Gard's case was not a matter of death panels; it was a matter of heartbroken parents in denial that their children was not going to get better. It's indeed an ethical quandary and no doubt a tragedy, but the hopelessness of the situation was not dictated by a heartless government but by health care professionals.   This is much more than I wished to say initially, but I am tired of seeing simplified fantasy being sold as panacea for what is an extremely complicated subject. Also, I'm not a public policy scholar, but I think I've done a better job than the author.\"", "What's f'd up is that we live in a business culture that allows this stuff to happen.  Capitalism where the end consumer is a product to be sold to shareholders and regulations are the antichrist unless they are the monopolies that allow them to treat their costumers like shit in the first place.", "Very rarely would an investor be happy with a 4% yield independent of anything else that might happen in the future. For example, if in 3 years for some reason or other inflation explodes and 30 year bond yields go up to 15% across the board, they would be kicking themselves for having locked it up for 30 years at 4%. However, if instead of doing that the investor put their money in a 3 year bond at 3% say, they would have the opportunity to reinvest in the new rate environment, which might offer higher or lower yields. This eventually leads fixed income investors to have a bond portfolio in which they manage the average maturity of their bond portfolio to be somewhere between the two extremes of investing it all in super short term/ low yield money market rates vs. super long term bonds. As they constantly monitor and manage their maturing investments, it inevitably leads them to managing interest rate risk as they decide where to reinvest their incremental coupons by looking at the shape of the yield curve at the time and determining what kind of risk/reward tradeoffs they would have to make.", "I am assuming this is USA. While it is a bit of a pain, you are best off to have separate accounts for your business and personal.  This way, if it comes to audit, you hand the IRS statements for your business account(s) and they match your return.   As a further precaution I would have the card(s) you use for business expenses look different then the ones you use for personal so you don't mess another one up.", "\"Are IP rights Intellectual Property rights?  What do you mean by the thunderdome for inventors without government created monopolies?   I've tried to google, but the answer eludes me. Would you elaborate on how \"\"rolling back IP protection to compete,\"\" works?\"", "Chipotle is not some huge chain that impacts American's total consumption of beef. Shit.. they only have like 5 menu items anyway. The place is for tools who like to pretend eat healthy. Next we'll hear Panara Bread is driving the nation to sustainable agriculture. Antibiotic free meat does not have a large market in the US. Sure... that tiny market may be growing, but it's comparable to preaching that Apple is about to overtake Microsoft.   Without legislation people will NOT make the right decision. They will eat what's cheap. Just look at the numbers. McDonalds rules fast food with low quality dirt cheap burgers. When Chipotle makes a dollar menu then they might have a real impact."]}
+{"query": "Is there an online cost-basis calculator that automatically accounts for dividend re-investments and splits?", "corpus": ["Google Finance portfolios take into account splits and cash deposits/withdrawals."], "neg": ["I'd start paying off the smallest balance first.   Hopefully, that can get cleared in a few months.   When that happens, close the account and try to get your bank loan again.    Keep repeating this process until either you pay off all of the debt.     After you've paid off one or two loans and put the negative marks of your credit history further into the past, you'll be able to make better progress.", "I am drug free and willing to move cross country to work for you for the right money. I am college educated, great with my hands, and have a blue collar employment background. Let me know if you're interested.  Time to sit back and watch the job offers roll in.", "\"Moneydance is a commercial application that is cross-platform. Written in Java, they run and are supported on Windows, Mac and Linux. They integrate with many financial institutions and for those that it cannot, you can import a locally downloaded file. I have used it for several years on my Mac, but have no company affiliation. I'm not sure if by saying \"\"Unix\"\" software you meant FOSS of some kind, but good luck in any case.\"", "Non-target undergrad in the south, but I networked with right people. Through the finance clubs I got an equity research role for the school's investment fund and leveraged that for an interview at a home developer but the partners there ultimately went with someone else. They happened to be investors at the firm I currently work at and thought my background would make me a good fit. Once I started working there, I took on as many projects/responsibilities as I could. I'm actually in the process of partnering up with the trader to take on some outside investors and get his algos running. He's been trading for ~25 years and I couldn't believe what his returns were at first, so I'm fairly excited to work with him.", "Herd immunity is just another bullshit soundbite from Big Pharma marketing trying to scare you into legislating a massive increase in their market share.  If you are vaccinated, you are immune... unless your vaccines are crap. This is why we sent kids to play with the kids with chickenpox--to acquire immunity. And why kids (and adults) who already had chickenpox don't fear catching it again.", "In personal finance circles this is called an Emergency Fund. There are many opinions about how big it needs to be but most seem to come in around 3-6 months worth of your average expenses. Any more than that and you're going to loose money to inflation, less and you will start having problems if you get laid off or have a medical issue.", "Yes an index is by definition any arbitrary selection. In general, to measure performance there are 2 ways: By absolute return - meaning you want a positive return at all times ie. 10% is good. -1% is bad. By relative return - this means beating the benchmark. For example, if the benchmark returns -20% and your portfolio returns -10%, then it has delivered +10% relative returns as compared to the benchmark."]}
+{"query": "Are stock prices purely (or mostly) only based on human action?", "corpus": ["Stock prices are indeed proportional to supply and demand. The greater the demand for a stock, the greater the price. If they are, would this mean that stock prices completely depend on HOW the public FEELS/THINKS about the stock instead of what it is actually worth? This is a question people have argued for decades. Literature in behavioral finance suggests that investors are not rational and thus markets are subject to wild fluctuation based on investor sentiment. The efficient market theory (EMT) argues that the stock market is efficient and that a stock's price is an accurate reflection of its underlying or intrinsic value. This philosophy took birth with Harry Markovitz's efficient frontier, and Eugene Fama is generally seen as the champion of EMT in the 1960's and onward.  Most investors today would agree that the markets are not perfectly efficient, and that a stock's price does not always reflect its value. The renowned professor Benjamin Graham once wrote: In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine. This suggests that prices in the short term are mainly influenced by how people feel about the stock, while in the long run the price reflects what it's actually worth. For example, people are really big fans of tech stocks right now, which suggests why LinkedIn (stock: LNKD) has such a high share price despite its modest earnings (relative to valuation). People feel really good about it, and the price might sustain if LinkedIn becomes more and more profitable, but it's also possible that their results won't be absolutely stellar, so the stock price will fall until it reflects the company's fundamentals."], "neg": ["&gt; For example, if you're one of the growing AI companies of the world who sees a unique trained-up xNN as core IP or trade secret, I would be hesitant deploying such a thing to Aliyun.  I'd be hesitant to deploy trade secrets to any machines not directly owned and managed.", "&gt; Because those conditions are arbitrarily set over a reality that does not conform to the fantasy with which they were contrived, by government officials that have no accountability to the post office's customers.  &gt; They chose false morality and good feels over reality, and they aren't paying the price. We are.  https://www.afge.org/about-us/  &gt; As a labor union, AFGE is in a unique position because it is not currently afforded the same full scope collective bargaining rights as workers in the private sector. For this reason in addition to negotiating working conditions at the bargaining table, AFGE coordinates a full-scale legislative and political action program to monitor issues that impact the government work force. **When Congress debates funding of vital government programs administered to the public by government workers or tackles employee health care issues, AFGE is on the scene representing its members.**", "I appreciate the reminder of demographic issues, but the argument is weak. There are structural issues like low wages, increasingly part time jobs, student debt, automation, Boomer asset selloffs/deleveraging, and energy headwinds.  Houses are not sold just because a large cohort shows up. It's when they have the money. And the last crash dug so deeply that we are poised for another recession sparked by shale peaking within 2 years, just when we climbed out of the hole.", "By buying the call option, you are getting the benefit of purchasing the underlying shares (that is, if the shares go up in value, you make money), but transferring the risk of the shares reducing in value. This is more apparent when you are using the option to offset an explicit risk that you hold. For example, if you have a short position, you are at unlimited risk of the position going up in value. You could decide you only want to take the risk that it might rise to $X. In that case, you could buy a call option with $X strike price. Then you have transferred the risk that the position goes over $X to the counterpart, since, even if the shares are trading at $X+$Y you can close out the short position by purchasing the shares at $X, while the option counterpart will lose $Y.", "I am a firm believer in TD's e-series funds.  No other bank in Canada has index funds with such low management fees.  Index funds offer the flexibility to re-balance your portfolio every month without the need to pay commission fees.  Currently I allocate 10% of my paycheck to be diversified between Canadian, US, and International e-series index funds. In terms of just being for beginners, this opinion is most likely based on the fact that an e-series portfolio is very easy to manage.  But this doesn't mean that it is only for beginners.  Sometimes the easiest solution is the best one! :)", "While the rest of the answers seem to be focusing on the parenting strategies around giving children an allowance, I'd like to address how to accomplish that.   I think the best most reasonable way to just to supply him with a checking and savings account at whichever bank you use.  Most reasonable banks will have some form of no-fee account for minors/young people; others will waive fees if you have it paired with your account.  Whatever way to can swing it, get the kid an account he can deposit/withdraw from and that is free of any additional services.  He doesn't need to learn the pain of overdrafts or random fees yet.  Then, just set up a recurring weekly/monthly transfer to the account, and let him determine his own allocation to savings and spending.  If he can manage it online, even better, that's a far more useful skill than knowing how to fill out a deposit slip at the bank.", "\"it is only sprayed on crops that are RoundUp ready, meaning the genome has been altered to accept RoundUp sprayed directly on the plant.    Jesus, reading this is like reading a memo directly from Monsanto.  You are blindly following the marketing of Monsanto with the \"\"how is RoundUp nasty\"\".  Really?  For fuck sake people, doctors used to recommend a certain brand of cigarette.  Wake the fuck up.\""]}
+{"query": "Everyone got a raise to them same amount, lost my higher pay than the newer employees", "corpus": ["\"Why do you think you are entitled to \"\"fairness\"\"? In this world you get what you get. I am pretty sure your employer is not paying you for how you \"\"feel\"\" either. And by-the-way turning up on time and not leaving early is not exceptional behaviour; it is expected behaviour. Bottom line: do you add more value to your employer's business then the new hires? If so, ask for a raise, if not find a way to add more value and then ask for a raise or keep doing what you're doing and accept what you get.\""], "neg": ["Less so today, but there was a time that women played a smaller role in the household finances, letting the husband manage the family money. Women often found themselves in a frightening situation when the husband died.  Still, despite those who protest to the contrary, men and women tend to think differently, how they problem solve, how they view risk. An advisor who understands these differences and listens to the client of either sex, will better serve them.", "I am from India. I visited US 6-8 times on business VISA and then started 2 Member LLC. Myself and My wife as LLC Members. We provide Online Training to american students from India. Also Got EIN number. Never employed any one. Do i need to pay taxes? Students from USA pays online by Paypal and i am paying taxes in India. Do i need to pay Taxes in US? DO i need to file the Tax returns? Please guide me. I formed LLC in 2010. I opened an Office-taken Virtual office for 75 USD per month to open LLC in 2010. As there is physical virtual address, am i liable for US taxes? All my earning is Online, free lancing.", "Meh?  Kinkos was bought by fedex in 2004. So it is really a combination of many things. [FedEx did win the USPS contract to handle Global Express Guaranteed Service](http://printmediacentr.com/2011/09/shipping-with-the-enemy-usps-partners-with-fedex/)  [Fedex also runs the overnight services an more](http://www.dmnews.com/fedex-usps-partnership-off-to-flying-start/article/74431/) FedEx pushes costly end delivery to USPS through SmartPost and yes FedEx owns kinkos and they charge $5 for a .20 box.", "You keep addressing irrelevant points. You're advocating an incompetent business with an inefficient model to continue running just to keep people employed. You're further assuming that they'll stay unemployed and no other, more efficient firm will capitalize on the niche that opened up with sears' passing.   Don't let emotions stomp on logic.", "At any point of time, buyer wants to purchase a stock at lesser price and seller wants to sell the stock at a higher price.  Let's consider this scenario  Company XYZ is trading at 100$, as stated above buyer wants to purchase at lower price and seller at higher price, this information will be available in Market depth, let's consider there are 5 buyers and 5 sellers, below are the details of their orders Buyers List Sellers List Highest order in buyers list will contain the bid price and bid quantity, Lowest order in Sellers list will contain the offer price and offer quantity. Now, if I want to buy 50 Stocks of company XYZ, need to place an order first, it can be either limit or Market. Limit Order : In this order, I will mention the price(buy price) at which I wish to buy, if there is any seller selling the stock less than or equal to price I have mentioned, then the order will be executed else it will be added to buyers list Market Order : In this order, I will not mention the price, if I wish to purchase 50 Stocks, then it will find the lowest offer price and buy stocks, in our case it will be 101. if I wish to purchase 200 Stocks, then it will find the lowest offer price and buy stocks, in our case it will be 2 transactions, since entire request cannot be accommodated in single order Usually the volume(Ask Volume and Offer Volume) being displayed are all Limit orders and not Market orders, Market orders are executed immediately. This is just an example, However several transactions are executed within a second, hence we will get to know the exact value only after the order is completed(executed)", "It lowered healthcare costs, not eligibility. Updating hospital billings and stopping the god awful medicare advantage plans are a bit different than current plans to cut back services. The new bill cuts medicare revenue and removes eligibility for millions of seniors. It also cuts back on matching state payments to seniors.", "It's rather evident that, despite the nay-sayers, food prices will go down due to this deal. Amazon is laser-focused on two things: making things cheaper and getting things to you faster. They've developed/ are developing a strong base of knowledge and development in machine learning, robotics, and blockchain, which would greatly facilitate these two tasks. However, as stated in the article, this will not have a significant effect on inflation due to the fact that the economy makes up for it in other respects (*cough* rising tuition and oil prices *cough*). It's interesting to note that food inflation was warned against by several experts within the past two years but this deal might change that (see: https://www.ers.usda.gov/data-products/food-price-outlook/summary-findings.aspx )."]}
+{"query": "Can used books bought off Amazon be claimed as a tax deduction in Australia?", "corpus": ["\"VAT = Value Added Tax (as an Aussie think \"\"GST\"\") This is applicable in Britain. Basically, if you were in Britain, and if you could claim VAT as a deduction, that invoice is not sufficient proof to make the claim. But you're in Oz so it doesn't apply to you in any case. For work-related deductions like book purchases, see http://www.ato.gov.au/individuals/content.asp?doc=/content/00216829.htm&pc=001/002/068/001/002&mnu=&mfp=&st=&cy=1  Issues such as the books being second hand or purchased online are not cited in the instructions as relevant/limiting factors. In fact, if you really want to get into the nitty gritty, you could claim the work-related proportion of your internet access fees as a deduction (question D5 instructions, above, cover that as well).\""], "neg": ["In the second example you are giving up future  free cash flows in exchange for a capital gain on the original investment. With that respect  the money you will not gain will be the difference of the future cash flows ( net of related costs) minus the net gain on the panel you have sold. The financial result can be considered as the opposite of a sunk cost, that is a cost you have already incurred ( and cannot be recovered)  vs net future gains you are giving up.  In more sophisticated financial terms we are talking about the  benefit-cost ratio:  ( from Investopedia)", "\"Right, but there were tangible reasons that made sense. That was fueled by a cycle of predatory loans and consumers being dumb enough to think that just because they got approved for a $500K house with a 500 credit score meant they should definitely take out massive loans and buy it. This was piled on by the derivative market, specifically credit default swaps, which certain people recognized as creating a liquidity issue. They didn't know *when* the crash was going to occur. They just knew that the asset bubble fueled by massive debt, with this debt being falsely rated as AAA when most of it was Junk, left banks in a position of complete insolvency when the mortgage defaults reached a certain point. When people realized the extent of the debt, (e.g. knowing with common sense that people with a 550 credit score shouldn't have 7 properties and be allowed to be that over-leveraged, let alone be rated AAA) and the amount of derivatives that would have to be paid out on top of having no cash flow due to mortgage defaults, they recognized that a bubble bursting would wreak havoc on the economy.       That had a lot of moving parts. Simply saying \"\"DAE OVERVALUED RECORD HIGHS CRASH COMING SOON!??!?!?!??!!??!?!?!? WHEN!??!?! HOW!!?\"\" is fucking stupid. Nobody knows. What evidence did OP offer? Not that he wouldn't still get laughed out because this topic is fucking annoying with thousands of people crying \"\"overvalued\"\", but he didn't even mention P/E ratio or anything. He literally came in and basically said \"\"when is it all gonna fall apart?\"\". Nobody knows the answer.\"", "Vanguard might be the top provider of no-load mutual funds around.  Attempting to do better than 0.13% in fees is just as likely to cost you more time than the money you're attempting to say.  You're in your first job out of school--you've got better things to do with your time.", "The mode of payment mentioned by your bank is called the ACH(Automatic Clearing House) which means that anyone(Trusted payment gateway owners like banks themselves) can process payments. There can be a fraud declared against any payment that you have made and you can get every single penny back. This amount can not be withdrawn in cash at all. However for your situation I would suggest that you ask your bank to block any transactions above the amount of a specific sum, this way they will require your authorization to finalize the payment. You should feel safe after this. Also no one can access any other account apart from the one whose details you are giving out so do not worry about this guy(or anyone else for that matter) to be able to access your other accounts.  Hope this helps. (I have experience in payment gateways so I do understand these procedures.) Cheers!!", "For Facebook and such companies, their ability to earn billions only happens through an IPO because that business model doesn't generate revenue. Without some drastic change that no one has mentioned, Facebook cannot make a profit, much less multi-billion dollar yearly profits.   So you launch an IPO to rip off the suckers", "Investing for your future through stocks isn’t for the faint of heart. While there are stocks that can withstand our volatile market, there are few that can guarantee their business will still be a business 20 or 30 years from now. [Compound Stock Earnings](http://www.compoundstockearnings.com) Report Benigans would always be with us, but they no longer exist.", "\"If all the property is going up and down at the same rate, it's probably a bit of a wash. However, there are markets (e.g. the Front Range of Colorado, where I live), where property at different price levels and locations has performed very differently. For a place to live, I think it's most useful to look at housing as a consumption decision, like buying a car, rather than an investment decision, like buying art (since it is similarly illiquid). Consider what you need and want (features, location), how important the \"\"own vs rent\"\" tradeoffs are to you (including the risk of losing your equity), and what you can comfortably afford. Then don't worry so much about price trends. This, it seems to me, is the lesson of the recent housing bust.\""]}
+{"query": "Tax withheld by USA working in UK (Form 1042-S and Form 1099)", "corpus": ["\"The shares are \"\"imputed income\"\" / payment in kind. You worked in the UK, but are you a \"\"US Person\"\"? If not, you should go back to payroll with this query as this income is taxable in the UK. It is important you find out on what basis they were issued. The company will have answers. Where they aquired at a discount to fair market value ? Where they purchased with a salary deduction as part of a scheme ? Where they acquired by conversion of employee stock options ?    If you sell the shares, or are paid dividends, then there will be tax withheld.\""], "neg": ["He was referring to tech companies. I am referring to old-school companies that haven't missed a dividend payment for 30 years. Anyway Facebook is probably a good bet – they have an even trying to monetize it other than to cover costs. Let someone else bet on that. it turns out that a lot of people open accounts and are active for about the first 30 days and that's it. But the accounts remain on the books. Linkedin – talk about worst in breed. Anyway, I still don't know what Facebook has that MySpace didn't.", "I should have said 'insane inflation related to rising costs versus wages'.  It used to be that wage inflation outpaced product inflation. It's been in reverse for some time, which only exacerbates the problem as it continues.  I'm aware in the manner our economy works some matching or reversal should be expected, but we've been in a downward spiral for the better part of 30 years.", "air conditioning repair  ---Do you know how Service Experts Heating &amp; Air Conditioning helps you beat the heat? With expert air conditioning repairs from our NATE-certified HVAC service technicians. NATE-certification means we have the experience, skills and tools to fix HVAC problems the first time. So when you need your Air Conditioner repaired fast, just give us a call or schedule your repair appointment online.", "I'm a two time Dungeons and Dragons World Champion - or whatever.  There are as many ways to answer your question as there are ways to be competitive. But that's not the point. I think you're doing yourself a disservice by employing a pop-psychology approach that has very little value in evaluating potential candidates. You'll succeed in picking out who shares your interest in sports, but little else. Even the famous [Meyers-Briggs Test](Meyershttp://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Myers-Briggs_Type_Indicator#Reliability) has been generally dismissed as unreliable.  Seeking information in a roundabout way is like shooting an arrow into the air and hoping to hit the bullseye. Just aim directly for the target and you'll get better results. If you want to know if someone is competitive, ask them if they're competitive. - explain why a competitive nature is important. Complete transparency and honesty is always the best approach.   Any trained psychologist will tell you (and I know several) that your method is not only ineffective, but recklessly assumptive.", "The fundamental problem with capitalism is that people assume that what makes money is worth doing, and that making money justifies it.  Money, wealth, jobs:  these are means, not ends.  Capitalist theory washes its hands of motivational concerns, correctly, but the guide to proper motivation, philosophy, must be developed concurrently.  It has not.  We have a modern economy wielded by barbarians and illiterate peasants, a gun handed to a chimpanzee, and we've shot our foot off for lack of learning proper self control.", "&gt; budget would reduce the deficit by $160 billion, while increasing the GDP  Sounds great until you learn that $160 billion is only 11% of [the $1400 billion the government borrowed in 2016](http://www.usgovernmentdebt.us/us_deficit) and the US GDP is only going up because the deficit isn't shrinking as quickly as it would under current spending levels.", "\"Visa Electron should be usable in any ATM (and shop) that accepts Visa, especially if the ATM also contains the \"\"Plus\"\" logo. However, if it's (for example) the card issued by La Banque Postale (in French) there are quite low withdrawal and spending limits.  These limits are over a period of the most recent seven days, so it can take a while before you can withdraw more.  So maybe not suitable to transfer a significant amount to your CZK account. As an alternative to finding an ATM that might have a fee, you can maybe use it to buy something small, then get cashback from stores that offer that. As it's a debit card, it needs to check the balance in real-time, so there are reports of it being often declined if it can't get a fast response from the home bank. In other words, make sure you have an alternative.\""]}
+{"query": "Should the bank cover money lost due to an unsuccessful transfer?", "corpus": ["Since the transaction was not your bank's mistake (but a decision by the Indian government) why should your bank bear the cost of the unsuccessful transaction? Your bank charged a fee for a service that you were willing to pay for. You might be able to negotiate a full or partial refund, and I have done the same with my own bank for fees that I didn't feel were appropriate.  Your bank will agree or not based on how much they value your business. If you are an otherwise profitable customer, they may agree to refund the fee."], "neg": ["&gt; The purpose of buying these bonds was not to step in due to the absence of a market. Rather, the purpose was to deliberately bid up the price of these bonds (ahead of the market), causing their price to rise and yields (interest rates) to drop.  There are some important things you need to understand about bubbles and how they form.  When interest rates are artificially low and down payments aren't required for many loans, do you agree this is a recipe for a bubble?", "You do know that since the shale gas boom started the cost of energy declined significantly, don't you? Your theory is a bit simplistic and had more than a few holes.   GDP growth is not that contingent on energy prices. How do you factor in increasing fuel efficiency in your theory?", "I was business and then did a 5th year undergrad to be eligible to sit for the CPA exams. There is no way I, or anyone, could start working on an audit on day one. Even if I had done internships, they wouldn't mean anything with a change in career path.", "If you want to combine old/new thoughts then maybe look af psychological or general theory of reflexivity.  One of the underlying assumptions in big data and AI is that if you have enough data, you will have the truth. but then look at elections in the US and UK or the fact that no one can predict exchanges rates because the market reacts in a dobbel loop.  how about some good old self-driving German cars as a subject? Lots of political, ethical, R&amp;D, management and tech considerations are in that area, finde ich. Viel Spass damit :)", "Fuel prices are regulated in most countires. The way its regulated differs. Essentially the idea is once the retail prices are up, they are normally kept that level so that a buffer profit is built, now if the fuel prices increase beyond the retail price can still be kept same using the buffer built up.", "If you're willing to entertain the fact that a lack of any action by the fed would have killed market confidence and caused equities to tank, gold could have been a suitable asset in a flight to quality.  Of course as others have said the drop would just be the uncertainty about QE3 being removed from the price", "We've tried to establish Atlantic Salmon in Pacific waters as late as 1981 (wild stock, not farmed). There were 3 escapes in the late 90's (totalling over half a million fish) with no 'wild' adults found (some juveniles were found in the rivers, but none are known to have returned).  Scientists have tried to hybridize Atlantic and Pacific Salmon. While successful, the offspring were sterile and the process was difficult and unlikely to occur in nature.  So, while they might, their kids won't (or haven't in previous episodes)."]}
+{"query": "Ticker symbols differences between Yahoo Finance and BestInvest", "corpus": ["\"BestInvest is a UK site looking at that URL, base on the \"\"co.uk\"\" ending. Yahoo! Finance that you use is a US-based site unless you add something else to the URL. UK & Ireland Yahoo! Finance is different from where you were as there is something to be said for where are you looking. If I was looking for a quarter dollar there are Canadian and American coins that meet this so there is something to be said for a higher level of categorization being done. \"\"EUN.L\"\" would likely denote the \"\"London\"\" exchange as tickers are exchange-specific you do realize, right?\""], "neg": ["&gt; It's often the minimum wage employees that I see abused the worst, they are easily replaceable by their employer and punishment for violating workers rights is a slap on the wrist.    Yeah, this is a good point.  I think the experience skews significantly as you go down the skill-level / prestige of the job.  An interesting observation (maybe) would be that this mostly applies to people who are *only just* above minimum wage, such as Walmart employees.  They get paid enough that it would be hard to find another retail job at the same pay level.  But certainly not enough to be considered well-off.  True minimum wage earners who I've known typically don't give even the smallest shit about their employer.  They switch employers in the blink of an eye, and at the slightest provocation.  Minimum wage jobs are as much a commodity for the employees, as minimum-wage employees are to the company.   &gt; A lot of this was to get over a peak of work... However now I have been granted some flexibility   Well said.  My situation is very similar.  The company communicates their needs to me, and so I'm well aware of when peaks are likely to occur, and of the consequences of missing deadlines, etc.  It rarely comes as a surprise.", "Mining/discovery of gold can be inflationary -- the Spanish looting of Central America for a few hundred years or the gold rush in the 19th century US are examples of that phenomenon. The difference between printing currency and mining is that you have to ability to print money on demand, while mining is limited to whatever is available to extract at a given time. The rising price of gold may be contributing to increased production, as low-grade ore that wasn't economically viable to work with in the 1980's are now affordable.", "There are no contracts. They give subscribers money on MasterCard gift cards which the theaters have to accept if they accept MasterCard.   The theaters really don't have much of a choice, but they're getting paid full price for tickets, so they shouldn't complain.", "\"Do you still enjoy living in your home? Can you afford the mortgage payments? Is there a reason for you to move, such as a relocation for work, or your third kid is on the way and your current house is already crowded with two? Those questions are more important than \"\"Is my home worth more than what I owe on it\"\". Ultimately, it's your home. You probably chose it for more than just its price, and those qualities should still make it valuable to you in some way beyond the monetary value which goes up and down with the market. You have a few options:\"", "\"In the US, dividends are presently taxed at the same rates as capital gains, however selling stock could lead to less tax owed for the same amount of cash raised, because you are getting a return of basis or can elect to engage in a \"\"loss harvesting\"\" strategy.  So to reply to the title question specifically, there are more tax \"\"benefits\"\" to selling stock to raise income versus receiving dividends.  You have precise control of the realization of gains.    However, the reason dividends (or dividend funds) are used for retirement income is for matching cash flow to expenses and preventing a liquidity crunch.  One feature of retirement is that you're not working to earn a salary, yet you still have daily living expenses.   Dividends are stable and more predictable than capital gains, and generate cash generally quarterly.  While companies can reduce or suspend their dividend, you can generally budget for your portfolio to put a reliable amount of cash in your pocket on schedule.  If you rely on selling shares quarterly for retirement living expenses, what would you have done (or how much of the total position would you have needed to sell) in order to eat during a decline in the market such as in 2007-2008?\"", "The best way to end the gaming of patents is to simplify the system. Just go back to the old rule of patents being good for one year after issuance. There are other issues like what should or shouldn't be patented, but just having the rule of patents being good for one year makes other issues relative minor ones when it comes to the monopolistic effect of patents. The more complex we make the system just increases the permutations for abuse.", "This is why charities and churches exist.   Businesses exist first and foremost to accomplish the goals of the owners. For most publicly traded companies, it is pretty safe to assume that the number 1 goal of the owners is to make money. Paying your employees more than they are worth is not a good way to make money."]}
+{"query": "Can a custodian refuse prior-year IRA/HSA deposit postmarked April 15?", "corpus": ["\"The \"\"must be postmarked\"\" language might be just from the old bank itself, not from the IRS.  The language I see in Publication 969 only says \"\"You can make contributions to your HSA for 2014 until April 15, 2015.\"\" In this case, it is understandable that the credit union you have the new account with does not want to accept the contribution for tax year 2014.  You didn't have an account with them in 2014.  You didn't even send out the paperwork to them to open the account until last week, and they didn't open your account until this week, after the deadline. It is unfortunate, but I don't think you'll be able to force them to do anything differently here.  It is just too late. I do know how that feels.  I had a somewhat similar circumstance with my HSA, the first year I had the account.  I contributed money to the HSA using my credit union's website, transferring money from my checking account into my HSA, as I was told to do.  In January and February of the following year, I made more contributions this way, thinking that I was making them for the previous tax year.  However, they never got coded correctly by the credit union, and I later found out that the credit union counted those as contributions for the current year.  As a result, I was essentially denied the full contribution limit for that year, and had a bit of a paperwork nightmare.  Now, if I have to make a prior year contribution, I only make it in person, and they have a form they have me fill out each time I do.\""], "neg": ["My personal favorites are Options, Futures, and Other Derivatives by John C Hull Thinking Fast and Slow - Daniel Kahneman Expected Returns - Antti Ilmanen [check out the video : How to Think About Expected Returns] It is a 600 page book … A summary of it: Without a rational expectation of expected returns, investing can lead to severe disappointment and disillusionment.  Making a good model to forecast expected returns is so difficult. Near-term expectation is almost impossible. The key is very very much about focusing on the long-term, and on getting returns that are feasible, not outlandish. There are three pillars that are central: Practically, the work of an investment manager today involves finding many different sources of returns, and diversifying effectively between them, and finally being humble about what returns we can expect today.", "You will see self driving full size semi trucks before you own a personal self driving car.  The efficiencies will be much greater for a big rig, vs small car or van.   Right now, HOS limits time a driver can spend behind the wheel. Without team drivers, the truck sits idle for 60-70+% of the time.  Large truck companies will see the benefit of owning less assets, paying less for whatever fuel they will be using, and increasing the general efficiency of their operations.", "don't know why you're being down voted, what you say is true in many markets. Universities are graduating a heck lot of undergrads and unless you have something more than that (say experience in the field) it's getting harder to compete.", "\"&gt;When you look at principles, whether you're a 'true' socialist, a watered-down SocialistLite or somwhere in between, the ideas are still anti-human.  I suggest you learn about a subject from the prolific authors of that subject, not people who claim to know it and bash it. Your argumentation is offensive, but I'll give you a reply anyway.  I know perfectly well what laissez-faire is, because I am in a way you are not also inclined to read texts of people who I do not agree with. I deliberately do not agree with laissez-faire, even though I believe in personal freedom as I am some variant of anarcho-socialist, but I don't believe in preserving the existing class relations and I don't believe laissez-faire to be fair for this exact reason; introducing it in the world today would only cement existing class differences, class differences brought on by the exploitation of the working class, which is the only way you can get really rich.  I suggest you actually read up on libertarian socialism and stop throwing around words like \"\"anti-human\"\", because you're quite honestly offending me, because obviously you're calling me \"\"anti-human\"\" as well, so even though I know you think you're playing some kind of enlightenment game by lecturing me on laissez-faire, a system that anyone who passed high school here in Sweden knows about, please stop and have some respect. I don't need to be lectured on the alternatives, I know them and I've chosen my beliefs.\"", "\"Ya, I mean if your really wanting to gain ppl's respect it might be a good idea. What you WANT to be is a leader, not just a manager. Ever wonder why most ppl hate their bosses?? It's bc they aren't leaders. Just from experience, since your young and wanting to gain the respect of the employees...you will gain it 100% more from your work ethic than any kind of job title. And if you do have eventually tell someone what to do, don't do it as a \"\"boss\"\" but a leader. Show them what you expect, show them you believe they can meet that expectation, then help them achieve it. Instead of yelling or fear mongoring.\"", "\"A budget is a predetermined plan for spending allocated funds to a fixed set of categories according to a schedule. If by,  \"\"Keeping track of your money\"\" you mean you are only recording your spending to see on what it is being spent and when, then the answer is no.  A budget has constraints on three things: Schedule:  The mortgage has to be paid at the 1st of the month with a 2 day grace period. Amount: The mortgage payment is 1500.00 Category: The mortgage. Tracking your money would be as follows: 10/5/2016: $25 for a video game. 10/5/2016: $129.99 for two automobile tires. 10/6/2016: $35.25 for luncheon. I didn't like him! Why did I blow this money? 10/7/2016: nothing spent...yoohoo! 10/8/2016: Payday, heck yeah! I'm financially solvent YET AGAIN! How do I do it?! See the difference?\"", "\"Buy term and invest the difference is certainly the standard recommendation, and for good reason. When you start looking at some sample numbers the \"\"buy term and invest the difference\"\" strategy starts to look very good. Here are the rates I found (27 yr old in Texas with good health, non-smoker, etc): $200k term life: $21/month $200k whole life: $177/month If you were to invest the difference in a retirement account for 40 years, assuming a 7% rate of return (many retirement planning estimates use 10%) you would have $411,859 at the end of that period. (If you use 10% that figure jumps to over $994k.) Needless to say, $400k in a retirement account is better than a $200k death benefit. Especially since you can't get the death benefit AND the cash value. Certainly one big difficulty is making sure you invest that difference. The best way to handle that is to set up a direct deposit that goes straight from your paycheck to the retirement account before it even touches your bank account. The next best thing would be an automatic transfer from your bank account. You may wonder 'What if I can no longer afford to invest that money?' First off, take a second and third look at your finances before you start eating into that. But if financial crisis comes and you truly can't afford to fund your own life insurance / retirement account then perhaps it will be a good thing you're not locked into a life insurance policy that forces you to pay those premiums. That extra freedom is another benefit of the \"\"buy term and invest the difference\"\" strategy. It is great that you are asking this question now while you are young. Because it is much easier to put this strategy into play now while you are young.  As far as using a cash value policy to help diversify your portfolio: I am no expert in how to allocate long term investments after maxing out my IRA and 401k. (My IRA maxes out at $5k/year, another $5k for my wife's, another $16.5k for my 401k.) Before I maxed that out I would have my house paid for and kid's education saved for. And by then it would make sense to pay a financial adviser to help you manage all those investments. They would be the one to ask about using a cash value policy similar to @lux lux's description.  I believe you should NEVER PUT YOUR MONEY INTO SOMETHING YOU DON'T UNDERSTAND. Cash value policies are complex and I don't fully understand them. I should add that of course my calculations are subject to the standard disclaimer that those investment returns aren't guaranteed. As with any financial decision you must be willing to accept some level of risk and the question is not whether to accept risk, but how much is acceptable. That's why I used 7% in my calculation instead of just 10%. I wanted to demonstrate that you could still beat out whole life if you wanted to reduce your risk and/or if the stock market performs poorly.\""]}
+{"query": "Is it correct to call an exchange-traded note a type of ETF?", "corpus": ["They're exchange traded debt, basically, not funds. E.g. from the NYSE: An exchange-traded note (ETN) is a senior unsecured debt obligation designed to track the total return of an underlying market index or other benchmark, minus investor fees. Whereas an ETF, in some way or another, is an equity product - which doesn't mean that they can only expose you to equity, but that they themselves are a company that you buy shares in.  FCOR for example is a bond ETF, basically a company whose sole purpose is to own a basket of bonds.  Contrast that to DTYS, a bear Treasury ETN, which is described as  The ETNs are unsecured debt obligations of the issuer, Barclays Bank PLC, and are not, either directly or indirectly, an obligation of or guaranteed by any third party. Also from Barclays site: Because the iPath ETNs are debt securities, they do not have any voting rights. FCOR on the other hand is some sort of company owned/managed by a Fidelity trust, though my EDGAR skills are rusty. AGREEMENT made this 18th day of   September, 2014, by and between Fidelity Merrimack Street Trust, a Massachusetts business trust which may issue one or more series of shares of beneficial interest (hereinafter called the “Trust”), on behalf of Fidelity Corporate   Bond ETF (hereinafter called the “Fund”), and Fidelity Investments Money Management, Inc., a New Hampshire corporation (hereinafter called the “Adviser”) as set forth in its entirety below."], "neg": ["It comes across as if you don't know much about what he or the firm does. Does he work in wealth management?      Someone looking for an assistant likely values organization and interpersonal skills over financial acumen.", "\"Here's my thought - call the insurance company back. Ask them to just tell you what the \"\"reasonable and customary\"\" approved payment would be. Offer that exact amount to the hospital, it's what they would have gotten anyway, and you learned a cheap lesson.\"", "\"Specifically, if you are looking for a \"\"reasonable\"\" rate for a savings (especially in TFSA) account then Ally has a 2% guaranteed account and ING has a 3% one (but it is subject to change). Update (Dec 9, 2013) - unsurprisingly, the ING special has disappeared .. I blame ScotiaBank. The current best rates are 1.35 and 1.40%. For Ally, we can blame RBC - current rates are 1.1\"", "\"I like a devil's advocate :)  &gt; Amazon made a brick-and-mortar acquisition which will now have a direct effect on consumers by trying to hamper which sites their customers try to access while on wifi and can also be seen as anticompetitive.  This statement assumes that Amazon intends to use the patented technology, despite no evidence of such intent (at the time of filing, at the time the patent was granted - which Amazon has no control over, or at the time of the WF purchase announcement).  Your reasoning has merit: the patent only became relevant when amazon acquired an opportunity to use it.   However, it relies on assumptions that aren't necessarily correct or complete. Hence, it isn't an objectively correct conclusion by any means.   By including only the fact that the patent was recently granted (timing lined up with WF acquisition), the author promoted the idea that the patent is part of Amazon's plan with WF going forward.   Amazon may *now* have plans for using it in connection with WF - or it may absolutely not. There is presently, working from the article itself, no evidence to suggest any such plans exist outside the author's mind. (I have zero doubt that they have *considered* using it, btw, I refer to actual plans to implement.)  I may be old fashioned or uncool, but the correct way to \"\"frame the situation\"\" is **always** completely and accurately, including all relevant information.    This allows readers to review the information and draw their own conclusions - even if the journalist *also* shares his own conclusion.\"", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://timharford.com/2017/08/what-we-get-wrong-about-technology/) reduced by 97%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; So sophisticated is Rachael that she is impossible to distinguish from a human without specialised equipment; she even believes herself to be human.  &gt; &amp;quot;If 11th-century Europe had little use for paper,&amp;quot; writes Mark Kurlansky in his book Paper, &amp;quot;13th-century Europe was hungry for it.&amp;quot; When paper was embraced in Europe, it became arguably the continent&amp;#039;s earliest heavy industry.  &gt; If human skills are now so valuable, that low-end growth seems like a puzzle - but the truth is that many distinctively human skills are not at the high end.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6wyvcy/what_we_get_wrong_about_technology/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~201126 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*: **human**^#1 **paper**^#2 **technology**^#3 **invention**^#4 **more**^#5\"", "\"So a guy that went to a shitty college moved to an $800 plus per month apartment in Manhattan to be an actor and applied for low skill jobs near minimum wage. That's the shittiest plan I've ever heard.  “When I first walked into Express, I said, ‘Oh my God, this place is awesome and there’s music and it looks like a happening place\"\".  Anyone want to claim that he's not an idiot?\"", "Stocks in the Weimar hyperinflation are discussed in When Money Dies. I don't own a copy of the book but here is a link to a blog post about it. Speculation on the stock exchange has spread to all ranks of the   population and shares rise like air balloons to limitless heights Basically, the stock market did very well (i.e. the US dollar value of stocks increased quite a lot. Of course, the price of everything increased if measured in marks.) Quote from the article: Bottom line: In marks, stocks had an amazing run. Even in USD they had   a nice runup. It makes sense that the stock market would skyrocket because (a) if  money has no value, then people will want to replace money with tangible things like goods, and since a stock represents a share in the factories and things which a company owns, it makes sense that you would want them and (b) if money has no value anyway, why not gamble with it? I would be interested to hear what happened in other hyperinflations."]}
+{"query": "I'm getting gouged on prices for medical services when using my HSA plan. How to be billed fairly?", "corpus": ["The big difference for me under the High deductible plan has been that instead of paying the co-pay, now I am now responsible for the negotiated rate until I reach the deductible limit. The HSA is only a way to funnel medical payments through a tax free account the insurance company and the doctor don't care about the HSA. If we go out-of-network, then I am responsible for the full rate, but they only count the negotiated rate as a credit against the out of pocket/deductible. This big difference makes it very important to pick a doctor in-network. For your example: I would have paid $50 under the PPO, but $200 under the high deducible plan. If I go out-of-network I would have to pay whatever the doctor want me to pay, but the insurance company would only credit me $200 against my deductible. I can pull the extra $350 from the HSA. It is hard to get good pricing information from some doctors, but the price difference for me has been so large that in-network is the only way to go. For prescriptions the high deductible plan has been worse, because we pay the full price with no discounts for the medicine, until we reach the plan deductible. That makes the cost of the prescriptions as much as 10x's more expensive. In fact the annual cost of our prescriptions all but guarantees that we hit the deductible each year."], "neg": ["\"First add the inflation, then minus your expenses for the year. If you are better than that, you have done \"\"good\"\".  For example: -  1.)You have $10,000 in 2014. 2.) You need $1,000 for your expenses in 2014, so you are left with $9000. 3.) Assuming the inflation rate is at 3 percent, the $10,000 that you initially had is worth $10,300 in 2015. 4.) Now, if you can get anything over 10,300 with the $9,000 that you have you are in a better position than you were last year i.e(10300-9000)/9000 - i.e 14.44%. So anything over 14.44 percent is good. Depending on where you live, living costs and inflation may vary, so please do the calculation accordingly since this is just an example. Cheers\"", "Just an observation analysis of what has been going on and what the media buzzwords are. Also all of the people who I know that are doing well or are not complaining take care of there health/body, didn't divorce, work hard, educated and are not stressed because they live within there means. Plus I truly believe that our capitalistic society is designed to keep you in debt or keep you needing government/charity help if your poor/uneducated.", "Most of the people I know who started doing that shit did it because they knew they were just cheap labor and didn't need their wits about them. It comes from a lack of respect of the job and the fact that they don't want to be there. Habits like that happen because they get started and change jobs and keep bad habits, which means that on some level you can assume someone coming from a long time of blue collar work may have habits that affect their productivity in a white collar job, which is opposite from the point you're trying to make.", "I disagree, a national ID card would provide more security than a social security number. SS cards are easy to guess; if you change a few numbers on your own SSN, you probably have a number of someone who was born in the same hospital as you. That's a tad scarier than a national ID.", "&gt; Turns out inside updates via the SIP are received faster than the prop market data feed, and faster than updates received over an order entry connection. Under these circumstances the street knows a trade occurred before the participants in the trade.  You're saying if IEX is the inside quote you see it disappear on a sip feed before you see it disappear from iex's MD feed? AND if it's your quote, even before you receive the trade report?", "\"Source?? Let me see all your evidence. What apps are you downloading and giving info too without permission? They have to request data and you have to click on \"\"allow\"\"-- its baked into the API. Please show me your sources that show Apple knowingly allows apps to have and distribute my personal information without asking for permission.   These apps have access to all the encrypted data on my phone without my knowledge?? Please show me sources.\"", "This is mostly an addendum to @fredsbend answer, which appears to list reasonable causes, but ignores the technical cost aspect. The other answer lists the technical cause, but doesn't explain it in detail. Look at the two graphs (from Wikipedia). This is how difficult -- in terms of computing power, meaning hardware costs and electricity costs -- it has been to mine bitcoins over years:  This is how many total bitcoins have been made since the start of btc era:  As you can see, despite rising difficulty and costs, the bitcoin mining is slowing down. It should be noted that this is by design. If you could use a home computer at start of bitcoin and mine 1 bitcoin a day on it, nowadays, you need to use specialized hardware costing thousands of dollars and pay huge sums in electricity costs in order to mine the same 1 bitcoin in a day. And this happened on the large scale quite recently.  Add the fact that there is no visible way to significantly increase bitcoin mining speed regardless of hardware used -- the network self-adapts.  The more hardware anyone throws at it, the harder it becomes for him and everyone else -- so extra hardware is used in order to drive out smaller players and keep the general ability to mine, rather than to increase the mining speed. Last year a friend and I were considering buying a couple specialized rigs, running on off-the-shelf powerful computers and using extra (gaming) graphics cards for number crunching. As we didn't get on the train fast enough, the graphic cards were bought up by bitcoin mining organizations en masse."]}
+{"query": "How to get into real estate with a limited budget", "corpus": ["You are neglecting a few very important things around real estate transactions in Belgium So in the end a 300K building may cost you more than 340K, let's take some unexpected costs into account and use 350K for remainder of calculation. Even worse if it's newly built (which I doubt) the first percentage is 21% (VAT) instead of 10%. All these costs can be checked on the useful site www.hoeveelkostmijnhuis.be Now, aside from that most banks will and actually have to demand you pay part of all this yourself. So you can't do 5*60K (or 5*70K now). Mostly banks will only finance up to about 90% of the value of the building, so 90% of 300K, which is 270K (5*54K), the other 80K (5*16K) you have to pay yourselves. But it could be the bank goes as low as 80%. Another part to complicate the loan is how much you can pay a month. Since the mortgage crisis they're very strict on this. There are lots of banks that will not allow you to make monthly payments of more than 33% of your monthly income when you are going to live there. This is a nuisance even when buying one house, you want to buy 2. Odds seem low they'll accept high monthly payments because you either need an additional loan or need to pay rent, so don't count on a 5y deal. Now this is all based on a single loan, it will probably be a bit different with multiple loans. However, it is unlikely any bank will accept this, even if all loans are with the same bank. You need to consider the basics of a real-estate loan: A bank trusts you can pay it off and if not they can seize the real-estate hoping to regain their initial investment. It's very hard to seize a complete asset if only one out of 5 loan-takers defected. You could  maybe do this with another less restrictive/higher risk type of loan but rates will be a lot higher (think 5-6% instead of 1.5%). And don't underestimate the running costs: for that price and 5 rooms in that city you're likely looking at an older building. Expect lots of cost for maintenance and keeping the building according to code. Also expect costs for repairs (you rent to students...). You'll also have to pay quite a bit of money on insurances and of course on real estate taxes (which are average in Ghent). Also factor in that currently there is not a housing shortage for Ghent students so you might not always have a guaranteed occupation. Also take into account responsibility: if a fire breaks out or the house collapses or a gas leak occurs, you might be sued. It doesn't matter if you're at fault, it's costly and a big nuisance. Simply because you didn't think of any of this: don't do this. It's better to invest in real estate funds. But if you still think you can do better then all the landlords Ghent is riddled with, don't do it as a personal investment. Create a BVBA, put some investment in here (like 10-20K each), approach a bank with a serious business plan to get the rest of the money as a loan (towards a single entity - your BVBA) and get things going. When the money comes in you can either give yourselves a salary or pay out profits on the shares. You may be confused about how rich you can become because we as a nation tend to overestimate the profitability of real estate. It's really not that much better than other investments (otherwise everybody would only invest in real estate funds). There are a few things that skew our vision however:"], "neg": ["\"I'm another programmer, I guess we all just like complicated things, or got here via stackoverflow. Obligatory tedious but accurate point: Investing is not personal finance, in fact it's maybe one of the less important parts of it. See this answer: Where to start with personal finance?  Obligatory warning for software developer type minds: getting into investing because it's complicated and therefore fun is a really awful idea from a financial perspective.  Or see behavioral finance research on how analytical/professional/creative type people are often terrible at investing, while even-tempered practical people are better. The thing with investing is that inaction is better than action, tried and true is better than creative, and simple is better than complicated. So if you're like me and many programmers and like creative, complicated action - not good for the wallet. You've been warned. That said. :-) Stuff I read In general I hate reading too much financial information because I think it makes me take ill-advised actions. The actions I most need to take have to do with my career and my spending patterns. So I try to focus on reading about software development, for example. Or I answer questions on this site, which at least might help someone out, and I enjoy writing. For basic financial news and research, I prefer Morningstar.com, especially if you get the premium version. The writing has more depth, it's often from qualified financial analysts, and with the paid version you get data and analysis on thousands of funds and stocks, instead of a small number as with Motley Fool newsletters. I don't follow Morningstar regularly anymore, instead I use it for research when I need to pick funds in a 401k or whatever. Another caveat on Morningstar is that the \"\"star ratings\"\" on funds are dumb. Look at the Analyst Picks and the analyst writeups instead. I just flipped through my RSS reader and I have 20-30 finance-related blogs in there collecting unread posts. It looks like the only one I regularly read is http://alephblog.com/ which is sort of random. But I find David Merkel very thoughtful and interesting. He's also a conservative without being a partisan hack, and posts frequently. I read the weekly market comment at http://hussmanfunds.com/ as well. Most weeks it says the market is overvalued, so that's predictable, but the interesting part is the rationale and the other ideas he talks about. I read a lot of software-related blogs and there's some bleed into finance, especially from the VC world; blogs like http://www.avc.com/ or http://bhorowitz.com/ or whatever. Anyway I spend most of my reading time on career-related stuff and I think this is also the correct decision from a financial perspective. If you were a doctor, you'd be better off reading about doctoring, too. I read finance-related books fairly often, I guess there are other threads listing ideas on that front. I prefer books about principles rather than a barrage of daily financial news and questionable ideas. Other than that, I keep up with headlines, just reading the paper every day including business-related topics is good enough. If there's some big event in the financial markets, it'll show up in the regular paper. Take a class I initially learned about finance by reading a pile of books and alongside that taking the CFP course and the first CFA course. Both are probably equivalent to about a college semester worth of work, but you can plow through them in a couple months each if you focus. You can just do the class (and take the exam if you like), without having to go on and actually get the work experience and the certifications. I didn't go on to do that. This sounds like a crazy thing to do, and it kind of is, but I think it's also sort of crazy to expect to be competent on a topic without taking some courses or otherwise getting pretty deep into the material. If you're a normal person and don't have time to take finance courses, you're likely better off either keeping it super-simple, or else outsourcing if you can find the right advisor: What exactly can a financial advisor do for me, and is it worth the money?  When it's inevitably complex (e.g. as you approach retirement) then an advisor is best. My mom is retiring soon and I found her a professional, for example. I like having a lot of knowledge myself, because it's just the only way I could feel comfortable. So for sure I understand other people wanting to have it too. But what I'd share from the other side is that once you have it, the conclusion is that you don't have enough knowledge (or time) to do anything fancy anyway, and that the simple answers are fine. Check out http://www.amazon.com/Smart-Simple-Financial-Strategies-People/dp/0743269942 Investing for fun isn't investing for profit Many people recommend Motley Fool (I see two on this question already!). The site isn't evil, but the problem (in my opinion) is that it promotes an attitude toward and a style of investing that isn't objectively justifiable for practical reasons. Essentially I don't think optimizing for making money and optimizing for having fun coexist very well. If investing is your chosen hobby rather than fishing or knitting, then Motley Fool can be fun with their tone and discussion forums, but other people in forums are just going to make you go wrong money-wise; see behavioral finance research again. Talking to others isn't compatible with ice in your decision-making veins. Also, Motley Fool tends to pervasively make it sound like active investing is easier than it is. There's a reason the Chartered Financial Analyst curriculum is a few reams of paper plus 4 years of work experience, rather than reading blogs. Practical investing (\"\"just buy the target date fund\"\") can be super easy, but once you go beyond that, it's not. I don't really agree with the \"\"anyone can do it and it's not work!\"\" premise, any more than I think that about lawyering or doctoring or computer programming. After 15 years I'm a programming expert; after some courses and a lot of reading, I'm not someone who could professionally run an actively-managed portfolio. I think most of us need to have the fun part separate from the serious cash part. Maybe literally distinct accounts that you keep at separate brokerages. Or just do something else for fun, besides investing. Morningstar has this problem too, and finance.yahoo.com, and Bloomberg, I mean, they are all interested in making you think about investing a lot more than you ought to. They all have an incentive to convince you that the latest headlines make a difference, when they don't. Bottom line, I don't think personal finance changes very quickly; the details of specific mutual funds change, and there's always some new twist in the tax code, but the big picture is pretty stable. I think going in-depth (say, read the Chartered Financial Analyst curriculum materials) would teach you a lot more than reading blogs frequently. The most important things to work on are income (career) and spending (to maximize income minus spending). That's where time investment will pay off. I know it's annoying to argue the premise of the question rather than answering, but I did try to mention a couple things to read somewhere in there ;-)\"", "I'm going to echo Phil and say that you should add more information. That being said, I think it is possible for you to owe the government that much. If you received a federal health insurance subsidy and live in a state that didn't expand medicaid, you could have received a subsidy through out the year that you did not end up qualifying for. It appears you are outside the medicaid limit of 133% of the poverty level($11,670) or $15,521. If you received a subsidy of $275 a month from the marketplace, you would have received $3300 worth of aid from the government that you don't qualify for. Now they are expecting you to pay it back.", "The typical scam is that they overpay you - 'accidentially', or for some obscure reason they claim, and they ask you to wire the extra money either back or to someone else. Because you wire it, that money is gone for sure. Then they undo the original transaction (or it turns out it was fake anyway), and you end up with a loss. Maybe he claims that he wants to buy some more stuff, and the fees are high, so he sends you all the payments in one amount, and you pay the other sellers from it, something like that. There are honest nigerians though, actually most of them. Either way, the real problem is that the original payment is fake. Whichever way it comes to you, you need to make sure that it cannot be reversed or declared invalid after you think you have it. Wire transfer is the only way I know that is not reversible. Bank transfers are reversible; don't think you have it just because it arrives in your bank account. Talk to your bank about what all can happen. If you make the deal, when you send the bike, think about insuring it (and make him pay for that too). That way, you are out of any loss risk.", "You can buy DIY will kits from office supply shopes like Staples or specialized publishers like Nolo or Quicken. The most important factor for you to consider will be the witness rules in your state to ensure the validity of your will later. Nolo has a lot of good information in this regard. Hopefully this is helpful :)", "\"Yes, there are a lot of places you can research stocks online, Google Finance, Yahoo Finance, Reuters etc. It's important to understand that the price of the stock doesn't actually mean anything.  Share price is just a function of the market capitalization divided by the number of shares outstanding.  As an example take two companies that are both worth $1 million, but Company A has issued 10,000 shares and Company B has issued 100,000 shares.  Company A has a share price of $100 while Company B has a share price of just $10.  Comparing share price does nothing to indicate the relative value or health of Company A versus Company B.   I know there are supposed to be no product recommendations but the dictionary area of investopedia.com is a good source of beginner investing information.  And as Joe points out below the questions here with the \"\"stock\"\" tag would also be a good place to start.  And while I'm on a roll, the book \"\"A Random Walk Down Wall Street\"\" is a good starting point in investing in the stock market.\"", "Quite a lot of reasons but mostly supply and demand.   Some areas of Africa are extremely remote and just don't have things there that some of the population now want.   I would guess it won't be like this for much longer but right now it is and i have met plenty of people taking advantage of that fact.", "every list I see is jam packed with women as candidates.  it's hard to believe that of all the potential proven (know how to make money) executives in America (or maybe worldwide) that 2 out of 3 BEST picks are women"]}
+{"query": "Analyze stock value", "corpus": ["\"A Bloomberg terminal connected to Excel provides the value correcting splits, dividends, etc. Problem is it cost around $25,000. Another one which is free and I think that takes care of corporate action is \"\"quandl.com\"\". See an example here.\""], "neg": ["\"Just to argue the other side, 1.49% is pretty low for a loan. Let's say you have the $15k cash but decide to get the car loan at 1.49%. Then you take the rest of the money and invest it in something that pays a ~4% dividend (a utility stock, etc.). You're making money on the difference. Of course, there's no guarantee that the underlying stock won't drop in value, but it might go up, too. And you'll likely pay income tax on the dividends. Still, you have a good chance of making money by taking the loan. So I will argue that there are scenarios where taking advantage of a low interest rate loan can be \"\"good\"\" as an investment opportunity when the risk/reward is acceptable. Be careful, though. There's nothing wrong with paying cash for a car!\"", "&gt;Most people spend their 20s figuring out their lives and their 30s and 40s building their family and retirement. The Millenials simply have less to lose and have suffered far less of an impact.  Totally disagree with the assumption you are making here, that millenials will all of a sudden start making a shitload of money in 10-20 years.  When a lot of them can't get jobs after graduation, it prevents them from ever climbing the ladder at all.  They can't get a professional job, so they take a menial job, and the longer they aren't in a professional job, the harder it becomes to GET a professional job.  Many will be stuck in menial jobs their entire lives, simply because noone would ever give them the experience needed.", "\"**Poverty in the United States**  Poverty is a state of deprivation, lacking the usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. The most common measure of poverty in the U.S. is the \"\"poverty threshold\"\" set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society. The official threshold is adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&amp;message=Excludeme&amp;subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.24\"", "Vietnam International Retail &amp; Franchise Show 2017 occurred last week in SECC, Ho Chi Minh City in Vietnam.  There were more than 200 exhibitors and almost 5000 visitors at the Expo. Vietnam Business Trip Service has played a part in supporting the companies at the Expo and here's what happened.  Vietnam Business Trip Service also attended and supported our customers there and we are so proud that we played a part in our customers' successes. Thank you and welcome back next time! ________________________________________________________ TRADE FAIR &amp; EXPO is a service package designed for companies who come to Vietnam to attend Fair and Expo to promote their products as well as look for customers. These are the services we offer our customers. 1. Event Registration and Booth Setup  2. Sales Supporters and Interpreters 3. Detailed Report and Contact List. All of our packages have included Entry Visa, Hotel Booking, and Car Rental. __________________________________________________________________ For more information and assistance, please contact us at: 📱  +84 933 66 5346 📧  harvey@kego.com.vn 🖥  www.vietnambusinesstrip.com", "The answers provided so far as good and informative, but I just thought I'd add one small point... There are super-national organisations that commonly lend to governments, in particular those in the developing the world. The World Bank and IMF (International Monetary Fund) are the two primary ones. Also quite notably, the Greek economy was bailed out only this year by the EMF (European Monetary Fund) spearheaded by Germany - this is a rare occurrence however and was done mainly because Greece was a relatively developed country and others had an obligation to assist it as an EU member state.", "But then why wouldn't that be their primary mode to control their currency now/are they starting/hinting at doing so to move away from US treasuries? There must be benefits to Treasury purchasing that seems better to them, maybe that QE can't do alone?  And I have to imagine with the tenuous nature of their financial system, the shock alone from losing access to the Dollar (and before they could use QE to devalue the currency back down) would be a major issue.", "It's not the words on the can that are wrong. It's the colors. They're practically undermining the marketing trademark they've had forever on the signature red cans. I would have assumed they re-designed the diet cans before I'd think to consider them as regular Coke ones."]}
+{"query": "Buying a small amount (e.g. $50) of stock via eToro “Social Trading Network” using a “CFD”?", "corpus": ["Concerning the Broker: eToro is authorized and registered in Cyprus by the Cyprus Securities Exchange Commission (CySEC). Although they are regulated by Cyprus law, many malicious online brokers have opened shop there because they seem to get along with the law while they rip off customers. Maybe this has changed in the last two years, personally i did not follow the developments. eToro USA is regulated by the Commodity Futures Trading Commission (CFTC) and thus doing business in a good regulated environment. Of course the CFTC cannot see into the future, so some black sheep are getting fined and even their license revoked every now and then. It has no NFA Actions: http://www.nfa.futures.org/basicnet/Details.aspx?entityid=45NH%2b2Upfr0%3d Concerning the trade instrument: Please read the article that DumbCoder posted carefully and in full because it contains information you absolutely have to have if you are to do anything with Contract for difference (CFD). Basically, a CFD is an over the counter product (OTC) which means it is traded between two parties directly and not going through an exchange. Yes, there is additional risk compared to the stock itself, mainly: To trade a CFD, you sign a contract with your broker, which in almost all cases allows the broker A CFD is just a derivative financial instrument which allows speculating / investing in an asset without trading the actual asset itself. CFDs do not have to mirror the underlying asset's price and price movement and can basically have any price because the broker quotes you independently of the underlying. If you do not know how all this works and what the instrument / vehicle actually is and how it works; and do not know what to look for in a broker, please do not trade it. Do yourself a favor and get educated, inform yourself, because otherwise your money will be gone fast. Marketing campaigns such as this are targeted at people who do not have the knowledge required and thus lose a significant portion (most of the time all) of their deposits. Answer to the actual question: No, there is no better way. You can by the stock itself, or a derivative based on it. This means CFDs, options or futures. All of them require additional knowledge because they work differently than the stock. TL;DR: DumbCoder is absolutely right, do not do it if you do not know what it is about. EDIT: Revisiting this answer and reading the other answers, i realize this sounds like derivatives are bad in general. This is absolutely not the case, and i did not intend it to sound this way. I merely wanted to emphasize the point that without sufficient knowledge, trading such products is a great risk and in most cases, should be avoided."], "neg": ["If you haven't already, check out his earlier articles when he was at DealBreaker.com - GREAT stuff, my [favourite one](http://dealbreaker.com/2011/09/lets-just-go-ahead-and-assume-that-greek-letters-evil/) is when UBS had a delta one trader Kweku losing $2.1b from unauthorized/unreported trades in the midst of Dodd Frank/Volcker Rule was being discussed.   &gt; A thing that you probably do is go borrow one million shares of UBS and sell them short. This is a sensible thing to do. Why is it sensible? Well, for one thing, your desk is called “delta one,” and you’ve written a derivative, and you want to delta hedge that derivative, and so you pull out a Black-Scholes calculator and plug in a lot of variables and get stuck but then you look at your business card and you’re like, oh, shit, the answer is “one,”", "Hahahaha its not only the poor, the lower and lower-middle class represent millions of americans with an active role in the economy. Are you seriously gonna defend 50 Billonaires who have never struggled in life vs 50 million americans who struggle everyday? This kind of thinking is un-american no wonder you Trump supporters dont mind about Russia colluding with the current administration", "For tax purposes, what matters is your province of residence at December 31st. Quebec Tax abatement therefore applies if you were living in Quebec, regardless of your employer, assuming you are an employee. As for effective tax, your question misses some data and does not quite make sense as effective tax is the result of dividing your total taxes paid after deductions and tax credits by your total income. As such, one cannot tell you your effective tax rate without knowing taxes paid after deductions and tax credits and total income.", "The middle class attack continues...    Nevermind that all that tax money goes to salaries, then returns in taxes, and eventually trickles back up to the wealthy in product purchasing, interest, etc, etc.  That is too long term thinking for short term America. We have forgotten that people need to have money to spend it.  This just sucks more money out of the economy and [again slows the velocity of money](https://fred.stlouisfed.org/series/M2V) which is at some of the lowest levels since it was tracked. Money is being hoarded and that helps noone in a consumer economy, not even the wealthy.  The check engine light is on in the American consumer economy and noone cares about fixing it or taking it in for repairs.", "Free Market as in Laissez-faire? Because that is economic anarchism and leads to either monopolies or market shutdown.   I believe in heavy restrictions myself, force companies to play ball, follow the rules, allow small businesses a chance to grow unopposed by big businesses, a few social programs here and there to incentivize employment and working - not giving out free money - except in the case of disability - which just ends up trapping people, myself included - and of course a reasonable minimum wage, so one person doesn't require more than one job, opening up those positions for other people.   This system makes it harder to get rich, sure, but it allows those at the bottom, especially hard-workers, to be able to survive, if not thrive. They pay more Sales Tax because they spend more, and they pay more Income Tax because they earn more, the currency strengthens as a result.", "There are still ways that the default values on the W4 can lead you to get a refund or owe the IRS. If there was a big delta in your paychecks, it can lead to problems. If you make 260,000 and get 26 paychecks that means each check had a gross of 10,000. Your company will withhold the same amount from each check. But If you earned a big bonus then the smaller regular paychecks may not have been withholding enough.  When bonus checks are involved the payroll office has to treat them as irregular pay to be able to make it work out. Some companies don't do this, so you may under or over pay during the year. If you changed companies during the year, this can lead to under or over payment. The lower paying company would not know about the higher rate of pay at the other company. so at one you would under pay, and the other you would over pay. There are also social security issues with more than one employer.", "No. A company cannot bill you for services you did not request nor receive. If they could, imagine how many people would just randomly get bills in their mail. Ignore them. They don't have a contract or agreement with you and can't do anything other than make noise. If they get aggressive or don't stop requesting money, hire an attorney and it will be taken care of."]}
+{"query": "Strategies to guarantee arrival time for transfers between banks", "corpus": ["Transfers are defined to arrive on a specific number of business days, nearly always one business day (if you submit it before the cutoff time). The exact number of days depends on the receiver bank, but when you try to create a transfer, it will tell you when it will arrive, before you send it out."], "neg": ["If a real estate property catches your eye, please don’t hesitate to request more information as these days, properties are snatched up quickly.  Just have questions? Give us a call or email us. We’re always happy to answer any questions you may have.  We look forward to the opportunity of helping you buy or sell your next Cabo home.", "&gt;A 2012 study by the Federal Trade Commission found that about 20 percent of consumers who were asked to review their reports discovered an error that was fixed after they disputed it, and more than 10 percent found an error significant enough to affect their credit score. Monitoring also alerts you if an application has been placed for a new account in your name.  &gt;Equifax, Experian, and TransUnion have turned monitoring into a business, charging as much as $25 a month for “premium” services that include reports from all three companies.  In other words, pay us protection money because we're bad at our jobs and your reputation is suffering as a result of our sloppy work.", "\"&gt;It can be argued that retarding the economy was a major goal of the Fed in the first place. To prevent the unrestrained runs that 1913-1929 saw which resulted in thousands of investors losing everything.   The Fed was the underlying *cause* of the 1913-29 era.   The \"\"Panic of 1907\"\" was really just a \"\"rich man's panic\"\" -- few people in the general population were invested in the stock market at that time -- and few businesses were listed either (the vast majority were privately owned, operated on a cash {i.e. not \"\"leveraged debt\"\"} basis, and were substantially unaffected).  The whole point of the Fed was to save the \"\"rich men's arses\"\" from their own screwups -- to \"\"socialize\"\" their losses.  Which is exactly (and only) what it is doing.  About the general welfare of the overall population... they couldn't give a rat's tail (other than some minimal concern over whether and how they will be able to milk &amp; bilk the population again).\"", "As far as the spam mail goes, I own a rental (in Connecticut) and live in Massachusetts, I get very little mail related to this property. I view this as a non-compelling reason.  Your other reasons pick up quick in value. The protection from the rest of your assets is helpful, and the one con for most is the inability to get a loan with such a structure, but in your case, a cash purchase is mentioned.  I don't know what the fees are to start an LLC, but overall, I believe the pros outweigh the cons. Yes, your Pro 4 looks good, an ongoing business with a track record will help the next purchase.", "Thanks for posting this.  Funny, but I find myself watching RT far more than CNN these days.  I am not a finance expert but as an econ major I can at least follow the argument.  Seems credible to me.  They are just saying that the resulting downgrade of bank bonds will affect them less than their competition. The second argument is that new (2008) accounting rules allow them to show a net gain on paper when their bonds get downgraded as a result of this loss.  It's a complicated argument but I can see how it make perfect sense.  I like how Bob English points out the fishy and probably strategic nature of the Thursday announcement.  Obviously there is a lot more to this story: http://www.zerohedge.com/contributed/2012-20-15/truth-about-jp-morgan%E2%80%99s-2-billion-loss", "it is pretty much the same as a normal margin loan but cheaper because you don't own the underlying share.the if the margin is $1000 at 5% you could borrow $20000 in total so the actual amount would be $19000 in total that you would have to pay interest on so at the moment it is 5.1% which is $19000x5.1% /365 days =$2.66 a day and if the share price rises you don't pay extra in interest costs unless you have borrowed more.it still stays at 2.66 a day until you have sold the shares", "They also have greatly reduced access to reproductive care and traditional health care at all. I'm for free condoms in every public school and college campus. But no the religious right won't stand for it. The real reason is the right loves poverty because it's profitable and keeps wages low and unemployment high."]}
+{"query": "How do I apply for a mortgage after a cash closing on a property?", "corpus": ["Is she correct in that you generally can't even apply until the cash   transaction is complete? Probably. How can you commit to mortgage something you do not own? Makes sense for them to wait not even until the transaction is complete - but until the transaction is recorded. Is 45 days reasonable to complete the financing? Yes."], "neg": ["The US will be a third world country, full of uneducated, climate change denying, racist, debtors; who still think coal is a viable resource. Just watch as China slowly shifts its trade from heading over the pacific, to heading west towards places like India and Russia. As the US under the Trump administration is refusing to move forward in transitioning into clean and renewable energy sources, we are leaving the window open for china to become the dominant world power.", "&gt;One effect of this system is job lock. People become dependent on their employment for their health insurance, and they are loath to leave their jobs, even when doing so might make their lives better.  Try telling any of this to progressives and they'll be ready to Tar and feather you... This is one of the reasons that I am hesitant to support unions...", "\"&gt;I am not forgetting anything. You don't seem to get a broadcasting is media and part of media. Like I said they are a media company. No different from saying Time Warner is a media company or Disney.   It's dishonest to equate a purely digital media entity to a broadcaster. Completely different tier—just not favorable to your argument.  &gt;Have you actually visited their website? It has such stories such as \"\"Turns Out It's Totally Cool to Have a 20-Pound Lobster in Your Suitcase\"\" and \"\"The Mothers Haunted by Their Sons' Unsolved Murders\"\" as well as \"\"D.R.A.M. Opens Up About Being a 'Big Baby' on 'THE THERAPIST'\"\" and \"\"New Yorkers Love Pride, Hate Trump\"\". Really no different from Buzzfeed except Vice doesn't do the whole list thing.   So, history time: Vice Magazine established a channel called Viceland.com, and later it established other channels on VBS.tv. Eventually, they combined into a combined channel called vice.com, including the following sub-channels:  * Vice  * Broadly.  * Creators  * i-D  * Amuse  * Motherboard  * Munchies  * Noisey  * Tonic  * Thump  * Vice Impact  * Vice Sports  * Waypoint  * Viceland  * Vice News  So, you are viewing content from all those channels combined together, mistaking it for all Vice News content. BTW, the best Vice News content gets put into their HBO programs. Vice the series is phenomenal!   &gt;Nope, as it is not faulty. You can claim it is all you want, but until you prove its faulty its not. And you yet to prove its actually faulty.   It's a sweeping generalization. The argument does not stand up to scrutiny, and that is proof it is faulty. Look up what a sweeping generalization is.  &gt;One I told you I read the article and it was crap, you even agreed with me it was crap. Two media companies do screen what content is on their platform. Meaning if they are smart they check for the quality of content as well. Thirdly didn't I tell you like 3 times now to stop making leaping assumptions and bullshit claims? Yet you continue to do so. And for someone claiming to have good analytic skills you certainly fall short in them.  Yeah, okay, I think this is the point that I refrain from rubbing your nose in not just your logical mistake, again, but also your mistake about the type of stories on Vice News. Also, for tech news, I will give Motherboard a nod as well. There's also some pretty good content from Viceland (Specifically, I enjoy Hamilton's Pharmacopeia).\"", "\"diamonds are intrinsically worthless this is simply wrong. (1) Diamonds that are sold for anything less than, oh, let's say $5000 at original retail - are indeed utterly, totally, completely worthless. It is simply \"\"one of the great scams\"\". Their real \"\"price\"\" is maybe \"\"five bucks\"\". End of story. There is no secondary market.  Literally - \"\"end of story\"\". If you buy a \"\"diamond\"\" lol for \"\"$2000\"\" to impress your loved one, you can not then \"\"sell it\"\" for any amount of money.  It is: worthless. Once again: simple, undeniable fact. the diamond you bought for 2 grand cannot be resold. Ir's worthless. (OK, maybe you can get 100 bucks for it, something like that. Or, you can scam someone clueless, and get 200 bucks.) (2) However actual \"\"investment\"\" stones do in fact have a value - if somewhat fragile. Example, a few years ago I sold a stone for 30 thousand. That was a \"\"real\"\" price and it was quite liquid - I was within days able to find a buyer. (A dealer - he would have then sold it on for 35 or whatever.) I have never dealt in stones over six figures, but I'm fairly certain those are \"\"real\"\" valuable objects: just like paintings by name artists. (However: yes, the line between \"\"laughable diamonds\"\" and actual investment stones, is indeed moving ever upwards.) (Note - the \"\"elephant in the room\"\" with diamonds is that GE's industrial process for simply making utterly flawless diamonds, starting with carbon, is getting better every decade.) (A second overwheleming point that nobody has mentioned: diamonds get beat-up.  Regarding \"\"engagement ring diamonds\"\", a used one is exactly as useless as a used car.  It's crap.  Just as with $200,000 picassos, this concept does not apply to \"\"actual investment stones\"\".) Note that many of the comments/arguments on this page are very confused because: people are not distinguishing between the (ROFL) \"\"engagement ring scam market\"\" and the rarefied \"\"investment gem market\"\". The two things are utterly different. Yes, \"\"engagement ring diamonds\"\" are an utter scam, and are simply: \"\"worthless\"\".  The fundamental, basic, overwhelming scam in today's business/social universe is: \"\"engagement diamonds\"\". Yes, the price is only due to marketing/monopolies etc. Elephant in the room A: GE's technology can - end of story - manufacture diamonds.  (Starting with \"\"pencil leads\"\".)  End of story.  It's all over. Elephant in the room B: folks forget that diamonds get beat-up, they are just like used cars. Regarding \"\"engagement-ring diamonds\"\", nobody has ever, or will ever, bought a used one. Simple, utterly undeniable fact: regarding \"\"engagement ring diamonds\"\". they have: zero value.  You cannot resell them. End of story. If you buy a house, you can resell it. If you buy a car, you can resell it (at a spectacular loss). If you buy a picasso, you can resell it (almost always making a huge profit). If you buy an \"\"engagement ring diamond\"\", it is worth: nothing. Zero. Nada. strictly regarding investment stones, which is a distinctly utterly different market.  This market has no connection, in any way, at all, even vaguely, it is utterly unrelated, to \"\"engagement ring diamonds\"\".  You can in fact buy and sell these items - very much like say \"\"art\"\" or \"\"mid century antiques\"\", and make money. This market just has utterly no connection to the whole \"\"engagement ring diamonds\"\" scam system. Say you buy wine at the supermarket, for 5 to 100 bucks a bottle. If you think that the \"\"wine\"\" thus bought, has a secondary market, or you can invest in it or something: you have lost your mind. In total contrast: Yes, although totally flakey, there is indeed an \"\"investment wine market\"\" which is real and reasonable. I for example have made some money in that. (I have a great anecdote even - I had one cellar of wine in burgundy, which could have been sold for, say, 30 grand - but we drank it  :)  ) Again, the (somewhat bizarre) actual market in investment wine, just has to \"\"buying wine in the supermarket\"\".  To further the analogy: wine prices in the supermarket / your (ROFL) wine dealer, from 5 to 100 bucks, are just: utterly laughable. Utterly. Laughable. Much as folks sit around, and decide on \"\"label designs\"\", they sit around, and decide on \"\"price points\"\". There is, utterly, no difference between $5 and $100 grape juice rofl \"\"wine\"\". The price difference is simply a marketing decision: at best, you can think of it as a Velbin good. ... exactly the same applies to \"\"engagement ring diamonds\"\".\"", "Welcome to the Rustic Posy, we are an online flower store which has greatest florist and influence the extraordinary day with our crisp bloom for the blessing that is accessible online administration in Australia. We have the most recent style in each bloom bunches for every single extraordinary event. You can purchase ordinary roses flowers in large quantity new blossoms for any occasion. Each dazzling blossom, that has checked to convey grins on numerous occasions. You can choose the most bloom blessing at the Rustic Posy. There are such huge numbers of reason to purchase the bloom present, for example, a wedding commemoration, Birthday. We have a decent expert flower vendor group that dependably outline the novel and appealing blossom endowments.", "They still got away with pocketing the cash and I got uhh DSL (shitty limited range technology) and other crummy something or other long distance options!  Fuck MA BELL. Name any phone company, it's still MA BELL. Smaller competitive with someone else company my ass. They're letting it merge back together too.  I still love the day our towns Main Street was being torn up to be repaved. During this little adventure they severed some fiber optic cables. It took out the cell phone network (and ONLY that network). I'll leave that there for someone to attempt to figure out.", "One of the biggest laws in economics is that if an opportunity is very profitable and is very easily exploitable even by complete beginners, then it will very soon stop being profitable. That's how the market works. If you buy stock when it is at the lowest, then you are making money, but most of the time someone else is losing money. And if there was a magic hour of the day when buying would be the most profitable, then soon everybody would want to buy at that time and no one would want to sell anything, so the scheme would collapse."]}
+{"query": "How to manage 20 residential apartments", "corpus": ["If he can't manage, best is he sells it off. Its easier to manage cash. Not sure what tax you are talking about. He should have already paid tax on fair market value of the 20 flats. If the intention of Mr X is to gift to son by way of death, then yes the tax will be less. Else whenever Mr X sells there will be tax.  how to manage these 20 apartments? Hire a broker. He may front run quite a few things like showing the place etc. There is a risk if he is given a free hand, he may not get good quality tenant. There are quite a few shark brokers [its unregulated] who may arm twist seeing the opportunity of an old man with 20 flats. See if you can do long term lease with companies looking for guest house etc, or certain companies who run guest house. They would like the scale, generally 3-5 years contracts are done. The rent is good and overall less hassle. The risk is most would ask to invest more in furnishing and contracts can be terminated in months notice. If the property is in large metro [Delhi/Bangalore/Chennai/etc] These places have good property management companies. Ensure that you have independent lawyer; there are certain aspects of law that may need to be studied."], "neg": ["What can you give them as security?  1. A fixed/floating charge over assets 2. Negative covenants/Non-subordination agreements 3. Real Mortgage 4. Chattel Mortgage 5. Personal or inter-business Guarantees  Essentially a bond is just a debt agreement, it is when you sell standardised bonds over a market that regulation comes into it.  Now I am from Australia, so I can't comment on US policies etc...", "He would spend it into the economy that is accepting his dollars. As an example, the apple maker might borrow $100 with $10 interest for the deer shank, then later on get the $100 back from the deer hunter in trade for 150 apples, and then pay this $100 to the banker. Now the apple maker still needs $10 to pay off his loan. The banker says he'll trade his $10 in interest profit for 15 apples, now the apple maker can resolve his debt without further borrowing.  The difference between spending interest earnings and issuing a loan is that when the banker is spending, they are getting something for their own use, when they are issuing the loan, they aren't getting anything but the promise to repay that loan.", "This is how all corporations shift taxes to low income tax . Most large companies are actually hundreds of companies, with individual companies in each country they do business in. They use this type of transfer payment so most of the profits end up in countries with low income taxes. That is why you might as well lower the corporate rate.  It will help employment, and end this kind of useless profit shifting. It's a world wide economy, and companies do what they need to do to keep taxes low no matter what.", "I suggest opening a Credit Card that doesn't charge Foreign currency conversion fees. Here is the list of cards without such a fee, Bankrate's Foreign transaction fee credit card chart", "1.) The majority of credit and loans do not go to publicly traded companies.   2.) Companies can and do trade commodities with paper.   3.) Can't keep up with all the crazy you are spouting.   Smart people lose their shirt in commodities all the time, it's not a fun place to play. If you really believe the majority of publicly traded companies are going to lose their value, then invest in them when they do. Money always has to go somewhere. Insurance, pensions, governments, businesses, don't like to just have cash sit there because nothing happens (you can point to Apple, etc but they're making acquisitions) anyways, they need to buy and sell and will always have to do it.   My last piece of advice, look up the Hunt brothers.", "CS grad here currently getting my MBA. seriously don't do CS unless you love, and I mean LOVE programming. I did it and realized junior year that I hated it and was miserable. I stayed another year and got a minor in business which landed me a job in consulting. CS is hard man. Really, really hard and you get total shit interaction with people. If you have other questions I'd love to answer. On mobile now so I can't go into super detail.", "\"Okay, I'm going to give you my opinion based on experience; not any technical understanding. The options - by themselves - are pretty meaningless in terms of determining their value. The business plan going forward, their growth expectations, the additional options to be authorized, the additional preferred stock offers they anticipate, even current estimated value of the company are some of the pieces of data you will be needing. I also want to say something cynical, like \"\"to hell with the stock options give me cold hard\"\" but that's just me. (My experience two-times so far has shown stock options to be worth very very little.)\""]}
+{"query": "Strategy to minimize taxes due to unpaid wages?", "corpus": ["\"Can I write off the $56,000 based on demand letters? Or do I need to   finish suing him to write-off the loss? No and no. You didn't pay taxes on the money (since you didn't file tax returns...), so what are you writing off? If you didn't get the income - you didn't get the income. Nothing to write off. Individuals in the US are usually cash-based, so you don't write off income \"\"accrued but never received\"\" since you don't pay taxes on accrued income, only income you've actually received. Should I file the 2012 taxes now? Or wait until the lawsuit finishes? You should have filed by April 2013, more than a year ago. You might have asked for an extension till October 2013, more than half a year ago. Now - you're very very late, and should file your tax return ASAP. If you have some tax due - you're going to get hit with high penalties for underpaying and late filing. If the lawsuit finishes in 2014, does it apply to the 2012 taxes? Probably not, but talk to your lawyer. In any case - it is irrelevant to the question whether to file the tax return or not. If because of the lawsuit results something changes - you file an amended return.\""], "neg": ["Are you sure you're not just looking at prices that are adjusted for the split, e.g. Yahoo? For example, Gilead Sciences (GILD) split a few months ago, but if you look at a price chart, there isn't an interruption even though the split is clearly marked. (Look in the past six months; it split in January). However, you could also simply be watching companies that happen to not split, for a variety of reasons. This isn't a criticism, but rather just a consequence of whatever stocks you happen to be watching.  However, a quick search for information on stock splits yields a few articles (mainly from the Motley Fool) that argue that fewer companies are performing stock splits in recent years; the articles mainly talk about tech companies, and they make the argument that even though the shares in Google and Apple have a high stock price: Google and Apple aren't all that expensive by traditional valuation   metrics. Google trades at just 15 times next year's projected   profitability. Apple fetches a mere 13 times fiscal 2012's bottom-line estimates. These articles are a bit dated in terms of the stock prices, but the rationale is probably still good. Similar logic could apply for other companies; for example, since May 2009, Panera's stock price has climbed by almost a factor of 4 without splitting. The articles also make the point that stock splits were traditionally seen as bullish signs because: Companies splitting to bring their share prices back down to more   accessible levels were optimistic in building those sand castles back   up. One could make a fair argument that the overall economic climate isn't as bullish as it used to be, although I would only be convinced that this was affecting stock splits if data could be gathered and tested. A stock split can also raise the price of a stock because if small investors feel the stock is suddenly more accessible to them, they purchase more of it and might therefore drive up the price. (See the Investopedia article on stock splits for more information). Companies might not see the necessity in doing this because their stock price isn't high enough to warrant a split or because the price isn't high enough to outprice smaller investors.  One interesting point to make, however, is that even though stock splits can drive small investors to buy more of the stock, this isn't always a gain for the company because professional investors (firms, institutions, etc.) have a tendency to sell after a split. The paper is a bit old, but it's still a very neat read. It's possible that more and more companies no longer see any advantage to splitting because it might not affect their stock price in the long run, and arguably could even hurt it. Considering that large/professional investors likely hold a higher percentage of a company's shares than smaller investors, if a stock split triggers a wave of selling by the former, the increasing propensity to buy of the latter may not be enough to offset the decline in price.  Note: My answer only refers to standard stock splits; the reasons above may not apply to a decrease in the number of reverse stock splits (which may not be a phenomenon; I don't know).", "I don't see a way that this would make matters worse than just giving them the credit card info... Except that it would make abusing the card easier at some other site (or the bank) if they have a similar (unreasonably weak) security-by-photo test. Still, I'd strongly recommend you use a separate card for this so you can cancel it without disrupting your other credit card uses.  (Actually I'd strongly recommend not doing business with folks who have already demonstrated questionable ethics, but you seem to have made that decision.)", "I'm going to guess that now you're going to explain how you shouldn't add up these percentages. That is most certainly wrong. The reason is that countries aren't going to agree on an order in which to tax a company. It wouldn't go like: well UK taxes first then Germany will tax whatever is left in net profits. Why the hell would Germany agree to that? They would each want their percentage of the *untaxed* pie.", "\"You're just outright wrong.    I'm sure if you post an ask reddit asking about people who smoke and what they do for a living you will be outright amazed at the cross section you find.  I make 6 figures, work my but off, and run a consulting business on the side and I'm a regular smoker.    I have co-workers who are regular smokers who also make 6 figures, in fact of the people I work with that smoke, the lowest paid makes somewhere in the 70k range.    Now, that anecdotal evidence is not super compelling as there are confounding factors.  But it's far more compelling than \"\"This is how it is because this is how I feel it is\"\", which seems to be the gist of your responses.\"", "\"This is not a mistake. This is done for \"\"Out of Network\"\" providers, and mainly when the patient is an Anthem member, be it Blue Shield or Blue Cross. Even though an \"\"Assignment of Benefits\"\" is completed by the patient, and all fields on the claim from (CMS1500 or UB04) are completed assigning the benefits to the provider, Anthem has placed in their policy that the Assignment of Benefits the patient signs is null and void.  No other carrier that I have come across conducts business in this manner. Is it smart? Absolutely not! They have now consumed their member's time in trying to figure out which provider the check is actually for, the member now is responsible for forwarding the payment, or the patient spends the check thinking Anthem made a mistake on their monthly premium at some point (odds are slim) and is now in debt thousands of dollars because they don't check with Anthem.  It creates a huge mess for providers, not only have we chased Anthem for payment, but now we have to chase the patient and 50% of the time, never see the payment in our office. It creates more phone calls to Anthem, but what do they care, they are paying pennies on the dollar for their representatives in the Philippines to read from a script.  Anthem is the second largest insurance carrier in the US. Their profit was over 800 million dollars within 3 months. The way they see it, we issued payment, so stop calling us. It's amazing how they can accept a CMS1500, but not follow the guidelines associated with it.  Your best bet, and what we suggest to patients, either deposit the check and write your a personal check or endorse and forward. I personally would deposit the check and write a personal check for tracking purposes; however, keep in mind that in the future, you may depend on your bank statements for proof of income (e.g. Social Security) and imagine the work having to explain, and prove, a $20,000 deposit and withdraw within the same month.\"", "Do we have a list of all of their predictions? Because 1. I predicted the last crash, whoop di doo 2. By default, on a planet of 7.3 billion, there will always be SOMEONE who predicts something right.  I've been reading about 'the person that nailed the last one predicting collapse tomorrow' since sometime in 2011...all those fuckers were wrong.", "I have one additional recommendation: if the dealer continues to press the issue, tell them that they need to drop it, or you will write a Yelp review in excruciating detail about the entire experience. Used car dealers are very aware of their Yelp presence and don't like to see recent, negative reviews because it can cost them a lot of new business. (I'm assuming this is a used car. If it's a new car, you could go over their heads and bring up the problem with the manufacturer. Dealers hate it when you go directly to the manufacturer with a dealer complaint.)"]}
+{"query": "What are online payment options with no chargeback protection?", "corpus": ["Generally there's no ultimate protection against charge backs. Some methods are easier to charge back and some harder, and there's always the resort of going to courts. The hardest to contest is, of course, a cash payment or wire transfer. You need to remember that imposing unnecessary/unreasonable difficulties on your customers will drive business away. I can buy diamonds in the nearest mall with my credit card - why would I buy from you if you want cash, BTC, or any other shady way to pay? I'm pretty sure that whatever that is you're selling, anyone can buy elsewhere as well."], "neg": ["\"The other answer has mentioned \"\"factual resident\"\", and you have raised the existence of a U.S./Canada tax treaty in your comment, and provided a link to a page about determining residency. I'd like to highlight part of the first link: You are a factual resident of Canada for tax purposes if you keep   significant residential ties in Canada while living or travelling   outside the country. The term factual resident means that, although you left Canada, you   are still considered to be a resident of Canada for income tax   purposes. Notes If you have established ties in a country that Canada has a tax treaty   with and you are considered to be a resident of that country, but you   are otherwise a factual resident of Canada, meaning you maintain   significant residential ties with Canada, you may be considered a   deemed non-resident of Canada for tax purposes. [...] I'll emphasize that \"\"considered to be a resident of Canada for income tax purposes\"\" means you do need to file Canadian income tax returns. The Notes section does indicate the potential treaty exemption that you mentioned, but it is only a potential exemption. Note the emphasis (theirs, not mine) on the word \"\"may\"\" in the last paragraph above. Please don't assume \"\"may\"\" is necessarily favorable with respect to your situation. The other side of the \"\"may\"\" coin is \"\"may not\"\". The Determining your residency status page you mentioned in your comment says this: If you want the Canada Revenue Agency's opinion on your residency   status, complete either Form NR74, Determination of Residency Status   (Entering Canada) or Form NR73, Determination of Residency Status   (Leaving Canada), whichever applies, and send it to the International   and Ottawa Tax Services Office. To get the most accurate opinion,   provide as many details as possible on your form. So, given your ties to Canada, I would suggest that until and unless you have obtained an opinion from the Canada Revenue Agency on your tax status, you would be making a potentially unsafe assumption if you yourself elect not to file your Canadian income tax returns based on your own determination. You could end up liable for penalties and interest if you don't file while you are outside of Canada. Tax residency in Canada is not a simple topic. For instances, let's have a look at S5-F1-C1, Determining an Individual’s Residence Status. It's a long page, but here's one interesting piece:  1.44 The Courts have stated that holders of a United States Permanent Residence Card (otherwise referred to as a Green Card) are   considered to be resident in the United States for purposes of   paragraph 1 of the Residence article of the Canada-U.S. Tax   Convention. For further information, see the Federal Court of Appeal's   comments in Allchin v R, 2004 FCA 206, 2004 DTC 6468.   [...] ... whereas you are in the U.S. on a TN visa, intended to be temporary. So you wouldn't be exempt just on the basis of your visa and the existence of the treaty. The CRA would look at other circumstances. Consider the \"\"Centre of vital interests test\"\": Centre of vital interests test [...] “If the individual has a permanent home in both Contracting States, it   is necessary to look at the facts in order to ascertain with which of   the two States his personal and economic relations are closer. Thus,   regard will be had to his family and social relations, his   occupations, his political, cultural or other activities, his place of   business, the place from which he administers his property, etc. The   circumstances must be examined as a whole, but it is nevertheless   obvious that considerations based on the personal acts of the   individual must receive special attention. If a person who has a home   in one State sets up a second in the other State while retaining the   first, the fact that he retains the first in the environment where he   has always lived, where he has worked, and where he has his family and   possessions, can, together with other elements, go to demonstrate that   he has retained his centre of vital interests in the first State.” [emphasis on last sentence is mine] Anyway, I'm acquainted with somebody who left Canada for a few years to work abroad. They assumed that living in the other country for that length of time (>2 years) meant they were non-resident here and so did not have to file. Unfortunately, upon returning to Canada, the CRA deemed them to have been resident all that time based on significant ties maintained, and they subsequently owed many thousands of dollars in back taxes, penalties, and interest. If it were me in a similar situation, I would err on the side of caution and continue to file Canadian income taxes until I got a determination I could count on from the people that make the rules.\"", "\"Gifts given and received between business partners or employers/employees are treated as income, if they are beyond minimal value. If your boss gives you a gift, s/he should include it as part of your taxable wages for payroll purposes - which means that some of your wages should be withheld to cover income, social security, and Medicare taxes on it. At the end of the year, the value of the gift should be included in Box 1 (wages) of your form W-2. Assuming that's the case, you don't need to do anything special. A 1099-MISC would not be appropriate because you are an employee of your boss - so the two of you need to address the full panoply of employment taxes, not just income tax, which would be the result if the payment were reported on 1099-MISC. If the employer wants to cover the cost to you of the taxes on the gift, they'll need to \"\"gross up\"\" your pay to cover it. Let's say your employer gives you a gift worth $100, and you're in a 25% tax bracket. Your employer has to give you $125 so that you end up with a gain of $100. But the extra $25 is taxable, too, so your employer will need to add on an extra $6.25 to cover the 25% tax on the $25. But, wait, now we've gotta pay 25% tax on the $6.25, so they add an extra $1.56 to cover that tax. And now they've gotta pay an extra $.39 . . .  The formula to calculate the gross-up amount is: where [TAX RATE] is the tax rate expressed as a percentage. So, to get the grossed-up amount for a $100 gift in a 25% bracket, we'd calculate 1/(1-.25), or 1/.75, or 1.333, multiply that by the target gift amount of $100, and end up with $133.33.  The equation is a little uglier if you have to pay state income taxes that are deductible on the federal return but it's a similar principle.  The entire $133.33 would then be reported as income, but the net effect on the employee is that they're $100 richer after taxes. The \"\"gross-up\"\" idea can be quite complicated if you dig into the details - there are some circumstances where an additional few dollars of income can have an unexpected impact on a tax return, in a fashion not obvious from looking at the tax table.  If the employer doesn't include the gift in Box 1 on the W-2 but you want to pay taxes on it anyway, include the amount in Line 7 on the 1040 as if it had been on a W-2, and fill out form 8919 to calculate the FICA taxes that should have been withheld.\"", "\"(Since you used the dollar sign without any qualification, I assume you're in the United States and talking about US dollars.) You have a few options here. I won't make a specific recommendation, but will present some options and hopefully useful information. Here's the short story: To buy individual stocks, you need to go through a broker. These brokers charge a fee for every transaction, usually in the neighborhood of $7. Since you probably won't want to just buy and hold a single stock for 15 years, the fees are probably unreasonable for you. If you want the educational experience of picking stocks and managing a portfolio, I suggest not using real money. Most mutual funds have minimum investments on the order of a few thousand dollars. If you shop around, there are mutual funds that may work for you. In general, look for a fund that: An example of a fund that meets these requirements is SWPPX from Charles Schwabb, which tracks the S&P 500. Buy the product directly from the mutual fund company: if you go through a broker or financial manager they'll try to rip you off. The main advantage of such a mutual fund is that it will probably make your daughter significantly more money over the next 15 years than the safer options. The tradeoff is that you have to be prepared to accept the volatility of the stock market and the possibility that your daughter might lose money. Your daughter can buy savings bonds through the US Treasury's TreasuryDirect website. There are two relevant varieties: You and your daughter seem to be the intended customers of these products: they are available in low denominations and they guarantee a rate for up to 30 years. The Series I bonds are the only product I know of that's guaranteed to keep pace with inflation until redeemed at an unknown time many years in the future. It is probably not a big concern for your daughter in these amounts, but the interest on these bonds is exempt from state taxes in all cases, and is exempt from Federal taxes if you use them for education expenses. The main weakness of these bonds is probably that they're too safe. You can get better returns by taking some risk, and some risk is probably acceptable in your situation. Savings accounts, including so-called \"\"money market accounts\"\" from banks are a possibility. They are very convenient, but you might have to shop around for one that: I don't have any particular insight into whether these are likely to outperform or be outperformed by treasury bonds. Remember, however, that the interest rates are not guaranteed over the long run, and that money lost to inflation is significant over 15 years. Certificates of deposit are what a bank wants you to do in your situation: you hand your money to the bank, and they guarantee a rate for some number of months or years. You pay a penalty if you want the money sooner. The longest terms I've typically seen are 5 years, but there may be longer terms available if you shop around. You can probably get better rates on CDs than you can through a savings account. The rates are not guaranteed in the long run, since the terms won't last 15 years and you'll have to get new CDs as your old ones mature. Again, I don't have any particular insight on whether these are likely to keep up with inflation or how performance will compare to treasury bonds. Watch out for the same things that affect savings accounts, in particular fees and reduced rates for balances of your size.\"", "\"&gt; but the buying power of that money can be significantly reduced to the point where it's fundamentally useless, i.e. inter-war Germany and many countries in South and Central America.  That's true, but *how* does that come about? The effect on buying power stems from the level of spending in the present period. Too little leaves you anywhere from outright deflation and contraction to weaker growth falling short of capacity. Too much reaches capacity and keeps spending, bidding up prices and driving down purchasing power.  It has nothing to do with debt:GDP or interest payments.  &gt; Germany managed to skate by by creating a new Deutschmark in a confidence trick, and it worked because Germany is a solid, iron clad manufacturing powerhouse of a lot of stuff.   There are two important differences between inter-war Germany and the US. First is that inter-war Germany *lost a war*. This real shock is kind of important. When you're talking about buying power of money, one side of it is the amount of money in circulation but the other side of it is how much real output there is to buy and German real output capacity collapsed after the war. Their most productive regions were occupied territory and they were no longer a powerhouse manufacturing a lot of stuff, driving down the value of their currency.  So lesson number one from Germany: real output collapse harms your currency.  The second problem is that losing a war left Germany saddled with war reparations denominated in foreign currency. When you're on the hook for something you don't print you're in a situation where you can run out of money and that's exactly what happened to them. They tried printing more of their own currency to buy the foreign stuff with but that quickly drove down the value of German currency.  So lesson number two from Germany is you don't want to be on the hook for a currency you don't issue.  Put the two together and you have a real supply shock + foreign-denominated debt eviscerating the buying power of German currency. It wasn't debt:GDP but the real basis for their economy collapsing out from under them pushed along by a need for foreign currency.  &gt;My question is, at what point do we engage Washington's unlimited money printing presses until we reach that point?  In answer to your question, the printing presses are what funds the real economy. The worry in terms of avoiding \"\"that point\"\" is in making sure we keep that real economy productive and fully funded. Ironically, taking our eye off the ball to focus on budget balance at the expense of real output pushes the economy in the direction you're afraid of going. See also: the euro zone today.\"", "Check out the property websites to get an idea of how much, the property in question, could yield as rent. Most give a range and you can get a good idea of it. Just one example from zoopla. Likewise you can refer mouseprice or rightmove and get yourself an idea. Property websites do a lot of data crunching to do an update, but their figure is only a guide.", "&gt;Sounds like bullshit. Silicon Valley is largely research and development, not manufacturing. Saying that you'll replicate the success of software engineers earning $120k a year by bringing in more $50k a year manufacturing jobs is misleading at best.   Today it is largely research and development but a few decades ago there was a production manufacturing capacity to it that was by in large far greater then what remains today.", "\"I agree: he evidently has critical thinking skills, but his on-screen persona takes over everything he does. With DJT in the White House, though, the whole \"\"bully-alpha-dude\"\" disguise has lost a TON of credibility as a sign of business acumen for the masses, so if I was him I'd try to be less of a c**t when the cameras are rolling, frankly.\""]}
+{"query": "What is a reasonable rate of return and fee structure for a Roth IRA?", "corpus": ["A Roth IRA is just an account wrapper.  Inside a Roth IRA you can have a plain 0.1% savings account, or a brokerage account, or an annuity or whatever.  There's no rate of return for a Roth IRA. That particular calculator seems to assume you'll be wrapping a brokerage account in a Roth IRA and investing in the stock market.  Over a long period 6% is probably a reasonable rate of return considering the S&P 500 has returned about 7% over the last decade."], "neg": ["I assume that when this actually matters for calculations with money on the line (if there is a need to calculate the probability of hitting a knockout, getting called out of a position, stop loss, etc.) many of these people will use the actual formulas that will give them the correct answers.", "At what point does it stop being about money, and start being about not killing our planet.  Plus, whatever profit Tesla is or is not making, Tesla, SpaceX, SolarCity all seem to be making industry changing splashes in their respective markets.", "\"Couple things, I will admit I was wrong about the total graduates at each of those programs; however, numbers taper out the lower the program is down to about 250-300 a class. Also, cut each of those numbers down to about 1/2 - 1/3 and you get the group that's actually focused on finance. Many MBAs do consulting, marketing, product development, etc nowadays.  Also I'm a bit offended by you saying I don't understand the CFA. Couldn't be more mistaken boss, I'm siting for L3 in June like you. The requirement is only 2 years in an \"\"investment decision\"\" role, this also means A LOT of back office risk guys qualify. That's a pretty fungible qualification, you don't have to be a PM to qualify. I have a buddy who qualified having done 2 years in fund accounting, not exactly sell-side ER.  I'm also going to guess you're a trader/brokerage/Cap Markets guy? If you wanna throw titles around I'm in a front office role at a BB, too, and worked at worked on buy-side research at a &gt;$150bn value shop. CFA is definitely more desired in sell-side markets focused as opposed to IBD where an MBA is more useful (more strategy focused).   The CFA is vital for boning up on quantitative skills an MBA won't cover, I'll absolutely give you that. But a lot of people fall into the trap of assuming a CFA is their ticket to bigger and better things. If you're working in back office risk management, getting a CFA doesn't immediately qualify you to do ER (which is a VERY common pitfall I see). Like an MBA it teaches everyone how to do the same type of analysis, too (another reason  the title means less and less).   Last weekend I had a conversation with a friend of a friend about this very thing! He's sitting for L3 CFA, works back office at a very notable HF, and expects to be moved up (without any indication that he will) to research when he's done. I asked his opinions about things like the European situation, fiscal cliff, and a hard landing in china. Not only was he not familiar these concepts he didn't even know what HFT was. The CFA gives you the tools to analyze the impacts of pension liabilities on EPS, but it still takes a passion about the markets, as well as creative/analytical judgement, to make it to ER.   My only point is an MBA and CFA are very similar in many ways. Both tend to hold their noses way to high, too. It's about what you chose to get out of it and too often people care more about the title than the process, which is why they are still stuck in mediocrity after completing the designations.   Go through a list of the biggest PMs in the business, most don't have either MBAs or CFAs! They achieved alpha by not following standard quantitative models but exploring creative and strategic avenues others undervalue while maintaining strict discipline. A model is a tool to better describe behavior and understanding of markets, it's not a solution.\"", "Hah! I used to work at Ratzie's Pizza off of Route 1 and Knox. Is it still there do you know? I was only at U of M for 3 semesters. I lived in Easton Hall. I spent too much time going to raves in DC...hence, only staying at U of M for 3 semesters.", "Three ideas: PayPal is probably the best/cheapest way to transfer small/medium amounts of money overseas.", "Can you elaborate on how corporate tax cuts exactly drain the economy and destroy jobs?    I feel like, going straight off text-book, his tax-plans make sense. It's very possible that I am a really confused student. (Currently second year student)  -edit  This is my interpretation of the capital-tax-gain-cut proposed by the Trump administration based on what I have learned in Micro/Macro-Econ thus far in college:   Less capital tax = less pressure on the wealthy/entrepreneurs (since you keep bigger portion of your net income, the interest to bring back business should increase) = capital inflow back to the US.    I feel like I'm missing something big here since a lot of folks seem to be against this, and I want to understand why something is the way it is. Thank you in advance.", "Let's be honest though; you would to if accepting reality meant that your way of life, your job, your grossly inflated salary, etc. just dried up over night. They're doing everything they can, hemorrhaging money buying law makers, paying lawyers, fighting tooth and nail to keep the dam from bursting. I can see why they'd do that, it makes sense. And the people who aren't at the top making millions a year in those respective area should also be terrified. The fallout from the newspapers was bad enough, swaths of people were laid off, wages were cut all around. It will not be a pretty sight to see when this happens to TV and Music. I imagine the Music industry will collapse first, mostly because they've been in the fight a lot longer than TV has, and so much new talent is actively avoiding them."]}
+{"query": "What are the easier to qualify home loans in Canada?", "corpus": ["Your credit score is really bad, and it's highly unlikely anyone will be willing to give you a mortgage, especially if you still have bad debt showing up on your credit report. What would help? Well, clearing off any bad debt would be a good place to start. Ideally, you want to get your credit rating up above 680, though that may be optimistic here. Note, though, that bad debt falls off your credit report after a while. Exactly how long depends on your province. Note that making partial payment, or even just acknowledging the debt, will reset the 'timer', however. I mention this, though, because you mention some of your debt is from 5 or 6 years ago. It may be just about to fall off. It would also help if you can show that your credit is so bad because of mistakes from a number of years ago, but you've been making payments and staying on top of all debts for the past few years, if that's the case. Also, it would help if you had a reasonable downpayment. 20% minimum, but you'll be a lower credit risk if you are able to put down 50 - 75%. You could also consider having someone with good credit co-sign the mortgage. Note that most people will not be willing to do this, as they take on substantial financial risk. All that said, there are some institutions which specialise in dealing with no credit or bad credit customers. You pay more fees and will pay a vastly higher interest rate, but this may be a good option for you. Check out mortgage brokers specialising in high-risk clients. You can also consider a rent-to-own, but almost all the advice I've ever seen say to avoid these if you can. One late payment and you may lose all the equity you think you've been building up. Note that things may be different if you are moving from the U.S. to Canada, and have no credit history in Canada. In that case, you may have no credit rather than bad credit. Most banks still won't offer you a mortgage in this case, but some lenders do target recent immigrants. Don't rule out renting. For many people, regardless of their credit rating, renting is a better option. The monthly payments may be lower, you don't need a downpayment, you don't have to pay realtor and legal fees (and pay again if you need to move). A couple of sites provide more information on how your credit rating affects your possibility of getting a mortgage, and how to get mortgages with bad credit: http://mortgages.ca/credit-score-needed-mortgage-canada/ and http://mortgages.ca/mortgage-solutions/new-to-canada-financing/, along with  http://www.ratehub.ca/mortgage-blog/2013/11/how-to-get-a-mortgage-with-bad-credit/"], "neg": ["&gt; He added that the company will be providing ... outplacement services, including a job fair with local IT employers.  Why even bother with the charade: If Lowes doesn't see the need the need to hire in this country, why should anybody else?  It is a [good idea](http://www.theonion.com/article/report-98-percent-of-us-commuters-favor-public-tra-1434) for *everybody else* to carpool or use mass transit.", "Only for farmers markets and only 3 bucks at a time. Kind of like a stupid screw up typical of government. This won't devastate folks and if the markets are solely dependent on these subsidies they will need to close. Maybe the meals on wheels should buy more local produce instead.", "FTA  &gt; In late July, the San Francisco-based bank lowered the minimum credit score on these fixed-rate jumbo mortgages to 700 from 720,  For comparison with the bubble years, mortgages were being issued to those with FICO scores under 620.", "So you'd prefer someone else to do your work for you? Someone figure out who's the bad guy, and figure out how to punish them? You are too busy filling your Jeep and drinking your latte to actually be a responsible member of society? It is attitudes like that which lead to tyranny. How can you trust those in power, if you have no idea whats right or wrong?", "Thats a LOT of assertions without data to back it up. How would you know that the jobs they get pay less? How would you know  that this happens with enough prevalence to pull the average down?  You're just backing your arguments up with thin air.   At least the author is using some data to back up his conclusions. It may have some other nuances, but I doubt he is outright wrong, unlike you.", "You mean the study which concluded the $15 minimum wage resulted in fewer hours / less employment and Seattle decided to no longer fund the study (presumably) because it didn't find what they wanted to find and blamed the methodology even though it was actually quite credible?   http://www.nationalreview.com/article/449603/seattle-minimum-wage-study-city-cut-funding-when-it-didnt-results  [Link to actual study]( http://evans.uw.edu/sites/default/files/NBER%20Working%20Paper.pdf)  [Link to debate with Seattle's Kshama Sawant](https://www.google.com/url?q=https://m.youtube.com/watch%3Fv%3DxfLx6XMdCiY&amp;sa=U&amp;ved=0ahUKEwjWpriJiqXVAhUG2IMKHfQLDYYQtwIIETAC&amp;usg=AFQjCNFVlJn3c9XWhfONhJRtJizknHr_FA)", "NASDAQ provides a very good IPO calendar as well for US listings."]}
+{"query": "Should I be worried that I won't be given a receipt if I pay with cash?", "corpus": ["If this is because he wants to avoid paying taxes, will I get in trouble if I agree to have him work on my vehicle? You should check your state and local sales tax laws to be certain, but in my state you have no liability if he does not pay his taxes.  That's his problem, not yours.  The biggest risk for you is if something goes wrong, you have no proof that the work was ever done, so it's possible he could deny that any transaction ever took place and refuse to correct it or refund your money.  So at worst you're out what you paid for the service, plus what it would cost you to fix it if you needed to and chose to do so.  If you don't want to take that risk, then insist on a receipt or take you  business elsewhere, but there's no criminal liability for you if he chooses not to report the income. EDIT Be aware, though that state tax is levied at the state and local level, so the laws of your individual state or city may be different."], "neg": ["Adriana Fine Jewelry conveys the most recent neckband styles in gold, with the goal that you have the alternative to pick which sort of material you might want to wear. Adriana Fine Jewelry has been endeavoring to pick up the reliability and personalized gold necklace for their clients. Adriana Fine Jewelry has dependably pledged to remain fully informed regarding just the most sweltering adornments patterns and keeps on doing as such right up 'till today. Our client benefit group is prepared and willing to enable clients to pick a style that suits them and help all through the requesting procedure and with existing requests. Purchasing adornments online ought to be a fun and positive experience. Adriana Fine Jewelry needs their clients to feel sure and finish when they slip on their new adornments.", "\"I do know people who follow the islam terrorist manifesto. One is a great guy, and one is a fucking closet jihadist nutbag who I am 100% certain will go jihadi on someone one day.   But that's besides the point. If bugs are infesting your house, you lob the bug bomb in there. You're going to kill some \"\"good\"\" bugs, but if you don't, the bugs are going to take the whole house.   It's ignorance like yours that is getting people killed left and right in Europe.\"", "You should be.  Plastics are harming our oceans and the entire environment.  No need to keep disposable water bottles at home.  Sure, there are cases where you don't have your water canteen(bottle) with you; and in those instances disposable water bottles make sense.   However, when you buy 48 pack disposable water bottles every two weeks for your house consumption.  There is some serious logic flaw there.", "&gt;What may have been a clever idea in its infancy has grown into a blob which is destructive to the growth-creating and consensus-building prospects of free market capitalism  I wonder how many IPOs this guy has underwritten. I wonder how often he shorts right before earnings to try to make a quick buck.  Hedge funds are all speculation. This guy is completely full of shit. He acts like he is doing some holy duty of balancing the market but all he fucking does is move money around when it's convenient in hopes for rapid returns.", "\"To answer #3 specifically, there are a number of exemptions from The Individual Shared Responsibility Payment (the \"\"fine\"\" or \"\"penalty\"\" for being uninsured). One of those is: You lived in a state that didn’t expand its Medicaid program but you   would have qualified if it had. That exemption (others may well apply based on income to many people in this category) applies for the entire year if: You live in a state that hasn’t expanded its Medicaid program under the Affordable Care Act [and] Your income and household size would have qualified you or your family for Medicaid if the state had expanded coverage As such, people who are stuck in the Medicaid gap in those states will not be fined. People in this category also have a special option to enroll in a non-Medicaid plan if their estimated annual income increases later in the year, even outside the normal enrollment period.\"", "This article may be a good place to start [Introduction to Smart Pricing: How Google, Priceline, and Leading Businesses Use Pricing Innovation for Profitability](http://www.ftpress.com/articles/article.aspx?p=1569334)   It gives a brief overview of three pricing strategies, cost plus, competition based pricing and consumer based pricing.  **Edit** -This may also be helpful [Social Science Research Network](http://www.ssrn.com/en/)", "Let's take your argument to its logical conclusion. Let's say there is a company that uses infrastructure of UK, Germany, France, US, Japan, Italy and Spain (because it's a global multinational). Corporate taxes in these countries are 19%, 29.65%, 33% (for large companies), 35%, 32.1%, 27.9% and 25%. Now according to your logic, each of these countries should tax the company's profits. Such a company in your world would pay more in taxes than it makes in profits (tax rate &gt; 100%)."]}
+{"query": "How to deal with activist targeting of individual stocks?", "corpus": ["The easiest way to deal with risks for individual stocks is to diversify. I do most of my investing in broad market index funds, particularly the S&P 500.  I don't generally hold individual stocks long, but I do buy options when I think there are price moves that aren't supported by the fundamentals of a stock. All of this riskier short-term investing is done in my Roth IRA, because I want to maximize the profits in the account that won't ever be taxed. I wouldn't want a particularly fruitful investing year to bite me with short term capital gains on my income tax. I usually beat the market in that account, but not by much. It would be pretty easy to wipe out those gains on a particularly bad year if I was investing in the actual stocks and not just using options. Many people who deal in individual stocks hedge with put options, but this is only cost effective at strike prices that represent losses of 20% or more and it eats away the gains. Other people or try to add to their gains by selling covered call options figuring that they're happy to sell with a large upward move, but if that upward move doesn't happen you still get the gains from the options you've sold."], "neg": ["Typically your paychecks are direct deposited into your bank account and you receive a paycheck stub telling you how much of your money went where (taxes, insurance, 401k, etc.). Most people use debit or credit cards for purchases.  I personally only use checks to transfer money to another person (family, friend, etc.) than a business.  And even then, there's PayPal.", "Aims Golf Avenue 2 Noida apartments are ready to move in option. These apartments are planned over 5.5 acres of greenery land to develop 2BHK &amp; 3BHK flats. The project having 6 towers to develop residences from 930 to 1765 Sqft. It is developing at Sector 75 Noida to build unique residences so that homebuyers will have great opportunity to invest in. http://www.smcrealty.com/golf-avenue2-noida/", "Here's some ideas: Hope that helps.", "That's not at all what I said.   I said regulation is inevitable. The question is, in whose favour we regulate? Employers, owners of capital, or workers.   Deregulation usually favours owners of capital and employers, and ends up concentrating wealth in the hands of the few. Because surprise surprise people would rather invest their money in something that just goes up in value rather than put all the effort into creating jobs or paying workers more. Since there are no laws to encourage them to do so.", "Unless your brokerage will sell you fractional shares, the most obvious difference (without us knowing the actual identify of the companies) is that with the $260 one, you will have 3 shares plus you will have $220 minus commission left over that you wanted to invest but weren't able to simply because of the mechanics of long division. You could put that $220 into one of the cheaper stocks, but now the multiple commissions will start to eat your returns. My personal opinion is you should go for a low cost index mutual fund or ETF, and wait to pick individual stocks until you have more than $1000 to work with (and even then, probably still go with the low cost index fund)", "Can't beat his [advice for anyone planning on taking the CFA exam for no real reason](http://dealbreaker.com/2011/12/advice-for-anyone-else-planning-to-take-the-cfa-exam-for-no-real-reason/), which has such gems as:   &gt; The thought process that leads you to wear your oversize CORNELL BIG RED sweatshirt to the exam is probably the wrong thought process. *Your Tiger Inn sweatshirt is worse.* If your goal is to intimidate the people around you, just do what I did: leave the morning session an hour early and come back visibly drunk for the afternoon.  I mean the fact that he passed after only studying for a week shows he probably knows what he's talking about.", "Cap gains and qualified dividend taxes are the same (see link below)  First let's assume were talking about a taxable account (in a tax-deferred/exempt account taxes don't really matter) capital gains taxes are only realized at the end sale, so share buybacks will not have any adverse until the gains are realized, which in theory should be as far out as possible, whereas dividends are taxed in the year they are received. because of the compounding the buybacks are better than the dividends (which pay tax up-front versus on the back end with buybacks). Yes investors are irrational, but I'm trying to take the long-term rational approach. Additionally, dividends are taxed at cap gains rates if the position is held 60+ days, so all else held equal, share buybacks are more tax-efficient in the long-run.   https://turbotax.intuit.com/tax-tools/tax-tips/Investments-and-Taxes/Guide-to-Taxes-on-Dividends/INF19201.html"]}
+{"query": "Are there any banks in Europe that I can have an account without being in that country?", "corpus": ["Opening account in foreign bank is possible, but you must have strong proofs you use it for legitimate purposes. More chances to get an account if you visit Europe and able to stay, for example, for a week, to visit bank in person and wait for all the checks and approvals. Also keep in mind that there will be deposit/withdraw limits and fees applicable, that are significantly stricter and larger for non-EU citizen. In my opinion, if your amounts are not large, it might not worth it. If amounts are large, you might consider business account rather than personal, as is the example of strong proof I meant."], "neg": ["Aside from the fact that probably nobody is ever going to come and ask for that proof unless your amounts get five digits (or you're unlucky), if you never before reimbursed yourself, your old tax declarations would clearly show that. You can't prove a negative, so the only potential is that you had reimbursements before, and an audit might ask you to prove that the new ones are not duplicates of those. In this case, if you have other receipts / proof for all those other reimbursements, they are obviously not duplicates.", "It makes no difference for tax purposes. If you are 1099, you will pay the same amount of taxes as if you formed a corporation and then paid yourself (essentially you are doing this as a 1099 contractor, just not formally). Legally, I don't know the answer.  I would assume you have some legal protections by forming an LLC but practically I think this won't make any difference if you get sued.", "I agree but...  ( i didn't read the article in its entirety!)  but if her business was grossing $300k per year...  and for her to fall so hard in such a short time, tells me that even with such a large income, she was still living beyond her means.", "&gt; In Economics, people are no longer included in the unemployment rate after 1 year of unemployment  ~~Bullshit.~~  [As long as they have actively looked for work in the past four weeks  (which can include asking friends or family about work), they are part of the labor force.](http://www.bls.gov/cps/cps_htgm.htm#unemployed)  Edit: The post is now correct.  I replied hastily and threw in an editorial comment that was unnecessary.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.bloomberg.com/news/articles/2017-07-24/at-t-said-to-be-in-early-u-s-talks-for-time-warner-approval) reduced by 89%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; U.S. antitrust officials have started talking to representatives from AT&amp;T Inc. and Time Warner Inc. about possible conditions that could secure approval of their $85.4 billion tie-up, according to people familiar with the matter.  &gt; One challenge: Justice Department lawyers are starting talks without their new boss being able to weigh in on a deal that would make AT&amp;T a media and telecommunications empire.  &gt; Regulators imposed conduct remedies on the cable giant aimed at preventing it from thwarting online rivals like Netflix Inc. Media companies worry about an AT&amp;T-Time Warner tie-up even more than they did about the NBC deal because it would give the telecom company unprecedented power, one of the people said.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6pe5qi/atandt_in_early_talks_with_us_officials_for_time/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~174909 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*: **deal**^#1 **AT&amp;T**^#2 **HBO**^#3 **Department**^#4 **antitrust**^#5\"", "Apex repairing centre is authorised IFB customer care and service centre.  We provides all types of solutions for IFB products in Mumbai. IFB is well known brand in India, so you can relax related to any query or problems you are facing related to the IFB products. Our repairing engineers are highly qualified who delivers the best result for your IFB products. If you found any problem in your IFB products you can call the apex repairing service (The authorised IFB customer care and service centre in mumbai). IFB is well known brand in washing machine industry in india. We provides genuine parts for your IFB products. Apex Repairing service provides this service in Mumbai and Near by Mumbai Region. Our service is fast. For Any Query Related To IFB Customer Care and Service Centre - Click Here", "Except ISP and cell phone providers were basically granted monopolies by the government. Amazon has just built a good company that consumers like but that doesn't mean they'll always be on top. The only way that could happen is if the government granted them the sole right to sell online."]}
+{"query": "How could I find someone to find a room for me to live in? (For a fee, of course.)", "corpus": ["Many colleges have offices that can help students find off campus housing. They will have information about rooms being let by families, and about houses being shared by groups of students. The biggest issue is that many of the best places were filled months ago. With only a month to go before classes start time is tight. You can also look for electronic listings organized through a campus newspaper.  The advantage of going through university resources is that they will have more information regarding the types of students they are looking for. A house full of undergrads is different than a family house that rents only to young professors."], "neg": ["\"The actual increase in the cost of living for one month over the previous month cannot be calculated from the annualized increase in cost over the entire previous year. Consider the hypothetical case of a very stable economy, where prices stay constant for decades.  Nevertheless, the authorities issue monthly statements, reporting that the change in the cost of living, for the last month, year over year, is 0.00%.  Then they go back to sleep for another month. Then, something happens, say in August, 2001.  It causes a permanent large increase in the cost of many parts of the cost of living components. So, in September, the authorities announce that the cost of living for the end of August, 2001, compared to August a year ago, was up 10%. Great consternation results.  Politicians pontificate, unions agitate on behalf of their members, etc... The economy returns to its customary behavior, except for that one-time permanent increase from August, 2001.  So for the next eleven months, each month, the authorities compare the previous months prices to the prices from exactly a year ago, and announce that inflation, year over year, is still 10%.   Finally, we reach September, 2002.  The authorities look at prices for the end of August, 2002, and compare them to the prices from the end of August, 2001 (post \"\"event\"\").  Wonder of wonders, the inflation rate is back to 0.00%!!  Absolutely nothing happened in August 2002, yet the rate of inflation dropped from 10% to 0%.\"", "Company Income Tax Filling |GST Registration and Migration Sujata Associate ia an accounting Firm and we are expertise in Companies Act 2013 and we help in Company Registration, Private Limited Registration , Limited Laiblity   Registration , Public Limited Company Registration , Partnership Company Registration and Propriotrship Company Registration. Sujata Associates also help in Company   Audit ,Maintaince of Company Accounts ,Sale Tax Return Filling and Income Tax Filling.", "Corporations are taxed on their profits.  Multinational corporations can report their profits in any country they have operations, regardless of where they made the sale.  In other words, it's impossible to nail down exactly where a company 'made it's money'.  So the US doesn't try, we just tax them on earnings everywhere, minus taxes paid elsewhere.  edit for clarity", "It wasn't that long ago that Tim Horton's was owned by Wendy's, another American fast food chain. The only reason Investment Canada would have to block a foreign takeover would be if it would risk Canadian jobs (which this one wouldn't) or risks putting an important Canadian resource in foreign hands (which this takeover also wouldn't).  Investment Canada has only blocked two foreign acquisitions of Canadian companies in the past 25 years.", "no u dont need to go to a top college and there's always hope. hell you'll even be able to break in even if your grades suck. find an area of finance that you're interested in, become as specific as possible, and get really, really good in that area. it isn't enough to say you're into finance. won't even be sufficient to say you're interested in trading. be as specific as possible - macro currency trading, emerging market rates volatility arbitrage, european credit - and then be the best young guy around in that area. then its just a matter of getting in front of people and getting noticed by the right people. good luck.", "\"What does your comment have to do with my comment? You say \"\"Apple only designs stuff\"\" as if that has some bearing on their net worth. Right now Apple's stock is worth about as much as *Google and Microsoft combined*, and they're sitting on about 60B in *cash*. They are *extremely* wealthy. They could do absolutely nothing for a very very long time and still stay in business.\"", "The problem with John Carter was the lack of a solid fanbase to appeal too. The series is old and the comic books are not that great to warrant any pop culture appeal. Now had they explained more about the storyline (and picked a different lead) in the marketing campaign they might have gotten more people interested. Probably the weakest Disney marketing I've ever seen."]}
+{"query": "Working for recruiter on W-2 vs. working for client on 1099?", "corpus": ["I don't think anyone can give you a definitive answer without knowing all about your situation, but some things to consider: If you are on a 1099, you have to pay self-employment tax, while on a W-2 you do not. That is, social security tax is 12.4% of your income. If you're a 1099, you pay the full 12.4%. If you're W-2, you pay 6.2% and the employer pays 6.2%. So if they offer you the same nominal rate of pay, you're 6.2% better off with the W-2. What sort of insurance could you get privately and what would it cost you? I have no idea what the going rates for insurance are in California. If you're all in generally good health, you might want to consider a high-deductible policy. Then if no one gets seriously sick you've saved a bunch of money on premiums. If someone does get sick you might still pay less paying the deductible than you would have paid on higher premiums. I won't go into further details as that's getting off into another question. Even if the benefits are poor, if there are any benefits at all it can be better than nothing. The only advantage I see to going with a 1099 is that if you are legally an independent contractor, then all your business expenses are deductible, while if you are an employee, there are sharp limits on deducting employee business expenses. Maybe others can think of other advantages. If there is some reason to go the 1099 route, I understand that setting up an LLC is not that hard. I've never done it, but I briefly looked into it once and it appeared to basically be a matter of filling out a form and paying a modest fee."], "neg": ["Par value SHOULD mean that they are offering you the options with a strike price (exercise price) that is equivalent to the current valuation of the company.  Note I said SHOULD. As long as you can confirm with HR (or if you're small enough, just ask the CEO) that your grant price is the same as the current valuation of the company's shares, then things are straight.  And while it's very unlikely that someone is doing Something Sneaky, it's always possible.  As a reference, my recent grant letter said:  [Company] (the “Company”) hereby grants you the following Option to   purchase shares of its common stock (“Shares”). The terms and   conditions of this Option are set forth in the Stock Option Agreement   and the [Company] 2013 Stock Incentive Plan (the “Plan”), both of   which are attached to and made a part of this document.", "\"I'm with you here, I can't imagine who in IB would be \"\"financial modeling\"\" with Excel. Matlab, R, or even more general purpose languages like C are much more common. Even things like cookie-cutter monte carlo simulations or many-step binomial trees are a pain with excel.\"", "OTOH if you look at automobile purchases I don't know if anyone could tell you who the CEO of say, GM or Toyota or BMW is. Those purchases tend to be more emotional than anything else and not directly related to corporate or CEO behavior.", "Find and spare thoughts regarding Lime scale remover on scale manager. See more thoughts regarding Calcium remover, Diy limescale removers and Hard water remover. Different store pantry fixings can demonstrate viable in handling electronic Limescale Remover . An answer of a balance of white vinegar and water can be convenient in de-scaling machines like the pot or coffee maker. There are likewise a lot of uncommonly defined cleaning items available that are especially viable in handling limescale issue regions like the can bowl and underneath your taps.", "If you think logically about strategic fit, I'm sure you can come up with tons of plausible M&amp;As. Amazon and Whole Foods clearly makes sense. Would I have thought about it alone? Probably not, but in hindsight it is a good strategic move by Amazon.", "\"There are many different methods for a corporation to get money, but they mostly fall into three categories: earnings, debt and equity.  Earnings would be just the corporation's accumulation of cash due to the operation of its business. Perhaps if cash was needed for a particular reason immediately, a business may consider selling a division or group of assets to another party, and using the proceeds for a different part of the business. Debt is money that (to put it simply) the corporation legally must repay to the lender, likely with periodic interest payments. Apart from the interest payments (if any) and the principal (original amount leant), the lender has no additional rights to the value of the company. There are, basically, 2 types of corporate debt: bank debt, and bonds.  Bank debt is just the corporation taking on a loan from a bank. Bonds are offered to the public - ie: you could potentially buy a \"\"Tesla Bond\"\", where you give Tesla $1k, and they give you a stated interest rate over time, and principal repayments according to a schedule. Which type of debt a corporation uses will depend mostly on the high cost of offering a public bond, the relationships with current banks, and the interest rates the corporation thinks it can get from either method. Equity [or, shares] is money that the corporation (to put it simply) likely does not have a legal obligation to repay, until the corporation is liquidated (sold at the end of its life) and all debt has already been repaid. But when the corporation is liquidated, the shareholders have a legal right to the entire value of the company, after those debts have been paid. So equity holders have higher risk than debt holders, but they also can share in higher reward. That is why stock prices are so volatile - the value of each share fluctuates based on the perceived value of the entire company.  Some equity may be offered with specific rules about dividend payments - maybe they are required [a 'preferred' share likely has a stated dividend rate almost like a bond, but also likely has a limited value it can ever receive back from the corporation], maybe they are at the discretion of the board of directors, maybe they will never happen. There are 2 broad ways for a corporation to get money from equity: a private offering, or a public offering. A private offering could be a small mom and pop store asking their neighbors to invest 5k so they can repair their business's roof, or it could be an 'Angel Investor' [think Shark Tank] contributing significant value and maybe even taking control of the company. Perhaps shares would be offered to all current shareholders first. A public offering would be one where shares would be offered up to the public on the stock exchange, so that anyone could subscribe to them. Why a corporation would use any of these different methods depends on the price it feels it could get from them, and also perhaps whether there are benefits to having different shareholders involved in the business [ie: an Angel investor would likely be involved in the business to protect his/her investment, and that leadership may be what the corporation actually needs, as much or more than money]. Whether a corporation chooses to gain cash from earnings, debt, or equity depends on many factors, including but not limited to: (1) what assets / earnings potential it currently has; (2) the cost of acquiring the cash [ie: the high cost of undergoing a public offering vs the lower cost of increasing a bank loan]; and (3) the ongoing costs of that cash to both the corporation and ultimately the other shareholders - ie: a 3% interest rate on debt vs a 6% dividend rate on preferred shares vs a 5% dividend rate on common shares [which would also share in the net value of the company with the other current shareholders].  In summary: Earnings would be generally preferred, but if the company needs cash immediately, that may not be suitable. Debt is generally cheap to acquire and interest rates are generally lower than required dividend rates. Equity is often expensive to acquire and maintain [either through dividend payments or by reduction of net value attributable to other current shareholders], but may be required if a new venture is risky. ie: a bank/bondholder may not want to lend money for a new tech idea because it is too risky to just get interest from - they want access to the potential earnings as well, through equity.\"", "In case you didn't see over the past few years, especially in banks, falling stock prices often lead to ratings downgrades. The logic is that a bank who's stock price is low, or falling, is suffering from a decrease in their ability to tap the equity markets in times of need.  With less ability to tap the equity markets in times of need, this means it is less likely the bank can raise funds to pay off debt, and thus, makes their debt more risky.   It's unfair for me to imply a 100% causal relationship here, because that's not the case, but each of the markets interact with each other in some way. You will at least notice that, whether leading or trailing, companies that have a decreasing stock price also often have a decreasing credit rating.  You'll also notice that stocks which slip under $5 often times get put on credit watch.   The logic could go any which way around the circle, but a company that cuts its dividend may lose some investors who were in it for the dividend. This can cause stock price to fall. Credit agencies, depending on the situation, may approve of companies that cut their dividend (more cash to pay off debt), or, may indicate the dividend cut is not enough to make up for the company's falling profits.   In the absence of full information, a cut in the dividend is often seen as a sign of weakness or a sign of tough times for the company in the future. Companies which have changes in dividend are looked at as less stable, more unpredictable, blah blah blah.   Again, I'm not implying a 100% causal relationship here, but, each of these markets work with each other somehow, and a bank which cuts its dividend may be expecting lower profitability, slower growth, need the funds to cover lawsuit payouts or settlements with insert-regulatory-agency, or any number of other situations."]}
+{"query": "How does a delta signify the probability of expiring in the money", "corpus": ["Just for clarification, delta and probability of expiring in the money are not the same thing. What the guy meant was that delta is usually a close enough approximation to the probability. One way to think about it is to look at the probabilities and deltas of In the Money, Out of the Money, and At the Money options. In these cases, the delta and probabilities are about the same. In fact if you look at an options chain with delta and probabilities, you can see that they are all about the same. In other words, there is a linear relationship between delta and probability. Here are a couple links to other answers around the web: Hope this answer helps!"], "neg": ["Well, I see that *[ThatMoron](http://www.reddit.com/r/business/comments/uocxp/my_small_family_company_really_needs_help_with/c4xccg2)* gave you some interesting advice; but it sounds to me like some minor renovations to your existing app might be the best way for you to go. I recommend you look into *that* option. Is the person / company who originally built the system someone you can reach out to? Or, do you have the source code and the right to modify the software as part of what you purchased?  *Edit:* link", "\"Do you have the claim ticket? I'll assume yes. Do a Google search for \"\"Dry Cleaner Regulations for [state you live in]\"\" and see if there is a regulatory agency because some states have them, although that might just be for environmental concerns. Worth a shot to call one and ask if they handle customer complaints. Otherwise, the goal is to have them either find your pants or compensate you for the loss. I'd try one last time on the phone or in person. If that fails: Send them a nastygram in the mail demanding $160 by x date or you will pursue \"\"further actions\"\". Keep the letter short and sweet. You can use Google to find example demand letters. After they ignore the letter, file in small claims court. It will cost you ~$50 in filing fees which will be included in the judgement if you win. Go to court, explain why you feel they owe you $160. Bring the claim ticket, the matching suit jacket, and proof that replacing it will cost $160. Step 4: win! Or if that sounds like too much work, you can just write a nasty review on Yelp. You won't get your pants back but it'll feel good. I'd avoid the complaining to the BBB because they have no teeth and the dry cleaner is not obligated to respond to a BBB complaint. Standing right outside their door handing out pamphlets might be a bad idea since it's likely private property and they'll make you leave. But you could always do the labor union thing and hold a \"\"shame on the drycleaners for losing my pants!\"\" sign out by the street or entrance to the parking lot. (That seems like a lot of effort, although it'll look great on your Facebook feed!)\"", "If you are moving into a new house, make sure that it has got a proper security system. A security system can be a complex one, covering the entire house, or it can be a localized one, installed only on specific doors and windows of the place.", "As far as I can see, this is an issue of the bank's policy rather than some legal regulation. That means that you'll need to work it out with the bank.  To give you a couple of ideas to work with when you talk with them, maybe something from this list will work: Good luck!", "You really need to back that up. If you are talking about graduate degrees it is a way different ballgame as math and science researchers generally pay similar tuition's after GA and TA stipends are given out.  This takes cost out of the equation and higher prestige generally means accepting better students.  Thus their success become difficult to separate between their ability and the education they got.  As for undergrad degrees, the prestige doesn't matter.  You'll actually find a lot of public universities on those lists right up next to their expensive cousins.  Then there's this http://online.wsj.com/article/SB10001424052748703597204575483730506372718.html.", "Keep in mind that in order to fund your online casino account, you either had to provide credit/debit card info, or you had to give them your bank account number band routing number already. Now, assuming you've seen no fraudulent activity on your account(s) since then, and it was you who initiated the contact with them, what they're asking for is not totally unreasonable, nor is it all that unusual.  MANY companies require you to provide account/routing info to do financial business with them, which doesn't automatically equate to nefarious purposes, so don't let yourself go down that rabbit hole unless there's some other serious red flag to the situation which you haven't shared with us. It is a bit odd they'd send you a check for a portion of the winnings, but maybe that's to demonstrate good faith on their part as to why they need you to provide them information to send the remainder of your winnings. That being said, the suggestion to open a bank account solely for purposes of receiving your winnings is a good one.  I would go a step further and, once the transfer is made, go to the bank in person and withdraw it in cash.  Then you can deposit it into your regular bank account without there being any possible connection between the two, just in case you decide to indulge your fears about this. Good luck!", "An auto title loans are typically utilized by those that wish to obtain a funding with bad credit rating or no credit in any way. An auto-mobile title lending frequently called a vehicle title lending or merely title funding as well as pink slip funding’s. You merely should have a vehicle that is paid off or nearly paid off and also you could make use of the auto title as security to obtain the cash money you require, enabling you to continue driving your vehicle while paying your loan.   Get Auto Car Title Loans Apple Valley CA and nearby cities Provide Car Title Loans, Auto Title Loans, Mobile Home Title Loans, RV/Motor Home Title Loans, Big Rigs Truck Title Loans, Motor Cycle Title Loans, Online Title Loans Near me, Bad Credit Loans, Personal Loans, Quick cash Loans  Contact Us: Get Auto Car Title Loans Apple Valley CA 17868 US Highway 18 # 409, Apple Valley, CA 92307 760-493-2444 autoloans781@gmail.com http://getautotitleloans.com/car-and-auto-title-loans-apple-valley-ca/"]}
+{"query": "Which mutual funds is Dave Ramsey talking about in The Total Money Makeover? [duplicate]", "corpus": ["See the Moneychimp site. From 1934 to 2006, the S&P returned an 'average' 12.81%. But the CAGR was 11.26%.  I wrote an article Average Return vs Compound Annual Growth to address this issue.  Interesting that over time only a few funds have managed to get anywhere near this return, but the low cost indexer can get the long term CAGR minus .05% or so, if they wish."], "neg": ["You're trying to change the subject. I guarantee to you, the amount of interference in your life, and death, would be FAR less intrusive with single payer, which is at least in responsible nations - accountable to the public. What we have now is forced privatization. Which means a total lack of accountability, why? Because the insurance industry and drug industry claim they need it in order to be profitabe WHICH IS BULLSHIT.  Nobody is calling them out on this,  so, what we're getting is Obama's Chicago school **[neoliberal right wing ideology](http://www.corpwatch.org/article.php?id=376)** being forced on this country - AND [other countries](http://ttip2014.eu) - [because of trade policy](http://citizen.typepad.com/eyesontrade/2013/11/38-million-retirees-say-no-to-a-trade-deal-that-would-make-medicine-more-expensive.html), even when they know it can't work!  Its a race to the bottom that is only going to get worse. IT [wastes quite conservatively AT least a third](http://www.pnhp.org/resources/pnhp-research-the-case-for-a-national-health-program), much more probably more than half of every health care dollar. Thats the facts.   It worthless arguing with you, though, because you're not listening.", "The biggest issue I can see is that in order to have your parents protected properly, they'll have to register an interest in the property (ie, the 25%). I can't see the mortgage lender being too happy to have a second lienholder on the house for a total of 100% of the purchase price. Usually their conditions state that they'll need to be informed of other debts secured on the house and might actually have a say in that. Another way of accomplishing this is putting your parents on the house's deeds but that might also complicate matters with the lender and cause additional problems when it comes to selling the property. Not to mention that if anything bad happens to your parents, their stake in your property would be counted as one of their assets and you might find yourself in the situation where you have to come up with 25% of the property value right now or you might find that you have to sell the property to the first bidder simply because you do need the money as quickly as possible. Personally I wouldn't do it (especially without legal advice), the legal structure can be a nightmare and you'll just end up painted into a corner.", "Mang định hướng là một sản phẩm hạng sang, góp phần nâng tầm diện mạo cho khu vực, Vinhomes Giảng Võ được kỳ vọng sẽ được trau chuốt tỉ mỉ, cẩn thận dưới bàn tay khéo léo, tài hoa của những kiến trúc sư tài ba thuộc tập đoàn thiết kế hàng đầu. Theo một số nguồn tin được tổng hợp từ báo chí, thiết kế tòa nhà dự án theo kiểu “giật cấp” sẽ là phong cách thiết kế mới lạ tại dự án, hứa hẹn những trải nghiệm mới và cảm nhận hoàn toàn mới dành riêng cho Quý cư dân tương lai của chung cư Vinhomes Giảng Võ: với không gian rộng thoáng hơn (đặc biệt đối với các căn hộ càng ở phía trên cao); hệ thống sân vườn, không gian xanh trên cao. Kiểu thiết kế này khiến Quý khách hàng liên tưởng tới Vườn treo Babylon – một trong những kỳ quan vĩ đại nhất trên thế giới.", "I don't think that there's a specific  number or index that gives you what you're looking for. I think the closest thing to it would be the velocity of money, which is a measure of how often money changes hands.  Also, for what it's worth, I believe that this concept is controversial in some circles.", "Large and small universities have procedures in place regarding the use of the universities name, logo, facilities, and budget. They should have in place guidelines regarding the collection and use of funds from members, and participants. These guidelines are what allows you to have an account with the university. Generally these are not kept in  the credit union but are with the university treasurer.  I would approach this as if I knew nothing about how to get an officially recognized club or organization started. They should then provide you with all the rules and policies regarding money for student organizations. These policies may also discuss how to collect cash, checks, and credit cards. Some universities also allow the use of special card readers to process the special debit card attached to your university ID.  The 10% fee charged by the university is typical. They will need to account for your funds, while maintaining their tax exempt status. If you get fully inline with their policies that will allow you to avoid tax issues.", "Ha!... just looked at some pics and you are probably spot on with the faux-steak-house-yet-quirky look.  At that point it's only the political ideology that might be a draw and as other's have pointed out it's a place / price point that is pretty well established.  They would have to be much more radical in a lot of areas to carve out a space for themselves.", "\"Appeal to Authority - Using an authority as evidence in your argument when the authority is not really an authority on the facts relevant to the argument.  As the audience, allowing an irrelevant authority to add credibility to the claim being made.  That is what I've been getting at in my comments. You kept saying you have more experience so I brought up that I've actually studied economics. Then I immediately followed it up with that, despite my studies, that doesn't mean I'm right just like your experience doesn't mean you are correct. That was my whole point and why I brought it up. Experience or \"\"authority\"\" doesn't mean you are correct. It's like saying \"\"I'm older so I know better.\"\"  But, you kept pressing forwards with \"\"I have more experience and more academics than you,\"\" and even calling me kiddo despite not knowing my age, so I went and grabbed a link to a consensus of 600 people who are considered experts in this field that disagreed with you. Each personal individually would trump your experience, let alone 600 of them collectively.  As far as my first source, it doesn't matter. I can go find more if you want. I stand by my claims because I've also seen it elsewhere. Sorry I didn't send you 10 links instead of just one, and now I'm in mobile so I can't easily discuss it.  As far as your source that discusses academic leanings, I'm intrigued with its findings, because it appears to be reputable, and plan to look over it. I've personally said for awhile that when faced with new facts/evidence I'll consider it in regards with my position, and will change my position if the evidence appears to line up. I've done it before and I'm not so prideful to not do it again. Besides, that's what people should do instead of just digging their heels in because they don't like what they hear.\""]}
+{"query": "How to increase my credit score", "corpus": ["Get a credit card is NOT the answer. The reason people have a bad (or no) credit score is often because they're new to the country, have just turned 18, have previously fallen into arrears or are just bad with money. Getting a credit card is risky because, if you don't stay on top of your payments, it'll just damage your score even more.  Now, it sounds like I hate credit cards - but I don't, and they do have their benefits. But avoid them if possible because they can be more hassle than they're worth (ie, paying the credit back on-time, cancelling accounts when the interest comes in, moving money in and out of accounts). It's risky borrowing money from anywhere whether it's a payday lender, a bank, a credit card, etc., so use them as a last resort. If you've got your own income then that's amazing!, try not to live outside of your means and your credit score will look after (and increase) itself. It takes time to build a good credit score, but always make sure you pay the people you owe on time and the full amount. I'd stick with paying your phone provider (and any other direct debits you have setup) and avoid getting a credit card. I'd recommend Noddle to keep track of your credit score and read their FAQ on how to help build it. Unlike Experian, it's free forever so not quite as detailed... but Noddle are owned by CallCredit - one of the biggest Credit Reference Agencies in the UK so they should have the latest information on yourself. In conclusion, if you already have financial commitments like a mobile phone bill, gym membership, store cards, anything that gets paid monthly by direct debit... your credit score will increase (provided you pay the full-amount on time).   I hope this helps. PS. I don't work for any of the companies here, but I've been working in the finance sector (more specifically, short-term loans) for 3+ years now."], "neg": ["Nobody tracks a single company's net assets on a daily basis, and stock prices are almost never derived directly from their assets (otherwise there would be no concept of 'growth stocks').  Stocks trade on the presumed current value of future positive cash flow, not on the value of their assets alone. Funds are totally different.  They own nothing but stocks and are valued on the basis on the value of those stocks.  (Commodity funds and closed funds muddy the picture somewhat, but basically a fund's only business is owning very liquid assets, not using their assets to produce wealth the way companies do.) A fund has no meaning other than the direct value of its assets.   Even companies which own and exploit large assets, like resource companies, are far more complicated than funds: e.g. gold mining or oil extracting companies derive most of their value from their physical holdings, but those holdings value depends on the moving price and assumed future price of the commodity and also on the operations (efficiency of extraction etc.) Still different from a fund which only owns very liquid assets.", "\"As I understand it, the cost of the cruise just about pays for your room, plus reasonable food. It doesn't always pay for the room service, even, which is why tipping is encouraged. The line makes money on the EXTRAS. The largest of these are the land tours that take place on an almost daily basis. Also, they manufacture and sell a \"\"cruise video,\"\" as well as souvenirs. They also have special events on board such as art auctions, where \"\"concessionaires pay the ship to let them try to make money on it.\"", "\"They are a screwed up company.  They constantly mess up our billing.  It takes me calling every other month to fix it.  Their auto billing is also messed up.    Their tech support is also screwed up.  The amount of times I have spent an hour on the phone with them to find out \"\"there is an outage in your area\"\" is pretty funny.  I even lead off with that question and it never is until the 1 hour mark.\"", "I think the first step is to be thankful that your relationship with this person has not degenerated into lawsuits and bickering.  That would greatly affect your cash flow and valuations!  It also seems that this person is open to a variety of solutions.  This truly is a gift. I see two options without taking a mortgage or fronting cash: The key here is if the 65% property already has a mortgage.  Does it have enough equity to provide 15% cash out, and cover the existing mortgage?  What is the interest rate?  Can you get a lower rate that will reduce the impact of a higher mortgage payment will have on your income?  Can you have your partner finance the 15%?   In the end there really isn't a way to divest this company without impacting your income.", "I like Trader Joe's, but I first noticed these aspects of the business model in about 1984. Some of what they sell is good, some is bad, and all of it is put in the most romantically humble packaging. Service is excellent.  If only Saab understood the affluent pseudo-hippie market as well as TJ's does.  Boy, some of the prepared meals they sell really suck. Those burritos: gack! And the produce has the power to turn you off food entirely, if you catch them on a bad streak - for a while, the nuts were virtually inedible.Still, the cheddar popcorn is more addictive than heroin.", "Operationally they wouldn't be too bad off if not for their debt. With declining sales and powerful competitors, they lack the cash flow to both compete and pay off their debt as it matures and while they've been able to refinance so far the doom and gloom outlook that some investors have right now on retailers makes it harder. If they could restructure they would come out in pretty decent shape though.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.reuters.com/article/us-eu-banks-deposits-idUSKBN1AD1RS) reduced by 85%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; BRUSSELS - European Union states are considering measures which would allow them to temporarily stop people withdrawing money from their accounts to prevent bank runs, an EU document reviewed by Reuters revealed.  &gt; &amp;quot;The desire is to prevent a bank run, so that when a bank is in a critical situation it is not pushed over the edge,&amp;quot; a person familiar with German government&amp;#039;s thinking said.  &gt; Existing EU rules allow a two-day suspension of some payouts by failing banks, but the moratorium does not include deposits.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6qliud/surely_the_banks_need_even_more_programs_in_their/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~179489 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*: **bank**^#1 **moratorium**^#2 **run**^#3 **lender**^#4 **fail**^#5\""]}
+{"query": "Reconciling transactions reimbursing myself for expenses as self-employed (UK)", "corpus": ["\"For anyone that's curious, I had a number of chats with Quickbooks who recommended I import only the relevant business transactions from my personal account & personal credit card in order to lower the tax liability. This way money \"\"paid\"\" from the business account to myself rightly shows up as a transfer and not as income. This means when generating a tax report, it calculates the correct rate of tax to be paid based on income minus allowable expenses, regardless which account they came from.\""], "neg": ["\"I'm in a similar situation. First, a 529 plan can be use for \"\"qualifying\"\" international schools.  There are 336 for 2015, which includes many well known schools but also excludes many schools, especially lower level or vocational schools and schools in non-English speaking countries. I ran 3 scenarios to see what the impact would be if you invested $3000 a year for 14 years in something tracking the S&P 500 Index: For each of these scenarios, I considered 3 cases: a state with 0% income tax, a state with the median income tax rate of 6% for the 25% tax bracket, and California with an income tax rate of 9.3% for the 25% tax bracket. California has an addition 2.5% penalty on unqualified distributions.  Additionally, tax deductions taken on contributions that are part of unqualified distributions will be viewed as income and that portion of the distribution will be taxed as such at the state level. Vanguard's 500 Index Portfolio has a 10 year average return of 7.63%.  Vanguard's S&P 500 Index fund has a 10 year average return of 7.89% before tax and 7.53% after taxes on distributions. Use a 529 as intended: Use a 529 but do not use as intended: Invest in a S&P 500 Index fund in a taxable account: Given similar investment options, using a 529 fund for something other than education is much worse than having an investment in a mutual fund in a taxable account, but there's also a clear advantage to using a 529 if you know with certainty you can use it for qualified expenses.  Both the benefits for correct use of a 529 and the penalties for incorrect use increase with state tax rates. I live in a state with no income tax so the taxable mutual fund option is closer to the middle between correct and incorrect use of a 529.  I am leaning towards the investment in a taxable account.\"", "\"Didnt know their union guys needed phones. I work military and we are \"\"always on\"\". Only time we got \"\"recalled\"\" was for DUI, test, or other admin. I have never been called in on my \"\"off\"\" day for a good reason..\"", "It is likely a bit of both.  Cooking the books AND an economic miracle.       There will definitely be a downturn eventually, and it will be interesting what shakes out.  At this stage, the Chinese model appears to be stronger than any alternatives.", "Sure you can say there are some successful ones from millions. But if you look at most of Reddit for example, they are weed smoking losers living at home and getting paid minimum wage, that is if they even have a job.    While you and your friends smoke once a month, many smoke daily and brag about it like it's a good thing. They all have the fake medical cannabis card and visit the shop weekly.   Daily weed smokers are not fit for the job and are at a higher risk because they are impaired. They also often or almost always lack motivation.", "It seems very risky have all of your net worth in this one home. If I were to buy the house, I'm not sure I would put that much down, consider 20% and keep cash on hand, in retirement assets, etc. I would look at how much a mortgage, plus interest, taxes, insurance, etc. would cost with 50% down and with 20% down and see how that impacts your cash flow. Renting may make more sense, it's hard to tell without more specifics (NYTimes Rent/Buy calculator is a nice tool), but regardless, I would not want to have so much net worth tied into one asset and so would opt for less money down if I were to buy. Focus on rebuilding some retirement assets.", "\"There is no zero risk option! There is no safe parking zone for turbulent times! There is no such thing as a zero-risk investment.  You would do well to get this out of your head now.  Cash, though it will retain its principle over time, will always be subject to inflation risk (assuming a positive-inflation environment which, historically in the US anyway, has always been the case since the Great Depression). But I couldn't find a \"\"Pure Cash - No investment option\"\" - what I mean by this is an option where my money is kept idle without investing in any kind of financial instrument (stocks, bonds, other MFs, currencies, forex etc etc whatever).  Getting back to the real crux of your question, several other answers have already highlighted that you're looking for a money market fund.  These will likely be as close to cash as you will get in a retirement account for the reasons listed in @KentA's answer. Investing in short-term notes would also be another relatively low-risk alternative to a money market fund.  Again, this is low-risk, not no-risk. I wanted such kinda option because things may turn bad and I may want nothing invested in the stock markets/bond markets. I was thinking that if the market turns bear then I would move everything to cash Unless you have a the innate ability to perfectly time the market, you are better off keeping your investments where they are and riding out the bear market.  Cash does not generate dividends - most funds in a retirement account do.  Sure, you may have a paper loss of principle in a bear market, but this will go away once the market turns bull again.  Assuming you have a fairly long time before you retire, this should not concern you in the slightest. Again, I want to stress that market timing does not work.  Even the professionals, who get paid the big bucks to do this, on average, get it right as often as they get it wrong.  If you had this ability, you would not be asking financial questions on Stack Exchange, I can tell you that. I would recommend you read The Four Pillars of Investing, by William Bernstein.  He has a very no-nonsense approach to investing and retirement that would serve you (or anybody) well in turbulent financial markets.  His discussion on risk is especially applicable to your situation.\"", "Basically a company who provides health insurance for their employees provides it as part of the employee's salary package. This is an expense by the company in its pursuit of making income. In general, tax deductions are available on any expense incurred in deriving income (the exception is when social policy allows deductions for other types of expenses). If you pay for your own health insurance individually, then this expense is not an expense for you to derive your income, and as such is not tax deductible."]}
+{"query": "Expense ratio of an ETF included in the price or calculated separately", "corpus": ["The expense ratio reduces the return of the ETF; your scenario of paying 100.0015 is that of a load.  Most (all?) ETFs can be bought without paying a load (sales charge as a percent of amount invested), and some ETFs can be bought without paying a brokerage fee (fixed or variable charge for a buy transaction just like buying any other stock  through the brokerage) because the brokerage has waived it.  Your broker  might charge fees for both buying and selling shares in an ETF, but in any case, this is quite separate from the expense ratio."], "neg": ["You're absolutely right - comforts in and of themselves are not everything, and certainly not an excuse to withhold freedoms or any of the other points noted in the list. That said, will all the others covered, comforts can be the icing on the cake.", "Fire insurance, as you have discovered, is a complete ripoff. Most people pay fire insurance all their lives with no benefit whatsoever, and those such as yourself who are lucky enough to get a payout find that it is completely insufficient to replace their loss. I once computed the actual beneficial net present financial value of my fire insurance policy and it came out to $40 per month. The cost was $800 per month. That is typical. Homeowners pay $500 to $800 per year for something that is worth $30 to $50 per year. Ironically banks would actually make more money from mortgages if they did not require mortgagees to buy insurance, but nevertheless they insist on it. It is not about logic, but about fear and irrationality. When I paid off my mortgage and gained ownership of my home the first thing I did was cancel my fire insurance. I now invest the money I would have wasted on insurance, making money instead of losing it. Being compelled to throw money down the toilet on fire insurance is one of the hidden costs of a homeowners mortgage in the United States. In your situation, the main option is to borrow the money to rebuild the house using the land as collateral, if the land is valuable enough. Of course, you still owe the money for your original mortgage on your now (non-existent) home. So, to get a home, you will have to have the income to service two mortgages. A loan officer at a reputable bank can tell you whether you have the income necessary to support two mortgages. If you were maxed out on your original mortgage, then you may not have enough income and you are screwed. In that case you will have to go back to renting and gradually paying off your old mortgage. (If it were me, I would sue the insurance company pro se as a way to get the necessary money to rebuild the home, because insurance companies roll over like a $20 hooker when they get sued. Juries hate insurance companies. But I am unusual in that I love courtrooms and suing people. Most people are terrified of courtrooms though, so it may not be an option for you.)", "One company owns majority of popular freelancing websites (elance included)  Aside from the race to the bottom pricing happening for projects; customer is always right. Lots of stories of even a pip from a client freezing accounts -- not even just a project, your whole account with any ongoing projects. Everything gone. Thousands lost. Not worth it. No recourse.", "\"Fulltext: https://pdf.yt/d/oUgs1U5suhiilEPi / https://dl.dropboxusercontent.com/u/182368464/2014-sariaslan.pdf  See also:  - 6: Sariaslan A, Langstrom N, D’Onofrio B, Hallqvist J, Franck J, Lichtenstein. \"\"The impact of neighbourhood deprivation on adolescent violent criminality and substance misuse: a longitudinal, quasi-experimental study of the total Swedish population\"\" http://www.researchgate.net/publication/256985352_The_impact_of_neighbourhood_deprivation_on_adolescent_violent_criminality_and_substance_misuse_A_longitudinal_quasi-experimental_study_of_the_total_Swedish_population/file/72e7e51f69f99ad646.pdf . _Int J Epidemiol_ 2013; 42: 1057–66. - 7: Frisell T, Lichtenstein P, Langstrom N. \"\"Violent crime runs in families: a total population study of 12.5 million individuals\"\" http://www.sakkyndig.com/psykologi/artvit/frisell2010.pdf . _Psychol Med_ 2011; 41: 97–105. - 8: Kendler KS, Sundquist K, Ohlsson H, Palmér K, Maes H, Winkleby MA, et al. \"\"Genetic and familial environmental influences on the risk for drug abuse: a national Swedish adoption study\"\" http://www.ncbi.nlm.nih.gov/pmc/articles/PMC3556483/ . _Arch Gen Psychiatry_ 2012; 69: 690–7. - 9: D’Onofrio BM, Lahey BB, Turkheimer E, Lichtenstein P. \"\"Critical need for family-based, quasi-experimental designs in integrating genetic and social science research\"\" http://people.virginia.edu/~ent3c/papers2/d%27onofrioAJPH.pdf . _Am J Public Health_ 2013; 103: S46–55.\"", "Internet sites Books Academic", "\"1040 or 1040NR depends on whether you are a resident alien or nonresident alien -- 1040/1040A/1040EZ for resident aliens, and 1040NR/1040NR-EZ for nonresident aliens. Determining whether you are a resident is somewhat complex, and there is not enough information in your question to determine it. Publication 519 is the guide for taxes for aliens. (It hasn't been updated for 2014 yet, so mentally shift all the years in the publication up by one year when you read it.) Since you don't have a green card, whether you are a resident is determined by the Substantial Presence Test. The test says that if (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2014) + 1/3 of (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2013) + 1/6 of (the number of days you were in the U.S. in 2012) >= 183 days (half a year), then you are a resident alien for 2014. However, there are exceptions to the test. Days that you are an \"\"exempt individual\"\" are not counted toward the Substantial Presence Test. And \"\"exempt individuals\"\" include international students, trainees, teachers, etc. However, there are exceptions to the exceptions. Students are not \"\"exempt individuals\"\" for a year if they have been exempt individuals for any part of 5 previous calendar years. (Different exceptions apply for teachers and trainees.) So whether you are an \"\"exempt individual\"\" for one year inductively depends on whether you have been an \"\"exempt individual\"\" in previous years. Long story short, if before you came to the U.S. as an F-1 student, you haven't been in the U.S. on F-1 or J-1 status, then you will be a nonresident alien for the first 5 calendar years (calendar year = year with a number, not 365 days) that you've been on F-1. We will assume this is the case below. So if you started your F-1 in 2009 (any time during that year) or before, then you would have already been an exempt individual for 5 calendar years (e.g. if you came in 2009, then 2009, 2010, 2011, 2012, 2013 are your 5 years), so you would not be an exempt individual for any part of 2014. Since you were present in the U.S. for most of 2014, you meet the Substantial Presence Test for 2014, and you are a resident alien for all of 2014. If, on the other hand, you started your F-1 in 2010 (any time during that year) or after, then you would still be an exempt individual for the part of 2014 that you were on F-1 status (i.e. prior to October 2014. OPT is F-1.). Days in 2014 in H1b status (3 months) are not enough for you to satisfy the Substantial Presence Test for 2014, so you would be a nonresident alien for all of 2014. If you fall into the latter case (nonresident alien), there are some alternative choices you have. If you were in the U.S. for most of those last 3 months, then you are eligible to choose to use the \"\"First-Year Choice\"\". I will not go into the steps to use this choice, but the result is that it makes you dual-status for 2014 -- nonresident until October, and resident since October. If you are single, then making this choice pretty much gives you no benefit. However, if you are married, then making this choice allows you to subsequently make another choice to become a resident for all of 2014. Being resident gives you some benefits, like being able to file as Married Filing Jointly (nonresidents can only file separately), being able to use the Standard Deduction, being able to use many other deductions and credits, etc. Though, depending on what country you're from, it may affect your treaty benefits, so check that before you consider it.\"", "&gt; 2) ... Similarly, using his example of 3 cents adding 2 seconds to the transaction ends up at a rate of $54/hr.  And all of those two seconds can be eliminated by putting four pennies in your hand while standing in line then just pull out the number you need when the total is displayed.   Of course, eliminating pennies wouldn't help this anyway as people would still need time to figure out the number of nickels. dimes, and quarters to have ready in a penniless transaction.  &gt; 3.) No machines take pennies. Fair enough.  Although it's not really true. As of three years ago (when I moved away) the Albuquerque busses took pennies, and I'm pretty sure the stamp machines at the post office take pennies, though I'm not sure about that.  And, of course, the self checkouts at stores everywhere take pennies happily."]}
+{"query": "Are car buying services worth it?", "corpus": ["I have used car buying services through Costco and USAA.  Twice with a Ford, and once with a Honda.  In all instances I was directed to sales people that were uncommonly friendly and pleasant to work with.  I was given a deep discount without any negotiation.  In two of the three cases I did not have a trade.  In one case I had a trade, and negotiated a deeper discount then was originally offered.   Did I get a good deal?  Eh, who knows?  Really it depends what your goal is.   If your goal is to avoid negotiation, avoid idiot salesmen, and receive a good discount then a quality car buying service may be for you.  My research, a few years old, indicated Costco's program was better then the USAA one. If your goal is get a deep as a discount as possible on a new car, well then you have some work cut out for you.  Keep some hand sanitizer handy when you meet one of the slime ball salesmen.  Keep in mind that not everyone understand the difference between the words value and cheap. If your goal is to pay as little as possible for quality transportation.  Avoid most dealers and new cars. But I don't think that is what you are looking for."], "neg": ["Depending on your income/savings level and who you work for (if you work for a big company check with an HSBC Premier advisor, they may waive the requirements), you may qualify for an HSBC Premier account, which can allow you to open accounts in different countries and transfer money between them without a fee. You can also get a Premier account without meeting the requirements if you are willing to pay a monthly fee, but I doubt that will be worth it in the long run for what you need (worth doing the math though if you travel frequently).  NOTE: There may be similar offerings from other banks, but this is just the only one I'm aware of.", "No no it's real good man, I mean there's a chance you'll die from heat stroke or get beaten to death for trying to escape since your employer took your passport, but it's great for the consumer who doesn't give a shit and just wants to watch the world cup.  Hope you end up in a service job with a boss that shits down your throat every time you take a piss break you entitled punk.", "I've read over these responses like a dozen times. It's really cool hearing from a business owner who has experienced things first-hand. Nobody in my family has ever been or known anything about business/stocks/Anything. I'm learning everything from the internet, friends, and now reddit. I'll certainly seek true legal advice but you have no idea how helpful you and every other person on this thread has been. Thank you! I'm all ears to anything else", "What makes you think corporations don't have to pay sales taxes or property taxes (or excise taxes, or environmental impact fees or fuel taxes or any of a million other taxes that we all end up paying) even if they lose money that year?", "I think you'll find some sound answers here: Money Creation in the Modern Economy by the Bank of England Where does money come from?  In the modern economy, most money takes   the form of bank deposits. But how those bank deposits are created is   often misunderstood. The principal way in which they are created is   through commercial banks making loans: whenever a bank makes a loan,   it creates a deposit in the borrower’s bank account, thereby creating   new money.  This description of how money is created differs from the   story found in some economics textbooks.", "Two different questions: Is it better to be in debt or to pay off the debt? And: Is it better to have student debt than other debt?  Any debt needs to be paid off eventually, and any debt makes you less flexible. So if you have the choice between spending/wasting your money and paying off debt, I would recommend paying off the debt.  The other question is whether having student debt is better than having other debt. You need to look at the terms of your student debt. Pay off the debt with the worst conditions first. Loan sharks (in Britain: pay-day loans) must be paid first. Credit cards debt must go next. Then general loans. Depending on your situation, you may want some savings as well. In case you lose your job, for example. So if you have $8,000 saved and an $8,000 student loan, you might consider waiting a bit before you pay back the loan. No job + $8,000 student loan + $8,000 in the bank is better than no job + no debt + no money in the bank.", "Unfortunately for the rest of us, avoiding the military industrial complex also avoids feeding the roads, schools, libraries and social programs industrial complex.  Not to mention the shortfall has to be made up, so it's more taxes and more debt for the rest of us that can't afford to dodge it..."]}
+{"query": "Is there a limit on the dollar amount of a personal check?", "corpus": ["Because of the way checks are processed, you can't write a check for $100 million or more: http://www.bankingquestions.com/checksyoureceived/q_limitfunds.html The field used for 'amount' has 10 digits, so anything at/above 10^10 cents (which would require 11 digits) can't be processed, at least not by normal means."], "neg": ["\"So you're making $150,000 per year and you have $245,000 in debts. You're in your late 30s and have $41,000, or less than 1/3 of a year's pay, put away for retirement. That's a bad situation, but not disastrous. Lots of people have recovered from far worse. But like the old joke goes, when you realize that you're deep in a hole, STOP DIGGING. The worst thing you could do right now is liquidate the few assets you have and go deeper into debt. I don't know where you live or what the housing market is there. But the easy answer is: find a cheaper house.  I'm not sure what you mean about \"\"affect the resale value\"\". Yes, if you buy a cheaper house it will have a lower resale value. So what? The days when a house was an investment that would skyrocket in value are over. (And even in those days, it didn't help most people. So when you move, you get a big profit on the sale of your house. But the house you're moving to probably went up by a similar percentage, so you really didn't gain anything.) Even if your house did increase in value, unless you sell it, that doesn't help you make the mortgage payments. It's a paper profit. Get yourself out of debt. Step 1 is to stop taking on new debts. And if at all possible, you should be putting bare minimum 6% into your retirement plan. I don't know where you work, but most employers match some percentage of the first 6% you put in. If you don't take advantage of that, you're giving up free money.\"", "While it is true that this formula may have historically outperformed the market you have to keep one important thing in mind: once the formula is out in the open, the market inefficiency will disappear. Here is what I mean. Historically there have always been various inefficiencies in the market structure. Some people were able to find these and make good money off them. Invariably these people tend to write books about how they did it. What happens next is that lots of people get in on the game and now you have lots of buyers going after positions that used to be under-priced, raising demand and thus prices for these positions. This is how inter-exchange arbitrage disappeared. Its how high frequency trading is running itself into the ground. If enough demand is generated for an inefficiency, the said inefficiency disappears or the gains get so small that you can only make money off it with large amounts of capital. Keep in mind, as Graham said, there is no silver bullet in the stock market since you do not hold any data that is unavailable to everyone else.", "\"I'm impressed.  She must have a substantial income to agree to a $500/month car payment.  I imagine her income is about 20K per month for that to make sense.  What kind of work does she do?  To answer your question, typical lease do not work the way you describe.  Paying an extra $2000 will allow you to skip 4 payments (provided the payments were exactly $500) any time in the future.  It does not modify the terms of the lease which would include the payment amount.  Also one does not receive a fiance charge reduction benefit as with a loan.  Essentially you are providing a loan to the leasing company for free. To be explicit you cannot tell the mortgage company anything as she is applying for the loan, not you.  She can tell the mortgage company the new payment is $400, but she would be falsifying the application which is not advisable. Perhaps the mortgage company is doing her a favor.  They are indicating her life is out of control financially.  Either she is attempting to purchase way to much home or her consumer debt is out of control.  It could be a combination of both.   My first paragraph was written to be \"\"tongue in check\"\" in order to demonstrate absurdity.  Without a substantial income and an substantial net worth, a 500/month car payment is simply ridiculous.  While it is someone average, when you compare it to the average income (~54K/year) you understand why 78% of US households live paycheck-to-paycheck (are broke), and have no retirement savings. For your and her sake, please stop giving all your hard earned money to banks.\"", "But it goes both ways. Why should the people care about your business and if it's sustainable? The market will deem it unprofitable if he can't support paying his workers living wages.   If there are no minimum wages that a person can scrape by on then you have preditory companies taking advantage of people or the business offsetting the cost to the public (like tips). The public would be subsidizing the business.   I think you need to dig deeper into that logic.", "Clearly the US isn't interested in prosecuting executives for criminal activity, and hasn't been for years. Rick Scott perpetrated the largest Medicare fraud in history, but he was never charged with a crime because his company (HCA Columbia) agreed to pay nearly a billion in fines. His lack of a criminal record and substantial net worth left him free to pursue other opportunities, like becoming the governor of Florida.", "\"I'd check the terms of the student loan. It's been a long time since I had a student loan, but when I did it had restrictions that it could only be used for educational expenses, which they pretty clear spelled out meant tuition, books, lab fees, I think some provision for living expenses. If your student loan is subsidized by the government, they're not going to let you use it to start a business or go on vacation ... nor are they likely to let you invest it. Even if it is legal and within the terms of the contract, borrowing money to invest is very risky. What if you invest in the stock market, and then the stock market goes down? You may find you don't have the money to make the payments on the loan. People do this sort of thing all the time -- that's what \"\"buying on margin\"\" is all about. And some of them lose a bundle and get in real trouble.\"", "\"TL;DR: Because stocks represent added value from corporate profits, and not the price the goods themselves are sold at. This is actually a very complicated subject.  But here's the simplest answer I can come up with.  Stocks are a commodity, just like milk, eggs, and bread.  The government only tracks certain commodities (consumables) as part of the Consumer Price Index (CPI).  These are generally commodities that the typical person will consume on a daily or weekly basis, or need to survive (food, rent, etc.).  These are present values. Stock prices, on the other hand, represent an educated guess (or bet) on a company's future performance.  If Apple has historically performed well, and analysts expect it to continue to perform, then investors will pay more for a stock that they feel will continue pay good dividends in the future.  Compound this with the fact that there is usually limited a supply of stock for a particular company (unless they issue more stock). If we go back to Apple as an example, they can raise their price they charge on an iPhone from $400 to $450 over the course of say a couple years.  Some of this may be due to higher wage costs, but efficiencies in the marketplace actually tend to drive down costs to produce goods, so they will probably actually turn a higher profit by raising their price, even if they have to pay higher wages (or possibly even if they don't raise their price!).  This, in economics, is termed value added. Finally, @Hart is absolutely correct in his comment about the stocks in the S&P 500 not being static.  Additionally, the S&P 500 is a hand picked set of \"\"winners\"\", if you will.  These are not run-of-the-mill penny stocks for companies that will be out of business in a week.  These are companies that Standard & Poor's Financial Services LLC thinks will perform well.\""]}
+{"query": "Will Indian young ones lose 18% of their EPF with new tax as per Budget 2016?", "corpus": ["Are these calculations correct? These are approximate calculations and are with the assumption that entire corpus will be taxed. The assumption was valid as the wording in the budget speech was not very clear. Subsequently the finance ministry has clarified that only interest generated will be taxed and not the contribution. There are no new calculations done with this assumption. Edit: As per communication from finance ministry this proposal is on hold."], "neg": ["We are about to have a 1.4 million headcount shortfall in software development by 2020, many of those jobs earn over twice the average household income.  So while you may claim software wealth peaked in the 90s, that's false. The problem is it takes decades for companies to churn out tons of millionaires, there really are no overnight successes and most people in the industry are mediocre. So for an accurate comparison you need to look at facebook, twitter and other social sites from the 00's and uber, airbnb and slack 10 years from now. The gaps are the result of the crashes in 01 and 08.  Also most people struggle with basic computer operation without a GUI, programming is not for everyone.", "There are just too many variables here... Will you legally be considered a permanent resident from the moment you move? Will you work from home as a contractor or as an employee? Those are not questions you can answer yourself, they really depend on your circumstances and how the tax authorities will look at them. I strongly encourage you to speak to an advisor. Very generally spoken, at your place of residence you pay taxes for your worldwide income, at the place of your work base (which is not clear if this really would be Turkey) you pay taxes on the income generated there. If it's one and the same country, it's simple. If not, then theoretically you pay twice. However, most countries have double taxation treaties to avoid just that. This usually works so that the taxes paid abroad (in Turkey) would be deducted from your tax debt at your place of residence.  But you might want to read the treaty to be sure how this would be in your specific case (all treaties are publicly available), and you should really consider speaking to a professional.", "\"Saying this to addicts makes you an asshole because this is patronizing as hell, which was already mentioned. If the solution were as simple as \"\"smoke weed instead of taking pills\"\", don't you think addicts would already be doing that?   The fact that you don't understand why this is patronizing and unhelpful is why you shouldn't be speaking on the subject.\"", "Politics aside, you also have to factor in working conditions and the fact that those folks are actually NEEDED in a lot of cases. Automated toll booths aren't free, and they need to be maintained. If you aren't paying someone a living wage they're going to find something else. I don't see the problem with compensating someone based partially on years of service and hazard pay (ie freezing cold or intense heat)", "Having just purchased an upcoming Samsung phone using their 0% interest I can tell you that the justification is to give you credit. I have the same with Best Buy which is 0% for a specific initial purchase. The bank (in the Samsung case is TD Bank) establishes a rotating credit line for you. The APR after is well established at the very high side of 29.99%. Nobody in their right mind should want to pay that much interest on any purchase. My last car purchase was below 3% APR. Additionally the introductory rate will still calculate their 29.99% interest as if it existed since the first day of credit and will be applied to your balance should you ever be late on any single payment. At that time the interest is factored in as if it were always there and payments are adjusted accordingly. You see, the bank wants you to pay their high interest rate. So they entice you with the 0% and hope you either finance more on that credit line (exempt from the promotional rate) or miss a payment and they can hit you with a whammy. Specifically the question asks how this offer benefits Samsung. To answer that portion; it ensures a sale at full retail price of the phone. Samsung is just an agent between you and the bank. The bank takes on the risk for a potential high reward.", "If you are comfortable with the risk etc, then the main thing to worry about is diversity.  For some folks, picking stocks is beyond them, or they have no interest in it.  But if it's working for you, and you want to keep doing it, more power to you. If you are comfortable with the risk, you could just as well have ALL your equity position in individual stocks.  I would offer only two pieces of advice in that respect. 1) no more than 4% of your total in any one stock.  That's a good way to force diversity (provided the stocks are not clustered in a very few sectors like say 'financials'), and make yourself take some of the 'winnings off the table' if a stock has done well for you. 2) Pay Strong attention to Taxes! You can't predict most things, but you CAN predict what you'll have to pay in taxes, it's one of the few known quantities.  Be smart and trade so you pay as little in taxes as possible  2A)If you live someplace where taxes on Long term gains are lower than short term (like the USA) then try really really hard to hold 'winners' till they are long term.  Even if the price falls a little, you might be up in the net compared to paying out an extra 10% or more in taxes on your gains.  Obviously there's a balancing act there between when you feel something is 'done' and the time till it's long term.. but if you've held something for 11 months, or 11 months and 2 weeks, odds are you'd be better off to hold till the one year point and then sell it.   2B) Capture Losses when you have them by selling and buying a similar stock for a month or something.  (beware the wash sale rule) to use to offset gains.", "In all transitions, real people actually did suffer.  In the large view, new markets were created and new jobs appeared.  But the people who got those new jobs were not the same people who originally lost them.  When the pace of such disruption is relatively slow, those pain points are manageable.  When the disruptions start coming one after another in rapid fire, the managing of problems of that many real, suffering, jobless or under-employed people becomes a disruptive problem in and of itself."]}
+{"query": "What is the purpose of endorsing a check?", "corpus": ["I actually had to go to the bank today and so I decided to ask. The answer I was given is that a check is a legal document (a promise to pay).  In order to get your money from the bank, you need to sign the check over to them.  By endorsing the check you are attesting to the fact that you have transferred said document to them and they can draw on that account."], "neg": ["\"In the US, a private company with less than 500 owners can dictate who can or can't become a shareholder (this is true in general, but I'm sure there are loopholes).   Prior to Google's IPO I could not buy shares in Google at any price.   The reason Google was \"\"forced\"\" to go public is the 500 shareholder rule.   At a high level, with 500 shareholders the company is forced to do some extra financial accounting and they no longer can control who owns a share of the company, allowing me to purchase shares of google at that point.  At that point, it typically becomes in the companies best interest to go public. See this article about Google approaching the 500 shareholder limit in 2003. Further, Sorkin is not quite correct that \"\"securities laws mandate that the company go public\"\" if by \"\"go public\"\" we mean list on a stock exchange, available for general purchase.   Securities laws mandate what has to be reported in financial reporting and when you have to report it. Securities laws also can dictate restrictions on ownership of stock and if a company can impose their own restrictions. A group of investors cannot force a company onto a stock exchange.   If shares of Facebook are already for sale to anyone, then having >500 shareholders will force Facebook to file more paperwork with the SEC, it won't force Facebook onto the NYSE or NASDAQ.   When that point is reached, it may be in Facebook's best interest to have an IPO, but they will not be required by law to do so. Update:  CNN article discusses likely Facebook IPO in 2012. When companies have more than 500   shareholders, they're required to make   significant financial disclosures --   though they can choose to remain   private and keep their stock from   trading publicly. However, most   companies facing mandatory disclosures   opt to go public. The Securities and Exchange Commission   gives businesses lots of time to   prepare for that milestone. Companies   have until 120 days after the end of   the fiscal year in which they cross   the 500-shareholder line to begin   making their disclosures. If Facebook   tips the scale this year, that gives   it until April 2012 to start filing   financial reports.\"", "Aditya City Residences is offering best apartments like 1, 2 and 3 BHK well located at NH – 24 Ghaziabad. That offers not costly flats only according to your budget and affordable for best deal call now @ 8800227454.", "\"I recommend avoiding trading directly in commodities futures and options.  If you're not prepared to learn a lot about how futures markets and trading works, it will be an experience fraught with pitfalls and lost money – and I am speaking from experience. Looking at stock-exchange listed products is a reasonable approach for an individual investor desiring added diversification for their portfolio.  Still, exercise caution and know what you're buying. It's easy to access many commodity-based exchange-traded funds (ETFs) on North American stock exchanges.  If you already have low-cost access to U.S. markets, consider this option – but be mindful of currency conversion costs, etc. Yet, there is also a European-based company, ETF Securities, headquartered in Jersey, Channel Islands, which offers many exchange-traded funds on European exchanges such as London and Frankfurt.  ETF Securities started in 2003 by first offering a gold commodity exchange-traded fund. I also found the following: London Stock Exchange: Frequently Asked Questions about ETCs.  The LSE ETC FAQ specifically mentions \"\"ETF Securities\"\" by name, and addresses questions such as how/where they are regulated, what happens to investments if \"\"ETF Securities\"\" were to go bankrupt, etc. I hope this helps, but please, do your own due diligence.\"", "\"In Europe in most of the countries there is also a thing called ACH. In UK there is a thing called BACS and in other countires there are other things. Essentially every country has what is called a \"\"Low value Net Settlement System\"\" that is used to transfer funds between accounts of different banks. In US there is rounting number, in UK there is a Sort Code, in Indonesia there is a sort code. Essentially a Bank Identifier that is issued by the Governing body within respective countires.   Certian identifiers like SWIFT BIC [Bank Identification Code] are Unique across world.\"", "\"&gt; She isn't asking for society to bear her burdens. She's asking for society to pay her a reasonable wage for her labor.  Asking society to implement a policy that will ultimately serve to harm more people*  &gt; So you read the article, but then chose to ignore all the arguments showing that this would not, in fact, ruin the economy?   Skimming through the article, I only saw one sentence that equated to \"\"no it wouldn't\"\". For the record, I would be  in favor of a scaled negative income tax.  &gt; Tell me - when drug companies hike the prices of essential medicine, do you also argue that it would \"\"ruin our economy\"\" or \"\"cause a lot more suffering\"\"? Or do you just shrug and go \"\"they're charging what the market will bear\"\"?  It would depend on the situation and why they were doing it, but generally speaking, I fucking hate the way that our drug industry is set up, for a whole host of reasons. I think it definitely harms more people than it helps.  &gt; Why is that for folks like you, it's always fine if companies raise prices; but if employees want a higher wage, it's an outrage?  Because you have created a group in your head that you are against, then you lump anyone that doesn't agree with you on other issues into that group without actually having a conversation to find out if they really do believe what you assume they believe. You know how conservatives will sometimes go, \"\"stupid liberals\"\"? Don't assume you're above making that same kind of generalization about other people. I understand why both sides do it, because it's entertaining to watch stupid people from the other side get interviewed and fail on issues that you agree with.\"", "\"To answer your question, specific to ATM usage: It is your money.  You can do with it as you wish, as long what you are doing with it is legal.  There is nothing illegal about taking money out of an ATM every day of the week. That said, there are some issues.  One you already mention being the typical daily limit of $300.  Another, is that these days most ATMs charge you for the transaction and many banks will also charge you for the transaction.  (That assumes that you are not using an ATM owned by your bank.)  These fees add up quite quickly.  Using the very typical $1.50/transaction (or $3/transaction total), you could make 8 transactions before the typical $25 wiring fee is more appropriate.  You should also not ignore the \"\"cost\"\" of the inconvenience of having to make so many transactions.  There is also the potential, however remote, that your bank may see it as suspicious activity and lead to the headaches you are trying to avoid by not wiring the money. If you don't have a checking account with that bank into which you could just transfer the money, online, by phone or whatever, I would simply jump through the required hoops.  Keep in mind that these hurdles are intended to protect your money.\"", "What beats me in all of this, is who's the stupid advertiser thinking annoying potential customer by interfering their content consumption will bring more business....The logic of the whole marketing decision making chain, ratified by higher echelons, totally escapes me."]}
+{"query": "total of all dividend payments for a particular company", "corpus": ["No - there are additional factors involved. Note that the shares on issue of a company can change for various reasons (such as conversion/redemption of convertible securities, vesting of restricted employee shares, conversion of employee options, employee stock purchase programs, share placements, buybacks, mergers, rights issues etc.) so it is always worthwhile checking SEC announcements for the company if you want an exact figure.  There may also be multiple classes of shares and preferred securities that have different levels of dividends present. For PFG, they filed a 10Q on 22 April 2015 and noted they had 294,385,885 shares outstanding of their common stock.  They also noted for the three months ended March 31 2014 that dividends were paid to both common stockholders and preferred stockholders and that there were Series A preferred stock (3 million) and Series B preferred stock (10 million), plus a statement: In February 2015, our Board of Directors authorized a share repurchase program of up to $150.0 million of our outstanding common stock. Shares repurchased under these programs are accounted for as treasury stock, carried at cost and reflected as a reduction to stockholders’ equity. Therefore the exact amount of dividend paid out will not be known until the next quarterly report which will state the exact amount of dividend paid out to common and preferred shareholders for the quarter."], "neg": ["Embrace the web.  Let folks search for info while they're in your store.  make the Salesmen do it.  give your customer all the info they need to pull the trigger and buy the product.  Just say we'll match Amazon or Newegg on this and the sale's a lock.", "Hedge fund idea: Cynic Capital   1. Create unclever, mostly-passive funds consisting of a sufficiently diverse array of holdings with historically* low volatility  2. Lever the shit out of it  3. Market it with excessive jargon to impress laymen   4. Attract investors with more money than sense  5. Make it up as you go along until you can hire actually smart, creative people down the road and pray that the market doesn't correct in the meantime  Yeah it's stupid but why wouldn't it work?    Furthermore, is this not basically what some hedge funds have done in the past?      ^(*past performance not guaranteeing future performance yada yada yada)", "In my graduate thesis I explored the liquidity changes in the bond markets. Part of my research led me to also identifying an opportunity for blockchain to play a role in measuring it, something mathematically impossible but increasingly necessary in fixed Income.  Definitely interested", "You missed the catch, there is always a catch, and in this case it is not well publicized.   First, some background. Congress (both parties) in 98 passed Graham-Leach-Bliley. It allowed commercial banks to invest, securitize, and insure securities. It also had privacy provisions, which prevented a securitizer of a mortgage from providing ANY personal information about the mortgage. That means that as Chase wrote these mortgage backed securities, they were forbidden, BY LAW, from telling the potential purchasers the addresses of the houses or SS#'s of the purchasers.   OF COURSE Chase did not choose to insure these MBS's themselves. Instead, they chose a third party like AIG because AIG could not know personal information about the mortgages, and was thus blinded to risk. AIG chose a middle of the road risk rating (something like 2% risk of default).   Chase FRAUDULENTLY represented the quality of the mortgages to the people writing the credit default swaps to insure them, and to the potential buyers. Chase KNEW the mortgages were crap.   Fraud is fraud and is illegal in security sales even after Graham-Leach-Bliley. However, to be clear, in this case there does not need to be any faking of paperwork. The loans can be passed along BLINDLY with insurance, as they were. If it could be documented that Chase misrepresented the quality of these AAA MBS's, they would be on the hook. But the catch is that Graham-Leach-Bliley offered them a cop-out.  AIG were the real dummies in all this. Who writes insurance without having a good idea of the risk....", "\"Assuming the numbers in your comments are accurate, you have $2400/month \"\"extra\"\" after paying your expenses.  I assume this includes loan payments. You said you have $3k in savings and a $2900 \"\"monthly nut\"\", so only one month of living expenses in savings. In my opinion, your first goal should be to put 100% of your extra money towards savings each month, until you have six months of living expenses saved.  That's $2,900 * 6 or $17,400.  Since you have $3K already that means you need $14,400 more, which is exactly six months @ $2,400/month. Next I would pay off your $4K for the bedroom furniture.  I don't know the terms you got, but usually if you are not completely paid off when it comes time to pay interest, the rate is very high and you have to pay interest not just going forward, but from the inception of the loan (YMMV--check your loan terms). You may want to look into consolidating your high interest loans into a single loan at a lower rate.  Barring that, I would put 100% of my extra monthly income toward your 10% loan until its paid off, and then your 9.25% loan until that's paid off.  I would not consider investing in any non-tax-advantaged vehicle until those two loans (at minimum) were paid off.  9.25% is a very good guaranteed return on your money. After that I would continue the strategy of aggressively paying the maximum per month toward your highest interest loans until they are all paid off (with the possible exception of the very low rate Sallie Mae loans).  However, I'm probably more conservative than your average investor, and I have a major aversion to paying interest.  :)\"", "\"Long here does not mean you wish for the underlying stock to increase in value, in fact, as the chart shows, just the opposite is true.  \"\"Long means you bought the derivative, and you own the option. The guy that sold it to you is at your mercy, he is short the put, and it's your decision to put the stock to him should it fall in value.  The value of the put itself rises with the falling stock price, you are long the put and want the put, itself, to rise in value.\"", "She walks backwards, making sure that the ground is clear. She tenses, bounces up and down to warm up and then, slowly at first, gathering steam, she begins to sprint. She's right on target, her leg goes back and now it's swinging forward, forward and *BOOM* it connects and the can goes flying down the road.  The world markets go wild for another 72 hours before pessimism returns!"]}
+{"query": "How to calculate how far a shorted stock's price can rise before broker issues a margin call?", "corpus": ["Most brokers have a margin maintenance requirement of 30%.  In your example, it would depend on how much money you're borrowing from your broker on margin. Consider this: You have $250, and short AAPL at $500 on margin. This would be a common scenario (federal law requires investors to have at least 50% of their margin equity when opening a transaction). If your broker had a requirement of 30%, they would require that for your $500 position, you have at least $500 * .3 = $150 equity. Since you are currently above that number at $250, you will not be hit with a margin call. Say the price of AAPL doubles, and now your position is worth $1000. $1000 * .3 = $300, which is $50 above your initial equity. Your broker will now consider you eligible for a margin call. Most will not execute the call right away, you will often have some time to either sell/cover stock or add funds to your account. But not all brokers will warn you if you are breaking margin requirements, and sometimes margin calls can take you by surprise if you are not paying attention. Also, many will charge interest on extra margin borrowed."], "neg": ["I've spent enough time researching this question where I feel  comfortable enough providing an answer.  I'll start with the high level fundamentals and work my way down to the specific question that I had. So point #5 is really the starting point for my answer. We want to find companies that are investing their money.  A good company should be reinvesting most of its excess assets so that it can make more money off of them. If a company has too much working capital, then it is not being efficiently reinvested.  That explains why excess working capital can have a negative impact on Return on Capital. But what about the fact that current liabilities in excess of current assets has a positive impact on the Return on Capital calculation?  That is a problem, period.  If current liabilities exceed current assets then the company may have a hard time meeting their short term financial obligations. This could mean borrowing more money, or it could mean something worse - like bankruptcy.  If the company borrows money, then it will have to repay it in the future at higher costs.  This approach could be fine if the company can invest money at a rate of return exceeding the cost of their debt, but to favor debt in the Return on Capital calculation is wrong. That scenario would skew the metric. The company has to overcome this debt. Anyways, this is my understanding, as the amateur investor. My credibility is not even comparable to Greenblatt's credibility, so I have no business calling any part of his calculation wrong. But, in defense of my explanation, Greenblatt doesn't get into these gritty details so I don't know that he allowed current liabilities in excess of current assets to have a positive impact on his Return on Capital calculation.", "AuDatingSites is the most secure online dating websites in the Australia. We take your privacy and safety extremely seriously. If you want to girls for sex and an extremely enjoyable experience for the both of you. You can register on our website online, We will provide you more contact for girls. A lot of time, the girl will put their own sexual needs to the back to ensure that us men are pleased.", "\"The math on this only works if the workers who are \"\"choosing no income at all\"\" are being paid by something else.  In first world countries, humans cannot live (eat food or sleep in a bed, etc) without some sort of money.  The only question is - what else is paying them?  Government programs, friends, family support?\"", "So basically india, but an asian versian.  The point was these places have entire under classes of their population that are allowed to literally die in the street.   I would say if that's your vision of a well run society you should move there.", "&gt; As you know, in 8 years Obama never achieved GDP over 3%.  I'm curious if you actually believe that or are you intentionally spreading falsehoods.  You might want to look at 2009 Q4, 2010 Q2, 2011 Q3, 2013 Q4, 2014 Q2, 2014 Q3, or 2015 Q1.", "Thanks for the feedback. What area of finance are you currently in?  I've heard that RMI jobs are in demand right now as well, and I feel like that coupled with a background in computer science could really help.", "\"We get HelloFresh and, for the most part, really like it. From opening the box to sitting down and eating, we spend about 35 minutes - typical dishes used are a couple pans and a cutting board.   To mix things up, we tried Blue Apron for a couple weeks.... hated it. Exactly as you say: \"\"15 minutes prep time\"\" was more like 40 minutes. The meals were just okay overall and the portions on average were smaller than HelloFresh.   HelloFresh has definitely had some misses.l, but we've enjoyed most of the meals.   Long term, we plan to still get a box 1-2x per month. We save all the recipe cards from meals we like and then buy twice the ingredients at the supermarket to remake them.\""]}
+{"query": "How is options implied volatility for a stock determined?", "corpus": ["\"There are a few different \"\"kinds\"\" of implied volatility. They are all based on the IVs obtained from the option pricing model you use. (1) Basically, given a few different values (current stock price, time until expiration, right of option, exercise style, strike of the option, interest rates, dividends, etc), you can obtain the IV for a given option price. If you look at the bid of an option, you can calculate the IV for that bid. If you look at the ask, there's a different IV for the ask. You can then look at the mid price, then you have a different IV, and so on and so on. And that's for each strike, in each expiration cycle! So you have a ton of different IVs. (2) In many option trading platforms, you'll see another kind of IV: the IV for each specific expiration cycle. That's calculated based on some of the IVs I mentioned on topic (1). Some kind of aggregation (more on this later). (3) Finally, people often talk about \"\"the IV of stock XYZ\"\". That's, again, an aggregation calculated from many of the IVs mentioned on topic (1). Now, your question seems to be: which IVs, from which options, from which months, with which weight, are part of the expiration cycle IV or for the IV of the stock itself? It really depends on the trading platform you are talking about. But very frequently, people will use a calculation similar to how the CBOE calculates the VIX. Basically, the VIX is just like the IV described on topic (3) above, but specifically for SPX, the S&P 500 index. The very detailed procedure and formulas to calculate the VIX (ie, IV of SPX) is described here: http://cfe.cboe.com/education/vixprimer/about.aspx If you apply the same (or a similar) methodology to other stocks, you'll get what you could call \"\"the IV of stock XYZ\"\".\""], "neg": ["I'm the equivalent of the FED at ROBLOX. I run a virtual economy there worth millions of dollars. Even though we are in the business of printing our own money, we've seen much more stability in our currency than in the USD. It actually appreciates over time. I don't think it would make a good investment though, nor would any of the online virtual currencies that I am aware of.", "I'm not incredibly savvy on the Indian market but I'm not sure if their electric grid is up to that from what I do know. Where as Diesel is insanely easy to transport...   Not sure if this is news or Politics speaking out of turn. Someone local would have to weigh in on that.", "True, not everyone becomes a debt-slave, especially if you choose your major wisely. I like it when people like you tell those debt-slave holders to put it in their pipe and smoke it!  Actually, they probably would, with a brandy.", "WilliamKF explained it pretty well, but I want to put it in a more simplistic form:", "\"@fredsbend, Hope this helps!  \"\"I understand that a reverse mortgage can be paid out in two ways: A lump sum and monthly payments. I figure that if you take the lump sum, eventually, the bank wants you to start paying it back.\"\" Answer:   Actually, there are 3 payout options, or 4 if you consider a combination payout as another one. There's a lump sum, a line of credit, or the monthly payout, or a combination.  \"\"I figure that if you take the monthly payments, eventually, the bank stops paying out and wants you to pay it back. In both situations, interest accrues and this is how the bank makes money off of the deal\"\".  Answer: The only time the monthly payments would stop would be if the borrower defaults on the lenders' terms or they no longer live at home. You are right though, and interest does accrue on whichever payment is decided on. I'm not sure how the lender makes money, probably by the interest, but I know borrowers are protected against high rates and owing more than your house. Here's an article I found that goes over the protections more in detail: https://www.americanadvisorsgroup.com/news/6-consumer-protections-reverse-mortgage-loan-borrowers.  \"\"But what determines when you have to begin paying back the reverse mortgage? Some sources online seem to say that it's based only on if you die or would like to sell/move. That can't be right in all situations, because you could end up with a massive debt on a property more than its value.\"\"  Answer: There are a lot of protections or regulations in place to protect anyone who takes out a reverse mortgage. One being, you can't owe MORE than your house is valued at during the time of repayment, a reverse mortgage is a non-recourse loan. In the instance that your house is less than you owe, you either sell the home and the proceeds are used to pay the loan and you keep the rest OR if you owe more than the house proceeds of the home go to the lender. Either way, you're not left paying for a \"\"mortgage\"\" without the house. In the case the parent, grandparent passes, then the heirs would have a choice of either paying back the reverse mortgage in payments, OR they can sell the house, heirs are protected during this as well to make sure they're not left with major debt in case of anything.  Is there a formula to figure out when the bank stops the monthly payments and then wants it back?  **Answer:**The amount becomes due if loan terms are not met, but the lender will discuss the options if it comes to that.  Is there a different formula for when the lump sum would have to be paid back?\"\"  Answer: Each payout option has the same terms and the same pay back terms. As long as terms are met, the lender can't ask for early repayment.\"", "MyDeals247 is the world’s first personalized eCommerce platform - post your request (on what you want) - it creates healthy competition among the local sellers and brings the top 5 lowest offers for the buyer request real-time - you can buy or sell any items in your local area - totally customised to your own personal needs.", "Because our entire economy is based on the stuff to keep going and every ounce has to be pulled out of the ground from somewhere.  Microsoft and Apple couldn't exist without oil to create the plastic and other components that go into computer hardware let alone getting employees to their campuses via car or bus."]}
+{"query": "What is the meaning of Equal Housing Lender? Do non-banks need to display it?", "corpus": ["At the top result of the Google search, on the Google results page it's sumarized as applicable to every lender participating in FDIC: The terms equal housing lender and equal opportunity lender are synonymous and refer to all banks insured by the Federal Deposit Insurance Corporation in the United States. Such banks are prohibited from discriminating on the basis of race, color, religion, national origin, sex, handicap, or familial status."], "neg": ["\"You get paid interest on deposits because banks only keep a fraction of the deposits on-hand. The rest is put to other uses, such as loaning money to others. If you deposit money and yield 1% interest, the bank is able to fund an auto loan, at 5%. By saving, you are actually making more capital available in the marketplace. \"\"Fixed\"\" or \"\"durable\"\" assets like gold, real property, or durable goods are different -- their value is based on attributes such as demand (gold, oil) or location (real property). If you bought an apartment in Manhattan in 1975, it appreciated greatly in value over the course of 30 years... but it did so because demand for apartments in New York City grew, while the supply of apartments grew more slowly. The government prints money for two core reasons: Think of it this way: Money is valuable because it is money.\"", "\"Barring unusual circumstances, a healthy adult is **absolutely** able to come off a domestic flight \"\"in a functional state\"\" and \"\"be operational at a high level.\"\"   EDIT: someone else pointed out the issue of in-flight productivity. If you're working on the plane (and the work is worth doing on the plane given the price of the upgrade), then it's a different situation.\"", "My experience (from European countries, but not Portugal specifically) is that it's better to change in the European country, as many banks will give you US $ as a matter of course, while in the US (insular place that it is), it can be rather difficult to find a place to exchange money outside an international airport.  In fact, I have a few hundred Euros left from my last trip, several years ago.  Expected to make another trip which didn't come off, and haven't found a place to exchange them. PS: Just for information's sake, at the time I was working in Europe, and found that by far the easiest way to transfer part of my salary back home was to get $100 bills from my European bank.  Another way was to withdraw money from an ATM, as the US & European banks were on the same network.  Unfortunately the IRS put a stop to that, though I don't know if it was all banks, or just the particular one I was using.  Might be worth checking, though.", "This isn't really the right sub, but check your Student's Union to see if they can give you any legal help or go to the Citizen's Advice Bureau. You need to get this cleared otherwise you may have problems getting lines in the future.", "\"Platinum use is pretty heavily overweight in industrial areas; according to the linked Wikipedia article, 239 tonnes of platinum was sold in 2006, of which 130 tonnes went to vehicles emissions control devices and another 13.3 tonnes to electronics. Gold sees substantial use as an investment as well as to hedge against economical decline and inflation, with comparatively little industrial (\"\"real world\"\", as some put it) use. That is their principal difference from an investment point of view. According to Wikipedia's article on platinum, ... during periods of economic uncertainty, the price of platinum tends to decrease due to reduced industrial demand, falling below the price of gold. Gold prices are more stable in slow economic times, as gold is considered a safe haven and gold demand is not driven by industrial uses. If your investment scenario is a tanking world economy, for reason of its large industrial usage, I for one would not count on platinum to not fall in price. Of course gold may fall in price as well, but since it is not primarily an industrial use commodity, I would personally expect gold to do better in such a scenario.\"", "A company like M. Davis &amp; Sons should be your best option. Even with other service provisions like rigging, steel fabrication in NJ and industrial maintenance, you can have a better package since they have skilled and seasoned inspectors and technicians.", "Everyone has a price. If nobody is selling shares, then increase the price you will buy them for. And then wait. Somebody will have some hospital bills to pay for eventually. I buy illiquid investments all the time, and thats typically what happens. Great companies do not have liquidity problems."]}
+{"query": "Germany Tax Question - Non-Resident and not employed in Germany", "corpus": ["No you won't. Germany taxes income, not bank accounts. Note that this changes immediately when your bank account makes interest - you will owe taxes on this interest. However, chances are you won't get a bank account. Without residency or income, typically the banks wouldn't give you an account. Feel free to try, though."], "neg": ["Shop for the quality always! Choose your favorite one football here and get it at your doorstep. No need to go market or any store, no need to be worry to find the unique and Best cheap soccer balls. All famous brands are available here at discounted price. Just choose and order your favorite brand with color option.", "Did a little bit of digging, and found this article, from Staples High School in Westport, Connecticut.  Hopefully this will be a growing trend.  They say: A personal financial management class will now be offered at the beginning of the upcoming school year (2011-2012). According to the course catalogue, the focus of this course will be using mathematics as a tool in developing financial literacy skills. Topics covered in the course will include: earnings, banking, credit cards, loans, taxes, insurance, investing, loans, budgeting, and buying personal property. “In a perfect world, everyone would be required to take a personal finance course,” Principal John Dodig said.", "Basically you have 4 options: Use your cash to pay off the student loans. Put your cash in an interest-bearing savings account. Invest your cash, for example in the stock market. Spend your cash on fun stuff you want right now. The more you can avoid #4 the better it will be for you in the long term. But you're apparently wise enough that that wasn't included as an option in your question. To decide between 1, 2, and 3, the key questions are:  What interest are you paying on the loan versus what return could you get on savings or investment?  How much risk are you willing to take? How much cash do you need to keep on hand for unexpected expenses? What are the tax implications? Basically, if you are paying 2% interest on a loan, and you can get 3% interest on a savings account, then it makes sense to put the cash in a savings account rather than pay off the loan. You'll make more on the interest from the savings account than you'll pay on interest on the loan. If the best return you can get on a savings account is less than 2%, then you are better off to pay off the loan. However, you probably want to keep some cash reserve in case your car breaks down or you have a sudden large medical bill, etc. How much cash you keep depends on your lifestyle and how much risk you are comfortable with. I don't know what country you live in. At least here in the U.S., a savings account is extremely safe: even the bank goes bankrupt your money should be insured. You can probably get a much better return on your money by investing in the stock market, but then your returns are not guaranteed. You may even lose money. Personally I don't have a savings account. I put all my savings into fairly safe stocks, because savings accounts around here tend to pay about 1%, which is hardly worth even bothering. You also should consider tax implications. If you're a new grad maybe your income is low enough that your tax rates are low and this is a minor factor. But if you are in, say, a 25% marginal tax bracket, then the effective interest rate on the student loan would be more like 1.5%. That is, if you pay $20 in interest, the government will then take 25% of that off your taxes, so it's the equivalent of paying $15 in interest. Similarly a place to put your money that gives non-taxable interest -- like municipal bonds -- gives a better real rate of return than something with the same nominal rate but where the interest is taxable.", "Perhaps it's best to balance out how it works out for all, especially the most vulnerable, before setting yourself for or against a policy such as this.   You are lucky that you don't have any pre-existing conditions, while others aren't. You earn enough that you are able to afford insurance, even if you're not happy with the fact that you have to pay for it.   But you are unlucky to be working for a company with short-sighted dickheads that look more at the immediate bottom line than they do at their employees. To be honest, if they are scrapping by so much that they need to move everyone to part time to avoid health insurance costs that they already had before, you'd better start looking for another job right away.", "I can give you some insight. You probably read some where that ceo thinks jpmchase as a tech company. Trust me he doesn't he was against cloud computing and is now against blockcain.  They are in business to make money simple as that, company's background is important just read glass door interview questions for your LOB", "You must understand that: So, if you -- the prospective buyer -- are in Waukegan, do you take the train all the way to New York City just to buy 100 shares of stock?  No.  That would be absurdly expensive.  So, you hire an agent in NYC who will broker a deal for you in the exchange. Fast forward 100 years, to the time when instant communications is available.  Why do we now still need brokerages, when the Exchanges could set up web sites and let you do the trading? The answer is that the Exchanges don't want to have to develop the accounting systems to manage the transactions of hundreds of thousands of small traders, when existing brokerage firms already have those computerized processes in place and are opening their own web sites. Thus, in 2017 we have brokerage firms because of history.", "The JPM note is more market related content anyway. The WF product is really solid. I get a ton of paid for macro research that's on par with the WF stuff. I like it because the WF work covers pretty much everything.  The other thing I would suggest is getting on the distribution list for ISM. Its easy, just send them an email. The contact info is on the bottom of their releases. There's probably a few more distribution lists you can get on. It is good to build up a good macro stream to your personal email address."]}
+{"query": "What is a good service that will allow me to practice options trading with a pretend-money account?", "corpus": ["Try wallstreetsurvivor.com It gives you $100k of pretend money when you sign up, using which you can take various courses on the website. It will teach you how to buy/sell stocks and build your portfolio. I am not sure if they do have Options Trading specifically, but their course line up is great!"], "neg": ["Be interesting to see how this falls in line with new rules on data protection in the EU (and probably more relevant, the UK as it's maintaining them after Brexit..).  Some of the data being held may well not be shareable without consent and if someone turns a spotlight on banks sharing data it could get quite ugly quite quickly.", "Well, define shitty.   The assumption of perfect competition should imply that only the firms that can manage to breakeven while still owing outstanding bonds will continue to issue bonds in the first place, as the competing monetary systems themselves will become a competitive market of their own.  Information on the specific bond you're using as a medium of exchange/legal tender should be easily be easy to find or public information.  If it's kind of bondnote has existed for five years with no substantial changes, my safe bet is on that bond being worth something.", "You do not need to have 'high net value', and yes, you can invest in it. Typically, fund companies require a minimum investment, that could be 100, it could be a 1000. 5000 should be enough for 99.9 % of all funds for an initial investment. What you need is an investment company that manages the account for you. I cannot name those for your country, but they should be easy to find (companies like IMG, and Fidelity might serve your country). You then open an account with the company of your choice, transfer the money, and tell them which fund it shall go in; all this is possible online. You can also go to see an agent in person, and he will fill the forms for you, and handle all the action, but he might take a fee for it.", "\"There are several types of financial advisors. Some are associated with brokerages and insurance companies and the like. Their services are often free. On the other hand, the advice they give you will generally be strongly biased toward their own company's products, and may be biased toward their own profits rather than your gains. (Remember, anything free is being paid for by someone, and if you don't know who it's generally going to be you.) There are some who are good, but I couldn't give you any advice on finding them. Others are not associated with any of the above, and serve entirely as experts who can suggest ways of distributing your money based on your own needs versus resources versus risk-tolerance, without any affiliation to any particular company.  Consulting these folks does cost you (or, if it's offered as a benefit, your employer) some money, but their fiduciary responsibility is clearly to you rather than to someone else. They aren't likely to suggest you try anything very sexy, but when it comes to your primary long-term savings \"\"exciting\"\" is usually not a good thing. The folks I spoke to were of the latter type. They looked at my savings and my plans, talked to me about my risk tolerance and my goals, picked a fairly \"\"standard\"\" strategy from their files, ran simulations against it to sanity-check it, and gave me a suggested mix of low-overhead index fund types that takes almost zero effort to maintain (rebalance occasionally between funds), has acceptable levels of risk, and (I admit I've been lucky) has been delivering more than acceptable returns. Nothing exciting, but even though I'm relatively risk-tolerant I'd say excitement is the last thing I need in my long-term savings. I should actually talk to them again some time soon to sanity-check a few things; they can also offer advice on other financial decisions (whether/when I might want to talk to charities about gift annuity plans, whether Roth versus traditional 401(k) makes any difference at all at this point in my career, and so on).\"", "My statement doesn't need a source.  CEOs are literally people that are in charge of entire companies.  Not everyone can do that.   You, on the other hand, provided a statement with out any information to back it up.  When you try to refute an argument with facts you need to give a source.  I'm not going to try to prove you're right.  If you're going to contradict someone, give them sources.", "It appears all you have to do is submit a form. It might be better if she submitted it herself instead of you doing it on her behalf.  All natural persons (individuals) and non-natural persons (businesses)   are entitled to access and inspect the data held on record about them   in the Central Credit Information System (KHR).", "If you have $10000 and wish to buy 1000 shares of a $10 stock, you risk borrowing on margin if you go over a bit. For some people, that's a non-issue. Some folk with an account worth say, $250K don't mind going over now and then or even let the margin account run $100K on a regular basis.  But your question is about market orders. A limit order above the market price will fast-fill at the market anyway. When I buy a stock, it's longer term usually. A dime on a $30 share price won't affect my buy decision, so market is ok for me."]}
+{"query": "Are banks really making less profit when interest rates are low?", "corpus": ["profit has nothing to do with the level of interest rates. Is this correct? In theory, yes. The difference that you're getting at is called net interest margin. As long as this stays constant, so does the bank's profit. According to this article: As long as the interest rate charged on loans doesn't decline faster than the interest rate received on deposit accounts, banks can continue to operate normally or even reduce their bad loan exposure by offering lower lending rates to already-proven borrowers. So banks may be able to acquire the same net interest margin with lower risk. However the article also mentions new research from a federal agency: Their findings show that net interest margins (NIMs) get worse during low-rate environments, defined as any time when a country's three-month sovereign bond yield is less than 1.25%. So in theory banks should remain profitable when interest rates are low, but this may not actually be the case."], "neg": ["The main reason for paying your mortgage off quickly is to reduce risk should a crisis happen.  If you don't have a house payment, you have much higher cash flow every month, and your day-to-day living expenses are much lower, so if an illness or job loss happens, you'll be in a much better position to handle it. You should have a good emergency fund in place before throwing extra money at the mortgage so that you can cover the bigger surprises that come along. There is the argument that paying off your mortgage ties up cash that could be used for other things, but you need to be honest with yourself: would you really invest that money at a high enough rate of return to make up your mortgage interest rate after taxes?  Or would you spend it on other things?  If you do invest it, how certain are you of that rate of return?  Paying off the mortgage saves you your mortgage interest rate guaranteed. Finally, there is the more intangible aspect of what it feels like to be completely debt free with no payments whatsoever.  That feeling can be a game-changer for people, and it can free you up to do things that you could never do when you're saddled with a mortgage payment every month.", "If you've been paying on the car for three years, it's possible that your credit is in a place where you don't need a co-signer any more. See if your bank will re-fi with you as the sole debtor.  If they won't do it, find another institution who will.  The re-fi will take your grandpa off the loan, and whichever institution that does the re-fi will still have a lien on the title until you pay it off.  Then, if you can do this soon enough, figure out if grandpa can sign you off the title.", "&gt;This problem could be fixed by having fewer MBAs leading companies, and more engineers and scientists.  This is funny. There's only 1 MBA on that list, but he also attended the School of Engineering at Duke University", "It is worth checking currency types you have authorised on your account, and that the payment that your client sent is in one of those currencies. Paypal will not always move or convert between currencies, and I have seen payments held for authorisation where simply enabling the paid currency at the receiving end would allow the transfer.", "The gift card for specific stores has no fee. In our budget of nearly $500/mo for supermarket, it would be easy to just buy 10 x $500 cards, and then be careful with them.  A look at your past 12 mo of spending should provide a hint what GCs might work for you.  Else, for a $4.95 fee, I've bought $500 generic Visa cash cards. When my new credit card offered a 10% cash bonus for spending, I spent. Took us nearly 18 months to burn thru 500 cards. But a net $4500 gain was sweet.  Update - the cash card racks all appear to have a sign that these cards may no longer be bought with a credit card.", "Joyce Meyer ministries in St. Louis hires lots of developers. You need to be an active member of a Christian denomination. And they check. And prayer meetings are required. At least that's what the recruiter told me. I turned down the opportunity to interview.", "Nice work saving. If you do find yourself in a relationship or with children, you'll be glad you saved now; family members increase the expenses ;-) Some observations large and small, no conclusions, I bet it would be awesome to do the world travel and the startup, and get a ton out of those. The money you've saved gives you the freedom to do all that great stuff that matters."]}
+{"query": "Is it better to buy U.S ADRs or stock in native stock exchange for a foreigner?", "corpus": ["It depends. An ADR might be exposed to a larger market (let's say American) with more volume and thus lower spreads, and thus cheaper. But it can also be the other way around, that the ADR serves a smaller market than the home market. I would go for the largest market, with the most volume so it's quicker and cheaper to buy/sell. Often ADR has less shares, meaning that the availability is lower and the prices higher (more expensive). This is often the case with Asian stocks where governments try to limit their company's exposure to foreigners. As a general rule I would buy the 'home' stock instead of ADR. From a tax standpoint it's also easier to comply with local laws. Your local accountant will be more familiar dealing with local stocks."], "neg": ["AMD is doing more than just laying off staff. Their earnings report also includes sales of real estate and other turn around strategies that could be reflected in the stock coming up on hope from investors. At the same time, consider how much of an up is a definite sign of positive news and how much may just be random noise as even a broken clock will be right twice a day. Often there will be more than just an announcement of x% of staff being laid off. There will be plans to improve future profits and this is what shareholders would want to know. What is the management doing to move the company forward to better profits down the road.", "My take is there's room for a lot of models on the Internet, just as there is room for nonprofits, for-profit businesses and other types of organizations in the brick and mortar world. The Internet is a flexible medium that can be used a number of ways. The best part of it to me is that people vote by their actions --- if I hate ad-supported sites, I can ignore them. If I'm willing to pay for, say, news, I can do that, too.", "**Mercantilism**  Mercantilism was a type of national economic policy designed to maximize the trade of a nation and especially to maximize the accumulation of gold and silver. It was dominant in modernized parts of Europe from the 16th to the 18th centuries. It promoted governmental regulation of a nation's economy for the purpose of augmenting state power at the expense of rival national powers. With the establishment of overseas colonies by northern European powers early in the 17th century, mercantile theory gained a new and wider significance, in which its aim and ideal became both national and imperialistic.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&amp;message=Excludeme&amp;subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.24", "Regardless of whether a stock is owned by a retail investor or an institutional investor, it is subject to the same rules.  For example, say that as part of the buyout, 1 share of Company B is equivalent to 0.75 shares of Company A and any fractional shares will be paid out in cash.  This rule will apply to both the retail investor who holds 500 shares of Company B, as well as the asset manager or hedge fund holding 5,000,000 shares of Company B.", "I'm not begrudging anyone for abiding by the law and minimizing their tax burden.  To do otherwise would amount to writing a check to the government, which is an asinine thing to do if you're concerned with actually changing the system.  You can speculate on his motivations, but he's gone out of his way to make his thoughts on the subject known, I have no reason to doubt the earnestness of his arguments.  Regardless, it's an impossible task to locate such an argument in a specific physical brain, all we need to do is show that such a thought process is theoretically sound in order to throw that premise into serious question.  &gt; Pray tell, what angel do you trust to make the decision of whether and to what extent systemic risk is introduced?  I'm skeptical that such an angel (or some distributed process accomplishing the same goal) exists.  But if the actuaries can't figure out a way to do it, then wouldn't that be cause to reevaluate the blind faith many people place in markets?", "\"&gt; the economy has experienced a huge expansion    what is \"\"the economy\"\"?  share values have been expanding for the last 8 years.  too bad wages haven't expanded at all. even after trump.  the rich get richer .. and everybody else can go fuck themselves.\"", "In store pickup at Walmart is atrocious. I've tried it. And, you still have to go to Walmart. Amazon draws the yuppie types who not only like saving money, but also don't have the time to deal with going to stores and sure as hell don't want to go to Walmart of all places."]}
+{"query": "How to calculate P/E ratio for S&P500 sectors", "corpus": ["\"To calculate a sector (or index) P/E ratio you need to sum the market caps of the constituent stocks and divide it by the sum of the total earnings of the constituent stocks (including stocks that have negative earnings).  There are no \"\"per share\"\" figures used in the calculation. Beware when you include an individual stock that there may be multiple issues associated with the company that are not in the index.... eg. Berkshire Hathaway BRK.B is in the S&P 500 but BRK.A is not.  In contrast, Google has both GOOGL and GOOG included in the S&P 500 index but not its unlisted Class B shares.  All such shares need to be included in the market cap and figuring out the different share class ratios can be tricky.\""], "neg": ["\"significant moral hazard is something to consider. If you want to help someone, give them a gift, make sure everyone knows that it is a gift with no strings attached, and move on. That's charity and it's a great thing. If a medical emergency pops up and he's poor the government already provides the safety net we're all paying for. of course setting something like you suggest up creates expectations. That's why welfare programs are universally detrimental to the individual. \"\"Why work when someone else is going to give me money every month?\"\" That's basic human nature.\"", "Don't worry about your Smith &amp; Wesson shares.  Sooner or later, some nut will shoot up a gun-free zone, then everyone will run off to by guns &amp; ammo before the government comes to take them all.  It's gotten sadly predictable.", "So no single bank is willing to underwrite the whole issuance, and the amount each wants is only roughly a sixth of the total each? Or did Greece limit the amount of the issuance that could be underwritten by one bidder? Just trying to understand.", "\"But you're forgetting that the problem under discussion here is that the owners who set the wages tend to prefer higher profits over \"\"best employees, they are happier, lower turn over\"\". In a lot of industries that employ a lot of people, a marginal increase in productivity isn't going to overcome the increase in wages required to create it.\"", "While the article correctly points out that 90% is done in store, I would be more interested to see how this breaks down by category. Things like groceries and clothing are notoriously difficult to showcase and browse online.   If I had a guess there are wild swings in % share for things like electronics.", "I understand what you're saying, but to me the circumstances are different. No scientist was or is predicting overnight calamity due to climate change. Predictions are for long-term change.   Various economics 'experts' on reddit, however, have been predicting imminent collapse for a long time. Krugman is also not saying to run a deficit forever; he follow Keynes, who said spend when times are tough and save when times are good.", "Ignoring brokerage fees and the wash-sale rule (both of which are hazardous to your health), and since the 15% LTCG tax is only on the gain, the stock would have to drop 15% of the gain in price since you originally purchased it."]}
+{"query": "Investing in a growth stock periodically", "corpus": ["I would encourage you to read The Warren Buffett Way.  Its a short read and available from most libraries as an audio book.  It should address most of the ignorance that your post displays.   Short term prices, offered in the market, do not necessarily reflect the future value of a company.  In the short term the market is a popularity contest, in the long run prices increases based on the performance of the company.  How much free cash flow (and related metrics) does the company generate.  You seem way overly concerned with short term price fluctuations and as such you are more speculating. Expecting a 10 bagger in 2-3 years is unrealistic.  Has it happened, sure, but it is a rare thing.  Most would be happy to have a 2 bagger in that time frame. If I was in your shoes I'd buy the stock, and watch it.  Provided management meet my expectations and made good business decisions I would hold it and add to my position as I was able and the market was willing to sell me the company at a good price.   It is good to look at index funds as a diversification.   Assuming everything goes perfectly, in 2-3 years, you would have an extra 1K dollars.  Big deal.  How much money could you earn during that time period?  Simply by working at a fairly humble job you should be able to earn between 60K and 90K during that time.  If you stuck 10% of that income into a savings account you would be far better off (6K to 9K) then if this stock actually does double.  Hopefully that gets you thinking. Staring out is about earning and saving/investing.  Start building funds that can compound.  Very early on, the rate of return (provided it is not negative) is very unimportant.  The key is to get money to compound!"], "neg": ["\"If he's not used to cooking, recipes might not be enough. Maybe he needs cooking lessons. I used to think if you could read, you could cook -- but I grew up \"\"helping\"\" my mom in the kitchen and in the process learning what all the instructions in cookbooks meant. But it also might just be force of habit, in which case about all you could do would be to go over and cook for (or with) him. Maybe if you helped him get into a good habit, he would be more likely to continue with it. Otherwise, I don't see that there's much of anything you can do. If he isn't motivated to change his habits to save for his trip, you can't make him be.\"", "I would like to post a followup after almost a quarter. littleadv's advice was very good, and in retrospect exactly what I should have done to begin with. Qualifying for a secured credit card is no issue for people with blank credit history, or perhaps for anyone without any negative entries in their credit history. Perhaps, cash secured loans are only useful for those who really have so bad a credit history that they do not qualify for any other secured credit, but I am not sure. Right now, I have four cash secured credit cards and planning to maintain a 20% utilization ratio across all of them. Perhaps I should update this answer in 1.5 years!", "Are you serious?   Voting for more social services for poor people hurts those with money by either raising their tax burden and/or reducing government expenditures that would have otherwise directly benefited them.   By giving blacks the vote, the white population's votes by definition carry less weight. Thus they've hurt their own ability to influence government.  I hope you can see the list goes on.", "\"Yes, and the reason for that is because things that are above the market (eg regulators, politicians et al) manipulate it constantly.  I think personally the market is still a price discovery mechanism, the rules of the game have just changed. I.e. risk now has taken on additional dimensions, so a lot of conventional theories of asset pricing can effectively be chucked out the window.   Whether we ever see the return to a more \"\"econ\"\"-driven reality in market expectations (and by that extent therefore asset pricing) is anyone's guess, for now bye-bye to the established light-touch framework of decades past, hello to interventionist randomness.\"", "The Vanguard Emerging Market Bond Index has a SEC yield of 4.62%, an expense ratio of 0.34%, a purchase fee of 0.75%, and an average duration of 6.7 years.  The Vanguard Emerging Market Bond Index only invests in US Dollar denominated securities, so it is not exposed to currency risk.  The US Intermediate Term Bond Index Fund has a SEC yield of 2.59%, an expense ratio of 0.1% and an average duration of 6.5 years.  So after expenses, the emerging market bond fund gives you 1.04% of extra yield (more in subsequent years as the purchase fee is only paid once).   Here are the results of a study by Vanguard: Based on our findings, we believe that most investors should consider   adding [currency risked] hedged foreign bonds to their existing diversified portfolios. I think a globally diversified bond portfolio results in a portfolio that's more diversified.", "Not just that.   I occasionally drive through a rough part of town and see the dumbest people just walking in the street.   There is a sidewalk,  but let's walk in the busy road instead.   I'm going to get video of it,  it's insane.   Nobody uses the cross walk,  just dart out in traffic.   This has convinced me that there may be a significant correlation between intelligence and socioeconomic classes.  It's not education,  it's common sense shit they seem to be lacking.     It's really bad in the area I'm talking about.   There are sidewalks and cross walks and they are both blatantly ignored by way too many people in the neighborhood I am speaking of.   You have to see it to believe it,  people are dangerously retarded.   In order to not walk 20 feet further to get to a crosswalk and to a bus stop,  many people just opt to step out into traffic.   I came to this thread just because this is something me and my gf discuss each time we are in this section of town. It's like watching a live version of *Frogger* every 100 yards.", "No, you can not claim any sort of tax benefit. The main problem is that your parent is not living with you, though even if they were, they would also have to be dependent on you. I cannot find a good definition of 'dependant', but from what I can find, they must have only a trivial amount of income and must rely on you for at least 50% of their living expenses. Useful links include: Note that your parent may (but probably won't) be required to pay taxes on the money you submit to them. I have no experience whatsoever with Indian tax law, just pointing this out as a possibility."]}
+{"query": "Did my salesman damage my credit? What can I do?", "corpus": ["This shows the impact of the inquiries. It's from Credit Karma, and reflects my inquiries over the past two years. In my case, I refinanced 2 properties and the hit is after this fact, so my score at 766 is lower than when approved. You can go to Credit Karma and see how your score was impacted. If in fact the first inquiry did this, you have cause for action. In court, you get more attention by having sufficient specific data to support your claim, including your exact damages."], "neg": ["If you enjoy driving 5 minutes out of the way to get gas (or mowing the lawn or whatever), then it is perfectly rational to do it.  If not, the value of your time is how much you would value (not necessarily how much you would get paid) doing something else. MrChrister is right, the concept behind the comic is opportunity cost.  In a nutshell, if driving an extra 5 minutes for gas is complete drudgery to you and you would only do it to save money, may as well get a part-time job at minimum wage instead.  If you would rather, say, go watch TV instead of getting that part-time job, then you value TV-watching at greater than the minimum wage, and it is still irrational to drive 5 minutes for the gas. Basically, the answer to your question is to figure out what else you could be doing that offers similar overall pleasure/pain to the task at hand and see how much you would get paid to do that instead.  It doesn't matter that you are on a fixed salary.", "A lender will look at three things when giving a loan: Income. Do you make enough money each month to afford the payments. They will subtract from your income any other loans, credit card debt, student loan debt, mortgage. They will also figure in your housing costs. Your Collateral. For a mortgage the collateral is the house, for a car loan it is the car. They will only give you a loan to a specific percentage of the value of the collateral. Your money in the bank isn't collateral, but it can serve as a down payment on the loan.  Your Credit score. This is a measure of how well you handle credit. The longer the history the better. Using credit wisely is better than not using the credit you have.  If you don't have a credit card, get one. Start with your current bank. You have a history with them. If they won't help you join a credit union. Another source of car loans is the auto dealer. Though their rates can be high. Make sure that the purchase price doesn't require a monthly payment too high for your income. Good rules of thumb for monthly payments are 25% for housing and 10% for all other loans combined. Even a person with perfect credit can't get a loan for more than the bank thinks they can afford. Note: Don't drain all your savings, you will need it to pay for the unexpected expenses in life. You might think you have enough cash to pay off the student loan or to make a big down payment, but you don't want to stretch yourself too thin.", "Nowsoft understands that eLearning is much more than designing a website, creating the course and delivering a Learning Management System. They first understand the need and scope of each business, identify their problem and then create a blueprint on the initial scope of the project. Then the options are evaluated and sorted out to reach the final stage of implementation. For more detail visit: http://masalamasti.informe.com/profile2648.html", "\"Assuming a price is set on an free market there are particular difficulties to pricing. A free market is one where the price is entirely determined by the willingness of people to buy and sell at a particular price point. What you perceive as price, is actually the \"\"tick\"\", i.e. the quote of the last transaction. The first and most serious major obstacle to pricing is a variation of the prisoners dilemma, a psychological phenomenon. For instance, bitcoin might be worth 4$ now, but you believe it will be worth 5$ in 3 days. Will you buy bitcoin? If acting only on your conviction, yes. But what if you consider what other people will do? Will others believe bitcoin will be worth 5$ in 3 days? Will they act on their conviction? Will the others believe that others believe that it wil be worth 5$ in 3 days, and will the others believe that the others who believe will act on their conviction? Will the others believe that others believe of still others who believe that they will act on their conviction? It goes on like this ad-infinitum. The actual behavior of any individual on the market is essentially chaotic and unpredictable (for the reason stated above and others). This is related to a phenomenon you call market efficiency. An efficient market always reflects the optimal price-point at any given time. If that is so, then you cannot win on this market, because at the time you would have to realize a competitive edge, everybody else has already acted on that information. Markets are not 100% efficient of course. But modern electronic markets can be very, very efficient (as say compared to stock markets fro 100 years ago, where you could get a competitive edge just by having access to a fast courier). What makes matters rather more difficult for price forecasting is that not only are humans engaging in the market, machines are as well. The machines may not be terribly good at what they do, but they are terribly fast. The machines that work well (i.e. don't loose much) will survive, and the ones that don't will die in short order. Since speed is one of the major benefits of the machines over humans, they tend to make markets even more efficient. Another phenomenon to price forecasting is that of information and entropy. Suppose you found a reliable method to predict a market at a given time. You act on this information and indeed you make a profit. The profit you will be able to achieve will diminish over time until it reaches zero or reverts. The reason for this is that you acted on private information, which you leaked out by engaging in a trade. The more successful you are in exploiting your forecast, the better you train every other market participant to react to their losses. Since for every trade you make successfully, there has to be somebody who lost. People or machines who lose on markets usually exit those markets in some fashion. So even if the other participants are not adjusting their behavior, your success is weeding out those with the wrong behavior. Yet another difficulty in pricing forecasts are black-swan events. Since information can have a huge impact on pricing, the sudden appearance of new information can throw a conservative forecast completely off the rails and incur huge losses (or huge unexpected benefits). You cannot quantify black-swan events in any shape or form. It is my belief that you cannot predict efficient and well working markets. You might be able to predict some very sub-optimal markets, but usually, hedge-funds are always on the hunt for inefficient markets to exploit, so by simple decree of market economics, the inefficient markets tend to be a perpetually dying species.\"", "\"&gt;It's the lion's share of the annual expenditures in the health sector and up there  Dude - no. Healthcare is [almost 4 trillion dollars a year](https://www.forbes.com/sites/danmunro/2014/02/02/annual-u-s-healthcare-spending-hits-3-8-trillion/#1ec0a80276a9) in the US. None of the links you posted show that the majority of that cost is due to regulation. Even if we *did* spend billions and billions on drug research - that's still a minor piece of the whole pie.  &gt;If you don't have a problem with it then contribute the share of your income you see fit voluntarily. But who entitled you to decide for others that they have to do the same  I advocate UH because it would save us money. *All of us*. Even folks like you who don't envision being old or sick. Even rich people who are able to pay ridiculously high premiums without feeling it. Because it brings the total cost of healthcare down as a segment of the economy. Care for which we currently pay [twice as much as other developed nations](http://www.commonwealthfund.org/publications/issue-briefs/2015/oct/us-health-care-from-a-global-perspective). This isn't about handouts. This is about saving American money *and* doing the right thing.   &gt;But I'd prefer the US to cut subsidies to 0, replace them with nothing and finally lower taxes. Which will eventually leave a lot more people with enough money to easily get private insurance. Just without the administrative effort and without forcing people to partake.  A simple example to show why this is purely wishful thinking. In the US - a heart stint (which is a big deal when you need one) is 50K. In the UK - it's 17K. In Spain - it's 12K. The median savings for American families is 5K. That means prices in the US need to come down 90% in order for people to be able to afford life saving surgeries.   Do you really, honestly, believe that cutting taxes and allowing mom and pop surgery centers or correspondence course MD schools will bring prices down that much? If so, do you *really* think we'll have favorable health outcomes that way?   Because remember - money isn't the only objective here. Healthy Americans is the desired outcome of this process.   &gt;exploiting a minority against their will is the right thing to do.  The world is more nuanced than that. And this is in general why I think the left tends to look down on the right alot. Very black and white. Very is or isn't. No reasonable person thinks that asking the wealthy or businesses to help pay to *maintain the house they live in with us* is the same thing as slavery or even \"\"exploitation\"\".   And do you really think they're paying their fair share now? Romney paid 15% in taxes man. Trump, likely, hasn't paid taxes in years. Apple paid 0%. The list goes on and on. They've built a tax system so complex that *the only people paying* are you and me. And they're so slick with this shit that people like you come out here and defend them while they fuck the both of us. Shit blows my mind.   &gt;You can try to seek refuge behind sources, but you can't refute the moral argument with those.  I've sourced every argument I've made clearly. That's not seeking refuge that's having an informed opinion.   For the latter, you claim taxation is theft.   If that's the case, then I claim it's OK to steal to heal sick people.\"", "If you have no need for the money. Donate it. Spend the next few years determining what charities make sense and then when the wills are settled, then make those donations. You should get advice how how to best do that, there can be some limitations and complications. Sometimes the source of the money/property makes it more complicated. The form of the inheritance can also make a difference.  You could even setup a charitable trust to spread the donations out over year or decade. You could even make it so that you can live off the interest until you die, and then the rest goes to the charity. Note: just because they have no other children, there is no guarantee that you will receive the money/property. They, at any time, could write a will and cut you out of some, most , or all of the wealth.", "\"According to page 56 of the 2015 IRS Publication 550 on Investment Income and Expenses: Wash sales. Your holding period for substantially identical stock or securities you acquire in a wash sale includes the period you held the old stock or securities. It looks like the rule applies to stocks and other securities, including options. It seems like the key is \"\"substantially identical\"\". For your brokerage / trading platform to handle these periods correctly for reporting to IRS, it seems best to trade the same security instead of trying to use something substantially identical.\""]}
+{"query": "Are stock investments less favorable for the smaller investor?", "corpus": ["You have got it wrong. The profit or loss for smaller investor or big investor is same in percentage terms."], "neg": ["hello pointbox,  i enjoy getting in front of someone that does know what they are talking about, so i have a question for you...  could you give to us a textbook example of what a high frequency trade looks like?", "If Trump does well, which I am 90% sure he will, then I will vote for him again.  Unless (!!!!), the DNC fight and fix the corruption in it and a descent Democratic candidate is chosen. I give less than 10% chance for this to happen (DNC fixing itself).   Hence, even if the DNC fix itself and we have a candidate like Kamala Harris (crazy far-left), I will not vote Democrats.  **I would have voted for Democrat O'Mally in the last elections if was nominated. But Hillary rigged it against him and Bernie.**", "\"In the US there is only one stock market (ignoring penny stocks) and handfuls of different exchanges behind it.  NYSE and NASDAQ are two different exchanges, but all the products you can buy on one can also be bought on the other; i.e. they are all the same market.  So a US equities broker cannot possibly restrict access to any \"\"markets\"\" in the US because there is only one. (Interestingly, it is commonplace for US equity brokers to cheat their customers by using only exchanges where they -- the brokers -- get the best deals, even if it means your order is not executed as quickly or cheaply as possible.  This is called payment for order flow and unfortunately will probably take an Act of Congress to stop.) Some very large brokers will have trading access to popular equity markets in other countries (Toronto Stock Exchange, Mexico Stock Exchange, London Stock Exchange) and can support your trades there.  However, at many brokers or in less popular foreign markets this is usually not the case; to trade in the average foreign country you typically must open an account with a broker in that country.\"", "A rule of thumb I like to follow when purchasing things from CL listed well below value is this.. Assess the level of affluence of the seller. People living in poor neighborhoods are much more likely to try and hide things that would deter buyers as they are more likely to need the money. I find that when I go to a big house with 4 cars in the driveway the seller is more likely to be honest because she likely doesn't need the money from the sale.  Edit: I seem to have angered the PC police with this answer. This is based on facts and statistics, not my opinion. I have no bias against poor people.", "haha ya, were a pretty great country. Our cell phone bills are ridiculous though. Highest in the world in fact, not to mention the province I am from, we're the highest in the country. So i pretty much pay more for my cell phone than anyone in the world!", "She should call 211. This is exactly how they help. The 2-1-1 service is run by the United Way, a nonprofit organization. The 2-1-1 service strives to be a clearinghouse for services within a local area.", "Over the last 100 years this has happened twice. It cant be considered an outlier. Especially considering the misery is far from over, euro crisis, looming pension crisis, food crisis, etc. There are a lot of things far from resolved. An event that happens once every 50 years is hardly an outlier just unlikely."]}
+{"query": "Is there a way to tell how many stocks have been shorted?", "corpus": ["Generally the number of shares of a U.S. exchange-listed stock which have been shorted are tracked by the exchange and reported monthly.  This number is usually known as the open short interest.  You may also see a short interest ratio, which is the short interest divided by the average daily volume for the stock. The short interest is available on some general stock data sites, such as Yahoo Finance (under Key Statistics) and dailyfinance.com (also on a Key Statistics subpage for the stock)."], "neg": ["If it turns out that you do want to help pay the tax bill (after answering all the questions above), I say cash out those funds. You are apparently very young with a long work life ahead (lucky you). Step aside from the actual money part of it for a moment. What does your Mom want? What do you really want to do about this? Is it from love that you want to help but are afraid it's a bad financial decision? Or is it from a feeling of duty and you deep down don't really want to spend your savings on Mom's tax bill. - If you really do want to help and you have the wherewithall to do so, then do it. Otherwise don't. You can recover financially. - I myself have had my retirement savings go to nearly zero 3 times. The first time I recovered pretty easily. The second time, not so easily. I'm just starting on the recovery path for the 3rd time at age 58 and I highly doubt I ever will recover this time. I didn't cash out on purpose but the stock market was not friendly. - My main point is to figure out truly what you want.", "\"I've never heard of a loan product like that. Yes, if they keep the funds in an account, it is no risk to the bank, but they would essentially need to go through the loan process twice for the same loan: when you pick a house, they need to reevaluate everything, along with appraising and approving the house.  Even if you did find a bank that would do this for you, there are a few problems with this scheme. You would be paying interest before you have a need for this money, negating the savings you might achieve if the interest rates go up. In addition, your \"\"balance\"\" will go down as \"\"payments\"\" are deducted from your loan, and when you finally find a home to buy, you might not have enough for the house you want. You'll need to borrow more than you need, which will further negate any possible savings.  It is impossible to know how fast rates will climb. If I were you, I would stick to saving for your down payment, and just get the best rate you can when you are ready to buy.  Another potential idea for you is to lock an interest rate. When you apply for a mortgage, the interest rate is often locked for as much as 60 days, to protect the borrower in the event that the rates go up. You could ask the bank if you can pay a fee to lock the rate even longer. I don't know if that is possible or not. And, of course, the fee would eat into your potential savings.\"", "There are a few things you should keep in mind when getting another vehicle: DON'T use dealership financing. Get an idea of the price range you're looking for, and go to your local bank or find a local credit union and get a pre-approval for a loan amount (that will also let you know what kind of interest rates you'll get). Your credit score is high enough that you shouldn't have any problems securing a decent APR. Check your financing institution's rules on financing beyond the vehicle's value. The CU that refinanced my car noted that between 100% and 120% of the vehicle's value means an additional 2% APR for the life of the loan. Value between 120% and 130% incurred an additional 3% APR. Your goal here is to have the total amount of the loan less than or equal to the value of the car through the sale / trade-in of your current vehicle, and paying off whatever's left out of pocket (either as a down-payment, or simply paying off the existing loan).  If you can't manage that, then you're looking at immediately being upside-down on the new vehicle, with a potential APR penalty.", "You don't need to recharacterize. If you are married and your spouse is covered under a work retirement plan and you are not  the AGI limit in 2013 for folks that are married and filing jointly is $178,000 before the phase out begins. That was raised to $181,000 for 2014. A quick call to the broker/bank where your IRA is should confirm this.", "We are sure that you want to know how much you will earn daily. Mostly it depends on your citizenship. US, UK and Canada members can earn about 50-60$ daily just for participating in surveys and offers. Representatives of other countries up to 5-7$, if they want to increase income it highly recommended to them mostly pay attention to passive income opportunities - our referral program. I like Cashle a lot better because you can get paid right away and the offers usually approve within the first day you complete them. Minimum for pay out is 1$ (!).", "Algorithmic trading essentially banks on the fact that a price will fluctuate in tiny amounts over short periods of time, meaning the volatility is high in that given time frame. As the time frame increases the efficiency of algorithmic trading decreases and proper investment strategies such as due diligence, stock screening, and technical analysis become the more efficient methods.  Algorithms become less effective as the time frame increases due to the smoothing effect of volatility over time. Writing an algorithm that could predict future long-term prices would be an impossible feat because as the time frame is scaled up there are far less price fluctuations and trends (volatility smooths out) and so there is little to no benchmark for the formulas.  An algorithm simply wouldn't make sense for a long-term position. A computer can't predict, say, the next quarter, an ousted CEO, a buyout, or anything else that could effect the price of the security, never mind the psychology behind it all. Vice versa, researching a company's fundamentals just to bank on a 0.25% daily swing would not be efficient. Tax advantages or not, it is the most efficient methods that are preferred for a given time-scale of trading.", "\"Market orders do not get priority over limit orders.  Time is the only factor that matters in price/time order matching when the order price is the same. For example, suppose the current best available offer for AAPL is $100.01 and the best available bid is $100.00.  Now a limit buy for $100.01 and a market buy arrive at around the same instant.  The matching engine can only receive one order at a time, no matter how close together they arrive. Let's say that by chance the limit buy arrives first.  The engine will check if there's a matching sell at $100.01 and indeed there is and a trade occurs.  This all happens in an instant before the matching engine ever sees the market buy.  Then it moves on to the market buy and processes it accordingly. On the other hand, let's say that by chance the market buy arrives first.  The engine will match it with the best available sell (at $100.01) and a trade occurs.  This all happens in an instant before the matching engine ever sees the limit buy.  Then it moves on to the limit buy and processes it accordingly. So there's never a comparison between the two orders or their \"\"priorities\"\" because they never exist in the system at the same time.  The first one to arrive is processed first; the second one to arrive is processed second.\""]}
+{"query": "Where to start with finding good companies to invest?", "corpus": ["\"There obviously is not such a list of companies, because if there were the whole world would immediately invest in them. Their price would rise like a rocket and they would not be undervalued anymore. Some people think company A should be worth x per share, some people think it should be worth y. If the share price is currently higher than what someone thinks it should be, they sell it, and if it is lower than they think it should be they buy it. The grand effect of this all is that the current market price of the share is more or less the average of what all investors together think it should currently be worth. If you buy a single stock, hoping that it's undervalued and will rise, you may be right but you may equally well be wrong. It's smarter to diversify over lots of stocks to reduce the impact of this risk, it evens out.  There are \"\"analysts\"\" who try to make a guess of which stocks will do better, and they give paid advice or you can invest in their funds -- but they invariably do worse than the average of the market as a whole, over the long term. So the best advice for amateurs is to invest in index funds that cover a huge range of companies and try to keep their costs very low.\""], "neg": ["\"are you implying that employees with families, a desire for personal time, any degree of physical/mental ailment, are \"\"bad employees\"\". good AND bad employees are a risk when they are treated poorly with complete disregard.  by enslaving the standard worker to a non-livable wage in which they cannot even afford to take time off you are virtually ensuring that no corresponding value can be added to the system except by those who are well off.   I responded to another post in this thread asking what the minimum wage should cover. and i ask the same to you. what do you believe that index should be. by your logic, even slavery can be considered the index.\"", "One answer in four days tells you this is a niche, else there should be many replies by now.  The bible is McMillan on Options Note - I link to the 1996 edition which starts at 39 cents, the latest revision will set you back $30 used. The word bible says it all, it offers a great course in options, everything you need to know. You don't get a special account for option trading. You just apply to your regular broker, so depending what you wish to do, the amount starts at   You sell calls against stock you own in your IRA. You see, selling covered calls always runs the risk of having your stock called away, and you'd have a gain, I'd hope. By doing this within the IRA, you avoid that.  Options can be, but are not always, speculative. Covered calls just change the shape of your return curve. i.e. you lower your cost by the option premium, but create a fixed maximum gain. I've created covered calls on the purchase of a stock or after holding a while depending on the stock. Here's the one I have now: MU 1000 shares bought at $8700, sold the $7.50 call (jan12) for $3000.  Now, this means my cost is $5700, but I have to let it go for $7500, a 32% return if called. (This was bought in mid 2010, BTW.) On the flip side, a drop of up to 35% over the time will still keep me at break even. The call seemed overpriced when I sold it. Stock is still at $7.20, so I'm close to maximum gain. This whole deal was less risky than just owning one risky stock. I just wrote a post on this trade Micron Covered Call, using today's numbers for those actually looking to understand this as new position. (The article was updated after the expiration. The trade resulted in a 42% profit after 491 days of holding the position, with the stock called away.) On the other hand, buying calls, lots of them, during the tech bubble was the best and worst thing I did. One set of trades' value increased by a factor of 50, and in a few weeks blew up on me, ended at 'only' triple. I left the bubble much better off than I went in, but the peak was beautiful, I'd give my little toe to have stayed right there. From 99Q2 to 00Q2, net worth was up by 3X our gross salary. Half of that (i.e. 1.5X) was gone after the crash. For many, they left the bubble far far worse than before it started. I purposely set things up so no more than a certain amount was at risk at any given time, knowing a burst would come, just not when. If nothing else, it was a learning experience.   You sell calls against stock you own in your IRA. You see, selling covered calls always runs the risk of having your stock called away, and you'd have a gain, I'd hope. By doing this within the IRA, you avoid that.  Options can be, but are not always, speculative. Covered calls just change the shape of your return curve. i.e. you lower your cost by the option premium, but create a fixed maximum gain. I've created covered calls on the purchase of a stock or after holding a while depending on the stock. Here's the one I have now: MU 1000 shares bought at $8700, sold the $7.50 call (jan12) for $3000.  Now, this means my cost is $5700, but I have to let it go for $7500, a 32% return if called. (This was bought in mid 2010, BTW.) On the flip side, a drop of up to 35% over the time will still keep me at break even. The call seemed overpriced when I sold it. Stock is still at $7.20, so I'm close to maximum gain. This whole deal was less risky than just owning one risky stock. I just wrote a post on this trade Micron Covered Call, using today's numbers for those actually looking to understand this as new position. (The article was updated after the expiration. The trade resulted in a 42% profit after 491 days of holding the position, with the stock called away.) On the other hand, buying calls, lots of them, during the tech bubble was the best and worst thing I did. One set of trades' value increased by a factor of 50, and in a few weeks blew up on me, ended at 'only' triple. I left the bubble much better off than I went in, but the peak was beautiful, I'd give my little toe to have stayed right there. From 99Q2 to 00Q2, net worth was up by 3X our gross salary. Half of that (i.e. 1.5X) was gone after the crash. For many, they left the bubble far far worse than before it started. I purposely set things up so no more than a certain amount was at risk at any given time, knowing a burst would come, just not when. If nothing else, it was a learning experience.", "Typically, a direct debit is set up by the company who will be receiving the money, not by you or your bank. So you need to contact your credit card company, and ask them to set up the direct debit.", "I worked for a firm where the trainer ruined the sales team and was eventually fired. Dude was an ex Tony Robbins con man that used Tony's name to come in and be a cheerleader. I'm sure some are good but do your research.", "&gt; I'm not sure what the point here is.  The point is that the US just abandoned taking responsibility for it's part in climate change to save some jobs that are a small part of the overall economy.  &gt; However, for the individual who has pride in his or her work as e.g a coal miner, and who made a decent living, won't be better off working for Arby's.  True, but the existing Arby's employees will be worse off, as will all the workers in other industries, as will all the inhabitants of Pacific island nations, as will just about everyone else in the world.  But thank god a small group has job satisfaction.", "\"Not to mention there's no such thing as an \"\"Economics Nobel Prize\"\", but to the credit of the OP the term was correctly put in quotations.  The prize (propaganda coup) is the Rikksbank Prize in memory of Alfred Nobel, and Nobel himself opposed the concept of a prize in economics. The much more recently created prize was devised only in 1969 by central bankers as a way to promote economists who primarily share and promote the ideology of central banking. They co-opted the Nobel name and bribed the Nobel committee with a lump sum they couldn't turn down, and the rest is history.\"", "Well, premium is the least of my worries. I would rather worry about that than have to worry about a margin call. I hate debt, and so this is the draw for me. I will check on that. I have a few books on options and derivatives, and I find it quite fascinating! I would really like a specific book on future options, but I will take a look through the books I have. Thanks!"]}
+{"query": "Can I do periodic rollovers from my low-perfoming 401k to an IRA?", "corpus": ["\"There are certain allowable reasons to withdraw money from a 401K.  The desire to free your money from a \"\"bad\"\" plan is not one of them.   A rollover is a special type of withdrawal that is only available after one leaves their current employer.  So as long as you stay with your current company, you cannot rollover.  [Exception: if you are over age  59.5] One option is to talk to HR, see if they can get a expansion of offerings.  You might have some suggestions for mutual funds that you would like to see.  The smaller the company the more likely you will have success here.  That being said, there is some research to support having few choices.  Too many choices intimidates people. It's quite popular to have \"\"target funds\"\"  That is funds that target a certain retirement year.  Being that I will be 50 in 2016, I should invest in either a 2030 or 2035 fund.  These are a collection of funds that rebalances the investment as they age.  The closer one gets to retirement the more goes into bonds and less into stocks.   However, I think such rebalancing is not as smart as the experts say.  IMHO is almost always better off heavily invested in equity funds.  So this becomes a second option.  Invest in a Target fund that is meant for younger people.  In my case I would put into a 2060 or even 2065 target. As JoeTaxpayer pointed out, even in a plan that has high fees and poor choices one is often better off contributing up to the match.  Then one would go outside and contribute to an individual ROTH or IRA (income restrictions may apply), then back into the 401K until the desired amount is invested.   You could always move on to a different employer and ask some really good questions about their 401K.  Which leads me back to talking with HR.  With the current technology shortage, making a few tweaks to the 401K, is a very cheap way to make their employees happy. If you can score a 1099 contracting gig, you can do a SEP which allows up to a whopping 53K per year.  No match but with typically higher pay, sometimes overtime, and a high contribution limit you can easily make up for it.\""], "neg": ["Sure - I honestly don't mind membership sites, and there are a bunch of sites that I do maintain active memberships to like the New Yorker, it's all about quality. I just have to keep an eye on my subscription credit card so I can make sure I'm not getting billed for a service that I've long since forgotten about.", "\"From the Times A Reader Q.&A. on G.M.’s Bankruptcy Q. I own G.M. preferred shares. Should I be looking to sell them, or   hold on? I bought them at $25 a share when they were issued in late   2001. — Karen, Manhattan A. When a company files for bankruptcy, its various stock and   bondholders essentially get in line. The first investors to be repaid   are secured debt holders, then senior bond investors, followed by   subordinated debt holders. Preferred shareholders are next, and   lastly, holders of common stock. In a bankruptcy, preferred shares are usually worthless, much like   shares of common stock. But in the case of G.M., there may be some   good — or at least somewhat better — news. Most of G.M.’s preferred   shares are actually senior notes or “quarterly interest bonds,” which   means you will be treated as a bondholder, according to Marilyn Cohen,   president of Envision Capital Management. So you will be able to   exchange your preferreds for G.M. stock (bondholders will receive 10   percent of the new company’s stock). It’s not the best deal, but it   beats the empty bag true preferred shareholders would have been left   holding. Of course this is just one example, and you were hoping to get some larger picture. The article stated \"\"In a bankruptcy, preferred shares are usually worthless, much like shares of common stock\"\" which at least is a bit closer to that, if you accept usually as a statistic.\"", "Successful covered calls are short term capital gains. The amount of time you have owned the underlying security is irrelevant. The gain occurred in the option period which will be an amount of days less than needed for a long term capital gain classification. Failed Covered calls can be either as the date you acquired the stock you are forced to sell determines their classification.", "\"I'm curious to know if you or any of your relatives have ever been declared as being mentally ill or having a psychological disorder.   Worst case scenario, let's say it is a \"\"con operation.\"\" In that case, that just makes all of the psychologists(and other people who aided them) look smart and the general public(which I already agree with) look stupid.   If most of psychology is all BS, then that just makes everyone else stupid for spending all of their money to get \"\"treated.\"\" And, really if we are that stupid (stupid enough to believe such a huge lie) I would then agree with the (25% of americans suffer from mental illness) statement because you have to be pretty stupid to be told such a huge lie and not figure it out.   Another thing: if it is so easy to tell that psychology is a scam, then why is there (in general) cross-field(scholars from physics, biology, history, language, medicine, etc) acceptance of psychology as a science?\"", "\"It's what modern advertising is based on. They're not selling you a product. They're selling you a \"\"new you.\"\" Modern advertising is based on the erroneous assumption that by buying the product your personality and lifestyle will improve and the customer believes he/she is entitled to the lifestyle they see people in the commercial enjoying by buying the product, at least subconsciously they think that. It's not logical but look at how many commercials barely feature the product or its benefits at all but instead focus on the customers of the product looking cool and popular and successful.  Having the logo of the brand of clothing that you bought, prominently displayed on the clothing lets everyone else know how you see yourself and what lifestyle you want for yourself. That's why so many people are eager to pay to advertise a corporation's brand.\"", "At Affordable RV storage customer get more saving then just money. They save time when they use the amenities at the vehicle storage facility. Even when using this boat storage you getting the best rates anywhere. RV parking is easy and user freindly for all customers. This RV storage is far more superior then all other competitors.", "Look at the basic cost of the lease.  Option 1: keep the car for three years. Pay for repairs during that time then sell it for $7,000. Option 2: Sell the current car for $10,000. Lease a new car for three years. Assume no need for repairs during those three years. At the end of the three years return the car in return for $0. Cost of option 1 is $3000 plus repairs.  Cost of Option 2 is 36 months x monthly lease cost. The first $83 of the monthly lease cost is to cover the $3000 fixed cost of option 1. The rest of the monthly lease cost is to cover the cost of repairs. Also remember that some leases have a initial down payment due at signing, and penalties for condition, and excess mileage. The lease company may also require a higher level of insurance for the lease to cover their investment if you have an accident.  Plus If you fall in love with a different car two year from now, or your needs change you are locked in until the end of the lease period."]}
+{"query": "What makes an actual share valuable? [duplicate]", "corpus": ["\"What benefit do I get from buying a share The value of any financial asset is its ability to generate cash in the future, and thus the \"\"value\"\" of a share is heavily influenced by the dividends it pays and the equity value.  The equity value can be calculated different ways. Two common ways are to just take \"\"book\"\" value, meaning assets - liabilities, or you can look at the projected free cash flows of the company discounted back to the present time. Voting rights don't typically influence a share price except in hostile takeover scenarios (meaning someone buys up a lot of shares to have more influence in company decisions)\""], "neg": ["\"You don't know what the term 'ad hominem' means. I am claiming you are ignorant based on your clear misrepresentation of factual evidence, which is an observation, not an ad hominem. You are just throwing out an insult not based on any actual evidence, which is an ad hominem. At least learn your pejorative terminology if you're going to try to adult.   As for \"\"bad life decisions\"\", again, you are flaunting ignorance by ignoring the fact that poverty is massively chronic in America right now. Four in ten Americans have an income below the 1968 minimum wage. You can try to call them names and demean them all you want, but the higher paying jobs just aren't there for everyone, which is why we must seriously increase the minimum wage so that the necessities of life can be attained.\"", "\"&gt; So the fact that i was born here against my own free will automatically gives the government the right to seize the fruits of my labor?  Yes, in the same way that being born to parents living in a clean house means you are going to make your bed, pick up your clothes, and mow the lawn...   &gt; \"\"well just leave then!\"\"   Well, yes. It is either that, or change the laws.   &gt; Which is fucking stupid and in pretty sure I already gave you 1 way but I'll say it again cuz it's clear you're incapable of following along  For someone who is so sure that they have \"\"*THE* answer\"\" you sure are defensive. It is quite possible that I have had a discussion over the SAME topic over the last 5 days with a *bunch* of people because so many people got butt hurt that I enjoy paying my taxes, and feel it is a patriotic duty because of all the good it does.   &gt; federal sales tax  So federal sales tax is your big secret? I would actually be fine with it, as long as it took into account those that are currently not paying income tax due to poverty or disability.  &gt; That's why you see countries like Sweden with insane tax rates seeing limited growth and in a lot of cases on the verge of an economic collapse.   I have lived in Europe for a number of years. I was in Germany last year, I will be in Spain next week. If you think that strong tax policy makes a country economically weak, then you have not actually lived in any of these countries, have you?   Sweden is currently ranked 11th in the world for [GDP per capita](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_GDP_(nominal)_per_capita). Matter of fact, the only country in the top ten of that list that don't have a strong tax policy is Qatar - and that is only because of ridiculous oil money. Would like to see where they sit in two years.   Sweden last year had an [economic growth rate of 4.1%](http://www.imf.org/en/News/Articles/2016/11/14/111716Sweden-Great-Economic-Performance-but-Mind-the-Debt). More than 3 times what the growth rate in the US was, at [1.6% for 2016](http://www.cbsnews.com/news/u-s-economic-growth-slowed-in-2016-to-1-9/). It was ranked [#34 in the world for economic growth](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_real_GDP_growth_rate), just under your Bahamas with their no income tax, no estate or wealth tax, but well above the US at 47. The IMF matter of fact said their economy was \"\"in good health and growing robustly\"\"... So, not sure where you are getting your facts from, but may want to think again. I would recommend that you actually go visit a couple of these \"\"tax hellholes\"\" and see for yourself how \"\"crushed\"\" by their taxes these poor victims of government \"\"theft\"\" are...\"", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://qz.com/1029925/if-youre-renting-a-city-apartment-without-a-car-16-of-your-rent-pays-for-parking-you-dont-need/) reduced by 76%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Since the 1940s, many US cities introduced minimum parking rules: for every new unit of housing, developers must also build a certain number of parking spaces.  &gt; Parking should be thought of as an equity issue, argues researchers Gregory Pierce and C.J. Gabbe in the journal Housing Policy Debate, Why? The average price of building a garage parking space is passed on to people whether they own a car or not, and distort the true demand for urban parking.  &gt; &amp;quot;The lack of rental housing without bundled parking imposes a steep cost on carless renters-commonly the lowest income households-who may be paying for parking that they do not need or want,&amp;quot; write the authors.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6o5ro3/if_youre_renting_a_city_apartment_without_a_car/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~170156 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*: **Parking**^#1 **housing**^#2 **price**^#3 **car**^#4 **new**^#5\"", "It was originally sponsored on 5/11 by Marco Rubio along with 4 other Republicans and 4 Democrats. It passed through both houses with relative ease. Lets not make this out to be some tough piece of legislation Trump had to fight for. This is something he signed on his way out the door to another golf trip.   And lets not forget the president is cutting disability pay for 225,000 veterans who are retirement age. This cuts what these veterans live on to about $1100 per month and saves a mere $3.2 billion while discretionary spending in the department has increased over $4 billion.   But go on and cheer the Secretary's ability to hire and fire people easier.", "Based on your description of what you were given, then you should not need to contact DMV/DOT However if you are not comfortable with that answer then contact/visit the dealer, you can ask them how long it normally takes, and do you pick up the real plates at the dealer, DMV, or will they be mailed to you. Also call them if the temporary plates will run out in a few days, to make sure everything is good to go. One other note. If the dealer is in one state, and you live in another they can give you temporary plate for their state but may not be able to file for the real plates in your state. Once everything is finalized go online to DMV and make sure that the car registration is OK. A few years ago the dealer gave me real plates, they gave me a registration good for two years. But the info sent to DMV was corrupted: the VIN was in the system, but the description was wrong and the plates were listed as none. This was only noticed when I tried to re-register the car two years later. In fact according to DMV the plates on the car were listed as never issued. If I had ever been pulled over it would have taken hours to resolve.", "Did you know that bill-pay is a third party system? The way they run it encourages multiple overdrafts, Just last week I had 150$ in fees. Not to mention they recently had a class action they lost in which they were fucking over service members with home loans. I've been with them since 2002, they're just as shady as every other institute that charges you money to use your money.", "You need a source of delisted historical data.  Such data is typically only available from paid sources. According to my records 20 Feb 2006 was not a trading day - it was Preisdent's Day and the US exchanges were closed. The prior trading date to this was 17 Feb 2006 where the stock had the following data: Open: 14.40 High 14.46 Low 14.16 Close 14.32 Volume 1339800 (consolidated volume) Source: Symbol NVE-201312 within Premium Data US delisted stocks historical data set available from http://www.premiumdata.net/products/premiumdata/ushistorical.php Disclosure: I am a co-owner of Norgate / Premium Data."]}
+{"query": "How do I handle taxes on a very large “gift” from my employers?", "corpus": ["\"You're right about your suspicions. I'm not a professional (I suggest you talk to a real one, a one with CPA, EA or Attorney credentials and license in your State), but I would be very cautious in this case. The IRS will look at all the facts and circumstances to make a claim, but my guess would be that the initial claim would be for this to be taxable income for your husband. He'd have to prove it to be otherwise. It does seem to be related to his performance, and I doubt that had they not known him through his employment, they'd give him such a gift. I may be wrong. So may be an IRS Revenue Officer. But I'd bet he'd think the same. Did they give \"\"gifts\"\" like that to anyone else? If they did - was it to other employees or they gave similar gifts to all their friends and family? Did those who gave your husband a gift file a gift tax return? Had they paid the gift tax? Were they principles in the partnership or they were limited partners (i.e.: not the ones with authority to make any decision)? Was your husband instrumental in making their extraordinary profit, or his job was not related to the profits these people made? These questions are inquiring about the facts and circumstances of the transaction. Based on what he can find out, and other potential information, your husband will have to decide whether he can reasonably claim that it was a gift. Beware: unreasonable claims lead to equally unreasonable penalties and charges. IRS and your State will definitely want to know more about this transaction, its not an amount to slide under the radar. This is not a matter where you can rely on a free opinions written by amateurs who don't know the whole story. You (or, rather, your husband) are highly encouraged to hire a paid professional - a CPA, EA (enrolled agent) or tax attorney with enough experience in fighting gift vs income characterization issues against the IRS (and the State, don't forget your State). An experienced professional may be able to identify something in the facts and the circumstances of the situation that would lead to reducing the tax bill or shifting it to the partners, but it is not something you do on your own.\""], "neg": ["The backbone of any Barrier gate, whether automatic or not, is the electric gate motor, the electric device which actually enables the barrier gate to open and close without having to manually push the gate. All types of electric gates and barriers make use of a motor of some kind.", "Its based on demand and supply and what Bank think the future rates would be. Today Banks in India have a liquidity crunch as the Repo Rates by Reserve Bank of India [Central Bank] are high. Bank want to encourage more people to deposit money and hence are offering higher rates. Banks also believe that once the Inflation is under control, the Central Bank would ease the repo rates. This is likely to happen in a years time. Hence Banks one year down want to lower the Fixed Deposit rates. So essentially they would be at loss if they give higher rates for longer periods. So they are offering the highest rates for a period of year which motivates more people to invest for a year, even if they want to stay invested for long.", "No it's not expensive sets - they are rare and there are tons of cheaper ones. I think technically it's cheaper than historically.  No it's not mine craft - that has been around for years already and they obvs actually make money off it.  I personally think it's saturation - 5 years of double digit growth and it's a durable product - people have already bought a ton of lego and expanding distribution will eventually run out of steam", "Well, premium is the least of my worries. I would rather worry about that than have to worry about a margin call. I hate debt, and so this is the draw for me. I will check on that. I have a few books on options and derivatives, and I find it quite fascinating! I would really like a specific book on future options, but I will take a look through the books I have. Thanks!", "\"Sorry, I figured maybe if we could a man on the moon, we develop an app lets you know the trade in value for an item on Amazon. Fuck off with you sarcastic \"\"wow\"\" remark, nothing insightful, nothing helpful just you masturbating your own ego with a three letter word, you must feel so proud.\"", "They also eliminate the risk associated with that loan, and get the money back to find a loan to someone else, possibly at a higher rate. It really is just about financially neutral for them.", "I view it as a “zero sum game” from the perspective of the customer. Don’t tell me that my meal is $25 when EVERYONE KNOWS that it’s actually, $25 + $5 tip = $30. Just make the menu price $30 and pay people properly. It’s the exact same cost for a customer. Then, if a tip is left, it is truly a tip for the worker(s) and not the majority of their earnings.   And before anyone chimes in to tell me that servers like to tax-dodge on their unreported earnings... Yeah, so would we all. In the same way that we’d never pay a Doctor, Accountant, Soldier, or Teacher a fraction of their pay and then hope that the people they serve were in a good mood to give them a little something extra, neither should we do this to tipped workers."]}
+{"query": "Who can I get to help me roll my 401(k) into an IRA when I live overseas?", "corpus": ["It is typically very easy to roll a 401(k) into an IRA.  Companies that provide IRA's are very experienced with it, and I would expect that they will take your calls from overseas. You will likely be able to do it over the internet without using a phone at all. Just open an IRA with any brokerage company (Scottrade, Vanguard, Fidelity, Schwab, Ameritrade, etc.) and follow instructions to roll your 401(k) into it.  Most likely they will need your signature, but usually a scan of a form you have filled out will do.  Be sure to have information on your 401(k) provider, including your account number there, on hand.  These companies are all very reputable and this is not a difficult transaction. There's really no downside to rolling into an IRA.  401(k) plans usually have more limited options and/or worse fee structures and are frequently harder to work with, as you have observed."], "neg": ["people implicity agree to sell stocks when a company does bad But, remember, when you sell the stock of a company that, in your estimation, 'did bad', someone else had to buy; otherwise, there is no sale. The someone else who bought your shares evidently disagrees with your assessment. Did you sell because the company didn't earn a profit at all? Did it not earn a profit because it's in a dead-end business that is slowly but inevitably declining to zero? Something like Sears Holdings? Or did it not make a profit because it is in an emerging market that will possibly someday become hugely profitable? Something like Tesla, Inc.? Did you sell because the company made a profit, but it was lower than expected? Did they make a lower-than-expected profit because of lower sales? Why were the sales lower? Is the industry declining? Was the snow too heavy to send the construction crews out? Did the company make a big investment to build a new plant that will, in a few years, yield even higher sales and profits? What are the profits year-over-year? Increasing? Declining? Usually, investors are willing to pay a premium, that is more than expected, for a stock in a company with robust growth.  As you can see, the mere fact that a company reported a profit is only one of many factors that determine the price of the shares in the market.", "\"One thing I'd quibble on. There is mainstream exposure. You are probably correct that everyone isn't buying records.   But from late 90's, non-existent to the availability now is a huge change. still not as common as groceries, or coffee.   The awareness of vinyl's return is fairly mainstream. Like when society as a whole co-opts a phrase / word, like \"\"bling\"\" or etc. That doesn't mean grandma is \"\"street\"\" now.\"", "Yeah those are similar numbers to the largest cities in the US.  You can buy a house in or near a mid-sized US city for 100K but it would be a very basic house in good not great neighborhood.  After the downturn, I bought 2 houses as investments.  One I bought for 31,000 USD and after renovations I had 85,000 in it.  Sold it for 115,000.  The other I bought for  $91,000.  I still have that one.  It rents for $1200/mo and is currently worth maybe $140,000 (3 Bedrooms, 1 full bath, 1 half bath, 1400 sq ft).  It is a very safe area but Cincinnati city schools.  FYI Cincinnati has a STEM academy that is one of the top public schools in the country but you have to test into that specific school.    Those prices just blow me away.  I make a very good living plus the investment income and I don't think I could even sort of make the payment on 1.4 million for a shack.  Everyone can't be a trust fund baby or a Google millionaire.  FYI(2) I joined a Bay Area internet startup back in the day and in the end it got bought up by an ERP company.  My stock that I hoped to make millions on got me a $45,000 payday (so a lot better than nothing but in no way buying me a house in the Bay Area)", "Besides the reason in @rhaskett's answer, it is important to consider that paying off a 30-year mortgage as if it was a 15-year is much more inconvenient than just paying the regular payments of a 15-year mortgage.  When you pay extra on your mortgage, some lenders do not know what to do with the extra payment, and need to be told explicitly that the extra needs to be applied toward the principal.  You might need to do this every month with every payment.  In addition, some lenders won't allow you to set up an automatic payment for more than the mortgage payment, so you might need to explicitly submit your payment with instructions for the lender each month, and then follow up each month to make sure that your payment was credited properly.  Some lenders are better about this type of thing than others, and you won't really know how much of a hassle it will be with your lender until you start making payments. If you intend to pay it off in 15 years, then just get the 15-year mortgage.", "\"No. Credit card companies will typically not care about your individual credit card account. Instead they look either at a \"\"package\"\" of card accounts opened at roughly the same time, or of \"\"slices\"\" of cardholder accounts by credit rating. If an entire package's or slice's balance drops significantly, they'll take a look, and will adjust rates accordingly (often they may actually decrease rates as an incentive to increase you use of the card). Because credit card debt is unstructured debt, the bank cannot impose an \"\"early payment penalty\"\" of any kind (there's no schedule for paying it off, so there's no way to prove that they're missing out on $X in interest because you paid early). Generally, banks don't like CC debt anyway; it's very risky debt, and they often end up writing large balances off for pennies on the dollar. So, when you pay down your balance by a significant amount, the banks breathe a sigh of relief. The real money, the stable money, is in the usage fees; every time you swipe your card, the business who accepted it owes the credit card company 3% of your purchase, and sometimes more.\"", "The values of 12, 26 and 9 are the typical industry standard setting used with the MACD, however other values can be substituted depending on your trading style and goals. The 26d EMA is considered the long moving average when in this case it is compared to the shorter 12d EMA. If you used a 5d EMA and a 10d EMA then the 10d EMA would be considered the long MA. It is based on what you are comparing it with. Apart from providing signals for a reversal in trend, MACD can also be used as an early indication to a possible end to a trend. What you look out for is divergence between the price and the MACD. See chart below of an example:  Here I have used 10d & 3d EMAs and 1 for the signal (as I did not want the signal to show up). I am simply using the MACD as a momentum indicator - which work by providing higher highs in the MACD with higher highs in price. This shows that the momentum in the trend is good so the trend should continue. However the last high in price is not met with a higher high in the MACD. The green lines demonstrate bearish divergence between price and the MACD, which is an indication that the momentum of the trend is slowing down. This could provide forewarning that the trend may be about to end and to take caution - i.e. not a good time to be buying this stock or if you already own it you may want to tighten up your stop loss.", "The only real competition I see in the US market is in the pre-paid service providers.  But they are just piggybacking off the networks of the larger carriers.  To have an actual functioning market they would have to be some legal framework that requires all carriers to share their networks at some reasonable fee rate and then put value added on top of that.  That is pretty much how the POTS worked.  We recognized that as a nation it is plainly ridiculous to compete on who can hang the most wires.  We lost that lesson and now we're letting carriers compete almost purely on who can erect the most towers.  AT&amp;T and Verizon are essentially the same company offering the same service.  The entire basis of their competition is who can get the most right of way access to install the most towers.  it's crazy."]}
+{"query": "Is it legal to receive/send “gifts” of Non-Trivial Amounts to a “friend”?", "corpus": ["\"Am I right to say that no tax needs to be given for the annual ~$130k   USD, since they are considered as annual gift tax exclusion? Not only that you're wrong, but it also looks like a tax fraud, not just mere avoidance. You'll have hard time proving to any judge or jury that the gifts are \"\"in good faith\"\". By the way, $5 a month is below minimum wage.\""], "neg": ["Like most software it's about what you put in to them. We use ProSeries software which is like TurboTax but $4500 with no questions.   I would do your taxes on online and then have a professional do them. You then can ask any questions you may have to better understanding of what's going on. Only take copies of your documents because some unprofessional places will try to keep them.  Do this each time something big changes in your life, you have a baby, buy a house or start a business.  May cost more but could save you thousands in the long run.  I have been doing taxes professionally for 7 years.", "\"Ally Bank $0 - from their website (emphasis mine): To receive a wire transfer from a non-U.S. bank: Incoming wire transfers from a non-US bank are processed by our   designated receiving bank, JP Morgan Chase Bank, N.A. You'll need to provide the following information to the person or   business sending the wire transfer to you: Receiving Bank: JP Morgan   Chase Bank, N.A. ABA/Routing Number: 021000021 Address: 1 Chase   Manhattan PLZ, New York, NY 10005 SWIFT Code or Bank Identification   Code: CHASUS33 Beneficiary Account Number: 802904391 Beneficiary Name:   List 'Ally Bank' since the wire is being processed by JP Morgan Chase   Bank, N.A. Further Credit: Your Ally Bank Account Number and your name   as it appears on your Ally Bank account. Note: We won't charge you to receive a wire transfer into your Ally   account. https://www.ally.com/help/search.html?term=SWIFT&console=false&context=Help&domain=www.ally.com&section=Help+%26+FAQs Alliant Credit Union $0 - from their website (emphasis mine): Direct international wire transfers  International wire transfers are   handled through our correspondent bank for processing. International   wires can take up to 10 business days to be credited to the receiving   institution. Funds should be wired to: Northern Trust ABA# 071000152 \"\"Note: US   Banks do not use SWIFT codes. This ABA # is used in place of SWIFT   codes for US Banks.\"\" 50 South La Salle Street, Chicago, IL 60603 For further credit: Alliant Credit Union Account Number 35101804 11545   W. Touhy Avenue, Chicago, IL 60666 For final credit: Member’s name and complete address (No P.O. Box)   Member’s 14-digit account number Destination of funds (checking,   savings or loan number)  Incoming wire transfers: Wire transfers received Monday - Friday,   7:00am - 3:00pm, CT, will be credited to your account the same day.   Wire transfers received after 3:00pm, CT, Monday - Friday and on the   weekend will be credited the next business day. Fees:   We do not charge a fee to receive incoming wire funds. However, the financial institution wiring the funds may charge for this   service. http://www.alliantcreditunion.org/help/receiving-a-wire-transfer-to-your-alliant-account\"", "\"A drop in credit score of 300 is pretty significant, right?  You describe the cause of this as \"\"unfortunate circumstances\"\".  Lets say you observe a mother giving a small child a ball to play with in the median of a busy interstate.  Once the inevitable happens, would you also describe that as \"\"unfortunate circumstances\"\"?  Because really it is the same thing. You overextended yourself and did not consider risk in the decision to borrow money.  This may sound harsh, but you have proven that you cannot handle credit.  So your solution is to borrow more?  That makes no sense. The best thing you can do for your credit score is to reduce, then eliminate all debt.\"", "“... Have you seen fucking L.A” and  “... Arkansas”. Sure, that’s how it is. I guess the analysis from OP’s link is a future where the world keeps developing. Taking the bus in Sicily when I first went there 25 years ago, was virtually impossible. It came when the driver felt like it, and it went to to/from a very limited amount of locations. Today it’s not a problem at all from early morning to early evening. I guess that in a few years, it will change even more. For the better.", "The only ridiculous thing in the article is the statement that taxes to try to keep down inequality won't do any good because companies will hire less.   What bullshit. Taxes on the wealthy doesn't need to come from the companies alone, it should also come from closing ridiculous loopholes that only favour the rich, and a more progressive income tax system that includes all earnings, be them through wages or through capital gains.   I really don't understand why $100,000 in wages should be treated differently tax-wise than $100,000 in capital gains...", "Disclaimer: I don't work in the finance industry, and simply took a few classes in corporate finance and management during my undergrad.  It depends on what type of investing you're talking about. If you're talking about building a portfolio of securities, then CAPM is the basis for most valuation models. Generally, CAPM will have you discount based on your best available risk-free rate (usually t-bills or some other fixed income source with a reliable backer). Even after your valuation, the basic theory of risk management for an investment portfolio is still to maintain a diverse basket of poorly correlated products.  If you're talking about corporate finance where a firm is considering an investment such as a new project, then a determining a WACC and using it as a discount rate for your cash flow is a basic strategy.   This is a basic strategy, but there are better ones depending on the specifics of the investment. This is where evaluating exposures is important. To hedge counterparty risk, you might discount by the estimated probability of non-payment or buy trade insurance. To hedge currency risk, you might buy forwards, options, or look into a money market hedge. To hedge political risks like repatriation or changes in tax laws or regulation you might buy political risk insurance. To hedge exposure to a particular commodity price, you can trade futures.", "Hello, my Dear Friend! Learn Colors with Color Sticky Tape Are you Sleeping Nursery Rhymes Song for Babies by Eva TV Thank you for watching my video! Five Little Babies Jumping on the Bed Song Nursery Rhymes Songs for Kids https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=hIAMkUdZ1QA Steal Chips Johny Johny Yes Papa Song Learn Colors with Bad Baby Nursery Rhymes https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=Evl4odr8xho #LearnColors #Colours #forKids #forChildren #AreYouSleeping #AreYouSleepingBrotherJohn #AreYouSleepingSong  #NurseryRhymes #BadBaby #StickyTape #ColorStickyTape #BabyDolls #FunnyVideoforChildren"]}
+{"query": "How can I investigate historical effect of Rebalancing on Return and Standard Deviation?", "corpus": ["\"Do not reinvent the wheel! Historical data about stock market returns and standard deviations suffer from number of issues such as past-filling and mostly survivorship bias -- that the current answers do not consider at all. I suggest to read the paper \"\"A Century of Global Stock Markets\"\" by Philippe Jorion (UC Irvine) and William Goetzmann (Yale), here. William Bernstein comments the results here, notice that rebalancing is sometimes a good option but not always, his non-obvious finding where the low SD did not favour from rebalancing:  Look at the final page of the paper,  \"\"geometric returns -- represent returns to a buy-and-hold strategy\"\" and the \"\"arithmetic averages -- give equal weight to each observation interval.\"\", where you can find your asked \"\"historical effect of Rebalancing on Return and Standard Deviation\"\". The paper nicely summarizes the results to this table:  The results in the table are from the interval 1921-1996, it is not that long-time but even longer term data has its own drawbacks. The starting year 1921 is interesting choice because it is around the times of social-economical changes and depressing moments, historical context can be realized from books such as Grapes Of Wrath (short summary here, although fiction to some extent, it has some resonance to the history). The authors have had to ignore some years because of different reasons such as political unrest and wars.  Instead of delving into marketed spam as suggested by one reply, I would look into this search here. Look at the number of references and the related papers to judge their value.  P.s. I encourage people to attack my open question here, hope we can solve it!\""], "neg": ["Does allowing family to stay at the rental jeopardize my depreciation?  No, accumulated depreciation that hasn't been deducted reduces your basis in the event of sale. That doesn't go anywhere. Accumulating more may not be allowed though. If the property is no longer rental (i.e.: personal use, your family member lives there for free), you cannot claim expenses or depreciation on it. If you still rent it out to your family member, but not at the fair market value, then you can only claim expenses up to the rental income. I.e.: you can only depreciate up to the extent the depreciation (after all the expenses) not being over the income generated. You cannot generate losses in such case, even if disallowed. If you rent to your family member at the market rate (make sure it is properly documented), then the family relationship really doesn't matter. You continue accumulating expenses as usual.", "\"That article, like almost any article written by a non-expert and quoting only \"\"research\"\" from lobbying groups, hugely misses the point. The vast majority of orders that end up being cancelled are cancelled as a standard part of exchanges' official market-maker programs. Each exchange wants you and me to know that it has liquidity -- that when we go to buy or sell some stock, there will be someone waiting on the other side of the trade.  So the exchange pays (via lowered fees or even rebates) hundreds of registered market makers to constantly have orders resting in each product's order book within a few ticks of the current NBBO or the last trade price.  That way, if everyone else should suddenly disappear from the market, you and I will still be able to trade our shares for a price somewhat close to the last trade price. But market makers who are simply acting in this \"\"backstop\"\" role don't actually want to have their orders filled, because those orders will almost always lose them money. So as prices rise and fall (as much as tens of times per second), the market makers need to cancel their resting orders (so they don't get filled) and add new ones at new prices (so they meet their obligations to the exchange).  And because the number of orders resting in any given product's order book is vastly larger than the number of actual trades that take place in any given time period, naturally the number of cancellations is also going to hugely outweigh the number of actual trades.  As much as 97% to 3% (or even more). But that's completely fine! You and I don't have to care about any of that.  We almost never need the market makers to be there to trade with us.  They're only there as a backstop.  There's almost always plenty of organic liquidity for us to trade against.  Only in the rare case where liquidity completely dries up do we really care that the registered market makers are there.  And in those cases (ideally) the market makers can't cancel their orders (depending on how well the exchange has set up its market maker program). So, to answer your question, the effect of standard order cancellation on a stock is essentially none.  If you were to visualize the resting orders in a product's book as prices moved up and down, you would essentially see a Gaussian distribution with mean at the last trade price, and it would move up and down with the price.  That \"\"movement\"\" is accomplished by cancellations followed by new orders. P.S. As always, keep in mind that your and my orders almost never actually make it to a real stock exchange anymore.  Nowadays they are almost always sent to brokers' and big banks' internal dark pools.  And in there you and I have no idea what shenanigans are going on.  As just one example, dark pools allow their operators and (for a fee) other institutional participants access to a feature called last look that allows them to cancel their resting order as late as after your order has been matched against it! :( Regarding the question in your comment ... If Alice is sending only bona fide orders (that is, only placing an order at time T if, given all the information she has at time T, she truly wants and intends for it to be filled) then her cancellation at a later time actually adds to the effectiveness of and public perception of the market as a tool for price discovery (which is its ultimate purpose). [In the following example imagine that there are no such things as trading fees or commissions or taxes.] Let's say Alice offers to buy AAPL at $99.99 when the rest of the market is trading it for $100.00.  By doing so she is casting her vote that the \"\"fair value\"\" of a share of AAPL is between $99.99 and $100.00. After all, if she thought the fair value of a share of AAPL was higher --  say, between $100.00 and $100.01 -- then she should be willing to pay $100.00 (because that's below fair value) and she should expect that other people in the market will not soon decide to sell to her at $99.99. If some time later Alice does decide that the fair value of AAPL is between $100.00 and $100.01 then she should definitely cancel her order at $99.99, for exactly the reason discussed above.  She probably won't get filled at $99.99, and by sitting there stubbornly she's missing out (potentially forever) on the possibility to make a profit. Through the simple act of cancelling her $99.99 order, Alice is once again casting a vote that she no longer thinks that's AAPL's fair value.  She is (very slightly) altering the collective opinion of the entire market as to what a share of AAPL is worth.  And if her cancellation then frees her up to place another order closer to her perceived fair value (say, at $100.00), then that's another vote for her honest optinion about AAPL's price. Since the whole goal of the market is to get a bunch of particpants to figure out the fair value of some financial instrument (or commodity, or smart phone, or advertising time, etc.), cancellations of honest votes from the past in order to replace them with new, better-informed honest votes in the present can only be a good thing for the market's effectiveness and perceived effectiveness. It's only when participants start sending non-honest votes (non bona fide orders) that things start to go off the rails.  That's what @DumbCoder was referring to in his comment on your original question.\"", "\"If you buy a call, that's because you expect that the stock will go up. If it does not go up, then forget about buying more calls as your initial idea seems to be wrong. And I don't think that buying a put to make up for the loss will work either, the only thing that is sure is that you will pay another premium (on a stock that could stay where it is). Even if you are 100% sure that the stock will go up again, don't do anything, as John Maynard Keynes stated: \"\"Markets can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent\"\". My idea is: wait until the expiration date. The good things about options is that you won't lose more than the premium that you paid for it and that until it reaches its maturity you can still make money if the market turns around. More generally, when you are purely speculating, adding to a position when it goes against you is called \"\"averaging down\"\". I sincerely discourage you to do that : If the stocks goes in the wrong direction, that means that your   initial idea was wrong in the first place (or you were not right at   the right moment). In my opinion, adding up to a wrong idea is not the   right thing to do. When you are losing, just take your loss and don't   add up to your position based on your emotions. On the other hand, adding to your position more when the stock goes in   your direction is called \"\"pyramiding\"\" and is, in my opinion, a better   way of doing things (you bought, you were right, let's buy more). But   at some point you will have to take your profits. There are plenty of other stocks on which you can try to invest and the market will still be here tomorrow, there will be other opportunities to make profits. Rushing things by constantly trying to have a position is not a good idea. Not doing anything is also a strategy.\"", "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.", "\"I don't know about that, how would anyone ever get loans? Of course I might just be limited to \"\"in the box\"\" thinking of the idea that we even need loans to facilitate the economy. I think maybe 90% reserves 10% lending or some other mix other than right now its currently law (in the US) that banks hold only 10% of the money in accounts as reserve while they can lend out 90%. I don't think it was ever intended to keep eroding like it has to the point where its 1:9 savings:loaned .\"", "Legitimate, yes.  However, cosidering the fact that Chinese working conditions are often far from ideal to begin with, that even though the salaries are increasing considerably, the majority  of people would never pay extra for fair trade. Organic , big city people with higher living standards, yes quite possibly considering the food safety issues. Majority, no way, too expensive.  Any business idea based on fair trade in China is nothing but wishful thinking in my humble opinion.", "This depends. Quite a few stock exchanges / country report total capitalisation in terms of free float. I.E total shares that can be traded, ignoring the promoters shares. The market cap reported by company takes all shares."]}
+{"query": "Pension or Property: Should I invest in more properties, or in a pension?", "corpus": ["Diversification is one aspect to this question, and Dr Fred touches on its relationship to risk.  Another aspect is leverage: So it again comes down to your appetite for risk.  A further factor is that if you are successfully renting out your property, someone else is effectively buying that asset for you, or at least paying the interest on the mortgage. Just bear in mind that if you get into a situation where you have 10 properties and the rent on them all falls at the same time as the property market crashes (sound familiar?) then you can be left on the hook for a lot of interest payments and your assets may not cover your liabilities."], "neg": ["With 10% return over three years, depositing $900 each month, in three years $34,039.30.  Re. downvote. I guess this is too brief and without explanation, but I was rushing.  If you want further explanation of how this is calculated check the link already posted by JoeTaxpayer, and have a look at the formula for continuously compounded return.  Also, try out the numbers in the simplified example below yourself.  E.g.  Addendum mhoran_psprep has pointed out that I didn't read the OP's post closely enough.  With rolling investments the total return will be:  Where n is the month number i.e. 36, 37, etc.", "You can't make your bank do a charge back. This function is to assist with straight up fraud, not a customer service mistake. (Think spoofed or stolen card or if a vendor intentionally acted fraudulently.) While you may believe what they did is fraud, your bank will require that you provide the vendor with the opportunity to rectify the situation themselves. Trying to call back and giving up after a long hold time won't meet their standards. If banks started letting anyone unhappy with a vendor start doing charge backs, they would be doing nothing else all day. The issues you're describing has not reached the threshold for the bank to authorize a charge back.  Comcast has local and regional offices, and you could go in person to speak with someone. Maybe there isn't one near you. There are non-peak hours which wait times will be less. You'll just have to grin and bear it if you truly want the money back. Then, take your business elsewhere and post bad reviews online. Always keep in mind that when you eventually speak with someone, they will not be the person that messed up, and you should be overly nice and polite to them. I promise it will yield far better results than being surly and demanding. Another way to get Comcast's attention would be to file a complaint with the BBB. It might take longer, but I've had this work with big companies, usually with good results. Again, be nice to whomever contacts you. In reference to your recent duplicate question: Mastercard won't be able to help at all. They play no part in the transaction at all.", "There are quite a few advantages to credit cards in the uk. But don't borrow on them past the grace period. Set up a direct debit to pay amount in full.", "Do you work with low-skilled employees? Specifically, do you ever have to manage them? I am going to make the assumption that you do not based on the comments you are making. It is impossible to say ALL of anything is a certain way. I'm not suggesting that at all. I'm going to specifically talk about averages. It seems like you've never been around the average.  The average minimum wage employee doesn't have a high school education. It is fairly safe to say that they continuously are not developing skills that provide value both to themselves and others. If a person refuses to provide more for society, should society fill the gap?  You suggest that people who are poor didn't get there because of their own right. Are people who are self-made millionaires (on average) good with finances? Why would that be? If yes, why do you assume those that are successful are so because of their own merit but cannot be blamed for failure?  Seattle is a nice place. My exterior painter is doing a job there right now. It's a 3 month job. He is painting 1,000 apartments. He took 7 guys with him that he pays around $1,750 a week plus room and board. He had to take 7 guys with him because he can't find workers up in Washington. Can you imagine that? People in Seattle have not developed the skill of exterior painting. That's the reality of your job market. Even further, companies do have massive incentives to move to cheaper locations. The starting salary of large corporations varies wildly based on cost of living. Goldman Sachs will offer nearly $100k a year starting to work in the NYC branch compared to $65-70k in Houston.", "\"The most common use of non-deductible Traditional IRA contributions these days, as JoeTaxpayer mentioned, is as an intermediate step in a \"\"backdoor Roth IRA contribution\"\" -- contribute to a Traditional IRA and then immediately convert it to a Roth IRA, which, if you had no previous pre-tax money in Traditional or other IRAs, is a tax-free process that achieves the same result as a regular Roth IRA contribution except that there are no income limits. (This is something you should consider since you are unable to directly contribute to a Roth IRA due to income limits.) Also, I want to note that your comparison is only true assuming you are holding tax-efficient assets, ones where you get taxed once at the end when you take it out. If you are holding tax-inefficient assets, like an interest-bearing CD or bond or a stock that regularly produces dividends, in a taxable account you would be taxed many times on that earnings, and that would be much worse than with the non-deductible Traditional IRA, where you would only be taxed once at the end when you take it out.\"", "Seems like this was a tough situation, but Dave Brandon has not had success recently. Dominoes straight up apologized for what their product became with him leading, he got ousted from UM Athletics because the ticket prices crashed and students were revolting, and now this. Doesn't look like a good few years for him from where I'm sitting.", "\"The easiest way to find a buyer should be to ask the company to connect you to some of their other shareholders. I imagine they are much more likely to take those shares off you than a random investor on the street. Otherwise, well, talk to people. At a golf club, maybe? :) Valuation is not going to be very straightforward. Basically you'll get whatever someone is willing to pay. That's what FMV means when there's no real \"\"market\"\". Realistically, the price is mainly going to be based on divididend history and the company's assets, discounted for risk and liquidity (you're currently feeling the reason for the latter discount).\""]}
+{"query": "Tax on insurance payment due to car deemed as total loss?", "corpus": ["DJClayworth's response is generally correct. You wouldn't have to pay taxes on insurance benefits, since those are in fact bringing you whole to what you've lost. However, in some cases you do need to consider taxes. Specifically, if the insurance payout is higher than your cost basis in the lost property. While you may think that this never happens (why would the insurance company pay more than what it cost you?), it in fact quite frequently does. Specific example would be a car used in your business. If you used your car as part of your business and deducted car depreciation on your tax return - your cost basis was reduced by the depreciation. Getting a full car cost payout form insurance would in fact constitute taxable income to you for the difference between your cost basis (adjusted for the depreciation) and the payout. Another example would be collectibles. Say you bought a car 20 years ago at $5000, you maintained it well during the years (assume you spend another $5000 on repairs), and it is now insured at FMV of $50000. But, alas, it got destroyed by a mountain lion who climbed over the fence and pushed it over a cliff. You got a $50000 payout from your insurance company (because you insured it for full FMV coverage, as a collectible should be insured), of which $40000 will be taxable to you. There may be more specific cases where insurance payouts are (partially) taxable. However, as a general rule, they're not, as long as they're at or below your cost basis level."], "neg": ["Standard Deviation is a mathematical term that is useful in many areas. It can be considered a measure of how tight the data points are to the average. If there is consistency in the measurement system, then a point that is two standard from the average can be considered an outlier. It doesn't even need to be time based. We can say that a child born weighing less than X pounds is more than 2 standard deviations below the average.  Using it to look at a price or an index value doesn't make a lot of sense because many expect there to be long term growth. For example you would never say that you will buy a new jacket for your child when they are two standard deviations above their average height. You can say you will buy or sell a financial instrument when the P/E ratio is 2 standard deviations from some average. It could be the average of the long term history, or the index, or the sector. You could do the same thing for earnings per share or many other business of financial statistics. A standard deviation calculated from a time series assumes that the measurement will normally stay withing some bounds. And that straying from those bounds is a sign of the right time to buy or sell.", "Does your friend have a preference? Why does he have that preference? Is his reasoning sound or can you make better suggestions.  That's all that matters in a Mac v. PC debate.  I'm assuming your friend is going into an undergraduate program. In which case he most likely won't touch any finance courses until his third year and even then they won't require macros or VBAs.  Companies that he interns at will provide computers (usually) and when he graduates he'll be shopping for another computer anyways.", "Well, first off, if your children are NZ citizens, they can borrow money at 0% interest for tertiary education and I don't see any benefit to not taking free money. A saving account is your money, and will accrue a little bit of interest and you will pay tax on that. A family trust (I hope this is what you mean by trust fund) is a separate financial entity that can be set up to own assets for the benefit of multiple people. For example, if you have a rental property or business and you want the income divided between your children, rather than coming to you, or if you have a bach you want to keep in the family after you die.", "I have just established a limited company (three directors spread around the UK) and I am in the process of setting up a business account. We will be able to arrange everything over the phone and each of us will have to appear in one of the branches with original documents: passport, bank statement. We are EU citizens and have UK bank accounts for over 5 years. That would probably be a problem for you. But still, you can try to call around and see if you can find a company to help you. You can also setup an account on one of the online currency exchange websites and then provide your customers with the website's bank account details with appropriate reference. You would have to check the legal side of this solution.", "When you're selling something through a provider, like Craig's List or newspapers, the only thing that may limit your choices is the provider. They may refuse your post if it's against their rules or the law. But luckily they usually don't limit or enforce certain payment choices.  These private business providers have the right to do so if they want. You don't need to be their customer. They may state their terms for using the service and even refuse service (before any payment is made).  The fun part is that you may do so as well. Just remember to state your terms in your post so the prospective buyers are aware of them. I've found it best to put payment and delivery terms in separate lines so that they are easily noticeable, for example: Nice victorian handbasket with gold embroidery, only used once. Signed by the original author. Comes with a certificate of authenticity. No delivery, only cash payments.", "Below are some of the differences between FedWire credit transfers and ACH credit transfers in the US. FedWire Same day clearing, which means the sender's account is debited and your account is credited on the same day Irrevocable.  Once a FedWire is sent, the originator/sender cannot send a reversing transaction.  This is a huge advantage of using FedWires because it mitigates risk of reversals. Cost.  FedWire typically cost more to send and to receive ACH Credit (aka Direct Deposit) Allows for Reversals.  Sender/originator does have the ability to perform reversals or correcting entries. Batch Processing  ACH entries are group together into batches and processed by Financial Institutions and the ACH Operators in batch mode. You can find additional information regarding ACH at http://www.achrulesonline.org/ and FedWire at http://www.frbservices.org/serviceofferings/fedwire/fedwire_funds_service.html", "\"I wasn't linking her performance to her gender, I don't think any of these CEO's are failing because they have a menstrual cycle, they are just making poor decisions.  It is impossible to ignore gender when we are constantly hearing about the \"\"Tech Gap\"\" and the puff stories about being a female CEO in a male dominated industry. It is entirely relevant.\""]}
+{"query": "Working on a tax free island to make money?", "corpus": ["If you're an American, and willing to give up citizenship, good luck to you.  Otherwise, Uncle Sam still wants his due -- Americans are responsible for paying taxes on income earned anywhere on earth, regardless of their residence."], "neg": ["\"You are likely making an assumption that the \"\"Short call\"\" part of the article you refer to isn't making: that you own the underlying stock in the first place. Rather, selling short a call has two primary cases with considerably different risk profiles. When you short-sell (or \"\"write\"\") a call option on a stock, your position can either be: covered, which means you already own the underlying stock and will simply need to deliver it if you are assigned, or else uncovered (or naked), which means you do not own the underlying stock. Writing a covered call can be a relatively conservative trade, while writing a naked call (if your broker were to permit such) can be extremely risky. Consider: With an uncovered position, should you be assigned you will be required to buy the underlying at the prevailing price. This is a very real cost — certainly not an opportunity cost. Look a little further in the article you linked, to the Option strategies section, and you will see the covered call mentioned there. That's the kind of trade you describe in your example.\"", "\"My gut reaction is how legal is his statement?  *\"\"So where am I going with all this? It's quite simple. If any new taxes are levied on me, or my company, as our current President plans, I will have no choice but to reduce the size of this company... So, when you make your decision to vote, ask yourself, which candidate understands the economics of business ownership and who doesn't? Whose policies will endanger your job? Answer those questions and you should know who might be the one capable of protecting and saving your job.\"\"*  If an employer sent this to me I'd seriously consider that a threat in regards against how I practice my political beliefs.  It undermines my right to educate myself.\"", "\"Usually not the total interest, but all interest accrued and unpaid to date. This is called the \"\"Loan Payoff Amount\"\", and repays the bank their principal plus the \"\"true\"\" cost of capital on that principal since your last amortized payment (which is probably never, since you just signed the loan papers). There may also be a \"\"prepayment penalty\"\". This is something that should have been disclosed to you if it exists, but it's fairly rare in U.S. mortgages anymore.  The theory is, the bank got the money they paid you at the start of the loan by selling a bond package backed by your mortgage and others of similar credit history and/or about the same time (a \"\"mortgage-backed security\"\"). By turning around and paying early, you meet your obligation, but the bank is now stuck with at least 10 years of quarterly coupon payments on that bond, which they were expecting to pay using your mortgage interest. For their trouble, you would pay an additional amount that either covers their \"\"call price\"\" on the portion of the bonds used for your principal, or simply buys them the time to re-issue a new mortgage using your repaid principal to back the bond again. In the modern housing market, such a prepayment penalty is very rare, because so many lenders are willing to give you a mortgage without one, and so many buyers balk at the thought of having to pay more if they pay early; the whole point is to pay less by paying early. Just something to look up in your mortgage documentation.\"", "The health specs is actually our cooking techniques and cleaning procedures of the restaurant. I'm not 100% certain, but I think they tracked that the E. Coli was from a distributor defect and not as much the restaurant. And GMO is not bad at all, I never said that, just that the non-GMO ingredients are obviously different, so they're gonna taste different than GMO produce and food.", "Yes. I doubt I'll see a penny of that money, but will now forever have to wait for the other shoe to stop, not only on my credit cards being stolen but also potentially my identity. There's no time limit to this, could be years later. It really sucks, you're lucky not to be involved.", "I think sometimes this is simply ignorance. If my marginal tax rate is 25%, then I can either pay tax deductible interest of $10K or pay income tax of $2.5K.    I think most americans don't realize that paying $10K of tax deductible interest (think mortgage) only saves them $2.5K in taxes.  In other words, I'd be $7.5K ahead if I didn't have the debt, but did pay higher taxes.", "The middle class needs support, not eroding. Negative interest rates would work for starters in getting that corporate profit capital moving in society, not this avoidance of responsibility from above by passing the buck to the people. By the same token therefore, voting more is not going to solve things quicker. Why say 'politics will not fix this' and then declare 'vote someone in to change it fast' after throwing a few figures and catchphrases at us? A convoluted, nonsensical waste of time."]}
+{"query": "Shareholder in US based company", "corpus": ["Companies need to go public before you can buy their shares on a public stock exchange, but all companies have shares, even if there's only one share. And anyone who owns those shares can give them to whoever they like (there are generally restrictions on selling shares in unlisted companies to unsophisticated investors, but not on giving them away)."], "neg": ["\"saying that someone is \"\"the CEO of their product\"\" (and the variants: for sales: \"\"the CEO of their territory\"\", for any one else: \"\"the CEO of their valuestream\"\") is idiotic and wrong.  It's a simple-minded nonsense perpetuated by unimaginative line managers.  It's downright insulting when directed at individual contributors.\"", "\"With regard to PMI. You propose to put down 5% less, i.e. 15% instead of 20%. This is $12,500.  How much is the PMI? You will pay interest on the $12,500 extra you are borrowing, but also stuck paying that PMI for a number of years. Say the PMI is $100/mo. That's like paying nearly 10% on top of the interest you are already paying.  If you get a firm quote on what the PMI will cost you, you can make an informed decision. Borrowing at a bit of a premium may make sense, but much about 7-8%, and I'd rather take the risk of needing to raise cash elsewhere. PMI is tough to get rid of until you are at 80% LTV.  Edit -Beautiful link from Chad below. Now for the real math - You borrow 85K (to keep math easy) which is 15% down on a $100K house. 1.1% of $85K is $935/yr. But, you see, you are subject to that because you couldn't raise that last $5000. And $935 is 18.7% of that $5000. The PMI is on the whole mortgage, not on that extra bit you owe. Permit me to say \"\"holy crap! 18.7% is higher than my worst credit card, and more than I'd pay to borrow nearly anywhere else.\"\"  The percent is the same regardless of the mortgage, this is the math to borrow at an 85% LTV. And why I suggest things like using one's 401(k) as a bridge for such amounts. For the OP, the $12K delta.  (Note, the link shows an update to 1.2% which makes the real cost 20.4%) The numbers are not as crazy when borrowing 95% LTV. \"\"only\"\" about 7.9% on the extra needed. Crazy as it sounds, this is how the math works.\"", "\"You're absolutely right.  I'm not commenting on the fact that retail stores still do massively more business than Online, nor the that they have a significant advantage when the balance begins to shift.   My only comment is that their data doesn't support their conclusion. They concluded that 90% of business is done in retail stores. No, 90% of business *involves a retail component*, including the somewhat dubious \"\"Returns\"\"- which is not part of the sales process and would understandably want to happen in a retail setting.\"", "\"&gt;  Facebook has become one of the big companies pushing for/creating newer better networking gear servers   Completely untrue, unless you count \"\"complaining about infrastructure\"\" as \"\"creating newer better networking gear servers\"\".  Sorry, but they do nothing demonstratively constructive in this field.\"", "Sort of unrelated to the main post here, but I've been hoping to buy a few shares that would motivate me to follow the market and get a bit of hands on experience to better understand it all.  What trading program would you recommend for a few simple trades like that?  Thanks!", "That's what she said.  But seriously, I'm very much against SOPA, but I don't want to open the floodgates and have this sub reddit become inundated with politicizing on this issue or any other.   I'll let this one stay for now, but if it starts trending towards more and more of it, I'll drop the ban hammer.", "\"I mean, are we moving from \"\"everyone deserves enough wage to fully live on no matter how much value their job creates\"\" to \"\"everyone deserves full on nice place to live no matter what\"\"?  My wife and I are living in 2 rooms of someone else's home because neither of us graduated college. That's an office we share and a bedroom. We are either sleeping or working. Often at different times because she works night shift. Our bathroom is the \"\"anybody who happens to be downstairs and anyone who visits the house bathroom\"\".  She's currently studying for a job upgrade and I've started a business that's beginning to get traction, but that's recent. We made bad decisions that led to not great jobs. But we realized that the only people who could pick us up and help were ourselves. My refrigerator just died, and I no longer have a vehicle because some loser decided he wanted to pull  out in front of me at the last possible second. My family helps, but they can't prop us up, and I DON'T WANT THEM TOO.  If you're working a minimum wage job, educate yourself. Build something else. Free education is all over the internet and you can literally make yourself a job now with nothing but a computer (fuck, a smartphone) and your work ethic. Nobody who will hire you gives a shit about your skin color or gender or anything like that. They care about whether or not you can provide value.  Let teenagers sling fries and pack boxes. Fucking grow up and learn how to code. Learn how to work on cars in your spare time. Education is now free and it's the ticket to a better life. Jesus fuck.  Saying things like \"\"Stop eating avocado toast and you could afford a house\"\" is bullshit.   But to say \"\"use free resources to help yourself instead of staying at McDonald's and spending your time on nonsense bullshit, and maybe you could soon make more than minimum wage\"\" sure isn't. I've worked minimum wage and driven an hour from my house for the privelege.  If you aren't willing to improve yourself and your skillset, then fuck yes, live under the stairs like Harry Potter.   There's no reason Gary Vaynerchuk goes from working at his dad's liquor store to millionaire, but someone else can't go from McDonald's to making a real \"\"living wage\"\".  There's no reason JK Rowling went from nothing to giving away so much money that she dropped from billionaire to millionaire​, but someone else can't learn how to write as copy or social media for businesses.  Live under the stairs. Make minimum wage. But don't bitch about it if you aren't fucking working to change your circumstances, because to be honest, nobody owes you or me shit.\""]}
+{"query": "Will Short Sale Prevent Me From Getting VA Home Loan Later?", "corpus": ["From MyFICO: A foreclosure remains on your credit report for 7 years, but its impact to your FICO® score will lessen over time. While a foreclosure is considered a very negative event by your FICO score, it's a common misconception that it will ruin your score for a very long time. In fact, if you keep all of your other credit obligations in good standing, your FICO score can begin to rebound in as little as 2 years. The important thing to keep in mind is that a foreclosure is a single negative item, and if you keep this item isolated, it will be much less damaging to your FICO score than if you had a foreclosure in addition to defaulting on other credit obligations. (personal note - I tip my hat to you, sir. Regardless of party, we owe our Vets a debt of gratitude. If I had my way, a VA loan would ignore the past short sale. I wish you well. And thank you for serving)"], "neg": ["Putting your money in the same account as a parent could cause many problems, with very few benefits. One of you would have to claim the dividends and capital gains that the fund might earn during the year. That person might have to pay taxes on those earnings. You would have to find some way of figuring out how to split the costs, and somebody would have to reimburse the other. If one person wanted to sell, figuring out which shares to sell would be much more complex. If these are retirement accounts, which have maximum limits based on income, and the use of other retirement accounts, there is no way to co-mingle the funds. Even if it was possible to combine the funds, the reality is that two people decades apart have different investment goals, and risk tolerances, so the types of investments that a great for one, are very poor for the other. The only benefit is that an existing account would already have more than the minimum investment, so some investments would be easier to make. Also some investments have lower fees if you meet specific investment thresholds. If the fund increases in value by 10% in a year, it doesn't make a difference if the value at the start of the year was 10K or 100K. The rate is the same. The benefits are minor and few; the drawbacks are many; and some situations make it impossible to co-mingle the funds.", "text blast is the now marketing. I think any company should try it right away. It is cheap and effective. texting service is something for your company to look into. I have been working in this text advertising for several year, so I do know the insight. Please contact me if you have any question.", "\"Hans Rosling has pointed out that most people have worse ideas about large issues in the world (specifically development, trends, etc.) than would be developed from random (\"\"I asked the chimps and they got it right 33% of the time\"\").    Highly educated people world-wide are wrong on poverty in the world, mortality, wealth distribution, economic variations in regions, etc. in vastly higher numbers than can be accounted for by no knowledge, it's rather wrong knowledge (bad generalization rules).  The generalization rules come from teachers, books, materials, etc. that have not incorporated the vast amounts of change (the emerging areas of stability and affluence in sub-Saharan Africa following the path of Korea for example) or the fact that world population will stabilize at 40% African, 40% Asian, etc at 11-12 billion people with zero growth as soon as those currently born are all reproducing and current generations reach death age as we are currently at zero population growth rates world-wide.  The videos are quite entertaining and informative (there are a lot of them as Hans Rosling tried to spread the word about this from 2003 on)  It's about making use of the data that we have (most of which is hidden in hard-to access charts, reports, data bases, etc -- Gapminder is devoted to summarizing and displaying this in easily understood forms\"", "The limits for 2011 and 2012 are $5000 or $6000 if you are 50 or older. The 2011 income limit is $169K, but that's MAGI, not gross. With a $180K income, your MAGI is likely below $169, but you can only tell by looking at your return. If you are this close, you might have to convert to a non-deducted IRA, or withdraw the money. Else, you can fund the 2011 IRA when you file the return in 2012 to be sure.", "\"Just a word of warning: Most of the companies that promise to repair your credit are scams or close to them.  You could just as easily do yourself what they are going to charge you for. Essentially they write a letter to the credit agencies disputing most or all of the bad stuff on your credit report. When you do that, the credit agency sends an inquiry to the company that reported the negative information requiring them to justify it. If that company doesn't respond within x days, they remove the item from your credit report. These companies depend on the fact that some companies aren't going to hit that deadline or even respond. Perhaps they are just too busy to hassle with providing backup documentation for a $20 late payment. They are banking on getting a few of these cheap \"\"outs\"\" to your benefit and charging you for what amounts to sending out a bunch of form letters. If you don't mind writing a bunch of letters, then you can save a lot of money and get the exact same results. These companies want to pretend they have some insider knowledge or fancy lawyers that know special credit-magic, but they generally don't. The only option I'd consider legitimate and not a waste of your time is a referral from the non-profit National Federation for Credit Counseling. They aren't going to \"\"fix your credit\"\", but will give you advice on budgeting and repairing your credit on your own.\"", "\"Payment gateways such as Square do not normally withhold tax. It is up to you to pay the appropriate tax at tax time. That having been said, Square does report your payments to the IRS on a form 1099-K if your payments are large enough. According to Square, you'll get a 1099-K from them if your total payments for the year add up to $20,000 AND more than 200 transactions.  Whether or not they report on a 1099-K, you are required to pay the appropriate taxes on your income.  So now the question becomes, \"\"Do I have to pay income tax on the proceeds from my garage sale?\"\" And the answer to that question is usually not. When you sell something that you previously purchased, if you sell it for more than you paid for it, you have a capital gain and need to pay tax on that. However, generally you sell things in a garage sale at a loss, meaning that there is no tax due.  If you make more than $20,000 at your garage sale and the IRS gets a 1099-K, the IRS might be curious as to how you did that with no capital gain. So if you sell any big ticket items (a bulldozer, for example), you should keep a record of what you paid for it, so you can show the loss to the IRS in the event of an audit.\"", "The core idea behind this statement is that there is always money for what you prioritize. If you try to use whatever is left over after your bills for savings, you probably won't save very much if anything. In practice, you decide on a fixed amount of money you will save out of each paycheck and put that aside in an investment or savings account, then pay your bills out of what is left.  Essentially it is a way to counteract the tendency of your lifestyle rising to exactly meet your income and leaving nothing for savings."]}
+{"query": "What would I miss out on by self insuring my car?", "corpus": ["\"Convenience, and of course money. In case of an event, you'll have to spend the full worth of money to fix/replace, while if you're insured - you get the insurance to pay for it. It is up to you to decide, if the money saved on the lower premiums worth the risk of paying much more in case of an event. Of course, the cheaper the car the more it makes sense not to pay the premiums. Many people do that. Regarding the bargaining power, I actually think that you would pay less if it is not going through insurance than the bill the insurance pays. I fixed a nasty dent for like $300  at one shop, while at the other they said \"\"It's $1200, but what do you care, your insurance will cover it\"\" (I had $500 deductible, so in the end it was cheaper for me to pay $300 without the insurance at all).\""], "neg": ["Statistically speaking active strategies **are** strictly on par with, or worse when you subtract fees, than passive strategies (regardless of how much time or money you spend investigating companies). Actively managed mutual funds are by and large just a racket where one class of rich people soaks another class of rich people plus some of the middle class. So yeah they should go ahead and call it a day. About time IMO.", "I wouldn't put too much stock in the guidance generically... it's more a measure of confidence in the company. When you listen to the earnings calls and start following a particular analyst, you'll understand where they come from when they kick out a number.", "If you use Google Shopping to promote your products, then you should seek out QliQ. They offer management services for your Shopping campaigns tailored to improve your brand’s online visibility. They will also enhance your product’s advertisements using unique keywords to attract more potential customers. Log on to https://www.qliq.co/ for more details about their services for Google Shopping.", "The stock market is not the economy you dimwit. Also, it takes several months for economic policy decisions to take effect, as others have pointed out, so current economic situation is largely the effects of the previous administration.  This doesn't mean Trump is doing a bad job, it's just too early to tell for the time being. So stop being a stupid cunt and sucking Trump's proverbial cock, the man doesn't even know you exist and he's not an emperor and you shouldn't act like a peasant grovelling to get his grace bestowed upon you, you fucking dirt farmer.", "Just so you know, in a small claims court limits are less than $10K so even if you win, you will get just half the money.  Hiring an attorney can be expensive. Never lend money to family or friends unless you don't expect to have it back.  Keep the friendship and the money.", "You assume that you'll be working at a bulge bracket, who have structured programs and are used to hiring globally.  If you go work at a hedge fund, it could end up being a small shop who would rather not deal with any additional issues.  On my campus - many companies don't hire international just because there are so many qualified domestic applicants.  This is probably the most competitive and lucrative field out of any profession.", "You should check this with a tax accountant or tax preparation expert, but I encountered a similar situation in Canada. Your ISA income does count as income in a foreign country, and it is not tax exempt (the tax exemption is only because the British government specifically says so). You would need to declare the income to the foreign government who would almost certainly charge you tax on it. There are a couple of reasons why you should probably keep the funds in the ISA, especially if you are looking to return. First contribution limits are per year, so if you took the money out now you would have to use future contribution room to put it back. Second almost all UK savings accounts deduct tax at source, and its frankly a pain to get it back. Leaving the money in an ISA saves you that hassle, or the equal hassle of transferring it to an offshore account."]}
+{"query": "Tax treatment of renovation costs and mortgage interest on a second house", "corpus": ["Should I treat this house as a second home or a rental property on my 2015 taxes? If it was not rented out or available for rent then you could treat it as your second home. But if it was available for rent (i.e.: you started advertising, you hired a property manager, or made any other step towards renting it out), but you just didn't happen to find a tenant yet - then you cannot. So it depends on the facts and circumstances. I've read that if I treat this house as a rental property, then the renovation cost is a capital expenditure that I can claim on my taxes by depreciating it over 28 years. That is correct. 27.5 years, to be exact. I've also read that if I treat this house as a personal second home, then I cannot do that because the renovation costs are considered non-deductible personal expenses. That is not correct. In fact, in both cases the treatment is the same. Renovation costs are added to your basis. In case of rental, you get to depreciate the house. Since renovations are considered part of the house, you get to depreciate them too. In case of a personal use property, you cannot depreciate. But the renovation costs still get added to the basis. These are not expenses. But does mortgage interest get deducted against my total income or only my rental income? If it is a personal use second home - you get to deduct the mortgage interest up to a limit on your Schedule A. Depending on your other deductions, you may or may not have a tax benefit. If it is a rental - the interest is deducted from the rental income only on your Schedule E. However, there's no limit (although some may be deferred if the deduction is more than the income) if you're renting at fair market value. Any guidance would be much appreciated! Here's the guidance: if it is a rental - treat it as a rental. Otherwise - don't."], "neg": ["Take the easy approach - as suggested by John Bogle (founder of Vanguard - and a man worthy of tremendous respect). Two portfolios consisting of 1 index fund each. Invest your age% in the Fixed Income index fund. Invest (1-age)% in the stock index fund.  Examples of these funds are the Total Market Index Fund (VTSMX) and the Total Bond Market Index (VBMFX). If you wish to be slightly more adventurous, blend (1-age-10)% as the Total Market Index Fund and a fixed 10% as Total International Stock Index (VGTSX).  You will sleep well at night for most of your life.", "At 1.4 Million, you can definately afford a professional advisor who would give you the best advice taking into account all your goals and risk appetite.", "Wiring is the best way to move large amounts of money from one country to another.  I am sure Japanese banks will allow you to exchange your Japanese Yen into USD and wire it to Canada.   I am not sure if they will be able to convert directly from JPY to CND and wire funds in CND.  If you can open a USD bank account in Canada, that might make things easier.", "If she lives by herself, my guess would be that she qualifies as a household of one. Either way, her monthly income is below the threshold, so she should be eligible. Per the linked website The only way to determine if your household is eligible for SNAP benefits is to apply. I'd say it's worth a try.", "Sure QNX is a good embedded operating system, but it's hardly the lack of a bulletproof real-time OS that's causing RIM problems right now. They were already known for making pretty reliable phones for basic telephony and messaging. Their problem is that the Blackberry OS interface and third-party application support is shit. QNX doesn't help them with that; in fact, it puts them even further behind.", "While my margin is not nearly as good as yours, I sell out early.  I generally think it's a bad idea to hold any single stock, as they can vary wildly in value.  However, as you mention, it's advantageous to hold for one year.  Read more about Capital Gains Taxes here and here.", "You should examine the letter more closely.  Most letters in this area are ones which inform you of a proposed settlement of a class action (not the initiation of a class action), and that you may be a member of the class.  A main point of such a letter is normally that if you take no action, you will be included in the settlement class.   Usually there are no major consequences to not opting out of the class other than you will lose the ability to get a lawyer and sue the defendants for the actions in question. To obtain benefits from the settlement, you will typically be required to submit documentation of the nature of your membership in the class.  This may be easy or hard.  The benefits are described in the materials, and could be substantial but usually are close to trivial, such as a coupon for $10 off when purchasing another product from the defendant."]}
+{"query": "Do I pay a zero % loan before another to clear both loans faster?", "corpus": ["By paying the $11,000 into the 2.54% loan you will save $23.30 in interest every month. By paying the $11,000 into the 3.625% loan you will save $33.20 in interest every month. If your objective is to get rid of one loan quicker so repayments can go to the other loan to pay off sooner, I would put the $11,000 into the 2.54% loan and pay that off as quick as possible, then put any extra payments into the mortgage at 3.625%. Pay only the minimum amounts into the 0% car loan as this is not costing you anything."], "neg": ["First off, congratulations on taking care of your finances and paying off your cards!  Takes a lot of discipline.   If your next oldest card is just a year apart, you can safely close this card.", "Limit orders are generally safer than market orders. Market orders take whatever most-favorable price is being offered. This can be especially dangerous in highly volatile stocks which have a significant spread between the bid and ask. That being said, you want to be very careful that you enter the price you intend into a limit order. It is better to be a bit slower at entering your orders than it is to make a terrible mistake like the one you mention in your question.", "Haha, I meant fair enough to his point, which to be clear I don't believe he is achieving.  The article is still poorly argued, I agree with you.  I'm not convinced I'm going to win any arguments about that, though, and kicking the wildly irrational BTC hornets nest on reddit is something I've grown tired of.", "And this is why we calculate actual yield and not just coupons. Nobody pays par for high yield notes. If the company performs well, the price of your note goes up and you can realize a gain when is called or your sell it.  High yield works exactly like equity, and in a lot of cases it's better because it spits out cash in the meantime.  I'm not even allowed to call the interest I get on my HY notes as interest. All realized gain.", "\"Careful. Economy, Personal Finance, and classical investing subreddits hate crypto, for the most part. They have decent points, but most of the time they're stuck in antiquated modes of thought. It's like describing the internet to phone or cable companies in the 80's: \"\"It's just a fad for nerds. It'll pass.\"\"\"", "I'd say that it cannot be meaningfully calculated or measured because the two are just too different in every way. Poker Stock trading I guess the last point (that someone relying on luck is exploitable in poker but not in stock trading) could be interpreted as stock trading being based more on luck, while the second and third points indicated that poker has more true randomness and is thus based more on luck. Something both have in common is that people who have been losing money are often tempted to take stupid risks which lose them everything.", "You and your husband are fronting all the money upfront. I'm guessing this will cost you around 67,000 once closing costs and fees are included. So obviously you would be hundred percent owners at the beginning. You'll then pay 31% of the mortgage and have your sister pay the remaining 69%. This puts your total investment at the end at 67k + 74.4k + 31% of interest accrued, and your sisters total investment at 165.6k+69% of interest accrued. If you hold the full length of the mortgage, your sister will have invested much more than you( assuming 30 year fixed rate, and 3.75%, she'd pay 116.6k in interest as opposed to your 49.6k) She will have spent 282.2k and y'all will have spent 191k. However if you sell early, your percentage could be much higher.  These calculations don't take into account the opportunity cost of fronting all the cash. It could be earning you more in the stock market or in a different investment property. Liability also could be an issue in the case of her not being able to pay. The bank can still come after you for the whole amount. Lastly and most importantly, this also doesn't include the fact that she will be living there and y'all will not. What kind of rent would she be paying to live in a similar home? If it is more than 1400, you will basically be subsidizing her living, as well as tying up funds, and increasing your risk exposure. If it is more than 1400, she shouldn't be any percent owner."]}
+{"query": "When to use geometric vs. arithmetic mean? Why is the former better for percentages?", "corpus": ["Simple.  Say in 2012 you were up 50% (brilliant) but then in 2013 you were down 50% (sorry). i.e. if you started with $1000, you were up to $1500, then down to $750. You lost $250 overall. If you were to compute the mean of the percentages using each method, then: Arithmetic mean: The average of +50% and -50% (really 150% and 50% of each period's initial value) is zero, not up or down. Geometric mean: 1.5 * .5 = .75, i.e. you are down 25% over 2 years, or about 13.4% per year. It should be clear the Geometric makes more sense in such a case."], "neg": ["I assume you are talking about a publicly traded company listed on a major stock exchange and the buyer resides in the US. (Private companies and non-US locations can change the rules really a lot.) The short answer is no, because the company does not own the stock, various investors do. Each investor has to make an individual decision to sell or not sell. But there are complications. If an entity buys more than about 10% of the company they have to file a declaration with the SEC. The limit can be higher if they file an assertion that they are buying it solely for investment and are not seeking control of the company. If they are seeking control of the company then more paperwork must be filed and if they want to buy the whole company they may be required to make a tender offer where they offer to buy any and all shares at a specific price. If the company being bought is a financial institution, then the buyer may have to declare as a bank holding company and more regulations apply. The company can advise shareholders not to take the tender offer, but they cannot forbid it. So the short answer is, below 10% and for investment purposes only, it is cash and carry: Whoever has the cash gets to carry the stock away. Above that various regulations and declarations apply, but the company still does not have the power prevent the purchase in most circumstances.", "\"With all due respect to economics everywhere and the armchair economist. I think they overlook one very basic fact. The alternative to buying popcorn  at the cinema is buying it cheaper at the store, or making your own and bringing it to the cinema. Cinemagoing is something you tend to do with a date (and sometimes your friends) and who wants to look cheap to their date (and perhaps their spouse/friends) bringing popcorn to the cinema?  This \"\"cheapo-gentlemens\"\" effect together with convenience is probably the reason why popcorn can remain so expensive at cinemas.\"", "Since near-term at-the-money (ATM) options are generally the most liquid, the listed implied vol for a stock is usually pretty close to the nearest ATM volatility, but there's not a set convention that I'm aware of.  Also note that for most stocks, vol skew (the difference in vol between away-from-the-money and at-the-money options) is relatively small,  correct me if I'm wrong, IV is the markets assessment that the stock is about 70% likely (1 Standard Deviation) to move (in either direction) by that percent over the next year. Not exactly.  It's an annualized standard deviation of the anticipated movements over the time period of the option that it's implied from.  Implied vol for near-term options can be higher or lower than longer-term options, depending on if the market believes that there will be more uncertainty in the short-term.  Also, it's the bounds of the expected movement in that time period. so if a stock is at $100 with an implied vol of 30% for 1-year term options, then the market thinks that the stock will be somewhere between $70 and $130 after 1 year.  If you look at the implied vol for a 6-month term option, half of that vol is the range of expected movement in 6 months.", "You can use www.etfdb.com and search on geography.", "It is obviously better to settle a little issue of AC now than to hold up and let it develop into a more concerning issue later. Additionally, holding up and proceeding to run the unit can expand your electric bills and even make perilous circumstances.", "The techs didn't plug them into the goddamned centrifuge controllers,  otherwise only one would be destroyed then. They were all networked and a different network computer had the drive plugged in and infected the centrifuges. The exact same attack vector would work against atms", "Toronto is a lot bigger then you think. It doesn't just include downtown Toronto and what not. Don't forget they already have a distribution centre in Missisuaga so the area isn't anything new to them. Amazon also apparently wants to have it in Canada."]}
+{"query": "Loan holder wants a check from the insurance company that I already cashed and used to repair my car", "corpus": ["What would happen if you was to cash a check, didn’t realize it was   to you and your finance company, take it to a local business that has   a money center, they cash the check without even having you sign let   alone having the finance companies endorsement on it . The money   cleared my account like a couple months ago and it was just brought up   now .. ? The reason why the check was made out the owner and the lender is to make sure the repairs were done on the car. The lender wants to make sure that their investment is protected.  For example: you get a six year loan on a new car. In the second year you get hit by another driver. The damage estimate is $1,000, and you decide it doesn't look that bad, so you decide to skip the repair and spend the money on paying off debts. What you don't know is that if they had done the repair they would have found hidden damage and the repair would have cost $3,000 and would have been covered by the other persons insurance.  Jump ahead 2 years, the rust from the skipped repair causes other issues. Now it will cost $5,000 to fix. The insurance won't cover it, and now a car with an outstanding loan balance of $4,000 and a value of $10,000 if the damage didn't exist needs $5,000 to fix.  The lender wants the repairs done. They would have not signed the check before seeing the proof the repairs were done to their satisfaction. But because the check was cashed without their involvement they will be looking for a detailed receipt showing that all the work was done. They may require that the repair be done at a certified repair shop with manufacturer parts.  If you don't have a detailed bill ask the repair shop for a copy of the original one."], "neg": ["It isn't great news, but it is still slow improvement. Check the prime working age labor force participation rate, employment population ratio, average wage, or average hours worked. They all tell the same story. An economy that isn't recovering as fast as anyone would like, but one that is clearly recovering.", "Isn't 'net' implying that job losses are already accounted for?  edit:  Now I'm thinking you're saying that the jobs Amazon destroyed need to be subtracted from their net.  Hmm.. Mathematically sound.  Practically next to impossible to determine an accurate number, I expect.", "Instead of gnucash i suggest you to use kmymoney. It's easier", "\"after 30 years, you'd have a million dollar house vs a quarter million dollar house. You've captured three quarters of a million dollars in rent, given my napkin math hypothetical. As I figure the math, a 250,000 house appreciating to a million dollar house in 30 years requires a sustained ~4.9% appreciation every year--seems unrealistic. The historical rate of inflation, on average, has been closer to 3-3.5%; a 3% appreciation would give a final value of $589k.  This also doesn't taken into account the idea that you may have bought a property during a housing bubble, and so then you wouldn't get 3% year-over-year returns. But also, in terms of \"\"capturing rent\"\", you are not factoring in necessary or possible costs that renting doesn't have:  mortgage interest and insurance, maintenance, property tax, insurance, buying and selling associated fees, and, importantly, opportunity costs (in that the money not tied up in the house could be invested elsewhere).   So it is not such a slam dunk as you make it out.  Many use the NY Times buy/rent calculator to compare renting vs. buying.\"", "Fees mostly.  BOA, for example, just announced $5/month for for all debit cards.  Chase has foreign transaction fees, mostly hidden. BOA once famously raised interest rates on credit card holders to 28%, legally.  Also, some people do not like patronizing a bank with CEOs that bankrupt the company and then get multi-million dollar golden parachutes. Finally some people have a problem with banks or institutions that suspend accounts based on political or unproven legal proceedings (ala Wikileaks and BOA).  Credit unions are less like to be involved in this sort of activity since they are not privately traded, and as such they are not ruled by shareholders who demand bottom line results at all costs.", "I have several as well, (acquired the same way as you) and I am happy with the idea.  They are very stable and that is the reason they pay so little.  I don't think you can get a low risk and medium (or high) return.  The interest does reset every six months so you do get a bit of the market, should the fed set interest rates higher, you bonds will eventually reflect that. Bonds and Certificates of Deposit are just one element of your investment portfolio.  Put the money you can't lose into bonds, the money you can into higher risk stocks. Bonds are great from our grandparent's perspective because they are NOT going to lose value. (My grandparents were depression era folks who wanted that stability)  They are trivial to give as gifts.  Most other investment forms require a heavy bit more of legal work I would think.", "\"I don't think there's any federal law prohibiting them from allowing you to AutoPay more than your minimum.  Certainly there are federal laws telling them what to do with payments more than the minimum - they must apply the leftover to the principal by default - so the law doesn't assume you can't overpay. However, federal law does require them to advance your next payment date if you overpay by a multiple of your minimum payment; i.e., if your payment is $50 and you send them $100, you don't have to make your next payment [though interest still accrues of course].  It's possible Navient isn't interested in implementing this functionality in their AutoPay, who knows. In any event, assuming you have a bank that has AutoBillPay functionality, you may want to consider using that - either for the \"\"extra\"\" or for the whole amount (if Navient isn't giving you a discount for AutoPay - if so, use that at least).  Your bank is happy to cut a check in any amount and send it on, and Navient is required to apply it to the principal.  (Though if you do the autopay-and-billpay and are sending an extra amount less than a whole payment, verify that they're willing to accept amounts less than a full payment, first; not all lenders are.)\""]}
+{"query": "How do you find reasonably priced, quality, long lasting clothing?", "corpus": ["On the quality angle a big part of it is experience, but the biggest thing is careful observation.  You have to take a close, critical look at any article of clothing.  (This holds true for just about any purchase.) As far as finding them for reasonable prices it's the usual thing: sales and buying them second-hand. Finally, regarding maintenance:"], "neg": ["It's unfortunate that these spots cannot be filled with US citizens. Not sure if it's a problem with our education system, but our economy moved from manufacturing to services and high tech enterprise. I'm surprised our citizens are so underqualified that Microsoft is having trouble filling 6000 spots with millions of US citizens.", "I wouldn't pay down your mortgage faster until you have a huge emergency fund.  Like two years' worth of expenses.  Once you put extra money toward principal you can't get it out unless you get a HELOC, which costs money.  You're in a position now to build that up in a hurry.  I suggest you do so. Your mortgage is excellent.  In the land of inflation it gets easier and easier to make that fixed-dollar payment: depreciating dollars. You seem like a go-getter.  Once you have your huge emergency fund, why not buy a few websites and monetize the heck out of them?  Or look for an investment property from someone who needs to sell desperately? Get a cushion that you can do something with.", "It refers to the risk free rate of a particular country. Because all other rates are usually pegged to the risk free rate. In US,it is the 30 day treasury rate. In England, it is the LIBOR In Canada, it is the overnight rate at which banks lend money to each other. All of these come under the category of risk free rate.", "I worked at Sears then commission only while in college. Taught me how to sell and I actually made decent money.  I see no problem with that in high ticket electronics sales as long as the business model supports it. Clearly the model didn't at Sears, CC, or HH Gregg", "Which is also part of the chain's problems. Grocery store prices are pretty low and you can easily make something better yourself.   The only way you can get people to spend money is to provide a better experience and these chains provide a shitty one.", "&gt; Once it is triggered, the system triggers an event to the bank’s alarm system, flags video surveillance of an event, and starts up a device designed to “jam” skimmers by disrupting their reading of card data.  If this works as well as the article claims, why not simply have the magnetic jammers running constantly?", "\"Well, it's directly depositing money in your account, but Direct Deposit is something completely different: https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Direct_deposit Direct deposits are most commonly made by businesses in the payment of salaries and wages and for the payment of suppliers' accounts, but the facility can be used for payments for any purpose, such as payment of bills, taxes, and other government charges. Direct deposits are most commonly made by means of electronic funds transfers effected using online, mobile, and telephone banking systems but can also be effected by the physical deposit of money into the payee's bank account. Thus, since the purpose of DD is to eliminate checks, I'd say, \"\"no\"\", depositing cash directly into your account does not count as the requirement for one Direct Deposit within 90 days.\""]}
+{"query": "Does an option trading below parity always indicate an arbitrage opportunity?", "corpus": ["\"Probably but not necessarily.  Your question could also be posed regarding cash & carry for commodities in contango: If I can take delivery on the gold now, short the gold next year and make delivery then, paying the storage fees, is this an arbitrage opportunity? It is in the sense that you know your delivery and the money you will make, but it's not in the sense that until delivery (or execution in the options case) you are still on the hook for the margins due from price fluctuations. Additionally you need to consider what ROI you will make from the trade. Even though it's \"\"guaranteed\"\" it may be less than what you can earn from other \"\"zero risk\"\" opportunities.\""], "neg": ["\"Time Value of Money - The simple calculation for this is FV = PV * (1+r)^N which reads The Future Value is equal to the Present Value times 1 plus the interest rate multiplied by itself by the number of periods that will pass. A simple way to look at this is that if interest rates were 5%/yr a dollar would be worth (1.05)^N where N is the number of years passing.  The concept of compound interest cannot be separated from the above. Compounding is accounting for the interest on the interest that has accrued in prior periods. If I lend you a dollar at 6% simple interest for 30 years, you would pay me back $1 + $1.80 or $2.80. But - 1.06^30 = 5.74 so that dollar compounded at 6% annually for 30 years is $5.74. Quite a difference.  Often, the time value of money is discussed in light of inflation. A dollar today is not the same dollar as 30 years ago or 30 years hence. In fact, inflation has eroded the value of the dollar by a factor of 3 over the past 30 years. An average item costing $100 would now cost $300. So when one invests, at the very least they try to stay ahead of inflation and seek additional return for their risk.  One quirk of compounding is the \"\"rule of 72.\"\" This rule states that if you divide the interest rate into the number 72 the result is the number of years to double. So 10% per year will take about 7.2 years to double, 8%, 9 years, etc. It's not 100% precise, but a good \"\"back of napkin\"\" calculation.  When people talk about the total payments over the thirty year life of a mortgage, they often ignore the time value of money. That payment even ten years from now has far less value than the same payment today.\"", "\"What is \"\"microlearning?\"\"  After just checking Google, and after reading through the corporate jargon, it sounds like it's a fancy way of saying \"\"I don't know the answer to this question, so I'm going to Google it.\"\"  Did I just \"\"microlearn\"\" without even realizing it?\"", "Here's a good run-down of what's required to handle the reporting of tip income. To address this question specifically, here's the relevant instructions from that post: If your allocated tips are less than what's recorded in your daily log, and you reported your tips to your employer, then it is likely that something is wrong with your employer's recordkeeping system. You can ask your employer to correct your W-2. You should report the allocated tips on Form 4137, plus any additional tips you show in your daily records.", "I've been hearing storied from Germans that this is happening in Germany, too, but at the bank level. All anecdotal, people I've met telling me their personal stories, but they follow the same pattern. Go to the bank, try to take out a few grand for a vacation or large purchase, bank tells them they can't have that much and that they just have to do with less, even if the account balance covers the withdrawal.", "I can think of three things you might do: Talk to a fee-only adviser. As the comments suggest, this would only be one or two sessions to lay out what all you have, establish what you want it to do, and write a plan that you are comfortable carrying out yourself. What do your 401k and Roth IRA look like? If you mean for this money to be long-term, then your retirement portfolio might be a good place to start. I don't currently own them, but one of my personally hobby horses is I-Series Savings Bonds, commonly called I Bonds. Even in the current low interest rate environment, they are a good deal relative to everything else out there. I summarized this more fully in my answer to another question. You can invest up to $10,000 per SSN per year, and the interest rate is the sum of a fixed rate plus a floating rate based on CPI. Currently the fixed rate is 0%, but the floating rate is better than what you can get from most other cash-like instruments.", "One of the reasons is also general distrust to the government. Another one is that there exist special interest group which profits from the complicated scheme, keep adding special cases, and has stronger financial situation that the opponents of such complex scheme. People do not trust government, or companies, to act in their best interests. So they (we) waste huge amount of time and/or money to comply with byzantine income laws. In 2004 Democratic presidential primary, presidential candidate Wes Clark (who beyond being 4-star general has also master degree in economics from Oxford, and taught economics in West point) proposed similar scheme: for people with income under 50K, employer would do all the (simple) paperwork, if desired, and get return.  In the noise of the campaign, idea how to simplify taxes for half of the population was lost.  Funny how the only candidate in recent history who was both professor of economics (not MBA, which is about business and profits) and distinguished military hero, could not get any traction in Democratic party.", "The $1300 turns into $2817/mo over a year. You've identified just over $1700 in expenses, but clearly missed a lot. Use what you wish, Mint, a spreadsheet, a notebook, I don't care. Just track every penny for a time. My property tax is due quarterly, so 3 months is minimum. It takes a year to get a full view of the items that are seasonal. Unless of course, the winter is mild (and your plowing expenses are low) or the summer is rainy (and the water bill for the grass is low.)  Even the above doesn't capture the things that are less regular. The house painting, the heater repair, etc.  The exercise itself is a great first step. As others stated $280 for cable/phone? Once you add the missing $900/mo, we'll know more.  What's really important is that you look at 100% of where the money goes and decide what the priorities are. No one's judging you, we chose the bigger house over eating out and expensive vacations. It's about knowing and understanding your choices."]}
+{"query": "Where can I find recent information about which major shareholders changed their positions in a given stock?", "corpus": ["For the united States forms must be submitted electronically with the Securities and Exchange Commission , they also must be posted to company websites."], "neg": ["I can't speak to Tangerine's system specifically, but I have used similar systems through Bank of America and Chase (both US-based).  It sounds like my experience in terms of identity verification were very similar, and I now use this to pay several contractors on a regular basis. No problems so far.", "I wholeheartedly agree with this, of course there are limits, but in my experience it's not the pay that makes you truly happy. Though it certainly relieves certain day to day stress, it's mostly the people you work with that tend to make or break you liking your job. In order for me to leave my current job I'd probably have to get at least a 50% percent pay increase for me to even consider it. I will not trade my current happiness for money alone.", "It was just for these two guys but we might be seeing a return to the finance hiring arms race for MBAs back in the 90's.  The number of MBAs every year has been dropping due to the recession but I think we're still a ways off from a hiring boom across the board.", "I would like to add that from my own research, a pro to leasing over buying a new vehicle would be that with the lease the entire 7,500 federal incentive is applied directly to the lease, or so they say. If you buy a new car you get a 7,500 federal tax incentive also but if you dont have 7,500 bucks in taxes this wont be as much value. It doesn't sense to me to buy used since you dont get the tax incentive and also if you're in california the 2,500 rebate only applies to buying new or leasing 30 month or longer.", "Yes, I think many of them actually do. All one has to do is look at how people responded to the [*exact same responses to Syria under Obama as well as under Trump*](http://nymag.com/daily/intelligencer/2017/04/gop-voters-love-same-attack-on-syria-they-hated-under-obama.html) to understand how much politics clouds people's thinking.   I think there is a percent of that population who never had to buy insurance before, and are not happy with having to now. I think there is a percent who had junk insurance before which wouldn't cover anything important and are upset that there is now a standard for coverage (and conveniently ignore the fact that they would leave the taxpayer responsible for covering it because the same people who buy shoddy insurance are usually the same people who can't cover catastrophic medical bills). Then I also think that there is a percentage of them who are facing the repercussions of their state government not enacting the Medicaid expansion and not taking part in the state exchanges. I think most of them have bought the party line - hook, line, and sinker - that this is all the ACA fault and that the GOP tinkering and obstructionism has nothing to do with it.", "Do all/most unit trusts have equalisation policy? It is really that some value of the fund is given to the investor, so the fund value goes down by that much per unit. It depends on the type of mutual funds. For example, there are growth type mutual funds that do not give any dividend and the total value of the fund is reflected in its price. Do the companies whose stocks we owned directly apply equalisation policy on their dividends as well? Why not? As far a stock price is concerned, it usually decrease by the same amount of the dividend payout at ex-date, so in effect, the market in a way does the equalization, the company directly does not do it.", "I'm not a finance professional by any means, but my understanding of cashier's checks is that they're more in favour of the person receiving. They're essentially guaranteeing that you have the money in your account to provide payment to the recipient.   The advice I've always received is to treat cashier's checks and money orders as straight up cash, because that's essentially what they are.  Hopefully someone else can come in with a better background, but I figured I'd pitch in."]}
+{"query": "Income Tax on per Diem (Non Accountable plan)", "corpus": ["A per diem payment is a cost of doing business for the company, not for you. They can claim it (probably); you can't (definitely)."], "neg": ["\"What percent of my salary should I save? is tightly coupled with its companion, What size “nest egg” should my husband and I have, and by what age? Interestingly, Mr.Christer's answer, 10%, is the number that plugs into the equation that I reference. Jay's 25X rule is part of this. We start with the assumption that one's required income at retirement will be 80% of their pre-retirement income. That's high by some observations, low by others. A quick look at the expenses that go away in retirement - The above can total 35-40% It would be great if it ended there, but there are costs that go up. The above extra spending is tough to nail down, after all, you knew what you spent, and what's going away, but the new items? Crapshoot. (For non-native speakers - this refers to a game with dice, meaning a random event) Again, referencing Mr Christer's answer \"\"financial planners whom you could pay to give you a very accurate number,\"\" I'm going to disagree with that soundbyte. Consider, when retirement is 30 years away, you don't know much If I can offer an analogy. I once had the pleasure of hearing Jim Lovell (The astronaut played by Tom Hanks in Apollo 13) give a speech. He said that for the first 99% of the trip to the moon, they simply aimed ahead of their target, never directly at the moon. In this manner, I suggest that with so many variables, accuracy is impossible, it's a moving target. Start young, take the 10% MrC offered, and keep saving. Every few years, stop and see if you are on target, if not, bump the number a bit.  Better to turn 50 and find that after a good decade you've reached your number and can drop your savings to a minimum, perhaps just to capture a 401(k) match, than to turn 50 and realize you've undersaved and need to bump to an unsustainable level. Imagine planning ahead in 1999. You've seen 2 great decades of returns, and even realizing that 18%/yr couldn't continue, you plan for a below average 7%, this would double your 1999 balance in 10 years. Instead you saw zero return. For a decade. In sum, when each variable has an accuracy of +/-50% you are not going to combine them all and get a number with even 10% accuracy (as if MrC were wrong, but the pro would tell you 11% is right for you?). This is as absurd as packaging up a bunch of C rated debt, and thinking that enough of this paper would yield a final product that was AAA.\"", "No, there is no standard. I see all kinds of paper sizes, and the amount, date, etc. is all over the place. They are all rectangular, but otherwise there seems to be a lot of freedom.", "SECTION | CONTENT :--|:-- Title | Residents Devastated After Dunkin’ Donuts Closed by Fire Description | Fire Shuts Down Shamokin Dunkin Donuts Length | 0:02:25           ****   ^(I am a bot, this is an auto-generated reply | )^[Info](https://www.reddit.com/u/video_descriptionbot) ^| ^[Feedback](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=video_descriptionbot&amp;subject=Feedback) ^| ^(Reply STOP to opt out permanently)", "I think you're eligible for the tuition fee loan but not the maintenance loan. I think that SFE were suggesting that you'd be eligible under point 4 here 4: People with the right of permanent residence in the UK If you satisfy all the conditions under this category, you will be   eligible for full Student Support. To be eligible: (a) you have the right of permanent residence in the UK; and (b) you are ordinarily resident in England on the first day of the   first academic year of your course; and (c) you were ordinarily resident in the UK and Islands for three years   before the first day of the first academic year of the course; and (d) if your three-year residence in the UK and Islands was at any time   mainly for the purpose of receiving full-time education, you must have   been ordinarily resident in the UK or elsewhere in the EEA and/or   Switzerland immediately prior to the three-year period of ordinary   residence in the UK and Islands. It does not matter if you were in the   EEA and/or Switzerland mainly in order to receive full-time education   during this earlier period. Point (b) would be the reason for asking you to prove you were in England on 1 September, but since you were under three years old when you left the UK, you wouldn't satisfy point (c). You should be eligible for the tuition fee loan under point 2 2: EU nationals, and family If you satisfy all the conditions under this category only, you are   eligible only for a loan to pay your tuition fees. To be eligible: (a) on the first day of the first academic year of the course, you   must be:     a UK national; or a non-UK EU national who is in the UK as a   self-sufficient person or as a student; the relevant family member of   such a person above; and (b) you must have been ordinarily resident in the EEA and/or   Switzerland for three years before the first day of the first academic   year of the course; and (c) the main purpose for your residence in the EEA and/or Switzerland   must not have been to receive full-time education during any part of   the three year period.", "This has never really adequately explained it for me, and I've tried reading up on it all over the place. For a long time I thought that in a trade, the market maker pockets the spread *for that trade*, but that's not the case.  The only sensible explanation I've found (which I'm not going to give in full...) is that the market maker will provide liquidity by buying and selling trades they have no actual view on (short or long), and if the spread is higher, that contributes directly to the amount they make over time when they open and close positions they've made.  It would be great to see a single definitive example somewhere that shows how a market maker makes money.", "Those terms apply for businesses operating in the US, yes. The main takeaway should be to think of whether or not you need access to tons of capital, will have substantial risk of liability, or will operate with a partner. If the answer to all of these is no, you should use the structure which is most convenient/best for your taxes. I would look up sole proprietorships and see if that matches the definition of a sole trader.", "\"From my recollection of Warren Buffett's book \"\"Warren Buffett and the Art of Arbitrage\"\", the following factors determine the difference between the market price of a stock and the future expected price of an acquisition or merger: Time: Assuming the deal will close, the market price should approach the offer price as the closing date approaches. The fact that there is a 14% spread partially reflects the time value of money. Probability: Things could happen between now and closing date which could derail the deal. The higher the spread the more likely the market thinks the deal will not occur. For example, LO shareholders could reject the offer saying it is too low, or anti-trust regulators could say the deal is anti-competitive. Part of this 14% spread indicates the probability of the deal completing.\""]}
+{"query": "Where can one download or subscribe to end of day price data for Tokyo stocks?", "corpus": ["\"Google Finance certainly has data for Tokyo Stock Exchange (called TYO on Google) listings.  You could create a \"\"portfolio\"\" consisting of the stocks you care about and then visit it once per day (or write a script to do so).\""], "neg": ["\"hey numb nuts, I've been working with blockchain implementation since before you became an armchair investor.  blockchain technology is an implementation of security by consensus, it can be between 2 people, and 100 million. bitcoin's incentive is the mother of all pyrimid schemes,\"\"put value into this, so it has value, so you can get value out of it\"\". It was never suppose to be industrialized in the way it has been, and it's become an amoral waste of resources. further evidence can be found in the fact that bitcoin HAD no value except as a currency before people started hacking contracts and the like into it. Etherium is admirable in that it actually has some kind of intent of value built into it, but it's simply not good enough for high demand applications.  in a private chain, mining doesn't operate with an increasing cost, it *could* be done by a single system, which is good enough for an internal chain. The security comes from the immutability of the chain that is generated which is what everyone subscribed to the chain gains. once something is added, no amount of hacking a centralized system could change the confirmed blocks, an attacker might be able to add a bunch of new blocks, but you could (with consensus) roll back the entire chain.   as a simple example: a company has several partners who it coordinates exchange rates with. they set the value and they want to share that with their partners, while keeping an entirely tamper proof history of the set values. they start the chain, and allow their partners to subscribe to it. they can then set their system to add a block every hour, which contains the set values. now every partner is keeping a consensus based record of what the trading values were when. If for whatever reason an audit was required (ie say they suspect someone was trading higher/lower than they should have) they can audit the chain and see exactly what everyone agreed would be the price at the time the exchanges were made. if a partner messed with his chain to cover whatever shadiness he would be involved in, the other's would refute it. It would be exceptionally hard for any single bad actor to alter all the chains.  the incentive in a private chain is rolled into business incentives for record keeping. They gain value by keeping certain types of records secure in this manor, therefore it is worth it to do, they don't need a literal payout to keep their own records secure.  this is why companies want to use the blockchain, immutable records, secured by even loose consensus are more secure than a centralized database, but with little to no increase in operation overhead. It then further gains value in that it could lead to distributed &amp; geosafe recorder keeping and management.  TLDR: lol you armchair finance guys.\"", "What  sounddude said, mortgage servicing companies do not get to unilaterally change the terms of a mortgage.  Although I'm inclined to guess it was a simple coding error on BOA's part (wrong processing box got checked when mortgage was acquired) that was never caught, in which case BOA *should* be falling all over themselves to fix the situation (on their dime).  If they don't fix it in a hurry, then I'd hope they get their head handed to them in court in a hurry.", "Every bank and credit union in the US has a Deposit Agreement and Disclosures document, Bank of America is no different. Our general policy is to make funds from your cash and check deposits   available to you no later  than the first business day after the day   of your deposit. However, in some cases we place a hold  on funds that   you deposit by check. A hold results in a delay in the availability of   these funds. that sounds great but ... For determining the availability of your deposits, every day is a   business day, except Saturdays,   Sundays, and federal holidays.   If   you make a deposit on a business day that we are open at one of our   financial centers before   2:00 p.m. local time, or at one of our ATMs   before 5:00 p.m. local time in the state where we  maintain your   account, we consider that day to be the day of your deposit. However,   if you make  a deposit after such times, or on a day when we are not   open or that is not a business day, we  consider that the deposit was   made on the next business day we are open. Some locations have    different cutoff times. so if you deposit a check on Friday afternoon, the funds are generally available on Tuesday. but not always... In some cases, we will not make all of the funds that you deposit by   check available to you by the  first business day after the day of   your deposit. Depending on the type of check that you deposit,  funds   may not be available until the second business day after the day of   your deposit. The first  $200 of your deposits, however, may be   available no later than the first business day after the day  of your   deposit.  If we are not going to make all of the funds from your   deposit available by the first business  day after the day of your   deposit, we generally notify you at the time you make your deposit. We   also tell you when the funds will be available. Ok what happens when the funds are available... In many cases, we make funds from your deposited checks available to   you sooner than we  are able to collect the checks. This means that,   from time to time, a deposited check may be  returned unpaid after we   made the funds available to you. Please keep in mind that even though    we make funds from a deposited check available to you and you withdraw   the funds, you are  still responsible for problems with the deposit.   If a check you deposited is returned to us unpaid  for any reason, you   will have to repay us and we may charge your account for the amount of   the  check, even if doing so overdraws your account. Fidelity has a similar document: Each check deposited is promptly credited to your account.  However,   the money may not be available until up to six business  days later,   and we may decline to honor any debit that is applied  against the   money before the deposited check has cleared. If a deposited check does not clear, the deposit will be removed  from   your account, and you are responsible for returning any  interest you   received on it. I would think that the longer holding period for Fidelity is due to the fact that they want to wait long enough to make sure that the number of times they have to undo investments due to the funds not clearing is nearly zero.", "Finance...there aren't really entry level jobs in economics. Of course people get jobs as econ majors but real economists only get hired at the senior (phd) level to implement a strategy that they studied in academia. Finance gives you a better understanding of financial statements and operations.   Kansas may lack financial career opportunities and on campus recruiting.", "\"Agreed on all points.  You're still not saving a TON of money, given that you have to have a reasonable balance of salary/distributions, but an S-corp is the way to go if you're making substantial profit in order to save tax money.  I'll reiterate (my wife is a CPA and she guides me on my business) - you can't legally save \"\"untaxed earnings\"\" for next year.\"", "It's been their strategy for years, I have colleagues who've worked in the packaging design departments for both Lidl and Aldi and it's blatantly obvious. When the briefs come in, designers are instructed to base the new design on a leading exisiting product's design, they have minimal time to design it and success is based on the careful balance of 'reminds consumer of brand, but is defensively differentiated.' So in other words make it close enough that it looks like and existing product but different enough that you could point out as many differences as there are similarities.   It's considered a pretty shady practice in the industry.", "Experts, who are working for a drawn out stretch of time on this same space, can quickly comprehend the plan of your home and can in like manner plainly advise you about the cost of the whole administration. Tile installers tampa can offer you diverse sorts of choices. Indeed, even they can help you to choose the proper item relying on the state of the floor materials and on your spending arranges."]}
+{"query": "Germany: Employee and Entrepreneur at same time (for getting AppStore payments)", "corpus": ["\"(Selling apps is AFAIK business, not freelancing - unless the type of app you produce is considered a freelancing subject. The tax office will give you a questionnaire and then decide).  As Einzelunternehmer, you can receive the payments for the apps to the same account where your wages go. However, there are lots of online accounts that do not cost fees, so consider to receive them on a separate account so you have the business and private kind of separate (for small Einzelunternehmer, there is no legal separation between business and private money - you have full liability with your private money for the business).  The local chamber of commerce can tell you everything about setting up such a business, ask them (you'll probably have to become a member there anyways). They have information as well on VAT (Umsatzsteuer, USt) which you need to declare unless you get an exemption (probably possible), and about Gewerbesteuer (the income tax of the business) etc. For the tax, you have \"\"subforms\"\"  for the income tax e.g. for wages and for business income, so you just submit both with the main form. You'll get an appropriate tax number when registering the business.  Social security/insurance: as long as the app selling is only a side business, the social insurance payments for your main job completely cover the side job as well. You need to make sure that your employment contract is compatible with the app business, though.  A quick search indicates that there is a tax treaty between Germany and the Ukraine, Wikipedia says there are no contracts about social insurance in effect (yet).\""], "neg": ["There are lots of things to consider in addition to your questions.  The rules changed in the US recently. I think you mean you will save more money. Your interest rate isn't likely to go up, but your principle will, so you will earn more interest income than before.   I would wager it won't be a significant amount however. You can certainly earn a reward, either cash back, points, miles or something else. BUT the sticking point with earning things with your card is harder than before.  Due to rules changes, merchants can now recuperate the fees they pay for accepting your credit card.  Rewards cards have a higher fee than non-rewards cards (because banks aren't in charities).  So now, depending on the merchant's choice, you could see a higher cost paying with a credit card (or a debit card) and that cost could wipe out your reward. And if your card has a fee, it has always been true that you need to evaluate the annual fee to confirm the benefit is more than paying for the fee. Additional advantages to credit cards", "The deposit slip at the institution that keeps your Roth IRA should have a place where you can designate the tax year the contribution should apply to.", "\"Bonds are priced \"\"very high\"\" because their price is compared to their yields. With the current interest rates, which are very low, the bond yields will be low. However, bond issuers still need the money, so there still will be high par value, and investors will not sell bonds at a loss unless there's a better investment (=bonds with better yields). Once the rates start going up, you'll see bonds with current rates dropping in value significantly. Once alternatives appear, people holding them will start dumping them to move the money somewhere more profitable. Similarly the stocks - since there's no other investment alternatives (yields on the bonds are low, interests are low), people invest more in the stocks. Once the rates go up, the investors will start rebalancing portfolios and cashing out.\"", "I feel your pain. It probably depends on your state, but two things we've tried with some benefit:", "Besides that, that about my comment was actually 'wrong' no matter what you do have about 60 hours of Gen eds to take. Everything beyond that was advice and recommendations which are never 'wrong' because they don't claim to be empirically 'right' in the first place.", "Revenue is not profit. The *vast* majority of that revenue goes to the rest of the value chain of the products (manufacturers &amp; distributors). [Wal-Mart's profit margin is 3.77% of revenue](http://finance.yahoo.com/q/ks?s=WMT).  It's like saying VISA gets all the hundreds of billions of dollars people put on their credit cards, which is true, for a short period of time.  But if you dont want to do any critical thinking and just looking for confirmation of your beliefs, this infographic is great. :P", "\"Whats obvious is obvious, and yet the Pseudo Intellectuals come out with their  . .\"\"Where is your tin foil hat\"\" and ridicule as if everything is a conspiracy theory.  Well . . .its seems the Jews . .which make up less than 1% of American society seem to control most of the wealth and all of the white house and every American politician must get his asshole inspected by AIPAC and suck their cock before he is deemed worthy, and you know what, the new Tax laws will make sure they get to keep what they stole from you and even pass it on through inheritance and contribute nothing to society except abstract mathematical financial products which will crash the economy and cost you your life savings.  But that's not a reality, that's a conspiracy  Whats reality is that Fuckerberg is actually a catholic school girl who made a US$ 60 billion web page and the Russians hacked the US election via Reddit and Face book.  Well enjoy the tin foil condom you get Shalomed with\""]}
+{"query": "LLC in states with customers with and without employees in the state", "corpus": ["If I hire someone in Utah to do sales for me over the phone, and he   works out of his home, am I required to register an LLC or file my   current one as a foreign entity in Utah? Yes, since you've established presence in Utah. You'll register your current LLC in Utah, no point creating another one. If my sales guy, or I, call businesses in, say, Florida, and sell a   few businesses our services for online work like maybe a website   design, etc. Are we required to file our LLC In Florida as either a   new LLC or a foreign one? No, you need to register where you (your company, including your employees or physical offices) are physically present. You don't need to register in any state you ship products or provide services to. If no-one of your company's employees is present in Florida and you don't have an office/rent a storage there - then you have no presence in Florida. If you actually go there to provide the services - then you do."], "neg": ["If you were to stick to your guns, then yes, that's what you'd need to do. In practice, that kind of a hit should get your attention, and you'd be wise to look at why your investment dropped 10% in a month. Value averaging, dollar-cost averaging, or any other investment strategy needs to be done with eyes open and ears to the ground.  At least with value averaging you need to look at your valuation each month!  From my own experience, dollar-cost averaging breeds laziness and I ended up not paying much attention to what I was investing in, and lost a fair bit of money. Bottom line is you still have to think about what you're doing, and adjust.", "\"&gt; I don't even have words for this.  I'm not surprised.  The \"\"you don't get to tell me what I can do with my money\"\" talking point has been hammered into American brains.  You would agree with most Americans that if the parents are in serious debt and pass away then the debt should not pass on to the child, yes?  It makes sense because why should the child have to pay for his parent's failures?  So why do you believe that debts shouldn't transfer but credits should?  If a child shouldn't get stuck with a parent's failures then shouldn't a child also not benefit from the parent's successes?\"", "Movie going (actual # tickets sold) [climaxed in 2002](http://www.the-numbers.com/market/) and the theater market has only been kept afloat since then by increasing ticket prices.  However, the more ticket prices increase, it creates a cycle where it's less attractive to go to the movies and so they have to increase ticket prices again.  Movie theaters typically cede most of the opening week revenue to the studio so they need some minimum foot traffic so a percent of audience buys the high margin popcorn and drinks.  Movie studios got greedier, wanting to take the movie out of the theater ever faster to multiple revenue-generating venues (Star Wars was in the theater a year+.... now all but the biggest movies are in, what, a few weeks?), costs to A/C-heat buildings rise, big TVs are cheaper every year, netflix, etc.  Not to mention the tablet, which I watch netflix on more than a big TV... and the rise of the formula superhero movie.  Pure no-value-added Theaters are on the way out in any areas with decent internet.  They arose in a time of touring stage entertainment and displaced many a live performance with this new moving picture tech.  Now they are being displaced by tech just the same.  A littering of restaurant theaters and imax or next tech theaters and the like will stick around in 25 years as attractions but it just won't be the same scale.  You can liken this to how consoles eventually killed the video game arcades, even with shittier hardware.  It's happening to retail market crashing down, and it happened to small chain book stores, CD stores, and a bunch of other categories, etc.  No surprise to anyone that pays attention and thinks the next tech/economical step.  In the end, it's really up to studios to decide if the movie theater is a relic worth keeping and only if they work jointly, and in the end it still might just buy them a few years til it sinks.  I don't think it's worth keeping.  My preferred local one is one of the better ones out of 4-5 (3 are small time with limited screens) and yet even they haven't replaced the carpeting in 15 years and it smells like piss in the summer.  This is in one of the richer areas of the country, not some ghetto, not going to the movies for that bonus whiff.", "The general idea of the PRPP is so that small business who cannot afford to offer a plan alone will be able to pool resources with others along with self-employed to create voluntary, defined-contribution pension plans that would be managed by private sector financial institutions. The PRPP concept would offer more options to individuals as well  as   small and medium-sized businesses - Tax Rules for Pooled Registered Pension Plans  You can also find an overview here THE NEW PRPP – A Pension for the Pension-Less", "\"Tumble? Haha, spreading fear, uncertainty and doubt to get a entry price point, that's what I'm seeing in this 'tumble'. Bitcoin was under 2k in March 2017. People have enjoyed an amazing bull run this year. To correct at $3,500 USD would still be a decent profit. RemindMe! One Year \"\"Bitcoin price today\"\"\"", "\"Ok, here's the final statement from me. Think about it in the future.  &gt; Your views are highly racial and not based on facts.   You know very very well that I do not hate ALL(!) Muslims!  [Here are facts about Muslims](https://www.reddit.com/r/The_Donald/comments/6f7y9l/stats_the_left_doesnt_want_you_to_see/)  Fear of Muslims is not \"\"Islamophobia\"\". It's a fear grounded in reality.  On the other hand, your view about Muslims is a baseless theory, just based on events in the last 24 hours.  Christians don't go on killing sprees during lent. Jews don't go nuts during Passover. Why do Muslims go all \"\"Allah Akbar\"\" during Ramadan?  Hence, \"\"Islamophobia\"\" is a word invented to Silence ANY Critics of Islam.  Do you see any problems with Islam and/or how it's practiced? If yes, would you tell a criticise a Muslim over that? Any problems you see with Jews or Christians?  &gt; A Moron heres your speech translates it to beat up all muslims because they are the terrorists and will do so.   Plenty of morons in Poland, Japan, Hungary and Norway. Also in Germany. Where do you think the morons beat Muslims? **Where do they already hit Muslims, according to you?**  You said it yourself: Germans beat Muslims. Is it going to stop? Do you think it will be reduced if more Muslims come over?  &gt; They actually do have a big Problem with antisemitism and this Problem needs to be addressed.  LOL!!!!!!! Honestly, as you probably know, many many Germans are antisemitic, past and present.  How is Germany, up until recently, doing addressing this issue? Success story? The same method will work to address antisemitism among Muslims?  Auf Widerehesen!\"", "It ought to be possible to buy a foreign exchange future (aka forex future / FX future). Businesses use these futures to make sure their exchange rate is predictable: if they put a bunch of money into manufacturing things that'll be ready a year later, it helps to know that the currency exchange rate shifts won't wipe out all their profits. If you're willing to take on some of that risk, and if things go your way, you can make money. They are essentially contracts between two private parties to pay each other a certain amount of money based on the movement of the currencies, so the Chinese government doesn't actually need to be involved and no renminbi need to change hands, you can just trade the contracts. Note that the exchange rate is currently fixed by the Chinese government, so you're going to be subject to enhanced levels of political risk, and they may not be as widely available or readily tradable as other foreign exchange futures, so check with a broker before opening your account. I couldn't find them on my personal Etrade account, but a quick Google search reveals CME Group offering some. There are probably others.  Foreign exchange futures are an advanced investing tool and carry risk. Be sure you understand the risk, in particular how much money you can end up on the hook for if things don't go your way. Also remember, futures expire: you're not just betting on the rate changing, but you're betting on it changing within a certain amount of time."]}
+{"query": "Do online repositories of publicly traded companies' financial statements exist?", "corpus": ["You can use the Securities Exchange Commission's EDGAR search engine to search all available SEC related filings. https://www.sec.gov/edgar/searchedgar/companysearch.html Top tip: use the fast search on the right to search for the company ticker rather than by company name."], "neg": ["\"First of all, congratulations on admitting your problem and on your determination to be debt-free.  Recognizing your mistakes is a huge first step, and getting rid of your debt is a very worthwhile goal. When considering debt consolidation, there are really only two reasons to do so: Reason #1: To lower your monthly payment.  If you are having trouble coming up with enough money to meet your monthly obligations, debt consolidation can lower your monthly payment by extending the time frame of the debt.  The problem with this one is that it doesn't help you get out of debt faster.  It actually makes it longer before you are out of debt and will increase the total amount of interest that you will pay to the banks before you are done.  So I would not recommend debt consolidation for this reason unless you are truly struggling with your cashflow because your minimum monthly payments are too high.  In your situation, it does not sound like you need to consolidate for this reason. Reason #2: To lower your interest rate.  If your debt is at a very high rate, debt consolidation can lower your interest rate, which can reduce the time it will take to eliminate your debt. The consolidation loan you are considering is at a high interest rate on its own: 13.89%.  Now, it is true that some of your debt is higher than that, but it looks like the majority of your debt is less than that rate.  It doesn't sound to me that you will save a significant amount of money by consolidating in this loan.  If you can obtain a better consolidation loan in the future, it might be worth considering. From your question, it looks like your reasoning for the consolidation loan is to close the credit card accounts as quickly as possible.  I agree that you need to quit using the cards, but this can also be accomplished by destroying the cards.  The consolidation loan is not needed for this. You also mentioned that you are considering adding $3,000 to your debt.  I have to say that it doesn't make sense at all to me to add to your debt (especially at 13.89%) when your goal is to eliminate your debt.  To answer your question explicitly, yes, the \"\"cash buffer\"\" from the loan is a very bad idea. Here is what I recommend: (This is based on this answer, but customized for you.) Cut up/destroy your credit cards.  Today.  You've already recognized that they are a problem for you.  Cash, checks, and debit cards are what you need to use from now on. Start working from a monthly budget, assigning a job for every dollar that you have.  This will allow you to decide what to spend your money on, rather than arriving at the end of the month with no idea where your money was lost.  Budgeting software can make this task easier.  (See this question for more information. Your first goal should be to put a small amount of money in a savings account, perhaps $1000 - $1500 total.  This is the start of your emergency fund.  This money will ensure that if something unexpected and urgent comes up, you won't be so cash poor that you need to borrow money again.  Note: this money should only be touched in an actual emergency, and if spent, should be replenished as soon as possible.  At the rate you are talking about, it should take you less than a month to do this. After you've got your small emergency fund in place, attack the debt as quickly and aggressively as possible.  The order that you pay off your debts is not significant. (The optimal method is up for debate.)  At the rate you suggested ($2,000 - 2,500 per month), you can be completely debt free in maybe 18 months. As you pay off those credit cards, completely close the accounts.  Ignore the conventional wisdom that tells you to leave the unused credit card accounts open to try to preserve a few points on your credit score.  Just close them. After you are completely debt free, take the money that you were throwing at your debt, and use it to build up your emergency fund until it is 3-6 months' worth of your expenses.  That way, you'll be able to handle a small crisis without borrowing anything. If you need more help/motivation on becoming debt free and budgeting, I recommend the book The Total Money Makeover by Dave Ramsey.\"", "The problem is not that someone wants to rent out a spare bedroom and make some extra money, but that investors are abusing airBnB platform in order to control sometimes 100s of units while claiming to use them all. This can lead to entire neighborhoods turning into tourist destinations without any real locals. While renting out a spare bedroom isn't that bad it is contributing to a growing problem where people are getting kicked out of their apartments to make room for a more profitable airBnB. Tourists don't work and don't start businesses. The current hotel model isn't great either due to giant corporations controlling the most of the market, but airBnB is a corporation just the same and is growing much faster.", "\"Tivo and listerine strips in my humble opinion are examples of \"\"first movers\"\"who stopped innovating after entering their product to the market. The competition simply developed better products or a new tech came along and they were unresponsive to those changes.\"", "One can expatriate and (depending on where you go) get some protections from the debt following you. Some DACA dreamers are finding this option a best choice given the current political environment. But, this is obviously an extreme measure :(", "\"It's correct.   Be sure of your personal opportunity cost and not that you're letting the tax tail wag the dog just to score \"\"tax free\"\".  Your upside is $3,700 (single) or $7,000 (married) in taxes saved until you're out of the 0% zone.  Is that worth not receiving an income? Even if your savings are such that you don't need to work for income for a fiscal year, how would this affect the rest of your career and lifetime total earning prospects?  Now, maybe: Otherwise, I'd hope you have solid contacts in your network who won't be fazed by a resume gap and be delighted to have a position open for you in 2019 (and won't give you the \"\"mother returning to the workforce\"\" treatment in salary negotiations).\"", "There are a few methods you can use to estimate your taxes. On the results screen, the app will show you your estimated tax burden, your estimated withholding for the year, and your estimated overpayment/refund or shortfall/tax due.  It may also have recommendations for you on how to adjust your W-4 (although, this late in the year, I think it only tells you to come back next year to reevaluate).   Your state might also have income tax, and if you are curious about that, you can find the state tax form and estimate your state income tax as well. My guess is that you will be getting a refund this year, as you have only worked half of the year.  But that is only a guess.", "\"Because until the end of the Cold War, India was \"\"non-aligned\"\" but lightly supported the USSR because Pakistan was cozy with the US. As a result, it was pretty low on the immigration list for US authorities.  Also, there isn't any history of Indian immigration to the US beyond the last 30 or so years. Other minorities, like the Chinese and Japanese, began coming here a century ago.\""]}
+{"query": "I'm 23 and was given $50k. What should I do?", "corpus": ["Here are some possibilities: avoid buying a car for as long as you can; if forced to own one, buy a used dependable car like a Toyota Corolla- 4 cyl  and don't abuse it.  open a Roth IRA, depositing max possible, the plan on doing so until you've investing the remaining balance. A Roth IRA, while not tax deductible now (you're in a low tax bracket now) will provide for tax-free distributions when you are both older and not in a low bracket. of course, invest in low cost equity funds.   Come back for more ideas once the dust settles, you've got money left over and some of the above accomplished. You've got one asset many of us don't have: time."], "neg": ["Whirlpool Washing Machine Service Center in Hyderabad. We have the Best service center in Hyderabad washing machine is an essential part of our daily life. So If you are facing any problem with your washing machine you Can Call Us:040-60506610, 60506611, and 60506622.We are providing fabulous service to you.Our technicians will reach you on time, and They will give good service to our customers. We have best materials for our service.", "In November '14, I wrote TurboTax 2014 Marketing Mistake  Shortly after writing it, a TurboTax agent wrote (on Amazon) to counter the complaints by saying that Deluxe has these forms but did not offer Interview help for them.  As Ben notes in his comment on LittleAdv's answer. TurboTax issued an apology letter, which, in my opinion, didn't really set things straight, factually.  The forms are there, the interview and data import for stock transactions is gone.", "I'll extend an olive branch here and concede that we have a lot more luxuries which is why we have more to work and pay for. But my point is we could have more or less the same amount of stuff by working 3 days a week.   I've heard that millenials are less materialistic than previous generations, so it will be interesting to see the effects of that.   Also, we need to take into account that AI likely will replace a large amount of jobs in the future as well. Maybe it will be even more plausible for most people to only work 3 days a week on average.", "Its due to the type of track.. nearly all automatic trains dont have object detection. They assume a clear track. That works great for elevated trains and isnt bad for a small metro.. ones that drive the rail infrastructure, arent yet for similar reasons to cars and everything else.. you dont want a 150 car train carrying fuel to not be able to detect a car stuck on the tracks.", "I think you just hit the nail on the head as to why I enjoy it so much.   I find I have a much lower attention span to music played digitally, the fact I have the power to skip songs, queue other artists. Even though I tend to be pickier with my Vinyl purchases I still struggle to listen to the same albums through Spotify.", "My question is what is the average income of those people who are driving into the core of the city for work. I am assuming that they probably make a much larger salary than $1.1k, though they are still getting screwed on transportation.", "Attending trade shows means putting out a good amount of money in getting that customized trade show display. Seasoned exhibitors know what to display to buy and who to buy it from. For first time or not so experienced buyers, consider gathering ideas from this great trade show tips. A good resource provided by Xtreme Exhibits, a St. Louis trade show displays and exhibit solutions provider."]}
+{"query": "Why do deep in the money options trade below their intrinsic value?", "corpus": ["You made 94$ on an investment of 554.80 *100 = 55480$ for an approx holding period of 1 year. So the % return is ~0.16%, which is not much better than the short term us treasury rate. The current 1 year treasury rate is 0.27%: http://ycharts.com/indicators/1_year_treasury_rate So yes, you have a risk free portfolio, so you make the risk free rate. Remember this is an European option, so you are stuck for 1 year. if you found the same mispricing in an American option, then you found an arbitrage."], "neg": ["You could also switch to CreditKarma to file taxes, it's 100% free and just launched. I'm not affiliated with them, just bringing up an alternative.", "Firstly if you've formed a limited company you don't need to register as self-employed.  You're an employee and shareholder of the company and your taxes will be handled that way. Registering as self-employed is only necessary if you're operating as a sole trader (i.e. without a company). Secondly you absolutely do want to get set-up correctly with HMRC as soon as possible, whether you're a company or a sole trader.  Ignoring the legal question your worry about paying taxes when you have no income is groundless - if you're not making any money there won't be any tax to pay.  Furthermore it seems likely that the business is currently losing money.  Those losses, if correctly recorded, can be carried forward and offset against future profits so not only do you not have to pay tax now, but you can reduce the tax you pay later when the money does start rolling in.", "&gt; Taking rough rice as an example, there are millions (if not billions) of people who eat rice to survive. People will always need oil to fuel their cars. People will always need electricity.  Commodity values are unlikely to go to 0, I agree. The fact you think this is super-relevant suggests to me you have not fully grasped the nature of the commodities futures markets.  &gt; I don't like to be too risky  You are looking at getting into extremely risky securities.  &gt; I guess what I am trying to do is look into things that allow me to profit, regardless of where equities are going.  Many men have died searching for the holy grail. Speculating in these markets is not for the faint of hearts, let alone for the risk-averse.  &gt; I have gone as far as to look through OTC ADRs to find some foreign value, and I found nothing.  There are plenty of funds offering lots of exposure to international equities, which seem well-geared toward the individual investor.", "The US requires its (tax) residents to report foreign accounts if the balances (on all the accounts together) are $10K or more at any given day during the year. This is done through the FBAR system. In addition, you obviously need to report this income on your US tax return and pay taxes. If the balances on your foreign accounts exceed specific threshold, your tax return should also include form 8938. If you report everything and pay the taxes due - you can keep the money wherever you want and transfer it between your accounts as you may see fit. If you don't - the US government may come after you with huge penalties, and the Dubai bank may freeze your account. Its easy to become US tax resident. Stay in the US for more than half a year in a row - and here you are. Subject to the US taxation. Even if you're not a US citizen or green card holder, or at all illegal. Some immigration statuses may grant you an exemption, but none that allows you working for your Dubai employer, so I'm assuming you're a US tax resident.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.npr.org/2017/08/02/540975904/senate-republicans-dont-seem-too-worried-about-trumps-subsidy-threat) reduced by 90%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Senate Republicans don&amp;#039;t appear to be too worried about President Trump&amp;#039;s latest round of threats.  &gt; Lamar Alexander, R-Tenn., and Patty Murray, D-Wash., announced the Senate Committee on Health, Education, Labor and Pensions would begin holding health care hearings in September.  &gt; The Trump administration could order the Office of Personnel Management to reverse that ruling, and leave lawmakers and staffers to fully fund their health insurance costs themselves.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6r43zh/trump_threatens_congress_health_care/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~181295 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*: **Insurance**^#1 **Trump**^#2 **health**^#3 **Senate**^#4 **bailout**^#5\"", "No one at my firm uses python, but we have both long-term algo-managed portfolios as well as very successful day trading strategies. I've worked a bit with both, so if you have any questions I'd be happy to try and answer them and if I can't I'll ask at work next week.", "You have several sources of money: Scholarships not directly from the university. Some organizations have scholarships based on your area of study, your nationality, or your industry. Some require you to show that you need the money, others are based on your grades. The university can help you find these scholarship, or at least point you towards reliable listings. Don't pay somebody/some company to help you find them. Your employer. Some companies will pay for some classes. They may limit the types of the classes, and the amount of money. They may also require you to stay as an employee for a specific number of years in return for the money. If you quit before that time,they can ask you to refund the money. loans. I don't know what loan programs are available for international students."]}
+{"query": "Deducting SEP-IRA contributions as a sole proprietor with no employees", "corpus": ["SEP IRA deduction goes to line 28 of your 1040, which is above the line (i.e.: pre-AGI). It should not be included in your taxable income (AGI) for Federal purposes."], "neg": ["\"I love how you're being downvoted even though you're providing a very basic answer that is easy to look up and see that you are correct, no the majority of people Linhares just listed aren't \"\"economists\"\" - but then again redditors vote based on they feel, irregardless of the facts. I also love how everyone now feels as though the financial crisis was easy to spot - I bet if we went back and asked them in 2007 they would have all foreseen it as well. Yes, a few exceptionally intelligent people (Roubini, Shiller, Grantham etc.) foresaw it, but then again thousands of intelligent people make forecasts on financial markets every day and the majority fail to outperform it. The survivor bias in action I guess.\"", "I'm interning right now for the state and it gets boring but I like to ask around for work. I tend to be a multi-tasker and take on several projects at once to keep me sane. They even recruit me to work for other departments outside of mine. The more stuff I do, the better it looks on my resume even if this isn't what I want to do. It benefits all parties to take on more work and responsibilities. If it's engineering, just work your tail off where you are right now and apply for other positions for the school you're in. Network with professors and such to see if they can help you out or with your career service center to see if there are some positions in other places. Best thing you can do is always keep your feet moving. It keeps depression away and benefits you in the long run.", "Costs for home / small business equipment under US$10,000 don't have to  be capitalized. They can be expensed (that is, claimed as an expense all in one year.)  Unless this printer is one of those behemoths that collates, folds, staples, and mails medium-sized booklets, it cost less than that. Keep track of your costs. Ask the charity to pay you those costs for the product you generate, and then donate that amount of money back to them. This will be good for the charity because they'll correctly account for the cost of printing.", "\"As you said, in the US LLC is (usually, unless you elect otherwise) not a separate tax entity. As such, the question \"\"Does a US LLC owned by a non-resident alien have to pay US taxes\"\" has no meaning. A US LLC, regardless of who owns it, doesn't pay US income taxes. States are different. Some States do tax LLCs (for example, California), so if you intend to operate in such a State - you need to verify that the extra tax the LLC would pay on top of your personal tax is worth it for you. As I mentioned in the comment, you need to check your decision making very carefully. LLC you create in the US may or may not be recognized as a separate legal/tax entity in your home country. So while you neither gain nor lose anything in the US (since the LLC is transparent tax wise), you may get hit by extra taxes at home if they see the LLC as a non-transparent corporate entity. Also, keep in mind that the liability protection by the LLC usually doesn't cover your own misdeeds. So if you sell products of your own work, the LLC may end up being completely worthless and will only add complexity to your business. I suggest you check all these with a reputable attorney. Not one whose business is to set up LLCs, these are going to tell you anything you want to hear as long as you hire them to do their thing. Talk to one who will not benefit from your decision either way and can provide an unbiased advice.\"", "\"You say \"\"it's expensive\"\".  I'm going to interpret this as \"\"the monthly payments are too high\"\". Basically, you need to get your old loan paid off, presumably by selling the car you have now.  This is the tough part.  If you sold the car now, how much would you get for it?  You can use Kelley Blue Book to figure out what the car is roughly worth.  That's not a guarantee that it will actually sell for that much.  Look in your local classifieds to see what similar cars are selling for.  (Keep in mind that you will usually get less for your old car if you trade it in versus sell it yourself.) Now, if you owe more than your car is worth, you're in a really tight spot.  If you don't get enough money when you sell it, you are still stuck with the remainder of the loan.  In that case, it is usually best to just stick with the car you have, and be more cautious about payments and loan length the next time you finance a car. Penalties:  Most car loans don't have any kind of early repayment penalty.  However, you should check your loan paperwork just to make sure.\"", "Mervis Diamond hosted a Spring Bling wedding band trunk show at all of its locations and   emphasized the fact that the event caters to all kinds of couples, straight and same-sex. A lot of members of the gay community attended that event. Some couples bought rings but more importantly, people remembered it for years. In Spring Bling show many guests were welcomed to attend and shop for any occasion-a birthday, anniversary or graduation.", "As mbhunter said, extra payments of principal don't affect your taxes (except to the extent that you'll pay less interest, because the amount you owe interest on - the total balance/principal - is smaller).  If you want to reduce your taxes, you might pay into an IRA instead."]}
+{"query": "how late can i put money into an IRA and still have it count for 2015?", "corpus": ["The IRA contribution for the year are allowed until the tax day of that year. I.e.: you can contribute for 2015 until April 15th, 2016 (or whatever the first business day is after that, if the 15th is a holiday). You'll have to explicitly designate your contribution for 2015, since some of the IRA providers may automatically designate the current year unless you explicitly say otherwise. If that happens - it will be very hard to fix later, so pay attention when you're making the contribution. You get a couple of things from your IRA provider: Form 5498 - details your contributions for the year, account FMV, and RMD details. You can see the actual form here. You don't always get this form, if you didn't contribute anything and no RMD is required for you. Since the last day to contribute is April 15th, these forms are usually being sent out around mid-May. But you should know how much you've contributed by the tax day without it, obviously, so this is only for the IRS matching and your record-tracking.  Form 1099-R includes information about distributions (including withdrawals and roll-overs). You may not get this form if you didn't take any money out of your IRA. These come out around end of January."], "neg": ["\"Wow. It's clear I'm outnumbered.  When I'm approached with the question (and keep in mind, it's usually a couple data points and little else) \"\"I am getting started, with no other money do I fund a retirement or emergency account?\"\" I often suggest they put the funds into a Roth, in a money market fund, and treat it like an emergency account. If there's in fact an emergency, there's no penalty to withdraw the deposit and we're talking peanuts for interest today.  With no emergency, two things could happen: A) As the account grows beyond what's needed for emergencies, the excess can be invested long term. B) As the investor earns more money and saves up enough to have a true emergency account separate from the IRA, the Roth can be fully invested long term. The 'Bad idea' stems from the view that one is using their Roth as an emergency account, which of course is bad. The subtle difference is one has no retirement savings and puts their Emergency account into the otherwise unused Roth. As time passes, they've protected more funds to grow tax free.  In the end, the most important thing is whether the person is saving and not tapping for simple non-emergency things. I'd rather see a guy with $25K in his Roth and no other funds than to have $5000 in his bank account because every time it gets larger he feels compelled to spend it.  My answer to Matt is to treat it for now as you intended, low risk, CD or cash (money market).\"", "Agreed. An easy way to practice selling is by joining a direct sales company. Just make sure they are legitimate and require no money to start. It gives you a product to sell (even if its from a catalog) and many times they have online resources that help train you.    Sales is a mental game imo. Getting past personal barriers and facing fears is a major huddle in sales.", "Lets imagine two scenarios: 1) You make 10.4k (40% of total income) yearly contributions to a savings account that earns 1% interest for 10 years. In this scenario, you put in 104k and earned 5.89k in interest, for a total of 109.9k. 2) You make the same 10.4k yearly contribution to an index fund that earns 7% on average for 10 years. In this scenario you put in the same 104k, but earned 49.7k in interest*, for a total of 153.7k. The main advantage is option 1) has more liquidity -- you can get the money out faster. Option 2) requires time to divest any stocks / bonds. So you need enough savings to get you through that divestment period. Imagine another two scenarios where you stop earning income: 1-b) You stop working and have only your 109.9k principal amount in a 1% savings account. If you withdraw 15.6k yearly for your current cost of living, you will run through your savings in 7 years. 2-b) You stop working and have only 20k (2 years of savings) in savings that earns 1% with 153.7k in stocks that earns 7%. If you withdraw your cost of living currently at 15.6k, you will run through your investments in 15 years and your savings in 2 years, for a total of 17 years. The two years of income in savings is extremely generous for how long it starts the divestment process.  In summary, invest your money. It wasn't specified what currency we are talking about, but you can easily find access to an investment company no matter where you are in the world. Keep a small amount for a rainy day.", "JohnFx is more experienced than I am but I have paid off friends cards before. It was as simple as asking them the routing number of the bank that gave them the card and setting up an ACH with their card number. I guess this might be against some banks T&C but the CU I used to carry out the ACH gave me the go ahead as long as I did not dispute the payment later.", "I work for an investment group in Central Asia in private equity/project investment. We use SPV and collateralized convertible loans to enter a project, we issue the loan at our own commercial bank. For each industry, the exact mechanisms vary. In most outcomes, we end up in control of some very important part of the business, and even if we have minority shares on paper, no decision is made w/o our approval.  For example, we enter cosntruction projects via aquisiton of land and pledging the land as equity for an SPV, then renting it to the project operator.   Basically, when you enter a business, be in control of the decisions there, or have significant leverage on the operations. Have your own operating professionals to run it. Profit.", "\"Legal tender is by law any denominations of money printed by the Bank of Canada.  There is an exclusion to this in that it must also be acceptable to both parties of the transaction.  See the following link from the Bank of Canada on Legal Tender and look at the answer to the question of What is \"\"legal tender\"\"? The reason retailers may refuse the \"\"legal tender\"\" is in the case of counterfeit prevention.  The stores that purchase the scanning machines are trying to be accommodating by deferring the decision to refuse the \"\"legal tender\"\" after verifying it (checking if it is acceptable).\"", "I agree that voicing your concerns can help change policy, but there is a degree of tact required. There are designated channels for complaints and concerns. Sending an email rant to coworkers is not the right way.  Edit: He posted it on an internal social network, not an email."]}
+{"query": "Generally Accepted Accounting Principles question", "corpus": ["You recognize expense when you sell the hot dog. When you pay for the buns you have inventory, which is an asset. When you sell the hot dog - you have cost of goods sold, which is the expense. Expense principle says that you recognize expense when you use the product. You use the buns when you actually sell the hot dog, not before. The matching principle is also honored because you recognize expense of the buns at the time of recognizing revenue of the hot dog."], "neg": ["\"I've been in a very similar situation to yours in the past.  Since the company is reimbursing you at a flat rate (I assume you don't need to provide documentation/receipts in order to be paid the per diem), it's not directly connected to the $90 in expenses that you mention.  Unless they were taking taxes out that would need to be reimbursed, the separate category for Assets:Reimbursable:Gotham City serves no real purpose, other than to categorize the expenses. Since there is no direct relationship between your expenses and the reimbursement, I would list them as completely separate transactions: Later, if you needed to locate all of the associated expenses with the Gotham trip, gnucash lets you search on memo text for \"\"Gotham\"\" and will display all of the related transactions.  This is a lot cleaner than having to determine what piece of the per diem goes to which expenses, or having to create a new Asset account every time you go on a trip.\"", "Simply, you should put your money into whatever has the higher interest rate, savings or repayment of debt. Let's say at the beginning of month A you put $1000 into each account. In the case of the savings, at the end of month A you will have $1001.6 ($1000 + 1000 x 2% annual interest / 12) In the case of a loan, at the end of month A you will have $1005.7. ($17000 plus 6.8 interest for one month is 17096.3. On $16000, the new value is 16090.6.  The difference between these is $1005.7. 5.7 / 1.6 = 3.56 Therefore, using your money to repay your loan nets you a return about 3.5 times greater.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.treasury.gov/press-center/press-releases/Pages/sm0132.aspx) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Washington - Today, the U.S. Department of the Treasury&amp;#039;s Office of Foreign Assets Control designated 13 current or former senior officials of the Venezuelan Government pursuant to Executive Order 13692, which authorizes sanctions against officials of the Government of Venezuela and others undermining democracy there.  &gt; Today&amp;#039;s designations focus on current and former officials of Venezuelan Government agencies associated with the elections or the undermining of democracy, as well as the government&amp;#039;s rampant violence against opposition protesters and its corruption.  &gt; The Government&amp;#039;s undermining of democracy in Venezuela has driven the people of Venezuela into the streets in protest, and the Maduro government has responded with repression and violence.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6pqzi8/treasury_sanctions_13_current_and_former_senior/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~176339 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*: **Venezuelan**^#1 **Venezuela**^#2 **Government**^#3 **former**^#4 **National**^#5\"", "The true answer is it depends because  it is up to the credit card issuer to follow the right path when issuing a replacement credit card. http://www.bankrate.com/finance/credit-cards/will-replacement-card-hurt-my-score.aspx Typically, issuers will transfer the account history to the new trade line, says Barry Paperno, the consumer operations manager at FICO, the creator of the FICO scoring formula. The new account should have the old open date, so you should retain your payment history, he says. The credit limit and balance should also stay the same. http://blog.credit.com/2014/02/lost-or-stolen-credit-card-hurt-your-credit-scores-76724/ How Issuers Report Replacement Cards We asked the major card issuers how they report replacement cards to credit reporting agencies: American Express: The new card has the same open date and “Member Since” year as the previous card. The balance on the old account number is transferred to the new account number. All payment history transfers over. Bank of America: All transactions and account history are transferred to the new account number when there is a card replacement or renewal. Capital One: The new account number with all the original account data (original open date, etc.) is reported along with a notification to the bureaus that the new account number is replacing the old.  The two tradelines can then be ‘merged’ into one, so that all the applicable payment history, balance, etc. is now under the new account number. Chase: The original tradeline does not change. The history on the account remains, just the account number field is updated with the new account number. There is no “new” tradeline in this scenario.", "I think it's very interesting to see these concepts play out (albeit simply) in an economy with a complete data set (as opposed to the never-perfect data we have about real systems). I'm also impressed that Valve hired an economist to help manage their economies, although I guess I shouldn't be surprised.", "oh Yay!!!  Tax cuts for the rich, just in time to maximize their profits from the Feds garage sale of goodies . . .  Ahh .  . . .its a good thing all the Goyim are paying attention to the foot ball thing or they just might wake and start to ask stupid questions and we will have to explain to them why low taxes for the rich is good for the poor.", "This is supposed to be a comment, as this is anecdotal, but I can't post comments.  Also, this information relates to the UK.  I used to work in a Licensed Betting Office, or a bookies to use the informal word for it, and we had to deal with this issue all the time.   The pens didn't really work all that well as the forgers found out that dipping forged notes in fabric softener nullified the effects of the pens, and some of the copies were incredibly good. Generally, we would take two or three notes per week."]}
+{"query": "What is the rate of return for a security when there is no risk-free rate (CAPM)?", "corpus": ["\"For starters, the risk-free rate has nothing to do with stocks.  It would be independent of anything.  It pays out the same return in all states of nature.  The definition of a risk-free asset is that regardless of how the universe turns out, including a meteor striking the Earth killing everyone but the recipient, then the payout would happen exactly as planned.  One could imagine a computer still being on, connected to a power supply and printing a check.  Most people use the 90-day t-bill as the risk-free rate.  A beta greater than one implies it is more volatile than the market, not that it moves more perfectly. The CAPM should not be used for this.  Cryptocurrencies should not be used with this model because they have valuation dynamics related to the new issue of coins.  In other words, they have non-market price movements as well as market price movements. In general, you should not use the CAPM because it doesn't work empirically.  It is famous, but it is also wrong.  A scientific hypothesis that is not supported by the data is a bad idea.  My strong recommendation is that you read \"\"The Intelligent Investor,\"\" by Benjamin Graham.  It was last published in 1972, and it is still being printed.  I believe Warren Buffett wrote the current forward for it.  Always go where the data supports you and never anywhere else, no matter how elegant. Finally, unless you are doing this like a trip to Vegas, for fun and willing to take the losses, I would avoid cryptocurrencies because you don't know what you are doing yet.  It is obvious from the posting.  I have multiple decades working in every type of financial institution and at every level, bottom to top.  I also have a doctorate, and I am an incredible researcher.  I am professionally qualified in three different disciplines. If you want to learn how to do this, start with the \"\"Intelligent Investor.\"\"  Get a basic book on accounting and learn basic accounting.  Pick up economics textbooks at least through \"\"Intermediate\"\" for both microeconomics and macroeconomics.  Get William Bolstad's book \"\"Introduction to Bayesian Statistics.\"\"  You will need them for reasons that go very far beyond this post.  Trust me; you want to master that book.  Find a statistician and ask them to teach it to you as a special topics course.  It will help you as both either a Marine officer or a Naval officer.  Then after that pick up a copy of \"\"Security Analysis.\"\"  Either the 1943 copy (yes it is in print) by Benjamin Graham if you feel good about accounting, or the 1987 copy by Cottle under the Graham/Dodd imprimatur.  Then, if you are still interested in cryptocurrencies and they will be blasé by then, then pick up an economics textbook on money.  If I were you, I would learn about Yap money, commodity money, and prison money first, then you might understand why a cryptocurrency may not be an investment for you.\""], "neg": ["I have money withdrawn near when the bill is due (not early at all) and my credit score is top-notch.  It's far, far more important that you don't pay late.  I don't think paying early earns you brownie points with FICO. Now, if you have an interest-bearing checking account, and if you pay your balance in full each month, and are very, very organized, then paying at the last minute, but on time, lets you take full advantage of the free float that the credit card issuer gives you. If you have trouble rubbing two brain cells together when it comes to bills (like I do sometimes) then either set up auto-deduct from your checking account or pay the bill as soon as it comes in.", "LOL. The DNC is literally bankrupt and in debt. You won't hear such truths uttered in the mainstream media, but suffice to say that a party that can't even manage it's own internal bookkeeping isn't going to fix the economy.  http://observer.com/2017/07/democratic-national-committee-failing-unpopular-debt/  Libs are lost and delusional.", "When I work hard people say “You Should Do That Anyways”, not acknowledging the fact that 9/10 people slack.  I think most people who work hard don’t get the credit they deserve. Usually people who are wealthy are born into it, lucky or know the right people and have the right ideas. Hard working people make it too but significantly less people make it from just “hard work”.  It all depends on your work ethic and what you’re willing to do in order to achieve your goals and reach your next step. Nice post op.", "The alternatives are practically perpetual with linen suits, the search is ideal for summer, pushing it flawlessly amongst shrewd and easygoing and offering so much adaptability. In case you're hoping to keep the look keen, then match your suit with a shirt and tie mix.", "\"If you find your local Verizon store \"\"seedy\"\", you might want to either bring your expectations about a place you'll spend about an hour in every couple years back in line with reality or just try shopping in a more upscale neighborhood.   Yes, really, Staples &amp; Bestbuy electronics salesmen make commissions. Believe it or not, their actually is a consumer electronics market beyond Apple.\"", "\"You're forgetting the fundamental issue, that you never have to actually exercise the options you buy.  You can either sell them to someone else or, if they're out of the money, let them expire and take the loss. It isn't uncommon at all for people to buy both a put and call option (this is a \"\"straddle\"\" when the strike price of both the put and call are the same). From Investopedia.com: A straddle is an options strategy in which the investor holds a position in both a call and put with the same strike price and expiration date, paying both premiums. This strategy allows the investor to make a profit regardless of whether the price of the security goes up or down, assuming the stock price changes somewhat significantly.   Read more: Straddle http://www.investopedia.com/terms/s/straddle.asp#ixzz4ZYytV0pT\"", "If you are calculating simple ROI, the answer is straightforward math.  See This Answer for some examples, but yes, with more leverage you will always see better ROI on a property IF you can maintain a positive cash flow.  The most complete answer is to factor in your total risk. That high ROI of a leveraged property is far more volatile and sensitive to any unexpected expenses. Additionally, a loss of equity in the property (or an upside-down mortgage) will further impact your long term position. To put this more simply (as noted in the comments below), your losses will be amplified. You cannot say a leveraged property will always give you a better ROI because you cannot predict your losses."]}
+{"query": "Is selling put options an advisable strategy for a retiree to generate stable income?", "corpus": ["No.  In good years, the income seems free. In a down year, particularly a bad one, the investor will be subject to large losses that will prove the strategy a bad one.  On the other hand, one often hears of the strategy of selling puts on stock you would like to own. If the stock rises, you keep the premium, if it drops, you own it at a bit of a discount from that starting point."], "neg": ["My current strategy is long equity in blue chips with limited growth but large profits... Some call that value investing.  GM, AAPL, BRK.B have done very well for me. VZ is a notable straggler. Regardless, my overall positions have grown considerably :)  Not a fan of shorting... but TSLA would be my short of choice since it is very expensive to short SHLD.", "If you want to invest in the stock market, whether over a shorter period of 1 to 2 years or over a longer period of 10 or 20 years or longer you need to take some precautions and have a written investment plan with a risk management strategy incorporated in your plan. Others have said that 1 to 2 years is too short to invest in the stock market as the stock market can have a correction and fall by 50%. But it doesn't matter if you invest for 1 year or if you invest for 50 years, the stock market can still fall by 50% just before you plan to withdraw your funds. What you need to figure out is a way to get out before the market falls by 40% to 50%. A simple way to do this is to use technical indicators to warn you when a market trend is starting to change and that it is time to get out of the market. Two simple indicators you can use on a market index are the Rate of Change (ROC) indicator and the 100 week Moving Average (MA). Below is a 10 year weekly chart of the S&P500 with these two indicators charted. They show good times to get into the market and good times to get out.  If you are using the 100 week MA you would buy in when the price crosses above the MA line and sell when the price crosses below the MA line. If you are using the ROC indicator you would buy in when the ROC indicator crosses above the zero line and sell when the ROC indicator crosses below the zero line. So your investment plan could be to buy an Index ETF representing the S&P500 when the ROC moves above zero and sell when it crosses below zero. You can also place a trailing stop loss of 10% to protect you in case of a sudden fall over a couple of days. You can manage your investments in as little as 10 minutes per week by checking the chart once per week and adjusting your stop loss order.  If you want to progressively add to your investment each month you could check the charts and only add any new funds if both the ROC is above zero and sloping upwards. Another option for adding new funds could be if the price is above the MA and moving further away from the MA. All these rules should be incorporated into your investment plan so that you are not basing your decisions based on emotions. There are many other Technical Analysis Indicators you could also learn about to make better educated decisions about your stock market investments. However, what I have provided here is enough for anyone to test over different indexes and time frames and do their own paper trading on to gain some confidence before placing any real money on the table.", "Recommended? There's really no perfect answer. You need to know the motivations of the participants in the markets that you will be participating in. For instance, the stock market's purpose is to raise capital (make as much money as possible), whereas the commodities-futures market's purpose is to hedge against producing actual goods. The participants in both markets have different reactions to changes in price.", "There are two reasons for incorporating a business in Canada - limiting liability and providing some freedom in structuring your taxes. Since you are asking about taxes, I will restrict myself to that topic. First of all, remember that if you don't make much money, there isn't much tax to save by clever structuring of your affairs. And if you do incorporate, you will pay taxes as a corporation, and pay taxes again on your salary paid from that corporation. It can still be advantageous, because the small business tax rate is less that the higher tax brackets of personal taxes, and you don't have to pay out all of the profit as salary. If you don't incorporate, you still must pay taxes on your net income from the business. (See brian's answer.) Definitely keep track of your income and expenses, even if you don't plan on making money, in case you get audited. If the CRA wants to call your hobby a business, you will need to show that you haven't made any profit. I am just giving you a few bits of advice because this subject is complicated. Too complicated for an answer on this site. If you are still interested, go to your local library and get some books on the subject.", "\"This is the sad state of US stock markets and Regulation T. Yes, while options have cleared & settled for t+1 (trade +1 day) for years and now actually clear \"\"instantly\"\" on some exchanges, stocks still clear & settle in t+3.  There really is no excuse for it. If you are in a margin account, regulations permit the trading of unsettled funds without affecting margin requirements, so your funds in effect are available immediately after trading but aren't considered margin loans.  Some strict brokers will even restrict the amount of uncleared margin funds you can trade with (Scottrade used to be hyper safe and was the only online discount broker that did this years ago); others will allow you to withdraw a large percentage of your funds immediately (I think E*Trade lets you withdraw up to 90% of unsettled funds immediately). If you are in a cash account, you are authorized to buy with unsettled funds, but you can't sell purchases made on unsettled funds until such funds clear, or you'll be barred for 90 days from trading as your letter threatened; besides, most brokers don't allow this.  You certainly aren't allowed to withdraw unsettled funds (by your broker) in such an account as it would technically constitute a loan for which you aren't even liable since you've agreed to no loan contract, a margin agreement.  I can't be sure if that actually violates Reg T, but when I am, I'll edit. While it is true that all marketable options are cleared through one central entity, the Options Clearing Corporation, with stocks, clearing & settling still occurs between brokers, netting their transactions between each other electronically. All financial products could clear & settle immediately imo, and I'd rather not start a firestorm by giving my opinion why not. Don't even get me started on the bond market... As to the actual process, it's called \"\"clearing & settling\"\". The general process (which can generally be applied to all financial instruments from cash deposits to derivatives trading) is: The reason why all of the old financial companies were grouped on Wall St. is because they'd have runners physically carting all of the certificates from building to building.  Then, they discovered netting so slowed down the process to balance the accounts and only cart the net amounts of certificates they owed each other.  This is how we get the term \"\"bankers hours\"\" where financial firms would close to the public early to account for the days trading.  While this is all really done instantly behind your back at your broker, they've conveniently kept the short hours.\"", "If I understand you correctly, you are noticing that a stock's price can change drastically when the time changes from pre-market trading hours to open market hours. This could occur because a much smaller pool of investors make trades during pre-market and after-market hours. When the regular market opens there is a large influx of trades, causing the prices to jump.", "Everything is down, when measured in the US Dollar because there was a flight to Dollars recently when everyone got the crap scared out of them with the Euro drama...  Remember, the thing you're measuring against is highly volatile at the moment - to get a better idea measure Amazon against something like a basket of commodities, or metals, or oil, or a currency basket (or better yet, all of these)."]}
+{"query": "Should I invest in my house, when it's in my wife's name?", "corpus": ["The best answer to this question will depend on you and your wife. What is 'fair' for some may not be 'fair' for others. Some couples split expenses 50:50. Some split proportionately based on income. Some pool everything together. What works best for you will depend on your relative incomes, your financial goals, living standards, and most importantly, your personal beliefs. Here is a great question with various viewpoints: How to organize bank accounts with wife. It doesn't touch heavily on home ownership / pre-nuptial agreements, but might be a good starting point to getting you to think about your options. Consider providing another loan to your wife for additional investments in the home. It seems you are both comfortable with the realities of the pre-nuptial agreement; one of those realities seems to be that in the event of divorce you would lose access to the house. Loaning money has the benefit of allowing for the improvements to be done immediately, while clearly delineating what you have spent on the home from what she has spent on the home. However, this may not be 'fair', depending on how you both define the term. Have you discussed how expenses and savings would be split between you? Since there is no mortgage on the house, she has effectively contributed her pre-marital assets towards paying substantially all of your housing costs. It may be 'fair' for you to contribute to housing costs by at least splitting maintenance 50:50, or it may not be. Hopefully you talked about finances before you got married, and if not, now would be the best time to start. I personally would hate to have an 'uneasy' feeling about a relationship because I failed to openly communicate about finances."], "neg": ["\"I think you're really underestimating the degree of ageism that occurs in hiring and just how much youth is favoured in the job markets. Experience costs more and it depreciates quickly. In most case employers  will prefer someone less experienced who comes across as mature and less expensive than someone who is more experienced but has been our of the industry for a year or more. The attitude of \"\"you can't teach an old job new tricks\"\" rules. Your 30s represent the ideal sweet spot: you are still young and you have some experience. If you're not in full preparing for retirement mode by 40 or 45, you're going to have a bad time. GenXers have lost most of their sweet spot and if the recovery doesn't happen, they will have lost all of it.   Yes, Millenials have it pretty bad too -- no one is disputing that -- but GenX was screwed from the start. We have larger generations on either side of us. We are a transitional generation that started out before computers went mainstream but ended after, so we have a hard time competing with Millenials who have lived with technology all their life. The whole structure of the world changed right under us, i.e., the end of the cold war. And this change significantly increased available labour. Even before 2008 the talk was all about how screwed the GenXers where because of the power of Boomers and the dominance of the Millenials. We already had our backs up against the wall then 2008 struck.  Also, I'd much rather be 28 and looking for a job than 40+ and looking for one. It's so much easier to jump industries or cites or countries when younger and you don't have children to look after. The 28 year old is not locked a career path and has lost a ton of political capital and credibility for having lost their job. The 40+ year old will always have to face questions: why wasn't he/she one of the one the company kept during the layoffs? will he/she be able to learn and adapt to the new job? will he/she be comfortable reporting to someone younger? will he/she be will to sacrifice time away from kids to work longer hours to compete with younger employees?\"", "\"The risk of any investment is measured by its incremental effect on the volatility of your overall personal wealth, including your other investments.  The usual example is that adding a volatile stock to your portfolio may actually reduce the risk of your portfolio if it is negatively correlated with the other stuff in your portfolio. Common measures of risk, such as beta, assume that you have whole-market diversified portfolio. In the case of an investment that may or may not be hedged against currency movements, we can't say whether the hedge adds or removes risk for you without knowing what else is in your portfolio.  If you are an EU citizen with nominally delimited savings or otherwise stand to lose buying power if the Euro depreciates relative to the dollar, than the \"\"hedged\"\" ETF is less risky than the \"\"unhedged\"\" version.  On the other hand, if your background risk is such that you benefit from that depreciation, then the reverse is true. \"\"Hedging\"\" means reducing the risk already present in your portfolio.  In this case it does not refer to reducing the individual volatility of the ETF.  It may or may not do that but individual asset volatility and risk are two very different things.\"", "For the first part of your question, I think the answer is a combination of three things:  (1) Bigger companies have leverage to negotiate better deals due to volume.  (2) Some of these companies are also taking bookings from outside the US for people traveling to the US (either directly or through affiliates).  This means that they also have income in other currencies, so they may not actually be making as many wire transfers as you think.  They simply keep a bank account in Europe, for example, in Euros to receive and send money in the Eurozone as needed.  They balance the exchange on their books internally in this case, without actually sending funds through the international banking system.  Similarly in other parts of the world. (3) These companies are not going to make a wire transfer for every transaction, in any case.  They are going to transfer big sums of money to an account abroad to balance things on a longer-term basis (weekly, month, etc.)  Then they will make individual payments to service providers out of the overseas account in between these larger, international transfers. For the second part of your question, I think there's probably no way for a new business to get the advantages of scale unless you've got significant capital backing your endeavor that would make it plausible that you'll be transferring in scale.  I don't see any reason in principle that the new company could not establish bank accounts abroad and try to execute the plan outlined in #2 above except that it would require some set-up costs to do the proper paperwork in each country, probably to travel, and to initially fund the various accounts.", "It is unlikely that buying 100 shares will have any effect on a stock's price, unless the stock's average trading volume is incredibly low.  That being said, no matter how many share you buy, there's no way to know what the impact on the price will be, because that's only one factor in how shares are priced.  If anyone could figure out the answer to your question then they'd be extremely rich, because they'd simply watch for big share trades and then buy those stocks on the way up. The market makers who actually execute the trades are the ones who set the prices, and most stocks have multiple market makers trading the stock, so the bid/ask you see is the highest bid and lowest ask.  The market makers set the price based on what the trend of the stock is.  If, for instance, there's a large number of sell orders against a stock, the market makers will start dropping the bid prices as they fill execution orders, and as they see buy orders increase, they'll raise ask prices as they fill execution orders.  The market makers earn the difference between what they paid to buy someone's stock who was selling and what they get from someone else who buys it. This is a simplified explanation, so pro traders, don't beat me up! (grin) So, basically, it takes quite a bit of share volume in one direction or another to affect a stock's price.  I can guarantee a 100-share trade wouldn't even be noticed by market makers. I hope this helps. Good luck!", "While open interest usually correlates to volume, the mark of liquidity is the bid ask spread. Even when trading options with spreads as large as an ask 2x the bid, a more realistic price that traders are willing to accept lies somewhere in the middle. Any option can easily be exited at intrinsic value: underlying price - exercise price for calls, exercise price - underlying price for puts.  For illiquid options, this will be the best price obtained.  For longer term options, something closer to the theoretical price is still possible. If an underlying is extremely liquid, yet the options aren't quite then options traders will be much more ready to trade at the theoretical price. For exiting illiquid options, small, < 4 contracts, and infrequent, > 30 minute intervals, orders are more likely to be filled closer to the theoretical price; however, if one's sells are the only trades, traders on the other side will take note and accept ever lowering implied volatilities. With knowledge of what traders will accept, it is always more optimal to trade out of options rather than exercise because of the added costs and uncertainty involved with exercising and liquidating.", "He actually cared about his people and let them know it by showing it.  Some of the stories that have come out about his actions are incredible.  He's sent people to college, helped sick kids and just all manner of random and very human interaction with people.", "\"&gt;HOWEVER, any close to normal person can see that there are a whole lot of people with serious issues that nobody mentions to them (or they themselves are afraid to acknowledge) because they don't want to deal with all of the drama.   Doesn't mean they are caused by a \"\"mental illness\"\".  &gt;And, just to be clear, the term \"\"Mental Illness\"\" in this case(according to the above studies) is really anything from anxiety, to depression, to schizophrenia, personality disorders, and even more social things like compulsive lying. Obviously, the definition is very broad and that is precisely why the statistic(25%) is so shocking.   Just to be clear... that is basically the definition of a \"\"con operation\"\".  The term \"\"mental illness\"\" (as it is used by the industry) is simply a fraud.\""]}
+{"query": "Is Cost of Living overstated?", "corpus": ["New York City is high cost-of-living, and I have absolutely no clue why people live there.  It's a tough place, and the taxes are oppressive.  People buy a studio apartment for $150,000 that has 175 square feet (that's not a typo) plus a $700/month maintenance fee that continues after the mortgage is paid off.  And that's just what the fee is now. Our rental house (which used to be our primary residence) at 1,300 square feet has a (15-year) mortgage payment of about $800, and $1,000 per year in property taxes.  And my area isn't particularly low cost-of-living. High cost-of-living is just that.  More money flies out the door just for the privilege of living there.  You make good investments with real estate by buying property at a good price in a good location.  Those deals are everywhere, but in high CoL locations you're probably more susceptible to price fluctuations which will trap you in your property if your mortgage goes underwater. Anyway, that's a long way of saying that I don't buy your recommendation to get property in high CoL areas.  There are desirable low CoL places to live, too."], "neg": ["&gt; current mayor, Bill de Blasio, has committed to the creation of 30,000 supportive units over the next 10 years  so, almost 60,000 need shelter and the mayor plans for HALF that number over TEN YEARS.  yup, you can count on government to protect the weak", "\"But you aren't driving between your two jobs, you're driving for your job. The better analogy would be \"\"If I didn't buy commercial insurance, but was hiring myself out to do deliveried then my personal insurance better cover me if I hit someone between deliveries\"\" It doesn't work that way. There is a reason commercial insurance costs a lot more - when your job is to drive, your risk profile increases significantly. There are specific clauses in personal insurance that they aren't going to cover you if something happens while you are using your car for commercial purposes.\"", "Shipping boxes are most ideal if you tend to move goods from one place to another on regular intervals. These boxes offer easy and better packaging and moving and protect your goods from any harm during transit. However, do ensure that you buy shipping boxes from a good and reliable company as boxes made out of poor quality can easily give way and they may not be able to take up the load.  Article Source: http://EzineArticles.com/7302491", "Worked for a SaaS based company that married data sources to existing IP and analog video feeds.  E.g. for an ATM you'd match transactions against the PinHole And/or overhead cameras and run analytics over that data.    Edit for clarity. You either MITM it if it's insecure for 'live' data or you parse it centrally and pull data in batches each night.", "You are planning on buying a car that is 50% of your salary. Add your student debt to that and your total debt is >50% of your salary. I would suggest getting a few credit cards to build up credit, but can you manage that? Buying a 25k car with 55k salary is overspending. Get a second-hand car for 7k or so. Plus, buying a new car is not smart either, from a pricing standpoint, if you really want a new car, buy one that is 1 to 2 years old.", "Yes, but most/many people will not realize how small hardcover books sales are in proportion. Then they throw in some hype about how this is a landmark in ebook sales etc.. and there you go.   The article has a clear agenda. There has been a lot of focus on ebook vs print and this tries to pull the wool over your eyes by leaving out relevant information.", "Both states will want to tax you. Your tax home is where you maintain a domicile, are registered to vote, etc. and you will probably want to keep this as MA since you state that MA is your permanent residence and you are staying in a rented place in PA. But be careful about voter registration; that is one of the items that can be used to determine your state of residence.  OK, so if you and your spouse are MA residents,  you should file jointly as residents in MA and as nonresidents in PA. Do the calculations on the nonresident return first, and then the calculations on the resident  return. Typically, on a nonresident tax return, the calculations are effectively the following: Report all your income (usually AGI from the Federal return).  Call this $X. Compute the PA state tax due on $X.  Note that you follow the rules for nonresidents in doing this, not the calculations used by PA residents. Call the amount of tax you computed as $Y. What part of the total income $X is attributable to PA sources? If this amount is $Z, then you owe PA $Y times (Z/X). On the resident return in MA, you will likely get some credit for the taxes paid to PA, and this will reduce your MA tax burden. Usually the maximum credit is limited to the lesser of actual tax paid to PA and what you would have had to pay MA for the same income. As far as withholding is concerned, your employer in PA will withhold PA taxes as if you are a PA resident, but you can adjust the amount via the PA equivalent of IRS Form W4 so as to account for any additional  tax that might be due because you will be filing as a nonresident.  Else you can pay estimated taxes via the PA equivalent of IRS Form 1040ES. Similarly, your wife can adjust her withholding to account for the MA taxes that you will owe on the joint income, or you can pay estimated taxes to MA too. Note that it is unlikely that your employer in Pennsylvania will withhold  Massachusetts taxes (and send them to Massachusetts) for you, e.g. if it is a ma-and-pa store, but there may be special deals available if  your employer does business in both states, i.e. is a MA-and-PA store."]}
+{"query": "What's the catch in investing in real estate for rent?", "corpus": ["\"Several, actually: Maintenance costs. As landlord, you are liable for maintaining the basic systems of the dwelling - structure, electrical, plumbing, HVAC. On top of that, you typically also have to maintain anything that comes with the space, so if you're including appliances like a W/D or fridge, if they crap out you could spend a months' rent or more replacing them. You are also required to keep the property up to city codes as far as groundskeeping unless you specifically assign those responsibilities to your tenant (and in some states you are not allowed to do so, and in many cases renters expect groundskeeping to come out of their rent one way or the other). Failure to do these things can put you in danger of giving your tenant a free out on the lease contract, and even expose you to civil and criminal penalties if you're running a real slum. Escrow payments. The combination of property tax and homeowner's insurance usually doubles the monthly housing payment over principal and interest, and that's if you got a mortgage for 20% down. Also, because this is not your primary residence, it's ineligible for Homestead Act exemptions (where available; states like Texas are considering extending Homestead exemptions to landlords, with the expectation it will trickle down to renters), however mortgage interest and state taxes do count as \"\"rental expenses\"\" and can be deducted on Schedule C as ordinary business expenses offsetting revenues. Income tax. The money you make in rent on this property is taxable as self-employment income tax; you're effectively running a sole proprietorship real-estate management company, so not only does any profit (you are allowed to deduct maintenance and administrative costs from the rent revenues) get added to whatever you make in salary at your day job, you're also liable for the full employee and employer portions of Medicare/Medicaid/SS taxes. You are, however, also allowed to depreciate the property over its expected life and deduct depreciation; the life of a house is pretty long, and if you depreciate more than the house's actual loss of value, you take a huge hit if/when you sell because any amount of the sale price above the depreciated price of the house is a capital gain (though, it can work to your advantage by depreciating the maximum allowable to reduce ordinary income, then paying lower capital gains rates on the sale).  Legal costs. The rental agreement typically has to be drafted by a lawyer in order to avoid things that can cause the entire contract to be thrown out (though there are boilerplate contracts available from state landlords' associations). This will cost you a few hundred dollars up front and to update it every few years. It is deductible as an ordinary expense. Advertising. Putting up a \"\"For Rent\"\" sign out front is typically just the tip of the iceberg. Online and print ads, an ad agency, these things cost money. It's deductible as an ordinary expense. Add this all up and you may end up losing money in the first year you rent the property, when legal, advertising, initial maintenance/purchases to get the place tenant-ready, etc are first spent; deduct it properly and it'll save you some taxes, but you better have the nest egg to cover these things on top of everything your lender will expect you to bring to closing (assuming you don't have $100k+ lying around to buy the house in cash).\""], "neg": ["Or because you know about them from the ads. Commercials are not sole intended to make you get off the couch and go to the store buy a product you've just seen an ad for, it attempts to familiarize you with the product and let you know about its existence. First time costumer likely to buy a brand that they heard of.", "\"&gt;but don't leave out the democrats as your article does  I really think that saying the Democrats are somehow \"\"equally\"\" to blame would be ignoring [research](http://www.people-press.org/2011/12/15/frustration-with-congress-could-hurt-republican-incumbents/) that suggests that the public assigns a greater responsiility to Republicans than Democrats. I have heard *no* meaningful discussions about problems facing us from Republicans.   But I have heard how Obama is at fault for everything wrong in this world, while telling us that we need to repeal every drop of Obamacare and financial reform (as if there was never an economics crisis or major problems with health care). All that congress is able to do these days is pander to a two year election cycle.\"", "I would suggest contacting them. If the account has a small amount of followers and seldom active on it, they usually don't mind handing over the account username. If they won't do it from the kindness of their heart, perhaps ask them how much they want for it? Nothing worse than having inconsistent social media account usernames.", "Funny all the landlord forums are all giddy about raising rents to eat up that extra income, but Im sure you know better being all what is it you do again arm chair economist?  https://www.forbes.com/sites/modeledbehavior/2015/08/23/the-minimum-wage-in-cities/#11e65f016153  http://www.latimes.com/opinion/opinion-la/la-ol-minimum-wage-housing-20150327-story.html  http://www.phillyvoice.com/does-raising-minimum-wage-raise-rents/  https://www.ezlandlordforms.com/articles/news/556/how-does-raising-the-minimum-wage-affect-rents/", "Walmart has in store pickup. Also, I recently looked at tablets at Fry's Electronics. They were not powered up, and there were several more times more customers than salesmen. People threatened to shop elsewhere and the salesmen couldn't care less. Similar to a warehouse with cash registers in front.", "**Here's a sneak peek of [/r/CFA](https://np.reddit.com/r/CFA) using the [top posts](https://np.reddit.com/r/CFA/top/?sort=top&amp;t=year) of the year!**  \\#1: [EXAM COMPLETION UPVOTE PARTY](https://np.reddit.com/r/CFA/comments/6f1beo/exam_completion_upvote_party/)   \\#2: [Passing Level 1 upvote party!](https://np.reddit.com/r/CFA/comments/4uoi45/passing_level_1_upvote_party/)   \\#3: [How to hit on girls after the CFA exam](https://np.reddit.com/r/CFA/comments/6eqykh/how_to_hit_on_girls_after_the_cfa_exam/)  ---- ^^I'm ^^a ^^bot, ^^beep ^^boop ^^| ^^Downvote ^^to ^^remove ^^| [^^Contact ^^me](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose/?to=sneakpeekbot) ^^| [^^Info](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/) ^^| [^^Opt-out](https://np.reddit.com/r/sneakpeekbot/comments/5lveo6/blacklist/)", "In your scenario, I would do the following: If, in the short term, something should happen, you can always tap into a line of credit or even a cash advance on the credit card.  But, you should in no way be paying $70 a month in interest.   Assume you want to pay off the Credit card over 12 payments, you would need to pay about 450 a month, which costs 400 in interest.  At the end of the year, you have $5000 in savings, and $0 debt. The alternative, is to pay off the credit card right now, and put that $450 into savings, you would have $5400 in savings, and $0 debt. I'm usually the last to recommend a $0 safety net, but I make an exception in the case of retirable credit card debt.   In the worst case, you are no worse off than you are now, in the best case, you're up about $400 at the end of the year."]}
+{"query": "ETF S&P 500 with Reinvested Dividend", "corpus": ["The problem there is that there's a tax due on that dividend. So, if you wish, you can buy the ETF and specify to reinvest dividends, but you'll have to pay a bit of tax on them, and keep track of your basis, if the account isn't a retirement account."], "neg": ["Investing in NPS is a good stratergy for long term keeping in mind your retirement plans. However, the amount deposited in NPS gets locked till you are sixty. So, it depends on you wheather you want to pay few bucks to the government to enjoy the remaining money as you wish or you want to save the money till you are in your sixties. I hope the answer is useful.", "\"You are looking to be made whole, so the requests need to be reasonable.  You need to be clear that you want: You aren't going to 'punish' the dry cleaner or anything else.  You don't want coupons or free service for future work, you want your pants or cash. If you send a letter, send it certified with a return receipt.  You want to be able to show a judge you made efforts outside of the court that you attempted to reconcile the issue.  Sending it certified is also a good way to indicate to the dry cleaner that you aren't going to just go away.  Be clear, firm and very polite.  You cannot blame or criticize the cleaner, simply state \"\"On YY/YY/YYYY date I didn't get my pants back; I want my pants or I want money by XX/XX/XXXX date.\"\" If you want to picket, contact local law enforcement and find out the rules before picketing.  You can probably picket from a sidewalk, but that doesn't mean the dry cleaner won't approach you and get in your personal space.   If you hand out flyers, stick strictly to provable facts lest you be sued for defamation.  It is smarter to hand out a fact sheet or speak from a rehearsed script so that you don't say something that would be actionable.  Make sure you pick the busiest day of the week for a dry cleaner. (Weekends?) I don't think this is criminal, but you can sue.  Like others said, if you have the cleaning ticket (and the ticket doesn't absolve the dry cleaner of responsibility) you will probably get a judgement.  Be careful what you ask for, make sure you cover all of your costs (the pants, filing fees, time off of work, and collection efforts.)  Itemize all your requested costs and make sure they are reasonable.  You only want to be made whole, and that only means $160 or pants (plus fees) Just because you won in small claims doesn't mean you can collect easily.  Figure in your cost for collecting when you sue.  You might have to hire somebody to collect on your judgement.  If you hire somebody they will want a cut, so you might want to figure that out for your small claims.  I am guessing this is a local business, so it should be pretty easy to collect.  (Unless they go out of business, in which case you will get nothing.)\"", "Because they believe that negative interest rates will force people to push capital around, and promote investment to avoid the negative interest rates associated with having your cash sitting in an account. Most likely they will be banning cash within the next 10 years anyway which will prevent you from being able to keep it yourself. You will either need to: or", "First, gather the information you have on her banking history.  She may have accounted for that money and moved it to a new account or otherwise spent it.  I don't expect you'll have much banking documentation from the 1950s, but if you do, then start there and trace the money. To the extent you can, you may try to contact the banks in question or their successors.  It may be difficult to trace them through mergers or closings.  Again, it's very possible that she spent or transferred those funds and there is nothing to find anyway. There is also a risk that if the money went unclaimed for too long, then the bank was obligated to escheat any remaining balance to the state of Ohio.  You can try contacting Ohio Department of Commerce about unclaimed funds and attempt to locate anything that may have rightly belonged to her.  You will need to gather documentation to do so.  You may be able to receive the funds from the state, if it has received them.", "Keep Your Passwords Updated - Passwords are at the core of hacking. Hackers either try to hack your password or exploit some other vulnerability to gain access to passwords, so make sure that all your passwords are completely random and not simple like 123456 or password. Log on http://tellemgrodypr.com/", "I buy all my casual shoes off the originals line. I also like options in the color of the shoes. Foot Locker will have max 5 color options, the adidas website has hundreds. No surprise that people are going right to the source.", "I do not meet your qualifications but this is what I would do: 1)  Save an amount that can replace your bike and accessories if it is stolen.  Don't touch it for anything but that. 2)  Compute an average monthly cost for maintenance items, double that for a couple of months until you have the account built up, then budget that amount every month. If your bike/headlight/front tire, get stolen or broken beyond repair, take it out of the first account.  Then your savings priority should be to rebuild that account.  I would be a bit alarmed if you have to keep hitting this account for legitimate reasons. When a tire goes flat, or other normal wear and tear item occurs, take it out of the second account.  This account should fluctuate regularly, and it is normal.  During certain months you may want to increase this amount (more glass on the street because of outdoor events means more flat tires). The same kind of thing holds true for a car. Putting numbers to some figures would help. I think the most alarming thing about your post is that a theft is somewhat ordinary.  Yikes!"]}
+{"query": "Is SIPC coverage on cash as strong as FDIC?", "corpus": ["For cash, SIPC insurance is similar to FDIC insurance. Your losses are not covered, but you're covered in case of fraud. Since your cash is supposed to be in a trust account and not commingled with brokerage's funds, in case of bankruptcy you would still have your cash unless there was fraud."], "neg": ["There's only one thing that will kill Walmart and Target: Walmart and Target.  Like just about every other corporation, they're going to find every way to trim costs to make more profit.  And those ways are going to make people shop elsewhere.  Walmart wasn't always known for hosting the dregs of society, at one point people liked shopping there because of all of the people they had working there, answering questions, helping out, keeping the place tidy &amp; clean.  Now they're often shitholes.  It's like they're taking pages out of the K-Mart playbook.", "There are the EDHEC-risk indices based on similar hedge fund types but even then an IR would give you performance relative to the competition, which is not useful for most hf's as investors don't say I want to buy a global macro fund, vs a stat arb fund, investors say I want to pay a guy to give me more money!  Most investors don't care how the OTHER funds did or where the market went, they want that NAV to go always up , which is why a modified sharpe is probably better.", "Used car dealers will sometimes deliberately issue high-interest-rate subprime loans to folks who have poor credit. But taking that kind of risk on a mortgage, when you aren't also taking profit out of the sale, really isn't of interest to anyone who cares about making a profit. There might be a nonprofit our there which does so, but I don't know of one. Fix your credit before trying to borrow.", "I sell gas to gas stations. Your profit isn't much in gas, it's in the convenience store. So if you're going to do it, focus on your store. Here in the Midwest we have a brand of stations called Quicktrip - everyone loves these gas stations and will go out of their way if they need gas. Because they're very clean and the workers are friendly.  Don't build a branded station. Right now branded gas is cheaper than wholesale in a lot of markets, but that's not usually typical. It's better to have options and not be locked into a BP station where you can only buy their gas no matter the price. Additives are BS - it's a commodity.   Operating capital will be fairly high.  Roughly 7500/gal per truck at say 3.00 cents/gal is about $22,500. In a high traffic area you could be pulling 1 truck per day to keep supply full (this is an assumption based on what we sell to customers). Do some math and that's quite a bit of operating capital, can you finance that? We set credit limits on our customers, but they're not high (think 50-100k for small stations, which is only a couple truck loads).  I don't think it's a terrible business to be in - but I would almost rather own the trucks hauling gas to your station and charging on the gallon. Or on the supply side of the equation where gas is more profitable.", "Option 3 is a pretty unique offering. Nationwide offer free withdrawals abroad, but you need to pay £10 per month (you do get very good travel insurance and other services for that fee too). So I like option 3, good for the average tourist, then pay a nominal % as expected.", "\"Signing bonuses are probably the most variable of all, as there is a general understanding that more personal factors are taken into account. As a result, HR isn't under a huge obligation to explain away the differences. In comparison, for salary there's the wide expectation that same job = same pay. Since there's so variable, but also fairly rare, \"\"budget\"\" isn't a main concern for many HR departments. And they certainly won't have a finely grained budget breakdown. \"\"This year we'll pay $250.000 for headhunters, $50000 for relocation payments, $100,000 for pension transfers, $150.000 for stock option losses...\"\". It's generally tossed on one big heap, \"\"cost of hiring\"\". So, what can you ask for? That's really a market question. What's your value to the company? How much of that is already reflected in salary and other benefits? The main downside to signing bonuses is that a company won't know how long you'd stay. Your value to the company is probably your monthly work. Therefore they cannot amortize that bonus over a fixed amount of months. What if you leave after 3 months? For that reason, a \"\"conditional\"\" signing bonus is a reasonable offer from your side. E.g. ask for one month salary, conditional on you staying for 24 months, and otherwise you'll repay them from your last salary.\"", "As far as I know, there is no direct equivalent. An IRA is subject to many rules.  Not only are there early withdrawal penalties, but the ability to deduct contributions to an IRA phases out with one's income level.  Qualified withdrawals from an IRA won't have penalties, but they will be taxed as income.  Contributions to a Roth IRA can be made post-tax and the resulting gains will be tax free, but they cannot be withdrawn early. Another tax-deductable investment is a 529 plan.  These can be withdrawn from at any time, but there is a penalty if the money is not used for educational purposes. A 401K or similar employer-sponsored fund is made with pre-tax dollars unless it is designated as a Roth 401K.  These plans also require money to be withdrawn specifically for retirement, with a 10% penalty for early withdrawal.  Qualifying withdrawals from a regular retirement plan are taxed as income, those from a Roth plan are not (as with an IRA). Money can be made harder to get at by investing in all of the types of funds you can invest in using an IRA through the same brokers under a different type of account, but the contribution will be made with post-tax, non-deductable dollars and the gains will be taxed."]}
+{"query": "Where can I lookup accurate current exchange rates for consumers?", "corpus": ["What you see on XE, is the rate at which it is being traded in the market. What you receive from a broker is the rate minus a fee, for the service being provided. You can check what rates are available for visa and mastercard on the following websites.  Visa rates Mastercard rates I want to shop in the currency that will be cheapest in CAD at any given time. This is a mirage and isn't going to help much. The prices you pay might be reflecting the exchange rates, difference in the product quality and other factors too.  Rates are fixed for a day, so any FX movement you see in the market willn't be reflected in what you pay."], "neg": ["How is Bitcoin silly at all? I don't understand.  Not all cryptocurrency supporters are against regulation. I want regulated cryptocurrencies.  The people who are going to lose here are the ones who invested in 'bad' ICOs. This isn't the first time ICOs have contributed to the fall of the crypto market. Months ago the crowds were screaming the end of crypto with the crash in June. Looking at it now it seems very small. Even with 20% loss the last few days we are still above our previous crash.  And what do you mean the west? We are not the only people developing, contributing, investing, and using crypto. Let's not forget Estonia, Mauritius, Denmark, South Korea... and there's more.", "That is the part I like most about SoundCloud, how artists use it as a platform to share their creations. As others have mentioned it's probably just a shit mobile app, which is a pity. Because the app is a means to an end, that is to say.... I use the app to stream soundcloud, which is then transmitted to my Hi-FI setup over Chromecast or bluetooth (preferably the former).", "It really depends. I mean, did he *actually* get hundreds of thousands of dollars, or did he go bankrupt? Did the IRS actually come in demanding cash, or was it a scam? Are the funds for the transaction being held in escrow? Were they transferred to the wrong bank? Why isn't your dad lawyering up over this? Etc. etc. etc.", "This is typically an issue for local law and regulation.  Once one person moves out, I would recommend one of the following options: Generally speaking, if there are clear records of all of the payments made by both parties, all of the costs associated with the maintenance and who made what use of the place, the final ownership can be resolved fairly even in the absence of a clear agreement. The pain and hassle to do it, though, is generally not worth the effort - even if it's an amicable relationship between the two owners. Your best bet is to agree as early as possible on what you plan to do, and to write it down - if you didn't have a contract before moving in together, write one up now.", "Decorative Balustrades are ideally suited for residential buildings where the aesthetics greatly matter.In premises where safety is a concern steel balustrades are better equipped to address these issues. Swimming pool fencing, railings for staircases and balconies can be fabricated out of aluminium. With coloured powder coating to match the building's exterior, aluminium balustrades are the perfect choice for every home.Several service providers offer top quality and low maintenance Balcony Railings.", "I have a Albertan corporation and my accountant set up my shares and options for free.   1. Get a NUANS repot.  2. Go to a registry office and get the incorporation paperwork 3. Get an accountant to help you fill out that paperwork for free (they assume you will do your accounting with them after the fact) 4. Go back to a registry office and register the corporation  5. Go have a beer you'  re new company   6. go get a bank account.  7. Get to work", "From what I understand, Japan has a great consumer goods industry and a sealed off food industry (they do not import rice and I seriously doubt anyone can supply seafood in their domestic market cheaper than they can) so it could be that they don't even really need to import that much at all. At the end of the day, that stockpiled wealth is still wealth we don't have that the Japanese people can rely upon  I'm not talking about a voluntary financial constraint like the arbitrary 90% debt:gdp policy! I'm saying let's actually figure out a method for determining our constraints scientifically in real time, and adapt our policy accordingly!"]}
+{"query": "How much of my home loan is coming from a bank, how much it goes back?", "corpus": ["\"Judging from your comments, you seem to be confused about the way banking works.  Banks can only lend out money that they actually have: whether from deposits or investors or loans taken from other banks/government entities.  The rules on how this works varies from country to country, but the principle is always the same.  There is no magic money. Let's imagine a closed system.  There's only one town, and that town only has one bank.  There are 100 people total in town, and each has $10,000.  Everyone deposits all of their money in the bank. The bank now has $1,000,000 in total deposits.  You take a loan for $100,000 and buy a house.  The bank now has $900,000.  You make your payments of $965 per month: $833 of interest and $132 toward principal.  In this ideal world, the bank has no costs associated with doing business.  After one month, the bank has $1,000,000 in deposits, $900,965 in cash on hand, $99,868 in loans, and $833 in profit (from interest). Now here's the confusing part.  You bought a house from someone.  That person also lives in town.  He takes the $100,000 you gave him and... deposits it in the bank.  The bank now has $1,100,000 in deposits, $1,000,965 in cash, $99,868 in loans, and $833 in profit. Assume 10 more people buy houses at $100,000 each, taking loans for that whole amount (for the same terms you did).  Assume those sellers then deposit the money back in the bank.  The bank now has $2,100,000 in deposits, $1,000,965 in cash, $1,099,868 in loans, and $833 in profit.  The bank is taking in $10,615 per month ($965 x 11) in loan payments, making profit of $9,163 ($833 x 11) per month from interest. This process of loans and deposits and payments can go on forever without any outside influence.  This is the primary way money is created.  It's like printing money without the paper. Of course, we're not in a closed system.  Banks are limited in endlessly creating money, primarily by two things: Reserve Requirements are set by government agencies.  They might say banks can lend until their cash on hand (or liquid equivalent) is, at minimum, 35% of total deposits.  So a bank with $1,000,000 in deposits would have to keep $350,000 in cash at any given time. Capital Requirements work largely the same way.  It's more the bank saying, \"\"What happens if a bunch of people want their deposits back?\"\"  They plan a reasonable amount of cash to have on hand for that scenario.\""], "neg": ["Payroll is a huge part of any companies costs. I said that it would of course have different consequences for subway than it does for Walmart, but more and more chains are finding that it is feasible to pay people fair wages and still be able to thrive. Starbucks is yet another example of this.  Businesses can't be held responsible to uphold social good on their own. Obviously, Subway has no real incentive to raise their wages. However, the government is responsible for policies that are good for the economy at large, and raising wages is one of the things they can do to stimulate an economy. It is true that typically it results in a small amount of job loss at first, but time and time again has shown net positives. Arguing against minimum wage or labor laws is just outright idiotic.", "In the EU, you might be looking for Directive 2000/35/EC (Late Payment Directive). There was a statutory rate, 7% above the European Central Bank main rate. However, this Directive was recently repealed by Directive 2011/7/EU, which sets the statutory rate at ECB + 8%. (Under EU regulations, Directives must be turned into laws by national governments, which often takes several months. So in some EU countries the local laws may still reflect the old Directive. Also, the UK doesn't participate in the Euro, and doesn't follow the ECB rate)", "\"This is a tough question, because it is something very specific to your situation and finances. I personally started at a young age (17), with US$1,000 in Scottrade. I tried the \"\"stock market games\"\" at first, but in retrospect they did nothing for me and turned out to be a waste of time. I really started when I actually opened my brokerage account, so step one would be to choose your discount broker. For example, Scottrade, Ameritrade (my current broker), E-Trade, Charles Schwab, etc. Don't worry about researching them too much as they all offer what you need to start out. You can always switch later (but this can be a little of a hassle). For me, once I opened my brokerage account I became that much more motivated to find a stock to invest in. So the next step and the most important is research! There are many good resources on the Internet (there can also be some pretty bad ones). Here's a few I found useful: Investopedia - They offer many useful, easy-to-understand explanations and definitions. I found myself visiting this site a lot. CNBC - That was my choice for business news. I found them to be the most watchable while being very informative. Fox Business, seems to be more political and just annoying to watch. Bloomberg News was just ZzzzZzzzzz (boring). On CNBC, Jim Cramer was a pretty useful resource. His show Mad Money is entertaining and really does teach you to think like an investor. I want to note though, I don't recommend buying the stocks he recommends, specially the next day after he talks about them. Instead, really pay attention to the reasons he gives for his recommendation. It will teach you to think more like an investor and give you examples of what you should be looking for when you do research. You can also use many online news organizations like MarketWatch, The Motley Fool, Yahoo Finance (has some pretty good resources), and TheStreet. Read editorial (opinions) articles with a grain of salt, but again in each editorial they explain why they think the way they think.\"", "\"There are basically two ways to get value out of an appreciating asset such as a home: (a) Sell it and take the profit. In the case of a home, you presumably still have to live somewhere, so unless you buy a cheaper home to replace it, this doesn't get you anywhere. If you can get another house that is just as nice and in just as nice a location -- whatever you consider \"\"nice\"\" to be -- than this sounds like a winning option. If it means moving to a less desirable home, then you are getting the cash but losing the nice home. You'll have to decide if it's worth it. (b) Use it as collateral for a loan. In this case, that means a second mortgage, home equity loan, or a home equity line of credit. But this can be dangerous. House prices are very volatile these days. If the value of the house falls, you could be stuck with debts greater than your assets. In my humble opinion, you should be very careful about doing this. Borrowing against your house to send the kids to college or pay for your spouse's life-saving operation may be reasonable. Borrowing against your house to go on a fancy vacation is almost surely a bad idea. The vacation will be over within a couple of weeks, but you could be paying off the debt for decades.\"", "True, but it's still money that (in theory) could be paid to the employee instead, in the same way that the employer's social security contribution could also be paid to the employee.  Note that I'm not saying that if the law were changed, every employer would suddenly increase wages by _x_ percent; merely that these taxes all fit into wage calculations along with perquisites, salaries, overhead, etc.", "Really, were only talking about Trumps plan? Cus I was talking about tax reform in general. As my OP mentioned, I think spending across the board needs to be reduced to make lower taxes easier to accomplish. ANYWAY, there's currently trillions in profits overseas that would be taxed at a one time low rate if repatriated. This low rate would probably be between 10-15%. Do the math, it roughly gives you the the 500b you mentioned", "You have a standard deduction of $12,600 (Married filing joint, MFJ) plus $8000 in exemptions. A total of $20,600 off the top. In other words, just under $10,000 taxable unless you have other income you haven't disclosed. For MFJ, you are at the 10% bracket up to $18,450 in taxable income.  I would withdraw just enough to 'top off' the 10% bracket each year, whether or not you send it to pay down the card. You don't disclose the rate, but if you are able take a low interest loan to get to a sub 5% interest rate, I'd do that."]}
+{"query": "Will I be turned down for a car loan?", "corpus": ["Considering I'm putting 30% down and having my father cosign is there   any chance I would be turned down for a loan on a $100k car? According to BankRate, the average credit score needed to buy a new car is 714, but they also show average interest rates at 6.39% for new-car loans to people with credit scores in the 601-660 range. High income certainly helps offset credit score to some extent.  Not every bank/dealership does things the same way. Being self-employed you'd most likely be required to show 2 years of tax returns, and they'd use those as a basis for your income rather than whatever you have made recently. If using a co-signer, their income matters. Another key factor is debt to income ratio, if too much of someone's income is already spoken for by other debts a lender will shy away. So, yes, there's a chance, given all the information we don't know and the variability with lender policies, that you could be turned down for a car loan. How should I go about this? If you're set on pursuing the car loan, just go talk to some lenders. You'll want to shop around for a good rate anyway, so no need to speculate just go find out. Include the dealership as a potential financing option, they can have great rates. Personally, I'd get a much cheaper car. Your insurance premium on a 100k car will be quite high due to your age. You might be rightly confident in your earning potential, but nothing is guaranteed, situations can change wildly in short order. A new car is not a good investment or a value-retaining asset, so why bother going into debt for one if you don't have to? If you buy something in cash now, you could upgrade in a few years without financing if your earning prediction holds and would save quite a bit in car insurance and interest over the years between."], "neg": ["Unfortunately, in this market environment your goal is not very realistic. At the moment real interest rates are negative (and have been for some time).  This means if you invest in something that will pay out for sure, you can expect to earn less than you lose through inflation.  In other words, if you save your $50K, when you withdraw it in a few years you will be able to buy less with it then than you can now. You can invest in risky securities like stocks or mutual funds.  These assets can easily generate 10% per year, but they can (and do) also generate negative returns.  This means you can and likely will lose money after investing in them.  There's an even better chance that you will make money, but that varies year by year.  If you invest in something that expects to make 10% per year (meaning it makes that much on average), it will be extremely risky and many years it will lose money, perhaps a lot of it.  That's the way risk is.  Are you comfortable taking on large amounts of risk (good chances of losing a lot of your money)? You could make some kind of real investment.  $50K is a little small to buy real estate, but you may be able to find something like real estate that can generate income, especially if you use it as a down payment to borrow from the bank.  There is risk in being a landlord as well, of course, and a lot of work.  But real investments like that are a reasonable alternative to financial markets for some people. Another possibility is to just keep it in your bank account or something else with no risk and take $5000 out per year.  It will only last you 10 years that way, but if you are not too young, that will be a significant portion of your life.  If you are young, you can work and add to it. Unfortunately, financial markets don't magically make people rich.  If you make a lot of money in the market, it's because you took a risk and got lucky.  If you make a comfortable amount with no risk, it means you invested in a market environment very different from what we see today. --------- EDIT ------------ To get an idea of what risk free investments (after inflation) earn per year at various horizons see this table at the treasury.  At the time of this writing you would have to invest in a security with maturity almost 10 years in order to break even with inflation.  Beating it by 10% or even 3% per year with minimal risk is a pipe dream.", "The higher the debt, the higher inflation needs to be to wash the debt away.  This is why the debt and US equities move upward hand in hand. The same goes for US housing. Just as homeowners borrow money through mortgages so that house prices rise, the banks borrow the money for mortgages through the central banks. Thus, the cycle circulates. The more debt, the higher the prices!  Everybody makes money from debt. That is why the US has the highest external debt on the globe, yet they are considered one of the wealthiest countries in the world.", "Here's what I would do:", "Investopedia has one and so does marketwatch    I've always used marketwatch, and I have a few current competitions going on if you want me to send the link    They recently remodeled the website so it works on mobile and not as well on desktop    Don't know anything about the investopedia one though", "\"There are several ways you can get out of paying your student loans back in the USA: You become disabled and the loan is dismissed once verified by treating doctor or the Social Security Administration. You become a peace officer. You become a teacher; generally K-12, but I have heard from the DOE that teachers at state schools qualify as well. So the \"\"malicious\"\" friend B is prescribing to the theory that if one of those conditions becomes true, friend A will not have to pay back the loan. The longer you drag it out, the more chance you have to fulfill a condition. Given that 2 of these methods require a commitment, my guess is that they are thinking more along the lines of the first one, which is horrible. Financially, it makes no sense to delay paying back your loans because deferred loans are only interest-free until you graduate and are past your grace period, after which they will begin accruing interest. Unsubsidized loans accrue interest from the day you get them, only their payback is deferred until you graduate and exhaust your grace period. Anytime you ask for forbearance, you are still accruing interest and it is capitalizing into your principal — you are just given a chance to delay payback due to financial hardship, bad health, or loss of job. Therefore, at no point are you benefiting beyond the time you are in school and getting an education, still looking for a job, or dealing with health issues. In the current market, no CD, no savings account, and no investment will give you substantially more return that will offset the loss of the interest you are accruing. Even those of us in the old days getting 4.X % rates would not do this. There was a conditional consolidation offer the DOE allowed which could bring all your loans under one roof for a competitive 5.x-6.x % rate allowing you a single payment, but even then you would benefit if you had rates that were substantially higher. From a credit worthiness aspect, you are hurt by the outstanding obligation and any default along the way, so you really want to avoid that — paying off or down your loans are a good way to ensure you don't shoot yourself in the foot.\"", "By paying the $11,000 into the 2.54% loan you will save $23.30 in interest every month. By paying the $11,000 into the 3.625% loan you will save $33.20 in interest every month. If your objective is to get rid of one loan quicker so repayments can go to the other loan to pay off sooner, I would put the $11,000 into the 2.54% loan and pay that off as quick as possible, then put any extra payments into the mortgage at 3.625%. Pay only the minimum amounts into the 0% car loan as this is not costing you anything.", "I'm all for free enterprise, but I feel like when services like Uber and Lyft get so big it might do them some good to offer disabled services. I mean obviously you can't cater to every single type of rider out there but basic wheelchair service would probably be good."]}
+{"query": "Solid reading/literature for investment/retirement/income taxes?", "corpus": ["For the mechanices/terms of stock investing, I recommend Learn to Earn by Peter Lynch. I also like The Little Book of Common Sense Investing by John Bogle. It explains why indexing is the best choice for most people. For stock picking, a good intro is The Little Book of Value Investing by Chris Brown. And then there is The Intelligent Investor by Ben Graham. IMO, this is the bible of investing."], "neg": ["I think it's impossible to work for an evil company without realizing they're evil, just as it's impossible to work for a sinking ship without realizing just that.  Any worker with half a brain would be able to tell the store is going under (open for business and nobody home?  More employees in the store than customers?).  If I worked at any of those places, I'd be sending my resume out day and night looking for a way out.  However, for most of the people on the actual store floors, they're McJobs anyway, and as much as it sucks to axe them, those jobs come and go by the dozen anyway.", "\"One idea that wouldn't require getting into any special \"\"SMS-only\"\" type of software project is to just use email groups - for example, to send an SMS message to a Verizon customer you can email using their phone number like 1234567890@vtext.com.    So \"\"Joe\"\" might have an email address of joe@company.com but you could create a new contact named \"\"SMS-Joe\"\" that has the cell phone email address.   Look up what domain name each cell carrier uses for that purpose on the page below, put a bunch of those into an email group and 'text' away.    https://www.digitaltrends.com/mobile/how-to-send-e-mail-to-sms-text/\"", "The new payment on $172,500 3.5% 15yr would be $1233/mo compared to $1614/mo now (26 bi-weekly payments, but 12 months.) Assuming the difference is nearly all interest, the savings is closer to $285/mo than 381.  Note, actual savings are different, the actual savings is based on the difference in interest over the year. Since the term will be changing, I'm looking at cash flow, which is the larger concern, in my opinion.    $17,000/285 is 60 months. This is your break even time to payoff the $17000, higher actually since the $17K will be accruing interest.  I didn't see any mention of closing costs or other expenses. Obviously, that has to be factored in as well.  I think the trade off isn't worth it. As the other answers suggest, the rental is too close to break-even now. The cost of repairs on two houses is an issue. In my opinion, it's less about the expenses being huge than being random. You don't get billed $35/mo to paint the house. You wake up, see too many spots showing wear, and get a $3000 bill. Same for all high cost items, Roof, HVAC, etc.  You are permitted to borrow 50% of your 401(k) balance, so you have $64K in the account. I don't know your age, this might be great or a bit low. I'd keep saving, not putting any extra toward either mortgage until I had an emergency fund that was more than sufficient. The fund needs to handle the unexpected expenses as well as the months of unemployment. In general, 6-9 months of these expenses is recommended.  To be clear, there are times a 401(k) loan can make sense. I just don't see that it does now.  (Disclaimer - when analyzing refis there are two approaches. The first is to look at interest saved. After all, interest is the expense, principal payments go right to your balance sheet. The second is purely cash flow, in which case one might justify a higher rate, and going from 15 to 30 years, but freeing up cash that can be better deployed. Even though the rate goes up say 1/2%, the payment drops due to the term. Take that savings and deposit to a matched 401(k) and the numbers may work out very well.  I offer this to explain why the math above may not be consistent with other answers of mine.)", "Ah, but it might be the regulators responsibility. Predatory pricing can be a monopolistic tactic, meaning that large corporations that can afford to lose money on some projects may be wise to do so to keep their smaller competitors out of the industry, and then being the only one (or several) left, can make those losses back on jacked up prices since there is little/no competition in their market.  Bidding at a loss is often [illegal or regulated](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Predatory_pricing#Legal_aspects).", "\"I started storing and summing all my receipts, bills, etc. It has the advantage of letting me separate expenses by category, but it's messy and it takes a long time.  It sounds from this like you are making your summaries far too detailed. Don't. Instead, start by painting with broad strokes. For example, if you spent $65.17 at the grocery store, don't bother splitting that amount into categories like toiletries, hygiene products, food, and snacks: just categorize it as \"\"grocery spending\"\" and move on to the next line on your account statement. Similarly, unless your finances are heavily reliant on cash, don't worry about categorizing each cash expense; rather, just categorize the withdrawal of cash as miscellaneous and don't spend time trying to figure out exactly where the money went after that. Because honestly, you probably spent it on something other than savings. Because really, when you are just starting out getting a handle on your spending, you don't need all the nitty-gritty details. What you need, rather, is an idea of where your money is going. Figure out half a dozen or so categories which make sense for you to categorize your spending into (you probably have some idea of where your money is going). These could be loans, cost of living (mortgage/rent, utilities, housing, home insurance, ...), groceries, transportation (car payments, fuel, vehicle taxes, ...), savings, and so on -- whatever fits your situation. Add a miscellaneous category for anything that doesn't neatly fit into one of the categories you thought of. Go back something like 3-4 months among your account statements, do a quick categorization for each line on your account statements into one of these categories, and then sum them up per category and per month. Calculate the monthly average for each category. That's your starting point: the budget you've been living by (intentionally or not). After that, you can decide how you want to allocate the money, and perhaps dig a bit more deeply into some specific category. Turns out you are spending a lot of money on transportation which you didn't expect? Look more closely at those line items and see if there's something you can cut. Are you spending more money at the grocery store than you thought? Then look more closely at that. And so on. Once you know where you are and where you want to be (such as for example bumping the savings category by $200 per month), you can adjust your budget to take you closer to your goals. Chances are you won't realistically be able to do an about-face turn on the spot, but you can try to reduce some discretionary category by, say, 10% each month, and transfer that into savings instead. That way, in 6-7 months, you have cut that category in half.\"", "\"If I invest in index funds or other long term stocks that pay dividend which I reinvest, they don't need to be worth more per share for me to make a profit, right? That is, if I sell part of the stocks, it's GOOD if they're worth more than I bought them at, but the real money comes from the QUANTITY of stocks that you get by reinvesting your dividends, right? I would say it is more the other way around.  It is nice to get dividends and reinvest them, but overall the main gain comes from the stocks going up in value. The idea with index funds, however, is that you don't rely on any particular stock going up in value; instead you just rely on the aggregate of all the funds in the index going up.  By buying lots of stocks bundled in an index fund, you avoid being too reliant on any one company's performance. Can I invest \"\"small amounts\"\" (part of paycheck) into index funds on a monthly basis, like €500, without taking major \"\"transaction fees\"\"? (Likely to be index fund specific... general answers or specific answers using popular stocks welcomed). Yes, you can.  At least in the US, whether you can do this automatically from your paycheck depends on whether you employer has that set up.  I don't know that work in the Netherlands.  However, at the least, you can almost certainly set up an auto-invest program that takes $X out of your bank account every month and buys shares of some index fund(s). Is this plan market-crash proof? My parents keep saying that \"\"Look at 2008 and think about what such a thing would do to your plan\"\", and I just see that it will be a setback, but ultimately irrelevant, unless it happens when I need the money. And even then I'm wondering whether I'll really need ALL of my money in one go. Doesn't the index fund go back up eventually? Does a crash even matter if you plan on holding stocks for 10 or more years? Crashes always matter, because as you say, there's always the possibility that the crash will occur at a time you need the money.  In general, it is historically true that the market recovers after crashes, so yes, if you have the financial and psychological fortitude to not pull your money out during the crash, and to ride it out, your net worth will probably go back up after a rough interlude.  No one can predict the future, so it's possible for some unprecedented crisis to cause an unprecedented crash.  However, the interconnectedness of stock markets and financial systems around the world is now so great that, were such a no-return crash to occur, it would probably be accompanied by the total collapse of the whole economic system.  In other words, if the stock market dies suddenly once and for all, the entire way of life of \"\"developed countries\"\" will probably die with it.  As long as you live in such a society, you can't really avoid \"\"gambling\"\" that it will continue to exist, so gambling on there not being a cataclysmic market crash isn't much more of a gamble. Does what I'm planning have similarities with some financial concept or product (to allow me to research better by looking at the risks of that concept/product)? Maybe like a mortgage investment plan without the bank eating your money in between? I'm not sure what you mean by \"\"what you're planning\"\".  The main financial products relevant to what you're describing are index funds (which you already mentioned) and index ETFs (which are basically similar with regard to the questions you're asking here).  As far as concepts, the philosophy of buying low-fee index funds, holding them for a long time, and not selling during crashes, is essentially that espoused by Jack Bogle (not quite the inventor of the index fund, but more or less its spiritual father) and the community of \"\"Bogleheads\"\" that has formed around his ideas.  There is a Bogleheads wiki with lots of information about the details of this approach to investing.  If this strategy appeals to you, you may find it useful to read through some of the pages on that site.\"", "What the fuck are you talking about. How does religion personally insult you on a daily basis? Do they insult you by serving you free food because you're homeless? Do they insult you by running orginizations that pay for peoples gas or electric bills in the winter seasons so they don't freeze to death?   Seriously people, what the fuck are you doing in your daily life? You're doing fucking nothing with it and you're just on reddit all day making shit up to bitch about, right? I work at a Catholic run non-for profit hospital which treats many children for free even from money we make at fundraising events. Is that so fucking terrible? That children are living because of money this hospital makes through the help of the archdiocese in my city?  Know what's funny? I can manage to be agnostic and not be a judgmental prick just because someone is christian, as long as they don't take it in their own right to attack my own beliefs or try and push their beliefs on me (which has never happened to me in my entire 21 fucking years)."]}
+{"query": "How to save money for future expenses", "corpus": ["First, talk to your husband about this. You really need to persuade him that you need to be saving, and get him to agree on how and how much. Second, if you husband is not good at saving, work on getting something set aside automatically - ideally deducted from a paycheck or transferred to a savings account automatically. If he is the kind of person who might dip into that account, try to make it a place he can't withdraw from Third, get some advice, possibly training, on budgeting. Buy a book, take a video course: even start by watching some TV shows on getting out of debt."], "neg": ["\"If the country went to a sustainable minimum wage like 15 dollars an hour we would benefit more. Anyone who thinks the walmart strikes are stupid and they should be fired clearly doesnt understand how the economy should work.  Oh?  You do know that all basic goods and services would increase  in price, right?  Raising the minimum wage will not raise minimum value.  \"\"If you are pro for under 15 dollars an hour, you are pro slavery.\"\"  Haha. Slaves are forced.  You aren't forced to work for minimum wage.  It's a result of many poor life decisions that led you there.  The fact that I'm not working a minimum wage job is because I worked my ass off to learn the skills I needed to make a good living.  \"\"The only people making these facts up are the ones who own the businesses because their wealth will go down and be spread among employees more.\"\"  Not really.  As a business owner, I would just increase the costs of my goods or services.  Most retail businesses have slim profit margins (restaurants are even worse).  They would not be able to survive long if their workforce cost suddenly doubled and their revenue stayed the same.  You don't know much about business. I'm glad people like you aren't making decision in government.\"", "\"A company's valuation includes its assets, in addition to projected earnings. Aside from the obvious issue that \"\"projected earnings\"\" can be wildly inaccurate or speculative (as in the case of startups and fast-moving industries like technology), a company's assets are not necessarily tied to the market the company is in. For the sake of illustration, say the government were to ban fast food tomorrow, and the market for that were to go all the way to zero.  McDonald's would still have almost 30 billion dollars worth of real estate holdings that would surely make the company worth something, even though it would have to stop selling its products. Similarly, Apple is sitting on approximately $200 billion dollars in cash and securities in overseas subsidiaries.  Even if they never make another cent selling iPhones and such, the company is still worth a lot because of those holdings. \"\"Corporate raiders\"\" back in the 70's and 80's made massive personal fortunes exploiting this disconnect in undervalued companies that had more assets than their market cap, by getting enough ownership to liquidate the company's assets.  Oliver Stone even made a movie about the phenomenon. So yes, it's certainly possible for a company to be worth more than the size of the market for its products.\"", "\"&gt;*Higher taxes aren't generally a path to economic growth and job creation. Higher cigarette taxes, however, are increasingly boosting at least one sector of the economy, organized crime.*  &gt;*'Smuggled cigarettes have become the new currency of organized crime, and a lot of these criminal organizations are finding that it’s more profitable than illegal narcotics,' Rich Marianos, the retired Assistant Director of the Bureau of Alcohol, Tobacco and Firearms,recently noted.*  &gt;*Marianos said that black market tobacco smuggling has become \"\"a high-profit, low-risk criminal enterprise. Compared to drug offenses where there’s a mandatory minimum sentence, there’s no penalties out there for the cigarette trafficker.\"\"*  &gt;*'They’re being sold in the bodegas, in the convenience stores, they’re being sold on the street, they’re being sold in the housing projects,” Marianos said, “by street gangs like the Latin Kings, terrorist organizations, the Russian Mafia.'\"\"*  &gt;*Politicians love raising tobacco taxes. With the number of smokers continuing to fall, fewer voters feel the pain of the higher taxes directly. Last year, three states raised their cigarette taxes, even though the states were enjoying higher tax revenue.*  &gt;*The political addiction to higher cigarette taxes is creating a boon for organized crime. Last month, the Tax Foundation, in testimony before the US Senate, noted that over 56% of the cigarettes sold in New York State were smuggled in from other states. New York has the highest tax on cigarettes in the country.*   Cross-post from /r/MAConservative\"", "\"Generally speaking, the \"\"we lose good people if we don't pay more\"\" at organizations where productivity is impossible to measure are usally horsehit.  The actual situation is usually: \"\"The next person I hire won't do both of our jobs if I can't give them a lot of money, if I have to pay them less I will actually have to work\"\".\"", "I doubt it.  Securitizations refer to deals that issue tranched bonds backed by a specific cash flow asset. That asset can be mortgages, credit cards, auto loans, syndicated loans, aircraft loans, trade finance...pretty much any type of loan.  - MBS refers to any securitization backed by mortgages. - CLO refers to any securitization backed by syndicated loans. - CMS refers to any securitization backed by commercial mortgage debt. - ABS refers to the rest (car loans, credit cards, airplanes, etc)  CDO refers to a securitization of other securitizations. The underlying securitizations could be MBS, CLO, CMS, ABS, whatever. Most common CDOs are securitizations of MBS or CLO, with the vast majority being MBS from the go-go years '05-'07. And don't even get me started on synthetic structures.  To my knowledge (and again I could be wrong here, please let me know if you've seen otherwise) the market for CDOs has been firmly dead since '07. ABS is still very active, although less than in the mid-oughts, and CLO is around still too. These two proved the best application of the concepts behind securitization: their underlying loans were truly diversified, so a general economic downturn hurt them less then the national collapse in the housing market. MBS issuance that does not involve Fannie/Freddie/Ginnie is rare but still exists. The lack of non-prime issuance of MBS is a huge reason for why the average American can't refi or take out a mortgage: there's no MBS issuance to package the loan into!  Edit: typos", "\"You're an idiot. There is no such thing as \"\"statistical heresy\"\". Picking any given stretch of time will create an assumption. The last year has had historically crazy low volatility, but if they were using a one year sample in mid-2009 it would be the most incredibly conservative VaR in history. On the other hand, using historical volatility from the past 50 years would make no sense either: does the stock market in 1985 look anything like today's? What about the liquidity of pretty much any derivatives market? There is no \"\"right\"\" way to measure VaR; any way you do it involves assumptions and tweaks that are entirely subjective.  Also, VaR can be over a variety of confidence intervals. 99% or 95% are standard, with 95% being more common because that's two standard deviations in a normal distribution. And hey! That's what they used.\"", "I got sucked into working with a tech company when I was striving to be an Investment banker in San Francisco.   I can't stress enough how much better I have it now working with a great tech company, with great pay, flexible hours and great vacation time.   But i'll admit, sometimes it feels like we're in our own little flourishing world."]}
+{"query": "What is a “fiat” currency? Are there other types of currency?", "corpus": ["\"A \"\"fiat\"\" currency is non-convertible paper currency that a government establishes as legal tender. Most countries today are using fiat currencies. The rest have currencies pegged (or convertible to) US Dollars (which is a fiat currency). In the past, money was usually based on precious metals such as gold or silver. Until the end of the gold standard, you could theoretically go the the US Treasury with a US Note or Federal Reserve Note and convert the note into a fixed quantity of gold or silver (depending on the note). The US had a bi-metallic currency policy for political reasons, which means that money was backed by both gold and silver.\""], "neg": ["I know it may not last longer but i was able to 2.5x my wealth over last 2 years.(2016, 2017 cont) I was successfully able to convert 70k into 452k in 21months. Now at this amount, I am really worried and want to take all the profit. I agree that I have been lucky with these returns but it was not all outright luck. Now my plan is to take 100k of it and try high risk investments while investing 350k in index funds.", "Instead of gnucash i suggest you to use kmymoney. It's easier", "How about this rule? Sell 10% of your shares every time they double in price.  (of course, only buy stocks that repeatedly double in price)", "Most soccer balls are made of blends of polyurethane, polyvinyl chloride, and common rubber or nylon. We provide the best soccer balls all branded companies in the world. At our website, you can search Best 10 soccer balls. We will provide all balls at an affordable price.The best and most expensive PU balls feel like leather and are very firm, durable and water-resistant. The PVC balls are also very durable but are not as soft and responsive as the PU-blend balls.", "Possible alternative: In my case, the part-time locksmithing is a small enough portion of my I come that I just submit it as hobby income, rather than trying to track it as a separate entity.", "I work in banking for the private bank division for a major bank as a banker. I have been helping clients with these types of transactions for years. I believe that large transactions like this are best left to the big boys. That is where the talented bankers/loan officers/underwriters are, and that is the type of transaction they specialize in. I know for a fact that your credit union will not be able to suit your needs, and a smaller bank will be tough to deal with. I wouldn't worry at all about the credit pulls as much as picking a rock solid bank with lots of experiences doing these kinds of deals. That is my 2 cents, albeit a little bit biased, but it is also coming from experience. History with the bank definitely matters, but what business you can bring to the bank along with the lending (deposits, 401k management, personal investments, business services, etc) matter just as much and can make or break the approval/decline or even the terms being favorable or not favorable to your company.", "\"Similar, but actually quite different.  A negative income tax on the first $20,000/year has a couple of problems this scheme doesn't:  1) Administration costs and legal complexity.  Are we \"\"prebating\"\" or \"\"rebating\"\" the stipend?  How is someone supposed to get along if they lose their job unexpectedly in a rebate-based system, can they get their income-tax withholdings back up to $20,000/year?  How does the government register changes in income to know when to write someone a check?  2) With a negative tax up to a certain *fixed* level, there's effectively a changing level of subsidy depending how much of the per-capita income is the break-even tax level.  If the per-capita income is $45,000/year (our current GDP per capita), then the subsidy level is almost 50%, and if it goes up to $60,000/year (our current mean household income), the subsidy level is then 33%.  The system I described and steepk (IIRC) invented fixes the subsidy percentage in relation to the mean reported income (effectively fixing a *relative class level* as minimum) rather than a particular monetary amount (whose relative buying power versus inflation or other incomes can fluctuate wildly).  We pick a subsidy level, say 1/3 (33.33333%).  We then impose a flat income tax of that level plus a little bit more for administration costs (say, 35%).  At the end of the year, everyone is taxed at that flat level, and the government scrapes its administration costs off the top and now has a big pot with 1/3 of everyone's income in it.  This is divided into one portion for each taxpayer, and those portions into monthly or biweekly pieces.  These pieces are sent out regularly as checks to the taxpayer, and *these checks are not taxed as income*.  That last bit is what makes this so nice: it turns the tax progressive, in fact more progressive than our current system.  After taxes and *after stipend*, only the rich will pay an *effective* tax rate asymptotically close to the real 35%.  Most people without incomes many, many times the size of their stipends will be looking at an effective tax rate of less than 15%, including the tax-paying middle class and the professional upper-middle class who currently bitch so much about our tax rates being so confiscatory (which they *are*, for the abysmal level of social services we receive).  Now, to get back to the big benefits of fixing the subsidy percentage.  This means that the subsidy grows with mean income, effectively functioning as easy to run, fair, and direct wealth redistribution without the difficulty of trying to create efficient, productive WPA-style jobs or imposing market-distorting subsidies.  It also means that we can allow things like automation to improve the productivity of our economy because *everyone* gets a share: if automating a certain job is truly more efficient than having a worker do it, the capitalist's income-gain from automation will push up the mean income, and therefore the basic income, further than the worker's lesser income and the capitalist's lesser profit would have.\""]}
+{"query": "Why are interest rates on saving accounts so low in USA and Europe?", "corpus": ["The United States Federal Reserve has decided that interest rates should be low. (They think it may help the economy. The details matter little here though.) It will enforce this low rate by buying Treasury bonds at this very low interest rate. (Bonds are future money, so this means they pay a lot of money up front, for very little interest in the future. The Fed will pay more than anyone who offers less money up front, so they can set the price as long as they're willing to buy.) At the end of the day, Treasury bonds pay nearly no interest.   Since there's little money to be made with Treasuries, people who want better-than-zero returns will bid up the current-price of any other bonds or similar loan-like instruments to get what whatever rate of return that they can. There's really no more than one price for money; you can think of the price of those bonds as basically (Treasury rate + some modifier based on the risk) percent.  I realize thinking about bond prices is weird and different than other prices (you're measuring future-money using present-money and it's easy to be confused) and assure you it ultimately makes sense :) Anyway. Your savings account money has to compete with everyone else willing to lend money to banks. Everyone-else lends money for peanuts, so you get peanuts on your savings account too. Your banking is probably worth more to your bank on account of your check-card payment processing fees (collected from the merchant) than from the money they make lending out your savings (notice how many places have promotional rates if you make your direct deposits or use your check card to make a purchase N times a month).  In Europe, it's similar, except you've got a different central bank. If Europe's bank operated radically differently for an extended period of time, you'd expect to see a difference in the exchange rates which would ultimately make the returns from investing in those currencies pretty similar as well. Such a change may show up domestically as inflation in the country with the loose-money policy, and internationally as weakness against other currencies. There's really only one price for money around the entire world. Any difference boils down to a  difference in (perceived) risk."], "neg": ["As well as credit risk there's also interest risk. If a bond has a face value of $100, pays 1% and matures in 20 years' time then you expect to receive a total of $120 from buying it now -- $1 per year for 20 years and $100 at the end. But if you can get a 3% return elsewhere, then if you invest your $80 there instead you will get $2.40 per year for 20 years and then $80 at the end, making a total of $128 (and you also get more of the money sooner). So even $80 for the $100 bond is a bad buy, and you should invest elsewhere.", "If the Democrats controlled the House the legislation would be equally as crony, bullshit, and corrupt. We just went through the entire ordeal in preventing SOPA from passing, which had explicit support from Democrats. So don't tell me  with a straight face that the parties are any different.   Obama is no different than Romney, the only issue is that Romney is in election mode and Obama has a Congress unwilling to pass any of his laws. If the situation was reversed (Rep white house, Dem congress) it would be equally as fucked up.", "\"I'm far from certain, but I'll take a swing at it.  Equilibrium term structure models \"\"predict\"\" a term structure that we don't observe, and no-arbitrage models \"\"correct\"\" prediction to match reality.  An analogous place to look would be implied volatility surfaces.  Black-Scholes predicts a specific implied volatility surface (or rather, it assumes the surface is flat).  So I think a Hull-White-style no-arbitrage model might work by addressing the difference between predicted and actual surfaces.  Like term structure models, you'd take a set of observed volatilities and somehow plug them into BS so that the BS price didn't imply arbitrage opportunities within the observed set of options.  I'm not at all certain that I'm being clear, and there's a distinct possibility that I'm saying/thinking something stupid.\"", "I hired our copywriter from linkedin last month. after 2 failed CL ads, 1 monster and 1 careerbiulder that gave us 90% crap candidates, I scouted some people on linkedin. I emailed 6 on there, 2 came in for an interview and we hired 1. They werent even looking for a new job, but it worked out well.", "Financial benefit? No. No matter whether you are paid based on a salary or by the hour, the frequency of your pay check has no effect since at the end of the year you will have received the exact same amount of money. Psychological benefit? Well, from the many answers and comments on this page that seem to think there is a difference, then apparently there is a large psychological difference. Whether that is a benefit or not, I guess, depends on your personality.", "If that condition is permanent -- the stock will NEVER pay dividends and you will NEVER be able to sell it -- then yes, it sounds to me like this is a worthless piece of paper. If there is some possibility that the stock will pay dividends in the future, or that a market will exist to sell it, then you are making a long-term investment. It all depends on how likely it is that the situation will change. If the investment is small, maybe it's worth it.", "It was everyone, from the bankers, to the no doc loan officers, to the people with no or minuscule incomes applying for a home they knew they could not afford, to the people who used their home as a piggy bank, to house flippers, to speculators, to investors. Everyone has some blame, greed, what ever you want to call it. There was no one person to shoulder the blame."]}
+{"query": "I am the sole owner of an LLC. Does it make a difference if I file as an S-Corp or a sole-member LLC?", "corpus": ["\"S-Corp are taxed very different. Unlike LLC where you just add the profit to your income with S-Corp you have to pay yourself a \"\"reasonable\"\" salary (on w-2) which of course is a lot more paperwork. I think the advantage (but don't hold me accountable for this) is if your S-Corp makes a lot more than a reasonable salary, then the rest of the money can be passed through on your personal return at a lower (corp) rate.\""], "neg": ["\"What interests me in the article is the way California seems to be quite happy to be losing people who pay taxes because the state can so easily attract new warm bodies. What happens to a state when there is no incentive to retain its people?   It struck a cord with me because I've been reading about the history of mining. If an industry can always bring in newer, poorer people, conditions for those working in that industry will never rise. In mining, conditions can be so bad that you can almost think of it as if the workers are expendable. Working conditions can be so bad that many die each year and nobody seems to care because if one group of workers gets a little uppity, management simply starts importing them from another country.   You can disagree but I see a parallel with California.Sure one is an industry and one is a country but this is a state that seems more than the rest of the country to depend on cheap Mexican labor. As Mexico stopped breeding people for export, California begin to simply import new slave labor from Honduras or any other place that still exports people as though they were only cattle. Of course this makes it difficult for those who came in an earlier wave to improve quality of life. In fact, life gets harder and grittier. Just look at what happened to the world class famous free public education in California. Yeah, distant memory now.   I also wonder if allowing California to ignore national immigration law, is good for the rest of the nation. What about this quote:  \"\"Also, more than 30% of the nation’s welfare recipients are Californians – even though California has just 12% of the nation’s population.  It is not surprising, therefore, that California is ranked number one in poverty.\"\"  California has so many electoral votes that I don't expect to see them prosecuted by the federal government (like AZ) no matter what they do. The state is too big to piss off. But it is becoming a cancer to the rest of the nation?\"", "\"We had an Aussie who works in Singapore in our office telling us that he couldn't believe how many acronyms Singaporeans have, and GFC was one of them. He said \"\"they love TLA in Singapore\"\". TLA? Three Letter Acronyms!\"", "Oh, ok. You have $3.8m cash to work with in creating a low-risk investment portfolio. All you need to do is pick investment options that stick to the three objectives of the fund. You may assume all the capital is available for immediate investment ($200k out of the $4m is set aside for scholarships so it must stay liquid).", "\"How can I use a house I own free and clear to purchase another home? Answer: walk in to any bank, that's any bank, or any lending institution. State that you own a house free and clear. This will happen: In all jurisdictions, it's incredibly easy to borrow large amounts of money at the lowest possible rate, once you own a house outright. On top of that, you want to spend the money on another house (as opposed to s sports car or the like), so you have even more equity.  Winner! Your main question will be this.  Say your current house (owned outright!) is worth $500,000.  Go to a bank or lender, and say to them, \"\"How much money will you give me to buy house B putting both the houses on the mortgage.\"\"  One bank will say \"\"fantastic!  buy any house you want up to $400,000!\"\"  Another will say \"\"$450,000!\"\" another will say \"\"$300,000!\"\"  In a hot market another will say \"\"$650,000!\"\".  So shop around and see who will give you the most.\"", "Stockpiled as treasuries, which are a debt security, they are liabilities.  You're making the case that as the gov't spends it's ability to spend increases as the economy grows? It's not like we're flipping a switch and turning on a light bulb  Edit: it's more like walking out on a tight-rope while people are yelling at you haha", "In the united states qualified institutions of higher education should give the student a 1098-t. This form breaks down all money received/billed  and for tuition and scholarships. It would not include items such as books and room and board. The 1098 would constitute proof of attendance and proof of expenses. If a 529 plan was used to pay for part or all of the tuition it should also be sent to you or the student depending on where the funds were sent. If the student can't find the 1098-t it is likely that the college had an electronic copy sent to the students official email, or it can be downloaded from the student's account where tuition bills care paid.  Note: a confusing part of the 1098-T is that many universities include the spring semester numbers in the form for the previous year.   For Example: The 1098-T will tell you if they have done that.", "\"SEC filings do not contain this information, generally. You can find intangible assets on balance sheets, but not as detailed as writing down every asset separately, only aggregated at some level (may be as detailed as specifying \"\"patents\"\" as a separate line, although even that I wouldn't count on). Companies may hold different rights to different patents in different countries, patents are being granted and expired constantly, and unless this is a pharma industry or a startup - each single patent doesn't have a critical bearing on the company performance.\""]}
+{"query": "Is it worth investing in Index Fund, Bond Index Fund and Gold at the same time?", "corpus": ["\"Index funds can be a very good way to get into the stock market. It's a lot easier, and cheaper, to buy a few shares of an index fund than it is to buy a few shares in hundreds of different companies. An index fund will also generally charge lower fees than an \"\"actively managed\"\" mutual fund, where the manager tries to pick which stocks to invest for you. While the actively managed fund might give you better returns (by investing in good companies instead of every company in the index) that doesn't always work out, and the fees can eat away at that advantage. (Stocks, on average, are expected to yield an annual return of 4%, after inflation. Consider that when you see an expense ratio of 1%. Index funds should charge you more like 0.1%-0.3% or so, possibly more if it's an exotic index.) The question is what sort of index you're going to invest in. The Standard and Poor's 500 (S&P 500) is a major index, and if you see someone talking about the performance of a mutual fund or investment strategy, there's a good chance they'll compare it to the return of the S&P 500. Moreover, there are a variety of index funds and exchange-traded funds that offer very good expense ratios (e.g. Vanguard's ETF charges ~0.06%, very cheap!). You can also find some funds which try to get you exposure to the entire world stock market, e.g. Vanguard Total World Stock ETF, NYSE:VT). An index fund is probably the ideal way to start a portfolio - easy, and you get a lot of diversification. Later, when you have more money available, you can consider adding individual stocks or investing in specific sectors or regions. (Someone else suggested Brazil/Russia/Indo-China, or BRICs - having some money invested in that region isn't necessarily a bad idea, but putting all or most of your money in that region would be. If BRICs are more of your portfolio then they are of the world economy, your portfolio isn't balanced. Also, while these countries are experiencing a lot of economic growth, that doesn't always mean that the companies that you own stock in are the ones which will benefit; small businesses and new ventures may make up a significant part of that growth.) Bond funds are useful when you want to diversify your portfolio so that it's not all stocks. There's a bunch of portfolio theory built around asset allocation strategies. The idea is that you should try to maintain a target mix of assets, whatever the market's doing. The basic simplified guideline about investing for retirement says that your portfolio should have (your age)% in bonds (e.g. a 30-year-old should have 30% in bonds, a 50-year-old 50%.) This helps maintain a balance between the volatility of your portfolio (the stock market's ups and downs) and the rate of return: you want to earn money when you can, but when it's almost time to spend it, you don't want a sudden stock market crash to wipe it all out. Bonds help preserve that value (but don't have as nice of a return). The other idea behind asset allocation is that if the market changes - e.g. your stocks go up a lot while your bonds stagnate - you rebalance and buy more bonds. If the stock market subsequently crashes, you move some of your bond money back into stocks. This basically means that you buy low and sell high, just by maintaining your asset allocation. This is generally more reliable than trying to \"\"time the market\"\" and move into an asset class before it goes up (and move out before it goes down). Market-timing is just speculation. You get better returns if you guess right, but you get worse returns if you guess wrong. Commodity funds are useful as another way to diversify your portfolio, and can serve as a little bit of protection in case of crisis or inflation. You can buy gold, silver, platinum and palladium ETFs on the stock exchanges. Having a small amount of money in these funds isn't a bad idea, but commodities can be subject to violent price swings! Moreover, a bar of gold doesn't really earn any money (and owning a share of a precious-metals ETF will incur administrative, storage, and insurance costs to boot). A well-run business does earn money. Assuming you're saving for the long haul (retirement or something several decades off) my suggestion for you would be to start by investing most of your money* in index funds to match the total world stock market (with something like the aforementioned NYSE:VT, for instance), a small portion in bonds, and a smaller portion in commodity funds. (For all the negative stuff I've said about market-timing, it's pretty clear that the bond market is very expensive right now, and so are the commodities!) Then, as you do additional research and determine what sort investments are right for you, add new investment money in the places that you think are appropriate - stock funds, bond funds, commodity funds, individual stocks, sector-specific funds, actively managed mutual funds, et cetera - and try to maintain a reasonable asset allocation. Have fun. *(Most of your investment money. You should have a separate fund for emergencies, and don't invest money in stocks if you know you're going need it within the next few years).\""], "neg": ["You can also roll money from prior 401ks into current 401ks. Call the administrator of the 401k you prefer (i.e., Fidelity/Schwab, whoever the financial institution is). Explain you don't work there anymore and ask if you can roll money into it. Some plans allow this and some don't. So either, 1) You  can roll all your prior 401ks into your current 401k. 2) You might be able to roll all prior 401ks into the prior 401k of your choice if they will accept contributions after you've left. You can't move the amount in your current employer's 401k until you separate or hit a certain age. 3) Like mentioned above, you can roll all prior 401ks into an IRA at any financial institution that will let you set up an IRA. Process: -Call the financial institutions you want to move the money from. Tell them you want a direct rollover. Have them write the check to the financial institution you are rolling into with your name mentioned but not the beneficiary (i.e., check written to Schwab FBO: John Doe account #12345) Tax implications: -If you are rolling from a pre-tax 401k to a pre-tax 401k or IRA, and the money goes directly from institution to institution, you are not liable for taxes. You can also roll from a Roth type (already taxed) account into another Roth type account with no tax implications. If they write a check to YOU and you don't put the money in an IRA or 401k within 60 days you will pay ~20% tax and a 10% early withdrawal penalty. That's why it's best to transfer from institution to institution. 401k vs IRA: -This is a personal decision. You could move all your prior 401ks into an IRA you set up for yourself. Generally the limitations of a 401k are the lack of funds to invest in that fit your retirement strategy, or high expense ratios. Be sure to investigate the fees you would pay for trades in an IRA (401k are almost always free) and the expense ratio for funds in your 401k vs funds you might invest in at a broker for your IRA. Best of both: -You can roll all your 401ks into a single 401k and still set up an IRA or Roth IRA (if your income qualifies) that you can contribute to separately. This could give you flexibility in fund choices if your 401k fees tend to be cheaper while keeping the bulk of your nest egg in low cost mutual funds through an employer account. Last advice: Even if you don't like the options in your current 401k, make sure you are contributing at least enough to get any employer match.", "The key to getting a job in college and for the rest of your life is networking and knowing exactly where you want to work not a business card.  During a career fair, recruiters get flocked hundreds of students who don't know shit about the company or industry.  All you need to do is research the company and figure out what makes it better than it's competitors. Then when you talk to a recruiter at the fair, be sure to slip it into the conversation.  Recruiters are looking for people who fit the companies culture. Make sure you structure your elevator pitch in a way that aligns with it perfectly.  If you do these things, I guarantee you will get an interview assuming you have the minimum GPA", "\"I find this very hard to believe Believe it.  The bottom quarter of American households have negative net worth, and the bottom three quarters have no more than a tiny amount saved up. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Wealth_in_the_United_States#/media/File:MeanNetWorth2007.png In an emergency, 63% of Americans would not be able to come up with $500 without going into debt.  http://www.forbes.com/sites/maggiemcgrath/2016/01/06/63-of-americans-dont-have-enough-savings-to-cover-a-500-emergency/ Nobody can retire with 5k in the U.S. The money will be gone within a year. Is it possible? Now you begin to see why the long-term stability of Social Security and Medicare are at present hot topics in American political life. Without them, a great many more Americans would die in poverty. What is the actual figure? The $5000 figure is accurate but irrelevant; that median includes people who are thirty years from retirement and people who are two days from retirement. The more relevant statistics are those restricted to people at or close to retirement age, and they can be found lower down in the article you cite, or in numerous other studies. Here's one from the GAO for example: http://www.gao.gov/products/GAO-15-419 The figures here are, unfortunately, no less terrifying: Now $104K is a lot better than $5K, but it's still not much to retire on. Why we believe that it is reasonable to throw out all the zeros before taking the median, I do not know. That seems like bad math to me. UPDATE: There is some discussion of this point in the comments; all I'm saying here is that this is a clumsy and possibly misleading way to characterize the situation. The linked report has the actual data, but let's try to summarize it here in a more meaningful way. Let's suppose that we make buckets for how dependent on SS is a retirement-age household to avoid starving to death, being homeless, and so on? Maybe these buckets are not ideal, and we could move them around a bit.  The takeaways here are that the ratios of nothing:inadequate:barely adequate:comfortable is about 40:30:20:10. That only the top decile of retirement-age households can fund a comfortable retirement without help illustrates just how dependent on SS American households are. how do 50% of old Americans survive in their old age?  Social Security and Medicare.  As the cited GAO report indicates: \"\"Social Security provides most of the income for about half of households age 65 and older.\"\" Do most old Americans rely on their children for financial support? One day I met a woman at a party and we were making small talk about her kids. She had a couple already and one more was on the way.  \"\"I want to have lots of children to support me in my old age\"\", she said.  \"\"Do you support your parents?\"\" I asked, which frankly seemed like an entirely reasonable question.  \"\"Of course not! I can't afford it. I've got a baby on the way and two more kids at home!\"\" I left her to draw her own conclusions as to the viability of her retirement plan.\"", "&gt; You are aware that online advertising spending recently overtook tv, right? It had a lot of people in the ad world screaming that tv advertising is dead and online is the only possible future.  That's a very narrow perspective to base your conclusions on.  The fact is I know what I'm talking about.  When a computer and internet expert gives you tips about the internet what you should do is shut up and think of how to use that knowledge to your advantage, instead of being mean.", "\"I was just going by [this](http://evonomics.com/amazon-accounting-corporate-profits-rich-peoples-income-invisible-bezos/) source and many like it.  They might not be reffering to _literal_ dividends but increased stock value.  Ultimately, I was responding to that idiot who said \"\"But a business making no profits to avoid tax is the worst tax planning advice I have ever seen!\"\"...\"", "it would help the economy tremendously.  even better, the US govt should give households massive amounts of money, to pay off debts.  and if they dont have debts they should go spend that money in the economy.   That type of economic stimulous would generate more revenue and taxes for govt to help pay off the US govt debt it accrues by printing money.", "\"What our friend \"\"otherwiseyep\"\" is describing in his first posts is *credit*, not money.  Money and credit are two very different things.  Economies function on capital, which is existing savings and supply of goods/services.  They cannot function on promises alone (credit).  So from the perspective of Austrian economists, his OP's were misleading.\""]}
+{"query": "Double-entry bookkeeping: When selling an asset, does the money come from, Equity or Income?", "corpus": ["\"There are basically two approaches, based on how detailed you want to be in your own personal accounting: Obviously the more like a business or like \"\"real\"\" accounting you want to be, the more complex you can make it, but in general I find that the purpose of personal accounting is (1) to track what I own, and (2) to ensure I have documented anything I need to for tax purposes, and as long as you're meeting those goals any reasonable approach is workable.\""], "neg": ["I think it would be better to remove income from the equation for things people need to live. For everything else we need some kind of market. How that'll end up with automation, 3d printing, and ai sprinting towards market saturation is anybodies guess.", "The put will expire and you will need to purchase a new one. My advise will be that the best thing is to sell more calls so your delta from the short call will be similr to the delta from the equity holding.", "Could be risky, consider that some of their assets in Bolivia were nationalized.", "\"For some people, it should be a top priority.  For others, there are higher priorities.  What it should be for you depends on a number of things, including your overall financial situation (both your current finances and how stable you expect them to be over time), your level of financial \"\"education\"\", the costs of your mortgage, the alternative investments available to you, your investing goals, and your tolerance for risk. Your #1 priority should be to ensure that your basic needs (including making the required monthly payment on your mortgage) are met, both now and in the near future, which includes paying off high-interest (i.e. credit card) debt and building up an emergency fund in a savings or money-market account or some other low-risk and liquid account.  If you haven't done those things, do not pass Go, do not collect $200, and do not consider making advance payments on your mortgage.  Mason Wheeler's statements that the bank can't take your house if you've paid it off are correct, but it's going to be a long time till you get there and they can take it if you're partway to paying it off early and then something bad happens to you and you start missing payments.  (If you're not underwater, you should be able to get some of your money back by selling - possibly at a loss - before it gets to the point of foreclosure, but you'll still have to move, which can be costly and unappealing.)  So make sure you've got what you need to handle your basic needs even if you hit a rough patch, and make sure you're not financing the paying off of your house by taking a loan from Visa at 27% annually. Once you've gotten through all of those more-important things, you finally get to decide what else to invest your extra money in.  Different investments will provide different rewards, both financial and emotional (and Mason Wheeler has clearly demonstrated that he gets a strong emotional payoff from not having a mortgage, which may or may not be how you feel about it).  On the financial side of any potential investment, you'll want to consider things like the expected rate of return, the risk it carries (both on its own and whether it balances out or unbalances the overall risk profile of all your investments in total), its expected costs (including its - and your - tax rate and any preferred tax treatment), and any other potential factors (such as an employer match on 401(k) contributions, which are basically free money to you).  Then you weigh the pros and cons (financial and emotional) of each option against your imperfect forecast of what the future holds, take your best guess, and then keep adjusting as you go through life and things change. But I want to come back to one of the factors I mentioned in the first paragraph.  Which options you should even be considering is in part influenced by the degree to which you understand your finances and the wide variety of options available to you as well as all the subtleties of how different things can make them more or less advantageous than one another.  The fact that you're posting this question here indicates that you're still early in the process of learning those things, and although it's great that you're educating yourself on them (and keep doing it!), it means that you're probably not ready to worry about some of the things other posters have talked about, such as Cost of Capital and ROI.  So keep reading blog posts and articles online (there's no shortage of them), and keep developing your understanding of the options available to you and their pros and cons, and wait to tackle the full suite of investment options till you fully understand them. However, there's still the question of what to do between now and then.  Paying the mortgage down isn't an unreasonable thing for you to do for now, since it's a guaranteed rate of return that also provides some degree of emotional payoff.  But I'd say the higher priority should be getting money into a tax-advantaged retirement account (a 401(k)/403(b)/IRA), because the tax-advantaged growth of those accounts makes their long-term return far greater than whatever you're paying on your mortgage, and they provide more benefit (tax-advantaged growth) the earlier you invest in them, so doing that now instead of paying off the house quicker is probably going to be better for you financially, even if it doesn't provide the emotional payoff.  If your employer will match your contributions into that account, then it's a no-brainer, but it's probably still a better idea than the mortgage unless the emotional payoff is very very important to you or unless you're nearing retirement age (so the tax-free growth period is small).  If you're not sure what to invest in, just choose something that's broad-market and low-cost (total-market index funds are a great choice), and you can diversify into other things as you gain more savvy as an investor; what matters more is that you start investing in something now, not exactly what it is. Disclaimer: I'm not a personal advisor, and this does not constitute investing advice.  Understand your choices and make your own decisions.\"", "Buy something from Nordstrom, then return it and ask for cash. They may ask for your ID.  Nordstrom's return policies are very lax and they will almost always give cash when asked for, sometimes even if you don't have the receipt.", "There are short-term and long term aspects. In the long term, if you live and work in Australia and plan to continue doing both indefinitely, you might as well move all your cash investments there.  There would be no point bearing the exchange rate risks.  It may be worth keeping the account open with just enough credit to stop it being shut down.  There is no point needing to (think about) filing foreign tax returns just because you have an account earning a small amount of interest. In the short term, I think the more important question is practicality rather than exchange rate risk.  You want to have enough cash in both countries that if you suddenly have to pay say an apartment deposit or a bill, you won't be caught short.  So I would leave at least a few thousands dollars in a US bank account until at least a couple of months after the move, when I was sure everything was settled. Good luck.", "\"**Poverty in the United States**  Poverty is a state of deprivation, lacking the usual or socially acceptable amount of money or material possessions. The most common measure of poverty in the U.S. is the \"\"poverty threshold\"\" set by the U.S. government. This measure recognizes poverty as a lack of those goods and services commonly taken for granted by members of mainstream society. The official threshold is adjusted for inflation using the consumer price index.  ***  ^[ [^PM](https://www.reddit.com/message/compose?to=kittens_from_space) ^| [^Exclude ^me](https://reddit.com/message/compose?to=WikiTextBot&amp;message=Excludeme&amp;subject=Excludeme) ^| [^Exclude ^from ^subreddit](https://np.reddit.com/r/economy/about/banned) ^| [^FAQ ^/ ^Information](https://np.reddit.com/r/WikiTextBot/wiki/index) ^| [^Source](https://github.com/kittenswolf/WikiTextBot)   ^] ^Downvote ^to ^remove ^| ^v0.27\""]}
+{"query": "Little hazy on how the entire RSU's and etrade works", "corpus": ["Is the remaining amount tax free? As in, if the amount shown (which I can sell) on etrade is $5000 then if I sell the entire shares will my bank account be increased by $5000? The stocks they sell are withholding.  So let's say you had $7000 of stock and they sold $2000 for taxes.  That leaves you with $5000.  But the actual taxes paid might be more or less than $2000.  They go in the same bucket as the rest of your withholding.  If too much is withheld, you get a refund.  Too little and you owe them.  Way too little and you have to pay penalties.   At the end of the year, you will show $7000 as income and $2000 as withheld for taxes from that transaction.  You may also have a capital gain if the stock increases in price.  They do not generally withhold on stock sales, as they don't necessarily know what was your gain and what was your loss.  You usually have to handle that yourself.   The main point that I wanted to make is that the sale is not tax free.  It's just that you already had tax withheld.  It may or may not be enough."], "neg": ["&gt; But overall we are living in one of the most stable-peaceful times in human history.  It's nice to see this stated, because it isn't said enough. We're so afraid of these constant political and social boogymen that we forget that that we live in a country free of civil war, where food is plentiful and clean water a given. Yeah, beyond the low level Maslow stuff we have problems, but damn, we have it good.", "You're completely right. They absolutely have an interest in these things. That's why we should reign in Washington, strip it of its power to play favorites.  If government is allowed to stack the deck, its the people who end up losing. How often do politicians really fulfill their campaign promises? Rarely, if ever.", "From a page on consumerfinance.gov A debt collector generally may not contact your employer or other third-parties about the debt. Debt collectors may ask your employer to verify your employment, or ask for your address or telephone number. Note - they aren't even allowed to tell the employer that they are trying to collect a debt. So - even if you were the guilty party, this isn't allowed.  They've already broken very clear laws and thus are probably not trustworthy, so (echoing what others have said) don't give them your own personal information.  If they've done one day's research on the law governing their industry they know this is illegal.  If they've actually gotten any money from your employer, it's theft.  If they haven't then it's just attempted theft.  Contact the police regardless. Also - contact a lawyer.  You may well have the right to sue them.  They've broken Federal laws in a way that causes you injury.  Odds are they've broken state laws as well. One last point - do you even have proof that these are debt collectors collecting a real debt, rather than people trying to get you to give them your SSN?  Perhaps their business plan is to look at company webpages and send bogus requests to the employers for some random employee and then see what information they get back (I'm not him, here's my personal information).  Be very careful to not give any personally identifiable information (date of birth, address, SSN, mother's maiden name, etc).  Anything they ask about you don't provide.", "Vikram was protecting American’s interest from European/British suckers, now the stocks will have a roller cost ride. American Investors be careful in investing in this stock, Europeans CEO will fund bad assets in Europe and suck up American investors money out of our economy. Why always innocent American have to lose because of corrupt FDIC suckers. I am sure they are colluded with European bad assets owners and cheaters. GOD bless CitiBank, it is on the path to bankruptcy.", "Similar to the lawn care you mentioned: if you have space, you could have the kids create a mini-farmstand. They could grow flowers for cutting, some vegetables, etc. It would be a different twist on the classic lemonade stand. If the kids are into animals and space and zoning allows, you could keep chickens and add eggs to your mini-farmstand. Upfront costs for the garden would be small enough that they can learn about how investing in a business works at a very small scale. Along with learning about money, they also learn responsibility because it requires commitment and daily attention. It's also seasonal in a way that meshes well with school (though having animals is a constant year-round responsibility).", "Then: (do these in whatever order)  35 is not mid-life.  You're on the tail end of the age to get started on retirement planning. Being single, relatively young, and a great income level, you are ideally situated to consider FIRE'ing yourself. (Financial Independent, Retire Early).  The basic idea is to invest a large chunk of your income and establish your comfort level balancing frugality and comfort.  There's a table on one of the FIRE websites that shows a graph between % of income saved and the number of years it takes to save enough to be financially independent.  If you can go over 50% savings, you can get down to about 10 years.  In this case, financially independent is where you can live on a safe percentage of withdrawal from your savings without depleting the savings.  At that point, you no longer need to work for a paycheck.  You would only do so to extend the savings, increase the safe withdraw rate, or because you want to do something that makes you feel productive.", "I don't know. That's not really my call. I know that he is not in America. I know that he thought he was going to be punished so he left. I know he felt that getting the information out was worth the risk of going to jail for.   Also you now get into if it's ok to preform an illegal act to expose an illegal act.   We are talking about a subway owner who created fake employees in order to pay his minimum wage guys less money."]}
+{"query": "Is stock in a private corporation taxable?", "corpus": ["\"This stock is the same as any other, but you need to keep clear in your head that you and your company are now different entities.  You (the person) will pay tax on capital gains and losses when you sell any stock that you hold in your own name.  You'll also owe \"\"regular\"\" tax if you draw a salary, etc.  The fact that it may be \"\"your\"\" company does not change these things. The company will not recognize a gain by selling stock to raise capital since it's nominally exchanging things of equal value, say $100 in cash for $100 in stock.  In order to sell stock, however, you MIGHT need to register with the SEC depending on how you're going about finding your investors, so keep that in mind.\""], "neg": ["\"Basically, the idea of an IRA is that the money is earned by you and would normally be taxed at the individual rate, but the government is allowing you to avoid paying the taxes on it now by instead putting it in the account. This \"\"tax deferral\"\" encourages retirement savings by reducing your current taxable income (providing a short-term \"\"carrot\"\").  However, the government will want their cut; specifically, when you begin withdrawing from that account, the principal which wasn't taxed when you put it in will be taxed at the current individual rate when you take it out. When you think about it, that's only fair; you didn't pay taxes on it when it came out of your paycheck, so you should pay that tax once you're withdrawing it to live on. Here's the rub; the interest is also taxed at the individual rate. At the time, that was a good thing; the capital gains rate in 1976 (when the Regular IRA was established) was 35%, the highest it's ever been. Now, that's not looking so good because the current cap gains rate is only 15%. However, these rates rise and fall, cap gains more than individual rates, and so by contributing to a Traditional IRA you simplify your tax bill; the principal and interest is taxed at the individual rate as if you were still making a paycheck. A Roth IRA is basically the government trying to get money now by giving up money later. You pay the marginal individual rate on the contributions as you earn them (it becomes a \"\"post-tax deduction\"\") but then that money is completely yours, and the kicker is that the government won't tax the interest on it if you don't withdraw it before retirement age. This makes Roths very attractive to retirement investors as a hedge against higher overall tax rates later in life. If you think that, for any reason, you'll be paying more taxes in 30 years than you would be paying for the same money now, you should be investing in a Roth. A normal (non-IRA) investment account, at first, seems to be the worst of both worlds; you pay individual tax on all earned wages that you invest, then capital gains on the money your investment earns (stock gains and dividends, bond interest, etc) whenever you cash out. However, a traditional account has the most flexibility; you can keep your money in and take your money out on a timeline you choose. This means you can react both to market moves AND to tax changes; when a conservative administration slashes tax rates on capital gains, you can cash out, pay that low rate on the money you made from your account, and then the money's yours to spend or to reinvest. You can, if you're market- and tax-savvy, use all three of these instruments to your overall advantage. When tax rates are high now, contribute to a traditional IRA, and then withdraw the money during your retirement in times where individual tax rates are low. When tax rates are low (like right now), max out your Roth contributions, and use that money after retirement when tax rates are high. Use a regular investment account as an overage to Roth contributions when taxes are low; contribute when the individual rate is low, then capitalize and reinvest during times when capital gains taxes are low (perhaps replacing a paycheck deduction in annual contributions to a Roth, or you can simply fold it back into the investment account). This isn't as good as a Roth but is better than a Traditional; by capitalizing at an advantageous time, you turn interest earned into principal invested and pay a low tax on it at that time to avoid a higher tax later. However, the market and the tax structure have to coincide to make ordinary investing pay off; you may have bought in in the early 90s, taking advantage of the lowest individual rates since the Great Depression. While now, capital gains taxes are the lowest they've ever been, if you cash out you may not be realizing much of a gain in the first place.\"", "I believe it's just to limit the less well-off from acquiring one. If your credit history and income do not support a $15,000 credit limit, then don't even think about applying for an Altitude Black card. If they do, then don't bother with a student card. It's primarily about market segmentation by wealth or income.", "Makes sense. Why should a company support a group giving it negative press?  Devout followers of the free market, how do you solve this problem? People don't want to pay for news when it only talks about problems they can not fix and only indirectly affects them. That leaves companies free to keep their consumers misinformed.", "Dental implants consist of small titanium posts that are inserted into the jawbone, closely replicating a natural tooth root. This does require a small surgical procedure but there is no need to be concerned as our principal dentist here at Radiance Dentistry is an experienced oral surgeon and prosthodontist. Dr. Mounir Iskandar has received specialized training and has many years’ experience in placing dental implants. He will make sure that every step of your dental implant treatment is meticulously planned, ensuring your dental implant surgery proceeds quickly and smoothly and is ultimately more successful. All the treatment you require can be carried out in our comfortable and well-equipped dental office, from a dental team you will already know and trust.  WHAT IS THE PROCEDURE FOR PLANNING DENTAL IMPLANT SURGERY?  To plan your implant surgery, Dr. Iskandar will take digital dental x-rays and a cone beam CT scan. This scan provides highly detailed 3-D images of your jawbone, allowing Dr. Iskandar to fully assess the condition of your jawbone and to identify all the important structures such as sinus cavities, nerves and blood vessels that must be avoided during surgery. These images will show if you have sufficient bone for implant placement or if you require a bone graft or sinus lift prior to surgery. If you do need a bone graft there is no need to be concerned, as Dr. Iskandar is extremely experienced in using the very latest and most advanced bone grafting techniques. Sometimes if only a tiny amount of bone is required it can be placed at the same time as your dental implant.  COMPUTER-GUIDED DENTAL IMPLANT SURGERY  Once Dr. Iskandar has identified the optimal position for your dental implants, a surgical guide is made that will be used during their placement. This is a highly sophisticated template that will guide the implant placement down to the nearest millimeter. Using computer-guided surgery will ensure your treatment is a complete success, providing you with teeth that not only look wonderful but which are fully functional.  WHAT TO EXPECT DURING IMPLANT SURGERY  We will make sure your dental implant surgery is pain-free by using local anesthesia to numb the area. If you are at all anxious about this treatment, you may wish to consider additional sedation. Dr. Iskandar can provide nitrous oxide or oral sedation to help you relax during surgery. To insert the dental implant, Dr. Iskandar will make a small incision in your gum to expose the jawbone, before placing the dental implant in the position identified by the surgical guide. The area is then stitched and left to heal.  At this stage, Dr. Iskandar may attach what is called a healing cap to the dental implant post. This gently shapes the surrounding gum tissue as it heals, providing improved aesthetics once your tooth is restored. If required, we can then fit a temporary restoration to be worn while your dental implants heal and integrate with your jawbone. There is no need to worry as we will make sure you can eat and speak comfortably during this healing period.  If you only require a single dental implant then surgery is really quite quick. A single dental implant may take as little as an hour to place. Bridges and dentures will require multiple dental implants, so surgery will take a little longer. The time required for your surgery can be discussed during your initial consultation.  OSSEO INTEGRATION  It normally takes 3 to 6 months for a dental implant to fully heal with the surrounding bone during a process called Osseo integration. Your dental implant post will have been specially treated to encourage this process, where new bone cells will grow on and around the post. As they do so, the post gradually fuses with the jawbone, becoming strong and stable and able to support a replacement restoration.  ATTACHING THE ABUTMENT  Once Osseo integration is complete, Dr. Iskandar will remove the healing cap and can attach an abutment to your implant post. There are many different types of abutments that can be used, depending on the final restoration. An abutment will protrude above your gum line and is used to support your crown, bridge or denture. A detailed dental impression is taken of your dental implant and is sent to our dental laboratory. They will custom-make your restoration to our exact prescription, using the highest quality materials to create beautiful teeth that will blend in seamlessly with your smile. Your restoration can then be secured in place at your next visit, completing your treatment and providing you with an aesthetically appealing and fully functional smile.  To find out more about dental implant surgery and how it could help restore your smile, contact Radiance Dentistry to schedule your consultation with Dr. Iskandar today.  About US:  http://radiancedentistry.com/dental-implants/surgery/ - Dr. Iskandar is a certified restorative and cosmetic dentistry specialist and is licensed both as a general dentist and as a Prosthodontist. Dr. Iskandar obtained his DDS degree from Cairo University School Of Dentistry in 1998. Dr Iskandar holds a specialty in Prosthodontics and MSD (Masters of Science in Dentistry) obtained from Indiana University School of Dentistry in 2008. Dr. Iskandar is a Diplomate of international Dental Implants association since 2011.  CONTACT US: Radiance Dentistry Mounir Iskandar 2020 W Rochelle Rd  Irving, TX 75062 Phone : (972) 258-1702", "\"&gt;  This is horse shit. You're citing liberal propaganda as fact. \"\"Cited as the anti scientist president.\"\" By whom? Just liberals with their dress over their heads.  Did you say \"\"By whom?\"\"??  Have you been living under a rock?  And, even then, do you not know how to google?  Nearly every science oriented magazine and organization has described Trump as anti-science:  1\\.  Scientific American ( https://www.scientificamerican.com/article/trumps-5-most-ldquo-anti-science-rdquo-moves/ )  &gt;  **Trump's 5 Most \"\"Anti-Science\"\" Moves.**   The president-elect has taken what is widely seen as a hostile stance toward the scientific community ...  2\\.  Union of Concerned Scientists ( https://psmag.com/environment/a-brief-survey-of-trumps-assault-on-science )  3\\.  Science ... *the magazine* for the American Association for the Advancement of Science ... the worlds largest general science organization (https://sciencemag.org http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/01/what-trumps-nominees-have-said-about-science-their-senate-hearings ,  http://www.sciencemag.org/news/2017/02/hundreds-rally-science-demonstration-near-aaas-meeting , and many others).  And many other news organizations:  4\\.  Worst anti-science president ever.  http://www.newsweek.com/trump-expected-be-most-anti-science-president-ever-519226   5\\.  Trump anti-science policies imperil the world  http://www.scmp.com/business/global-economy/article/2094269/opinion-trumps-anti-science-policies-imperil-world  6\\.  President Trump's War on Science.  https://www.nytimes.com/2017/09/09/opinion/sunday/trump-epa-pruitt-science.html  7\\.  Trump has launched a blitzkrieg in the wars on science   https://www.theguardian.com/environment/climate-consensus-97-per-cent/2017/mar/28/trump-has-launched-a-blitzkrieg-in-the-wars-on-science-and-earths-climate    &gt;  This Nature article is junk, it's just an opinion piece, a few quotes from literally who, and a random bar graph.  That was a news piece, not an opinion piece.  And that doesn't matter anyway.  The result is the graphs which are from the UCLA HERI study.  There was also a Pew Study done in 2009.  http://www.people-press.org/2009/07/09/section-4-scientists-politics-and-religion/  But I don't know why you're arguing ... because you summarized my point (poorly, I may add) with:  &gt;  Trump won on income and was inversely proportional on education.  This was basically my point.  You would know that if you actually read what I wrote.  I say \"\"basically\"\" here, because:  1\\.  You confused \"\"inversely proportional\"\" with negatively correlated ... or proportional with a negative proportionality constant.   Certainly you're aware that \"\"inversely proportional\"\" actually means a relation like y = C 1/x + k.     2\\.  \"\"won on income\"\" is just poor phraseology.  Polls suggest that Trump had a slightly higher edge (2% vs. Hilary) for those whose income was in the higher tiers (most tiers above $50K/yr income).  Polls suggest that he was strongly disfavored for lower incomes.  Of course ... it's best seen in the poll I linked into my first post on this page.  &gt;  Jeez who would have thunk it, lifers post docs are bought it on their liberal academic surroundings. As if that was indicative of intelligence.  Most of your sentences above had poor grammar and, at first, I suspected some advanced Russian bot.  But this is atrocious. Try to express yourself in complete thoughts.  Read what you wrote ... it's complete garbage.  I almost didn't respond at all since it doesn't deserve a response.\"", "\"Sigh when will someone teach zero hedge how to make a rigorous argument.  None of those facts actually prove anything. Heck some don't have anything at all to do with NAFTA. Not a single \"\"fact\"\" listed actually makes a case for a causal link between \"\"xyz negative thing\"\" and NAFTA.  I'm sure a few of them have actually have a causal relationship behind them (I didn't get to read all the links cause time) but they don't even hint at a the existence of an casual relationship.\"", "Start at Investopedia. Get basic clarification on all financial terms and in some cases in detail. But get a book. One recommendation would be Hull. It is a basic book, but quite informative. Likewise you can get loads of material targeted at programmers. Wilmott's Forum is a fine place to find coders as well as finance guys."]}
+{"query": "I'm thinking of getting a new car … why shouldn't I LEASE one?", "corpus": ["If you are looking to build wealth, leasing is a bad idea.  But so is buying a new car.  All cars lose value once you buy them.  New cars lose anywhere between 30-60% of their value in the first 4 years of ownership. Buying a good quality, used car is the way to go if you are looking to build wealth.  And keeping the car for a while is also desirable.  Re-leasing every three years is no way to build wealth. The American Car Payment is probably the biggest factor holding many people back from building wealth.  Don't fall into the trap - buy a used car and drive it for as long as you can until the maintenance gets too pricey.  Then upgrade to a better used car, etc. If you cannot buy a car outright with cash, you cannot afford it.  Period."], "neg": ["\"&gt;taking your typical GP's advice regarding \"\"risks\"\" is really no different than listening to your barber --  If you _truly_ believe that, then go to your barber the next time you have a medical issue. You don't though, so stop talking out of your ass.\"", "That's your assumption, but the details are there are different tiers of liability depending on the level of employees you have. Have 5,000+ you must pay this increased level of medical insurance or other liabilities.   So if he has 7,000 employees and increased liabilities would happen at 5,000+ ---- sounds like there's a $$ incentive to decrease to 4,999.   That's not emotion, that's just business.  The irony would be if he sold to a Chinese company, that cuts employee benefits and wages and sends most of the profit home while employing tax shelters to yield as little as possible in taxes.", "&gt; Try it! Deposit a check or buy with a credit card and scribble something unrelated as a signature! The deposit or credit card transaction will go through.  About that you are correct, however during any sort of forensic investigation they are going to ask to see a signature receipt if one is available.  &gt; For decades, retailers never compared signatures on credit cards to the person's signature.  No that isn't true. Retailers are required by many card processing vendors to send in a signed receipt. This is changing, because employees are lazy, and retailers don't care about their customers at all so they don't bother enforcing any standards on their minimum wage register jockeys. However many of them are still required to send signed receipts in. When I was younger I worked at a store that would not get paid by the bank if it did not send in a signed receipt for every transaction.  Go on, try walking away without signing your credit card receipt at stores where they present it for signature, and see what happens.  &gt; I know what I am talking about because I deal with credit cards a lot, professionally, in IT.  You and everyone else. Big deal. Different credit card processors have different requirements for their customers (merchants).  &gt; The credit card companies don't really care.  I think the real lesson here is **nobody cares**. Not the banks, not the credit card companies, and not the merchants. The only thing any of them give a fuck about is keeping the money flowing, especially into their own wallets, and if that means customers get ripped off sometimes because of inadequate protections, so what.  My only point is, if I have one at all, **merchants _should_ care** about protecting the customer, and **customers _should_ care** about what protections are in place to prevent fraud. **PIN numbers are fine** as an authentication method, **but they should be completely shielded from view** by people standing in line or cameras overhead.", "For #1, I see no advantage in putting money from your non-retirement savings into a Roth just for the purpose of using it as a down payment on your house.  Why not just put the $5.5K directly toward the down payment? For #2, dollars converted from a traditional 401K or IRA to a Roth are considered income, and will be taxed at your marginal rate.  So if your marginal tax rate is 25%, you will need to pay $5K in order to convert the $20K.  Usually this payment is done independent of the conversion amount--in other words, you would convert the full $20K but pay the $5K in taxes out of other funds (checking/savings). Based on your stated goals of using the money for a down payment on a house, I don't see any advantage to contributing (or converting) to a Roth IRA.", "You can get an investment manager through firms like Fidelity or E*Trade to manage your account. It won't be someone dedicated exclusively to you, but you're in the range where they'd take you as a managed account customer. Another option would be to get a financial planner (CFP or something) help you to identify your needs and figure out what your investments portfolio should look like. This is not a whole lot of money, but is definitely enough to have an early retirement if managed and invested properly.", "The biggest value driver we identified were staff costs. If Amazon implements their Amazon Go technology in Whole Foods' stores(which I assume is their current plan) they would be able to cut a large chunk of staff costs reducing COGS significantly. With Jana Partners buying up shares and an already large institutional share of ownership we saw the likelyhood of success of a deal to be quite high.   The new technology is exciting and we believe interest for shopping at Amazon will be high the first years which brings revenue synergies to the table.   I'm on mobile right now(at work) so maybe I can give a more detailed answer later.", "If you are tired of acting as the bank after selling your Real Estate and owner-financing the loan with a promissory note, we can offer a sound and painless exit strategy today. We can fund the purchase in as little as 15 business days. We at Cash Note USA buy Real Estate Promissory Notes Nationwide. We Purchase Owner Financed Mortgage, Land Contract, Contract For Deed, Deed Of Trust, Private Mortgages, Secured Notes, Business Notes, Commercial Notes and Partial Notes and many kinds of seller carry back mortgage notes. Convert Real Estate Note To Cash Now.Sell Your Mortgage Note Fast &amp; get More Cash For Your Note. You will get a Fair Offer Within 24 Hours.Get your Note cashed today!    Cash Note USA is a note buyer all over the nation. Convert your mortgage payments into cash. Simple closing process. We buy Promissory Notes, Real Estate Trust Deeds, Seller Carry Back Notes, Land Contract, Contract for Deed, Privately Help Notes, Commercial Mortgage Notes &amp; Business Promissory Notes.   Contact Us: Cash Note USA 1307 W.6th St.Suite 219N, Corona, CA 92882 888-297-4099 cashnoteusa@gmail.com http://cashnoteusa.com/"]}
+{"query": "Protecting savings from exceptional taxes", "corpus": ["\"What EU wanted to force Cyprus to do is to break the insurance contract the government has with the bank depositors. The parliament rightfully refused, and it didn't pass. In the EU, and Cyprus as part of it, all bank deposits are insured up to 100,000EUR by the government. This is similar to the US FDIC insurance. Thus, requiring the \"\"small\"\" (up to 100K) depositors to participate in the bank reorganization means that the government breaks its word to people, and effectively defaults. That is exactly what the Cyprus government wanted to avoid, the default, so I can't understand why the idea even came up. Depositors of more than 100k are not guaranteed against bank failures, and indeed - in Cyprus these depositors will get \"\"haircuts\"\". But before them, first come shareholders and bondholders who would be completely wiped out. Thus, first and foremost, those who failed (the bank owners) will be the first to pay the price. However, governments can default. This happened in many places, for example in Russia in the 90's, in Argentina in 2000's (and in fact numerous times during the last century), the US in the 1930's, and many other examples - you can see a list in Wikipedia. When government defaults on its debts, it will not pay some or all of them, and its currency may also be devaluated. For example, in Russia in 1998 the currency lost 70% of its value against the USD within months, and much of the cash at hands of the public became worthless overnight. In the US in 1933 the President issued an executive order forbidding private citizens keeping gold and silver bullions and coins, which resulted in dollar devaluation by about 30% and investors in precious metals losing large amounts of money. The executive order requiring surrender of the Treasury gold certificates is in fact the government's failure to pay on these obligations. While the US or Russia control their own currency, European countries don't and cannot devaluate the currency as they wish in order to ease their debts. Thus in Euro-zone the devaluation solutions taken by Russia and the US are not possible. Cyprus cannot devaluate its currency, and even if it could - its external debt would not likely to be denominated in it (actually, Russian debt isn't denominated in Rubles, that's why they forced restructuring of their own debt, but devaluating the currency helped raising the money from the citizens similarly to the US seizing the gold in 1930's). Thus, in case of Cyprus or other Euro-zone countries, direct taxes is the only way to raise money from the citizens. So if you're in a country that controls its own currency (such as the US, Russia, Argentina, etc) and especially if the debt is denominated in that currency (mainly the US) - you should be worried more of inflation than taxes. But if you're in the Euro-zone and your country is in troubles (which is almost any country in the zone) - you can expect taxes. How to avoid that? Deal with your elected officials and have them fix your economy, but know that you can't just \"\"erase\"\" the debt through inflation as the Americans can (and will), someone will have to pay.\""], "neg": ["This is actually a very good point - any money that is spent on an employee in excess of the bare minimum required for them to perform their job should be viewed as a component of total rewards. You can directly extend OP's logic to any other form of compensation or benefits - Why let public employees take PTO except for when mandated by federal or state law? Why not target the 10th percentile of the market for all federal jobs? Why provide employees with retirement benefits? The answer to all of the above is that all elements of a total rewards package are necessary to attract, retain, and develop good employees.      I've done consulting in the sphere of organizational structure, design, and development. I've seen the type of employees that a bare-bones total rewards philosophy attracts, and I'm not sure that I want them working for the public.", "Rent the property?? Is that a possible solution? Since selling the house is not an option and living in it isn't either, then perhaps renting it is the way to go? Since no explanation for the sister's motives is given, i'd speculate it is a mixture of emotional and financial concerns. Maybe mostly emotional. I imagine letting go of the one physical thing that has memories of you and your parents attached to it is very difficult. I don't think getting a lawyer or doing what's convenient for only your boyfriend is the way to go...But that's my own personal opinion. Clearly, he only has one close family member left alive. Creating permanent wounds in that relationship will cost more along the way. And quite frankly, if the house is owned 50-50, don't you need both owners to sign the deed to sell the house anyways? If renting is not an option, then maybe refinancing the mortgage to lower payments? Or Airbnb it only half the time? Or rent it out for events to help with payments? Or ask the sister for a little money...Not for half the mortgage, but at least a few hundred dollars to maintain the house and heat. If she is indeed concerned with the property, then maintaining it to prevent serious damagae is in her interests, no matter her income.", "One approach would be to create Journal Entries that debit asset accounts that are associated with these items and credit an Open Balance Equity account. The value of these contributions would have to be worked out with an accountant, as it depends on the lesser of the adjusted basis vs. the fair market value, as you then depreciate the amounts over time to take the depreciation as a business expense, and it adjusts your basis in the company (to calculate capital gains/losses when you sell). If there were multiple partners, or your accountant wants it this way, you could then debit open balance equity and credit the owner's contribution to a capital account in your name that represents your basis when you sell. From a pure accounting perspective, if the Open Balance Equity account would zero out, you could just skip it and directly credit the capital accounts, but I prefer the Open Balance Equity as it helps know the percentages of initial equity which may influence partner ownership percentages and identify anyone who needs to contribute more to the partnership.", "\"If any intelligent person can answer the title of your article with one word (in this case, \"\"no\"\"), then you are writing a puff opinion piece. In this case, one obviously sponsored by one of Tesla's many, many detractors in the fossil fuel industry trying to find reasons why we shouldn't save the world by banning over-priced fossil fuels.\"", "The NY company's board of directors are your agents and fiduciaries.  I'll call them your agents below.  The acquiring company entered into some contract that your agents negotiated.  Whatever the acquiring company owes you in terms of money, equity, or specific communication is based on what your agents dealt for in the sale contract.   Best ask your agents what they got for you.", "What I'm reading is that they subtracted the $85 you owe them and they're cutting you a cashier's check for the rest. Ethically speaking, you owed them the money, they subtracted it and made you a check for the rest.  Once you cash that check, nobody owes anyone anything in this equation.  Sounds like they're in the clear. Legally speaking, I have no idea, since I'm not a lawyer, but even if it was not legal, good luck getting the $85 back without spending far more in retaining a lawyer and fighting it in court.  Even fighting it in small claims court will take more of your time than $85 is worth. If it's your time that is the problem, 12 days is not horrible in banking terms.  Yes, we're spoiled now by ACH transfers and same day deposit availability, but since you're retired, I'm sure if you think back you'll remember when it used to take two business weeks to clear a check... TLDR; cancel future deposits to that bank, find a new bank, then forget this fiasco and get your revenge by enjoying your life.", "There many car loans at zero percent interest.   Finance the car at zero percent, then take your money and invest it. If you want to be super safe buy a CD the same length as the car loan. 5 years you will get 2%.  If you still want safety and a better return take up a asset allocation strategy that moves your cash to risky assets when the market is performing well, then to cash, bonds, or cds when the market under-performs. Now you have your car with a zero percent loan and you are making the return on the money instead of the car company."]}
+{"query": "What are my risks of early assignment?", "corpus": ["One reason this happens is due to dividends. If the dividend amount is greater than the time value left on a call, it can make sense to exercise early to collect the dividend.  Deep in the money puts also may get exercised early. There's usually little premium on a deep in the money put and the spread on the bid-ask might erase what little premium there is. If you have stock worth $5,000 but own puts on them that will give you $50,000 upon exercise (and no spread to worry about), the interest you can gain on the $50k might be more than the little to no time value left on the position... even at several weeks to expiration."], "neg": ["The ETF price quoted on the stock exchange is in principle not referenced to NAV. The fund administrator will calculate and publish the NAV net of all fees, but the ETF price you see is determined by the market just like for any other security.  Having said that, the market will not normally deviate greatly from the NAV of the fund, so you can safely assume that ETF quoted price is net of relevant fees.", "\"So I'm in Australia and we have our very own housing price/credit bubble right now (which is finally deflating) and I'll try explain it as I understand. I welcome anyone to chime in and correct me.  The problem we faced (still face to a large degree) is the idea of rising asset prices and how this fuels a feedback loop into increasing personal debt, all based on the false assumption that house prices always go up. Now before I continue, house prices *do* always go up in the long run, but so does the cost of everything and we call that inflation, adjusting for this effect usually reveals that house prices are cyclical in the long term and never really 'grow'. So that aside we in Australia recently saw a long period of increasing house prices (as did the USA and Europe, and more recently China), the thing about house price is it is your 'equity', I'll try and explain: (all figures are made up to provide a simple example) if you borrow $200,000 to buy a house that costs $250,000 you owe the bank 80% of the equity (what your home is 'worth', and notionally this is value that you own) in your home and the bank will be happy, remembering that they make money on your interest payments, not your principal repayments. If your house then increases in value to $300,000 but you still owe $200,000 then you now owe only 66% of your equity. The bank sees you as a lower risk and encourages you to borrow more to get back up to that sweet spot they had before of 80% - this is a nice tradeoff between risk and reward for the bank. You, the consumer, have just been mailed a new credit card with a 50k limit (hypothetical) and theres a new iMac being released next week, and you really did want to trade in your 5yr old car (see where this is going yet?). Not only is this type of spending given a mighty boost but consumers feel like this house thing has done them very well and suddenly they have the ability to borrow lots more money, why not get a second house and do it all over again? The added demand for investment housing drives prices, throw in some generous government incentives (here and in the USA) and demand is pushed hard, prices grow more and the whole thing feeds back into itself. People feel richer, spend more from their credit cards, buy another house, etc.  But what happens if your house 'value' then drops to $240k? The bank now sees you as a high risk, so do the bank's investors, you have negative equity, the bank demands the difference paid back to it or it might take your home. Somehow, nobody believed this would happen.  Hopefully you start to see the picture? In Australia we are now facing a slow melt in housing prices which has not yet hurt en masse but it has dried up the credit cards, retails spending has collapsed and everyone is worried about the future.  Now to realise where the USA got to you have to also understand that banks were not merely asking for a maximum of 80% owed on the asset, many of them let this figure go to 100%, since hey prices always go up, right? They then in some cases went further and neglected to look into your income and confirm you could even *repay* your loan. Sounds dodgey? This is just the setup.  Remember I mentioned the bank's investors? Well banks/smart people basically figured out a clever way of 'dealing with' the risk of a few outliers with bad financial situations by collecting large numbers of home loans into a single entity and selling it on. Loans were graded according to risk and I believe they were even cut up into smaller pieces (10% of your high risk loan assigned to 10 different 'debt objects' with different risk profiles). These 'collateralised debt obligations' were traded from one bank/investment firm to another with everyone happily accepting the risk profiles until eventually nobody knew what risk was where. Think about it like \"\"I'll throw 10 high risk loans, 50 medium risk loans and 40 low risk loans into a pot, stir it up and sell the soup as 'pretty safe' \"\". This all seemed like a very good idea until it gradually became clear just how much of these loans were in the 'extremely stupid high risk' category. This is probably extremely confusing by now, but thats the point, investors could no longer judge how risky an investment in a bank or financial institute was, the market did not correct for any of this until it was all too late.  The moral of the story is when people tell you an investment is guaranteed to make you money, you stay away from that investment. And to specifically answer your question you can't solely blame government incentives as you might be able to see, but they play a part in a giant orchestra, there are many factors that drive this sort of stupidity, stupidity being the primary one.\"", "Right there with you.  It drives me crazy watching those commercials with the cute talking babies telling the average person they can take control of their own future and open a trading account.    A few months ago I met someone at a bar who worked customer support for a large company with lots of individual traders.  I asked him what percentage of his client accounts actually made money and he guessed only a few.  The company got paid either way (commissions).  What a scam.", "www.sedar.com is the official site that provides access to most public securities documents and information filed by public companies and investment funds with the Canadian Securities Administrators (CSA) in the SEDAR filing system. Now, I'm guessing - I think the doc is MDA - Management’s Discussion and Analysis of Financial Condition and Results of Operations. At least this is what appears listed for many companies.", "They aren't giving stuff away their resources for free. If they bail Europe they would get a massive boost in international clout and political power.  He who controls the purse strings, controls the world. When you give aid to a country, that country is pretty much your bitch. I mean, look at the power the US has over all of Central and South America. Hell you can even look at Pakistan, the US kills civilians over there with drones, yet Pakistan doesn't dare stand up to the US since the US provides billions in aid to Pakistan.  The US pays the bill for a large part of IMF, NATO, and the UN. And for those reasons, the UN/IMF/NATO is pretty much just a puppet of the US. If the US doesn't agree with something, none of those organizations will contradict the US. None of them can, the US foots the bill for most of their funding.  A China that just sits on $3.1 trillion dollars has zero world influence. Money that sits in a bank has no power. But when China spends those trillions, and trades them for power and influence. That's when China will turn into a superpower.", "\"I agree that you should have received both a 1099 and a W2 from your employer. They may be reluctant to do that because some people believe that could trigger an IRS audit. The reason is that independent contractor vs employee is supposed to be defined by your job function, not by your choice. If you were a contractor and then switched to be an employee without changing your job description, then the IRS could claim that you should have always been an employee the entire time, and so should every one of the other contractors that work for that company with a similar job function. It's a hornet's nest that the employer may not want to poke. But that's not your problem; what should you do about it? When you say \"\"he added my Federal and FICA W/H together\"\", do you mean that total appears in box 4 of your 1099? If so, it sounds like the employer is expecting you to re-pay the employer portion of FICA. Can you ask them if they actually paid it? If they did, then I don't see them having a choice but to issue a W2, since the IRS would be expecting one. If they didn't pay your FICA, then the amount this will cost you is 7.65% of what would have been your W2 wages. IMHO it would be reasonable for you to request that they send you a check for that extra amount. Note: even though that amount will be less than $600 and you won't receive a 1099 in 2017 for it, legally you'll still have to pay tax on that amount so I think a good estimate would be to call it 10% instead. Depending on your personality and your relationship with the employer, if they choose not to \"\"make you whole\"\", you could threaten to fill out form SS-8. Additional Info: (Thank you Bobson for bringing this up.) The situation you find yourself in is similar to the concept of \"\"Contract-to-Hire\"\". You start off as a contractor, and later convert to an employee. In order to avoid issuing a 1099 and W2 to the same person in a single tax year, companies typically utilize one of the following strategies: Your particular situation is closest to situation 2, but the reverse. Instead of retroactively calling you a W2 employee the entire time, your employer is cheating and attempting to classify you as a 1099 contractor the entire time. This is frowned upon by the IRS, as well as the employee since as you discovered it costs you more money in the form of employer FICA. From your description it sounds like your employer was trying to do you a favor and didn't quite follow through with it. What they should have done was never switch you to W2 in the first place (if you really should have been a contractor), or they should have done the conversion properly without stringing you along.\"", "I agree but...  ( i didn't read the article in its entirety!)  but if her business was grossing $300k per year...  and for her to fall so hard in such a short time, tells me that even with such a large income, she was still living beyond her means."]}
+{"query": "Howto choose a marketplace while submitting an order for a stock trade", "corpus": ["It depends on your cost structure and knowledge of the exchanges. It could be optimal to make a manual exchange selection so long as it's cheaper to do so. For brokers with trade fees, this is a lost cause because the cost of the trade is already so high that auto routing will be no cheaper than manual routing. For brokers who charge extra to manually route, this could be a good policy if the exchange chosen has very high rebates.  This does not apply to equities because they are so cheap, but there are still a few expensive option exchanges. This all presumes that one's broker shares exchange rebates which nearly all do not. If one has direct access to the exchanges, they are presumably doing this already. To do this effectively, one needs: For anyone trading with brokers without shared rebates or who does not have knowledge of the exchange prices and their liquidities, it's best to auto route."], "neg": ["I think India and Africa are going to center of the economic growth market in the next two decades. Probably more India, since they have the means to develop and a culture that wants it. I think the growth rates are all relative, but you obviously know the standard growth rate of the Sp500. I just can't see it falling because we are still in the middle of a complete globalization and I really think it won't be over before I retire. It will probably yake Africa 50 years before they reach a first world living standards we enjoy now. God only knows what we will have as the definition of first world by then.   The medical industry alone will drive a large portion of growth. Cyber security is going to be the next frontier in tech as the internet of things explode into our daily life.   I am not as weary about long term growth. We are always innovating and creating new markets. The beauty of the Sp500 is that it doesn't even have to be in the US to make money off it.", "\"Some technical indicators (e.g. Williams %R) indicate whether the market is overbought or oversold.   ... Every time a stock or commodity is bought, it is also sold. And vice versa. So how can anything ever be over-bought or over-sold? But I'm sure I'm missing something. What is it? You're thinking of this as a normal purchase, but that's not really how equity markets operate. First, just because there are shares of stock purchased, it doesn't mean that there was real investor buyer and seller demand for that instrument (at that point in time).  Markets have dedicated middlemen called Market Makers, who are responsible to make sure that there is always someone to buy or sell; this ensures that all instruments have sufficient liquidity.  Market Makers may decide to lower their bid on a stock based on a high number of sellers, or raise their ask for a high number of buyers. During an investor rush to buy or sell an instrument (perhaps in response to a news release), it's possible for Market Makers to accumulate a large number of shares, without end-investors being involved on both sides of the transaction.  This is one example of how instruments can be over-bought or over-sold. Since Williams %R creates over-bought and over-sold signals based on historical averages of open / close prices, perhaps it's better to think of these terms as \"\"over-valued\"\" and \"\"under-valued\"\".  Of course, there could be good reason for instruments to open or close outside their expected ranges, so Williams %R is just a tool to give you clues... not a real evaluation of the instrument's true value.\"", "\"Logic fail. The qty of shares is irrelevant. What matters is the value, which is, of course, quite high -- and, what's more, the P/E ratio, which is extremely favorable. Having worked in operations at Apple for 7 years, I can tell you that the company is very lean and efficient.  25% matching is extremely generous. 25% contribution rates are standard in corporate jobs (contribution rates are what maximum percentage of your pre-tax income you can opt to set aside into a 401K; this is different than matching). It absolutely is not bare bones to be given 25% matching. Although I no longer work at Apple, I still have my 401K, and the administration of it is good, as is the choice of funds. Back to the matching... It's free money. For every $1 you put in your 401K (pretax, btw), Apple puts in a quarter. Having worked in other corporations over my career, I can tell you that this level of matching is pretty much as good as it gets.   For a good part of the time I worked there I made around $30K (not in Retail, but in Operations, as mentioned before). I maxed out the Employee Stock Purchase Program contribution and mostly maxed out my 401K contribution. Now, 12 years later, my stock appreciated beyond my wildest expectations. I have made well over six figures on it over the years. If I never sold any, it would be worth over $500,000 by now. All that from 10% contributions on a salary that ranged from about $26K when I started out to about $46K when I left 7 years later. My 401K holdings are worth about $60K, I think, invested extremely conservatively. I have had it in money market funds since right before the 2008/2009 crash, which I anticipated.  So the investment benefits at Apple served me extremely well. My stock appreciation paid for my car, and it will soon cover the down payment on a house. I was essentially able to \"\"retire\"\" to be a stay-at-home-mom when my son was born, thanks to the safety net I have from my Apple stock.  Regarding health benefits...  I think you meant to say copays, not deductibles. When I was there, there were no copays. I forgot what the deductibles were, but for most routine visits, you wouldn't need to pay out of pocket. Annual physicals are included in the health plan, up to $250. The health plan works with various local providers to ensure that the $250 allotment will cover all expenses needed for an annual physical. This physical is separate and in addition to a women's health annual exam (pap smear/pelvic exam/etc) that is also included without copay. I'm pretty sure annual mammograms are covered. All prenatal visits are covered with zero copay. All child well checks, including immunizations, covered with zero copay. Two dental checks a year. Dental Xrays at regular intervals included. Annual vision exams and, I think $300 annually towards glasses or contacts included, IIRC.   Time off was pretty standard and accrued by the hour worked, which was nice. There was no \"\"you have to be with the company for X length of time\"\" before time off benefits began to accrue, or before any benefits kicked in, for that matter. By about Year 5, I had easily racked up enough vacation days to take 3 weeks off at a time. The longer you have been with the company, the faster your time off accrues. And each summer they'd offer a cash-out program, where you could double up on time off, where if you took off a week, you could opt to deplete your accrued vacation time by two weeks and get double pay for it. A lot of people liked this option.  The points for absenteeism thing seemed a bit silly -- and seemed to only have been implemented in one store and then only for a brief time. From what I gathered in the article, it was an experiment that failed miserably.  The other corporation I have spent a significant amount of time working at is Whole Foods Market, in their corporate office. While both Apple and Whole Foods always are selected as two of the top companies to work for by Forbes in their annual report, as far as benefits went, Apple's were far superior in most aspects. With respect to company culture, I personally found Whole Foods to be better, but that was sort of a personal preference. Both were dream jobs, and I consider myself very fortunate to have had the opportunity to work for two outstanding companies that both treated me very well.  Oh- and incidentally, Ron Johnson, who was VP of Retail at Apple from the inception of the stores until like a year ago, now is CEO of JC Penny, and, I suspect, is fully behind JCP's ad campaigns which include images of families with same-sex parents. JCP has stepped deliberately and full-on into what is, unfortunately, still a controversial topic and has taken a firm stand in support of all types of loving families. I have to wonder if part of this might have been inspired by the fact that Apple's new CEO, Tim Cook, is gay. Ron Johnson would have worked closely alongside Cook during his tenure. I met Ron once and found him to be a great guy, and I worked with the Retail operations folks from the time the stores launched. They were a great team that worked hard and were very sincere and dedicated. You could see his leadership reflecting in each member of the team.\"", "&gt; pay a premium to the enthusiastically complicit exchanges for the privilege of scalping those that do not.  I'm assuming you're talking about colocation. Can you tell me how colos enable them to scalp participants without a colo? Give me a breakdown.", "\"I wish you were right, but sadly, \"\"we the data\"\" have pretty much *no* ability to have any effect on Equifax; **That's** the real \"\"fuck you\"\" of this whole situation, *we* had zero choice in whether or not they tracked our data.   Now, more to your point... Can we *maybe* get the *actual* customers (banks, loan brokers, etc) to favor TransUnion over Equifax?  *Maybe*.  But you're missing the point entirely if you go that route.   The problem here isn't Equifax.  The problem here is that Equifax (and Experian, and Transunion, and LexisNexis, etc) is *allowed to exist* under US law in the first place.   Don't lobby your bank, lobby your **senator**.  They won't actually *care*, since Equifax pays them more than you do, but that's at least nominally \"\"more effective\"\" if we want to play pretend that our elected officials actually care what we think.\"", "The screen copy talks about disablity, so if you want to cut your leg off or so, this would work. Otherwise, yes, you can retire anytime now. However, you can only get social security benefits after you turn 60, and it will not be much. So if you have enough money around to feed yourself till you turn 60, and thereafter want to live on the meager benefits, then you can retire now.", "Well thats a natural monopoly, nobody needs competition in search engine or social websites, who uses two social websites if one has everyone in it anyway. Learn before you talk.  Some industries are born to be monopolies but the problem that people are arguing is that companies like amazon give you much better prices and deliver stuff to your house. This is different than normal monopoly situation where they increase the price to a higher one than the market equilibrium and cause welfare loss.  In this case for example, amazon actually kills all the retailers which are earning normal amounts of money anyway, uses underpaid workers for more profit, don't pay taxes to us government for more profit and basically takes away money from the buyers indirectly(who are very happy with their new x which was cheaper than retailer price)."]}
+{"query": "How to approach building credit without a credit card", "corpus": ["Ways to build credit without applying for credit cards: It takes some time for these types of actions to positively affect you.  I'd say at the very least 6 months.  You won't get the full benefit for several years.  However, the earlier you get started, the better."], "neg": ["\"In addition to all the points made in other answers, in some jurisdictions (including the UK where I live) the consumer credit laws require the lender to allow the borrower to pay off the loan at any time. If the lender charges interest and the borrower pays off the loan early then the lender loses the interest that would have been paid during the rest of the loan period. However if the actual interest is baked into the sale price of an item and the loan to pay for it is nominally \"\"0%\"\" then the borrower still pays all the interest even if they pay off the loan immediately. If you think this game is being played then you can ask for a \"\"cash discount\"\" (or similar wording: I once had problems with a car salesman who thought I meant a suitcase full of used £20s), meaning you want to avoid paying the interest as you are not taking a loan.\"", "Since the compounding period and payment period differs (Compounded Daily vs Paid Monthly), you need to find the effective interest rate for one payment period (month).   This means that each month you pay 0.33387092772% of the outstanding principal as interest.  Then use this formula to find the number of months:  Where PV = 21750, Pmt = 220, i = 0.0033387092772  That gives 120 Months.  Depending on the day count convention, (30/360 or 30.416/365 or Actual/Actual), the answer may differ slightly. Using Financial Calculator gives extremely similar answer.  The total cash paid in the entire course of the loan is 120 x $220 = $26,400", "The bigger problem isn't the people making career posts. It's that this subreddit has grown too big to have the intelligent conversation it once did. This subreddit has gone from being mostly finance professionals to now including the types you see in /r/economy and other idiots that are only tangentially interested in finance. I'm not sure what you can do about this, it's probably too late.", "The right answer is use it, but use it responsibly. The point of the credit report is to prove to potential creditors that you are a responsible person who pays their bills on time. If you don't use the new credit card, you can't prove that. However, of course there is a limit. If you max out the card, you have only proven that you are irresponsible with credit. Try to stay around 50% of your max limit. More is O.K., but never go over 89%. Always pay your bills on time. Always. Not just this new credit card, but all bills. The best way to ruin your credit is not paying your bills. Even if you are having a dispute with a company, pay the bill anyway to save your credit and then dispute the situation and try to get your money back. Prove to creditors that they can trust you and you'll have an excellent credit score.", "Except: it's a material concern at every company.  If the senior executives all quit at the same time, this is going to be problematic no matter what company we're discussing.  I wouldn't be surprised if most 10-Ks have similar generic language.", "Agreed. If you create a small sustainable biz for yourself, you create the freedom to pursue the hobby project ideas as well. You have a strong base which protects you.  A software biz like ours is WAY more tolerant than a job. Like when I got sick for 3 mos and couldn't work at ALL, we didn't grow, but we didn't collapse either. It pretty much coasted. That means we have way more free time than we think we do.", "This is a nice narrative, but the organizations I have operated in put a good amount of effort trying to de-bottleneck production issues by going straight to the front lines. My current org does an annual survey (with tons of open ended questions) and listening sessions around 5 year plans. Also every production employee gets a weekly 30 minute session with their direct report.  Now it takes some effort to separate signal from noise (yes, everyone wants to be paid more and receive frequent strategic communication).  Now grossly inefficient general and administrative costs that thrash bottom line .. we have that in spades!!"]}
+{"query": "Borrowing 100k and paying it to someone then declaring bankruptcy", "corpus": ["This is fraud and could lead to jail time. The vast majority of people cannot obtain such loans without collateral and one would have to have a healthy income and good credit to obtain that kind of loan to purchase something secured by a valuable asset, such as a home. Has this been done before?  Yes, despite it being the US, you may find this article interesting.     Hopefully, you see how the intent of this hypothetical situation is stealing."], "neg": ["Ultimately the question is more about your personality and level of discipline than about money.   The rational thing to do is hang on to your cash, invest it somewhere else, and pay off the 0% loan as late as possible without incurring penalties or interest.  Logically it's a no-brainer.  Problem is, we're humans, so there's a risk you'll slip up somewhere along the way and not pay off the loan in time.  How much do you trust yourself?", "\"I think the \"\"right\"\" way to approach this is for your personal books and your business's books to be completely separate. You would need to really think of them as separate things, such that rather than being disappointed that there's no \"\"cross transactions\"\" between files, you think of it as \"\"In my personal account I invested in a new business like any other investment\"\" with a transfer from your personal account to a Stock or other investment account in your company, and \"\"This business received some additional capital\"\" which one handles with a transfer (probably from Equity) to its checking account or the like. Yes, you don't get the built-in checks that you entered the same dollar amount in each, but (1) you need to reconcile your books against reality anyway occasionally, so errors should get caught, and (2) the transactions really are separate things from each entity's perspective. The main way to \"\"hack it\"\" would be to have separate top-level placeholder accounts for the business's Equity, Income, Expenses, and Assets/Liabilities. That is, your top-level accounts would be \"\"Personal Equity\"\", \"\"Business Equity\"\", \"\"Personal Income\"\", \"\"Business Income\"\", and so on. You can combine Assets and Liabilities within a single top-level account if you want, which may help you with that \"\"outlook of my business value\"\" you're looking for. (In fact, in my personal books, I have in the \"\"Current Assets\"\" account both normal things like my Checking account, but also my credit cards, because once I spend the money on my credit card I want to think of the money as being gone, since it is. Obviously this isn't \"\"standard accounting\"\" in any way, but it works well for what I use it for.) You could also just have within each \"\"normal\"\" top-level placeholder account, a placeholder account for both \"\"Personal\"\" and \"\"My Business\"\", to at least have a consistent structure. Depending on how your business is getting taxed in your jurisdiction, this may even be closer to how your taxing authorities treat things (if, for instance, the business income all goes on your personal tax return, but on a separate form). Regardless of how you set up the accounts, you can then create reports and filter them to include just that set of business accounts. I can see how just looking at the account list and transaction registers can be useful for many things, but the reporting does let you look at everything you need and handles much better when you want to look through a filter to just part of your financial picture. Once you set up the reporting (and you can report on lists of account balances, as well as transaction lists, and lots of other things), you can save them as Custom Reports, and then open them up whenever you want. You can even just leave a report tab (or several) open, and switch to it (refreshing it if needed) just like you might switch to the main Account List tab. I suspect once you got it set up and tried it for a while you'd find it quite satisfactory.\"", "\"Ah to be clear, \"\"bad customer\"\" here means someone that ends up costing the company more money than they are worth to you.  The article explictly says that a lot of the problems that Bob had were nothing to do with their product.\"", "\"Most other countries are worse off.    Your perception of what is a resource intensive lifestyle does not take into consideration future innovation or adaptation.    Government debt is large but not insurmountable.  Much of it is owned by the government itself (social security trust fund and the federal reserve) and by domestic banks.   The \"\"crumbling infrastructure\"\" claim is often made but is rarely articulated well so it's hard to respond to.    Entitlements is a bit more complicated an issue due to political gridlock, but I expect that at least minor changes will be made gradually that will help deal with this problem.  If not major reform, small things like pushing back the benefit age a year here and a year there, repealing benefits for the wealthy, reducing the size of cost of living adjustments, reducing the amount that is paid out to higher earning recipients, increasing the amount of yearly income that is subject to FICA...  These are piecemeal changes that both sides could agree to even in the current political climate.  Medicare is the bigger cost, but how to deal with that is difficult to determine considering what's going on with obamacare.  Municipal and state governments will not fail if they go bankrupt.  Most municipalities and states are able to balance a budget.  It can be done but in some place it isn't because politicians don't have enough backbone to say no.  When they go bankrupt and are unable to borrow money, they will have no choice and can blame their cuts on the banks who won't loan them money.  That is, unless the people running the federal government also have no backbone and decide to bail them out, in which case we will have an enormous case of moral hazard on our hands.  The economic dominoes in Europe and China are not damaging the core of their economies.  Unless Europe breaks apart violently and goes to war with itself or China has a civil war, the basic aspects of their economy that make them a valuable part of the global economy will not go away.  Their productive capacities will remain intact and we'll still want to buy stuff from each other.    The beauty of free market capitalism is that it's so adaptable and the fact that things are changing does not mean that everyone will be worse off.  Whether or not the US is above everyone else in the end is mostly irrelevant, but the fundamental aspects of the US economy that make it among the strongest in the world will not change because of these things.  Our workforce will remain highly educated, very productive and very innovative.  We have the best farmland in the world and a lot of it, enormous amounts of natural resources, a relatively flexible and adaptable economy and a tremendous amount of wealth.  There may be troubles related to certain institutions and governing bodies, but remember that those things are not the economy.  The economy is the people, the things they can make, the things they know, and the things that they can do.\"", "Are corporations not already passing along the cost of healthcare to the consumer?  When the employer pays, directly, for the employees health insurance, it goes directly into overhead costs.  Goods and service costs have to rise to meet that.  It's already happened.    Ideally, the healthcare savings would just offset the VAT.  Employee salaries probably wouldn't increase any, even ideally.", "On July 20, when you posted this question, AAPL was trading almost at 115.  The market charges an extra premium for buying an option that is in the money (or on the money like this case) over one that is out of the money.  In order for the 130 Call to be worth something the market has to go up 15 points. Otherwise you lose 100% of your premium. On the other hand with the 115 every point that the market goes up means that you recover some of that premium. It is much more likely that you recover part of your premium with the 115 than with the 130.  With the higher probability of losing part of the premium, the sellers are going to be reluctant to write the option unless they receive larger compensation.", "By studying. I wouldn't consider the statistics and math required for finance to be of the most difficult caliber, maybe a statistics major would be a nice extra to set a person ahead but I'd say just a couple intermediate courses would serve well for a finance career."]}
+{"query": "If a trendline or pattern breaks due to some bad news but it returns back what to do?", "corpus": ["There is a technique called the Elliott wave which explains these 'shocks'. The reversal directions you are questioning are part of the pattern, it is known as corrections. The Elliott wave is an indicator based on psychology of investors. Think about it this way, if you see a huge up trend what are you most likely to do, sell and make profit or continue, this is why there is a shock before it continues. Many people will sell to be safe, especially after hearing the bad news they won't risk it. By learning the Elliott wave you'll be able to make an educated decision on whether or not to stay or leave. Here are websites on the Elliott wave: http://stockcharts.com/school/doku.php?id=chart_school:market_analysis:elliott_wave_theory http://www.swing-trade-stocks.com/elliott-wave.html The Elliott wave is helpful in any time frame and works well with momentum. Hope this helps."], "neg": ["It's because trucks and SUVs can have way better margins. Automakers might make a few hundred bucks on a sedan vs $10,000 on a truck.   Truck and SUV price points are insane. Part of it can be blamed on the availability of credit.", "Cool! Financial IT is fun. Banks wouldn't run without us :).  I'm doing a Master's while working part time in IT in an investment bank. I'm kind of on the fence of if I should go for a more technical profile (software development) or business profile (IT business analysis). It's quite the different career tracks...", "Hello Wall Street!  I would like to remind you all once again that the march of computer automation will continue to take your jobs.  Put in those 100 hour weeks.  Kiss ass.  Discard your ethics.  Do whatever you want because in the end, you WILL be beaten by a $3000 machine.  You cannot win this battle.  Nobody in HISTORY has won this battle.    We'll see you soon!", "&gt; Say profits are 100mil, and a dividend is payed. Say 50 mil worth is payed out as dividend and 30 mil is kept as retained earnings for future investment.  This does not equate. Out of net income, it is only possible to either reinvest (retained earning) or payout (repurchase or dividend). You can't have a $20m gap there.  &gt; Can the remaining 20 mil be distributed to shareholders A and B, so that they both get 10mil each?  What makes them entitled to a separate, special dividend over the other shareholders?  &gt; Can certain shareholders be favored and get a bigger cut of profits than the dividends pay out is my question basically.  It kinda sounds like you're describing preferred equity, but doing it in a rather round-about way.", "Did you buy near the bottom? Suppose you did then the price is still 16% below. 50% fall and then 40% increase leaves a 16% gap. So there could still be upside. However, it appears that you are talking about a small-cap that is volatile. I wouldn't hold it. I would take the money and invest elsewhere. If you have a lot of shares and brokerage is less then sell 60% now and the remaining 40% on either 10-15% jump in price or if it falls by 5% from now. Too risky to hold longer-term.", "At the present time, businesses are facing serious threat from various sources. This is needless to say that, if there is a new brand wants to occupy a small space in market, it has to make an elusive effort while there are different brands have already taken their places.", "\"Wait...what? Do you live in backwards land? They've let free market reign in healthcare that is why prices are through the roof. The healthcare industry is immune to antitrust, and negotiating with government programs. There is no such thing as \"\"preventing single payer programs......it only works if there is a SINGLE overriding singlepayer program (yes they wont pass it), anything else doesnt over come the problems of a fractured buying pool.  Things they legislate is \"\"No negotiating policy\"\" ....and no.\""]}
+{"query": "Why are banks providing credit scores for free?", "corpus": ["I think the biggest reason is price; it's a lot cheaper now than it was to offer these.  That's because for the most part, when you get a credit score for free, you're not getting a true FICO score.  You're getting instead a VantageScore. VantageScore was created by the three credit bureaus, and as such they can offer it without paying Fair Isaac a licensing fee.  That makes it a lot cheaper to offer, and while it's not absolutely identical to FICO (or more accurately to any of the FICO provided scores) it's close enough for most peoples' purpose. And of course undoubtedly Fair Isaac has some price pressure on their side now that Vantage is big enough that many people see them as fungible.  As such they've had to make it easier, or they'd lose business - no longer being a monopolist. The other relevant piece here is that probably in many of these cases they're really just offering you what Experian would give you directly - so it's just a cross-marketing thing (where Experian, or perhaps another bureau, gets access to you as a customer so they can up-sell you ID theft insurance and whatnot, while the bank gets to offer the free score)."], "neg": ["The simple fact of the Matter is this, that the US will not attack NK because it has nuclear weapons, The Orange Tangerine may like to talk out of his ass all day long, its simply not something that is going to happen.  Countries that do not have nuclear weapons, get attacked and invaded, Iraq, Libya, Afghanistan, Syria, Crimea and soon unless they detonate a nuclear weapon and demonstrate the ability to deliver it . .Iran  It is a simple fact of life, it is important for anybody wishing for survival not to depend on the good wishes of a nation that is unable to recognize the Human right abuses and systemic genocide of the Palestinian people because of a handful of Jews that have them by the balls,, yet stand in front of the world and pretend to be the last bastion of Humanity and still lead the charge of Islamophobic hatred against all Muslims because the Israelis need to steal more land from the Palestinians. It has been 50years of Apartheid and ethnic cleansing and mass murder.  Its not about cute one liners pumpkin", "There is no clear answer, it might be or not be. Depends a lot on your situation. 1)Yes it is taxable but as Italy has a double taxation agreement with UK, you might not have to pay. You can get a detailed guidance on the HMRC website. 2) Apply here for a certificate of residence  3)You can only claim back if Italy taxes you more than UK would. If it is less than you will have to pay the remaining portion to HMRC. You do this in the self assessment form/tax return/call up HMRC. 4)Tell the truth, explain your whole scenario and don't withheld relevant information assuming you may lower you tax by doing so.", "Although I don't think you need to factor in risk tolerance to get the probabilities, I agree with JoeTaxpayer that you will need to factor in risk tolerance in order to make a practical decision about what to do.  In fact, I think that to make a practical decision you will need more than the specific probability you ask for you in the question; rather, you would like to see the complete probability distribution of possible outcomes. In other words, it's not enough to know that there is a 51% chance that investing will outperform paying down debt.  You actually need to know much it outperforms when it does outperform, and how much it underperforms when it underperforms.  As JoeTaxpayer's comment suggests, you might not choose to make an investment that had a 99% chance of outperforming debt payment by 1%, and a 1% chance of underperforming by 99%. I think it possible to address these questions by doing simulations.  This can be done even with a spreadsheet, but more flexibly with simple programming.  Essentially you can create some kind of probabilistic model of the various factors (e.g., chance that your investment will go up or down) and see what actually happens: how often you lose a lot of money, lose a little money, gain a little money, or gain a lot of money.  Then based on that you can consult your inner spirit animal to decide whether the probability distribution of possible gains outweighs that of possible losses.", "\"I haven't read the book and have no intention of reading it. This definitely looks like a forced savings plan with \"\"Whole Life Insurance\"\" as the theme – which is pretty bad for someone who is able to take care of his finances. It would be good for someone who is not very good with his finances and wants to be forced into savings, but then even for those people it would only help a little; there are enough clauses that would make things more bad for him. i.e. one can choose to take a loan, pay only interest etc. No book is going to help you build a savings habit. One has to realize and spend what is essential (it means not buying or doing tons of things) and putting quite a bit away for a rainy day. After this, comes investing wisely...\"", "There is no rule that says the dealer has to honor that deal, nor is there any that says he/she won't.  However, if you are thinking of financing through though the dealership they are likely to honor the deal. They PREFER you finance it. If you finance it through the dealer the salesman just got TWO sales (a car and a loan) and probably gets a commission on both. If you finance it through a third party it makes no difference to the dealer, it is still a cash deal to them because even though you pay off the car loan over years, the bank pays them immediately in full.", "3S Courier and Logistics in Singapore can offer the best services to the clients at the most affordable rates. They have designed services for the clients. They ensure that the delivery of the document or the parcel happens timely.The Same Day Delivery Service is also offered by the company which can be availed by paying extra charges. The clients can also Buy Carton Boxes Online for safe and secure packaging of their commodities and products.", "Those are some very broad questions and I don't think I can answer them completely, but I will add what I can. Barron's Finance and Investment Handbook is the best reference book I have found. It provides a basic description/definition for every type of investment available. It covers stocks, preferred stocks, various forms of bonds as well as mortgage pools and other exotic instruments. It has a comprehensive dictionary of finance terms as well. I would definitely recommend getting it.  The question about how people invest today is a huge one. There are people who simply put a monthly amount into a mutual fund and simply do that until retirement on one side and professional day traders who move in and out of stocks or commodities on a daily basis on the other."]}
+{"query": "UK student loans, early repayment/avoiding further debt", "corpus": ["\"I think you're right that from a pure \"\"expected future value\"\" perspective, it makes sense to pay this loan off as quickly as possible (including not taking the next year's loan). The new student loans with the higher interest rates have changed the balance enough that it's no longer automatically better to keep it going as long as possible. The crucial point in your case, which isn't true for many people, is that you will likely have to pay it off eventually anyway and so in terms of net costs over your lifetime you will do best by paying it off quickly. A few points to set against that, that you might want to consider: Not paying it off is a good hedge against your career not going as well as you expect, e.g. if the economy does badly, you have health problems, you take a career break for any reason. If that happens, you would end up not being forced to pay it off, so will end up gaining from not having done so voluntarily. The money you save in that case could be more valuable to you that the money you would lose if your career does go well. Not paying it off will increase your net cash earlier in life when you are more likely to need it, e.g. for a house deposit. Having more free cash could increase your options, making it possible to buy a house earlier in life. Or it could mean you have a higher deposit when you do buy, reducing the interest rate on the entire mortgage balance. The savings from that could end up being more than the 6% interest on the loan even though when you look at the loan in isolation it seems like a very bad rate.\""], "neg": ["\"myRA is a name for a proposal Obama made to make IRA more accessible to people who are employed but don't have access to the traditional employer-sponsored retirement plans. However, other than making IRA more accessible - there's nothing in that plan that doesn't exist already. You can open IRA yourself and deposit money there yourself. The only thing \"\"myRA\"\" proposal adds is an ability to deduct money automatically from your paycheck and deposit it into your IRA without you doing it manually. Bottom line - it is just a proposal, not an existing program, that makes things you're already doing easier for people who are not doing it yet.\"", "\"What does stupid have to do with it?  There's nothing unreasonable about the proposition, and frankly, the public has very little sympathy with organized labor right now.    \"\"Oh, you think your job is lousy?  Well so's mine, and I still owe fifty thousand on the degree I needed to get it, so suck it up.\"\"\"", "I wouldn't recommend trying to chase a good return on this money.  I'd just put it into a savings account of some sort.  If you can get a better interest rate with an online account, then feel free to do that.  I'd recommend using this money to pay for as much of college out of pocket as you can.  The more student loans you can avoid, the better. As @John Bensin said, trying to make money in the stock market in such a short time is too risky.  For this money, you want to preserve the principal to pay for school, or to pay down your loans when you get out. If you find you have more money than you need to finish paying for school, then I'd suggest setting some aside for an emergency fund, setting aside enough to pay your loans off when you're out of school, saving for future purchases (house, car, etc), and then start investing (maybe for retirement in a Roth IRA or something like that).", "Advertising in an essential tool for any sized business or individual who needs to promote their products or services. Advertising allows you to target a set group of individuals or a general population and publicize directly to them. Each business requires a different advertising strategy to complement their unique strengths and correspond with their goals.", "&gt;By 2037, the debt would be almost twice the size of the economy, the agency said. That would mean **higher interest rates**, slower economic growth and far more painful choices for lawmakers than they face today.  Japan is at 230% right now!  &gt; Japan 208.2 2011 est. **229.77%** 2011 Asia http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_public_debt  &gt;Bank of Japan Keeps Monetary Policy Unchanged Published on 5/23/2012 12:57:08 PM  | By TradingEconomics.com, Bank of Japan  &gt;At the Monetary Policy Meeting held on May 23rd, the Policy Board of the Bank of Japan decided, by a unanimous vote, to keep the uncollateralized overnight call rate at around 0 to 0.1 percent.  http://www.tradingeconomics.com/japan/interest-rate", "\"There should be no affect on your taxes. If you profit on the sale of a home, it does not matter whether you own the home fully or not. Selling a house with a mortgage on it will usually incur fees, \"\"like mortgage processing fees\"\". Paying off the mortgage is preferable because that will make the sale easier. When a bank is involved then they will function in the closing as a 3rd or 4th party, making everything more complicated. Not only that, they will charge you fees, for making them sit through a closing. The bank will require a lawyer. Guess who pays for their lawyer? You do. When you pay off a mortgage, none of this happens. You just pay the mortgage and the bank goes away. There are no lawyers and no fees. This makes it easier to sell the house and gives you full control over the sale.\"", "\"As long as you're willing to pay the taxes and the penalties, once you're no longer employed you're allowed to do whatever you want. You can always do an \"\"direct roll-over\"\" (See IRC Sec. 401(a)(31)(A) which mandates this) and then withdraw from another qualified account, thus creating a withdrawal, if they refuse to just mail you a check (Why would they care? Don't know). The match may have some vesting restrictions, though. Your own contributions - are yours to do with whatever you feel like. That said, just pointing out the obvious - it's a very bad idea. Unless you expect to die before you're 60 and don't want to leave a dime to your heirs, you would probably be better off leaving it in a tax-sheltered account. If the custodian is bad - just roll over elsewhere, there's tons of excellent IRA providers.\""]}
+{"query": "Asset allocation when retirement is already secure", "corpus": ["he general advice I get is that the younger you are the more higher risk investments you should include in your portfolio. I will be frank. This is a rule of thumb given out by many lay people and low-level financial advisors, but not by true experts in finance.  It is little more than an old wive's tale and does not come from solid theory nor empirical work.  Finance theory says the following: the riskiness of your portfolio should (inversely) correspond to your risk aversion.  Period. It says nothing about your age.  Some people become more risk-averse as they get older, but not everyone.  In fact, for many people it probably makes sense to increase the riskiness of their portfolio as they age because the uncertainty about both wealth (social security, the value of your house, the value of your human capital) and costs (how many kids you will have, the rate of inflation, where you will live) go down as you age so your overall level of risk falls over time without a corresponding mechanical increase in risk aversion. In fact, if you start from the assumption that people's aversion is to not having enough money at retirement, you get the result that people should invest in relatively safe securities until the probability of not having enough to cover their minimum needs gets small, then they invest in highly risky securities with any money above this threshold. This latter result sounds reasonable in your case.  At this point it appears unlikely that you will be unable to meet your minimum needs--I'm assuming here that you are able to appreciate the warnings about underfunded pensions in other answers and still feel comfortable.  With any money above and beyond what you consider to be prudent preparation for retirement, you should hold a risky (but still fully diversified) portfolio.  Don't reduce the risk of that portion of your portfolio as you age unless you find your personal risk aversion increasing."], "neg": ["\"One can generalize on Traditional vs Roth flavors of accounts, I suggest Roth for 15% money and going pretax to avoid 25% tax.  If the student loan is much over 4%, it may make sense to put it right after emergency fund.  For emergency fund priority - I'm assuming EF really requires 2 phases, the $2500 broken transmission/root canal bill, and the lose your job, or need a new roof level bills. I'm in favor of doing what let's you sleep well. I'm also quick to point out that if you owe $2500 at 18%, yet have $2500 in your emergency fund, you're really throwing away $450 in interest each year. There's an ongoing debate of \"\"credit card as emergency fund.\"\" No, I don't claim that your cards should be considered an emergency fund, per se, but I would prioritize knocking off the 18% debt as a high priority. Once that crazy interest debt is gone, fund the ER, and find a balance for savings and the next level ER, the 6-9mo of expenses one. One can choose to fund a Roth IRA, but keep the asset out of retirement calculations. It's simply an emergency account returning tax free interest, and if never used, it eventually is retirement money. A Roth permits withdrawal of deposited funds with no tax or penalty, just tracking it each year. This actually rubs some people the wrong way as it sounds like tapping your retirement account for emergencies. For my purpose, it's a tax free emergency fund. Not retirement, unless and until you are saving so much in the 401(k) you need more tax favored retirement money. I wrote an article some time ago, the Roth Emergency Fund which went into a bit more detail.  Last - keep in mind, this is my opinion. I can intelligently argue my case, but at some point, it's up to the individual to do what feels right. Paying 18% debt off a bit slower, say 4 years instead of 3, in favor of funding the matched 401(k), to me, you run the numbers, watch the 401(k) balance grow by 2X your pretax deposits, and see that in year 3, your retirement account is jump-started and far, far more than your remaining 18% cards. Those who feel the opposite and wish to be debt free first are going to do what they want. And the truth is, if this lets you sleep better at night, I'm in favor of it.\"", "Every year stories like this come out. Every year the US does not default on its debt. We all should know by now that the US, as a financially sovereign nation that issues its own currency, cannot default on its debt. This fearmongering is just a click-baity waste of time, and yes, a waste of money.", "That's different in that nobody pays him 46 million dollars in wages or salary. He is self employed and negotiates individual fees for his performances. This guy is almost certainly worth 46 million a year because he negotiates many fees amongst many paying clients. It's possible that a person receiving 1 salary from one employer is being overpaid but if you are dealing with dozens of employers it's unlikely that they are *all* overpaying market rates.", "And that's the rub, you didn't win a fucking thing. You are not part of a team. You are just brainwashed by the politics you choose to isolate yourself with. Trump won, not you, and he won on accident and on lying to people that supported him foolishly.  He was expecting to lose, and the day before and day of election Tuesday his campaign was pushing a narrative that democrats cheated to win.  We all fucking lost. You lost worse that I did, because you continue to put your hope in a lying scumbag who has no morals, scruples, or sense of decency whatsoever, and it is too painful to admit your monumental fuckup.", "An important risk is that the government may decide to change the rules. For example, prior to 2011, over the counter drugs like aspirin, Tylenol, Nyquil, etc. were eligible expenses. You could use your HSA money to buy as much as you wanted. Beginning in 2011, those rules changed. Now, if you want to spend your HSA money on Tylenol, you need a prescription for it. The value of HSA dollars was diminished in the sense that the universe of eligible expenses was diminished. No one knows what the HSA rules will be in the future. What will be eligible expenses? Who will be eligible providers? What kind of compliance paperwork will be required? What kind of fees will be imposed? Personally, I'm a great believer in HSAs. I've saved in one for years. But remember that the government makes the rules regarding their use. They've changed the rules to the detriment of HSA owners at least once; I won't be surprised if it continues.", "You signed a contract to pay the loan.  You owe the money.   Stories of people being arrested over defaulted student loans are usually based in contempt of court warrants when the person failed to appear in court when the collection agency filed suit against them. Explore student loan forgiveness program. Research collections and bankruptcy and how to deal with collection agencies.  There are pitfalls in communicating with them which restart the clock on bad debt aging off the credit report, and which can be used to say that you agreed to pay a debt.  For instance, if you make any sort of payment on any debt, a case can be made that you have assumed the debt.  Once you are aware of the pitfalls, contact the collection agency (in writing) and dispute the debt.  Force them to prove that it is your debt.  Force them to prove that they have the right to collect it.  Force them to prove the amount.  Dispute the fairness of the amount.   Doubling your principal in 6 years is a bit flagrant.   So, work with the collectors, establish that the debt is valid and negotiate a settlement.  Or let it stay in default. Your credit report in the US is shot.  It will be a long time before the default ages off your report.  This is important if you try to open a bank account, rent an apartment, or get a job in the US.  These activities do not always require a credit report, but they often do.  You will not be able to borrow money or establish a credit card in the US. Here's a decent informational site regarding what they can do to collect the loan.  Pay special attention to Administrative Wage Garnishment.  They can likely hit you with that one.  You might be unreachable for a court summons, but AWG only requires that the collectors be able to confirm that you work for a company that is subject to US laws. Update:  I am informed that federally funded student loans are not available to international students.  AWG is only possible for debts to the federal government.  Private companies must go through the courts to force settlement of debt.  OP is safe from AWG.", "I really think it's zoning restrictions and a general move back toward living in big cities. Larger cities are pretty notorious for having terribly restrictive zoning requirements. When you combine limited space, with increasing population, and restrictions on building then the outcome is fairly predictable."]}
+{"query": "What happens to class action awards for a stock in an IRA?", "corpus": ["\"In most cases, if you are a member of the class the law-firm will contact you via postal mail to notify you of the class action and give you an opportunity to opt-in or opt-out of participating in any settlement that happens.  More often than not, they take the opt-out approach, meaning that if you don't say you want out of the class it is assumed that you agree with the complaints as defined in the class action and would like to receive your portion of the money if there is a settlement.  If you haven't gotten such a letter and you think you should have, it is a good idea to contact the law firm. How do you find the law firm? Usually some Googling on \"\"class action\"\" and the name of the defendant company will get you there. Also, check the legal section of the classifieds of the local newspaper, they sometimes advertise them there.  Typically they aren't hard to find because it is in the law firm's best interest to have everyone sign on to their class action for a number of reasons including: If you have a lot of people who are supposedly aggrieved, it makes the defendant look more likely to be guilty, and more participants can equate to higher settlement amounts (for which the law firm gets a percentage). That is why you see non-stop ads on daytime TV for lawyers marketing class action cases and looking for people who took this drug, or had that hip implant. Once a settlement occurs and you are a member of that class, there are a number of ways you might get your piece including: - A credit to your account. - A check in the mail. - A coupon or some other consideration for your damages (lame) - A promise that they will stop doing the bad thing and maybe some changes (in your favor) on the terms of your account. A final note: Don't get your hopes up. The lawyers are usually the only ones who make any substantial money from these things, not the class members. I've been paid settlements from lots of these things and it is rare for it to be more than $25, but the time the spoils are divided. I've gotten NUMEROUS settlements where my share was less than a dollar. There are some decent resources on ClassAction.com, but beware that although the site has some good information, it is primarily just an ad for a lawfirm. Also, note that I am not affiliated with that site nor can I vouch for any information contained there. They are not an impartial source, so understand that when reading anything on there.\""], "neg": ["I've had fairly extensive experience using Entropay, with a few hiccups along the way. I suspect your transaction or repeated top-ups has been flagged as 'suspicious' activity. Read: potentially fraudulent or money laundering.  You've also tried to buy expensive electronic goods, a common use of fraud/laundering. Finally, Entropay does NOT provide address validation. Again, with laptops being a common use for fraud, it is more than likely Lenovo attempted to do an address validation on your card details, which failed and may have led to the hold. How to resolve it? You will probably need to provide documentation to Entropay including proof of identity and where you live.", "Great question. Surprisingly, stock returns and GDP growth are mostly unrelated. In fact, they are slightly inversely correlated when you look across countries. Consider a firm that earns $100 on average per year with zero growth. If investors apply a 10% discount rate to this firm, the company will have a market value of $100/10% = $1,000. If it continues to earn $100 per year, it will produce 10% returns despite zero growth in earnings. You can see that realized returns are largely a function of the return investors demand for putting their money in risky assets.  I say mostly unrelated because an increase in GDP growth may increase our firms earnings (though the relationship to earnings per share is muddied by new share issuances, buybacks, M&amp;A, etc.). But you can see from the above example that returns can vastly exceed growth in perpetuity.", "Do you mean, like for instance to steal their money?  There is a way to wrestle control away from the 0.1%, but it will seem perfectly counter-intuitive to you. that would be to get the federal government out of the economy. Cut regulations, eliminate subsidies, shrink the federal government. The rich and powerful stay rich and powerful by harnessing the power of the Federal government", "\"I haven't seen this addressed anywhere else, so I'll make a small answer to add on to the great ones already here. Money isn't the only way a person can contribute to a relationship. Time and effort are valuable contributions. Who runs the household? Who cooks, cleans, does laundry? How will you share these duties? My husband and I have a couple of rules. One of which is that we don't keep count. \"\"I did dishes, so you do laundry\"\". \"\"I made coffee last time, so now it's your turn\"\". \"\"I paid this, so you pay that\"\". That's not allowed.  I happen to make ~4x as much as my husband, but I work 4x the hours (he's part time at the moment). So, he does the dishes, he cooks, he does laundry, he runs the household. Do I value him less? No! I value him more, because he is part of the team, and he feeds me coffee while I work (we have our own business). Even though I make so much more than him, we still split everything down the middle. Because his contribution to this relationship, to this household, is so much more than just money. And I value him. I value his contribution.  At the end of the day, you are a team - and if you split hairs over finances, you'll find yourself splitting hairs over everything.\"", "&gt; The European economy was not utterly doomed before the Euro, therefore the fall of the Euro does not doom their economy.  I'm not sure how that's related at all.  Just because at some random point in time, the European economy was doing OK, doesn't mean that it will definitely be ok again in the future after a jarring multi-national currency shift.  There are tons of other factors in play.  First of all, who's going to accept drachma again?  What is it worth?  What about pesata and lira?  These currencies haven't been used in over a decade.  Who is going to value them?  Who is going to accept them?  What happens when the Greeks default?  When their pension checks start bouncing?  This is what Germany is fearing.  Who is going to buy their products when there is a major currency crisis going on?", "I suspect that the times you are referring to are those times when there is relatively low volumes of foreign exchange trading.  Lower volumes of trading make it possible for large orders to have a disproportionate effect on the market price.  This implies that the times to avoid will be the times with the lowest relative volumes.  This will occur on the cusp between the New York market winding down and the Asia/Tokyo market revving up. This will be in the hours preceding Tokyo's opening at 06:00 Tokyo time, so the time to avoid is about 04:00-06:00 Tokyo time, or about 20:00-22:00 GMT (if I've worked out the time difference correctly). Foreign exchange is a 24 hour, global market.  Although each of the three main trading centres - London, New York, Asia - will operate 24 hours a day, they will maintain only a skeleton staff outside of normal working hours.  The time difference between London and New York is only 5 hours, so there is no period of time when both centres are operating with a skeleton staff.  The time difference between London and Tokyo is 8 hours, so again there is no period of time when both centres are operating with a skeleton staff.  The time difference between New York and Tokyo is 13 hours.  This does include a period where both centres are operating with a skeleton staff, as well as London operating on a skeleton staff.  Thus, in the couple of hours immediately preceding Tokyo's opening for the regular trading day there is minimal coverage in each of the three main trading centres.  As mentioned above, this is the time when large orders can have a disproportionate effect on fx rates and so this is the time to avoid.", "Getting about a dollar more per day is the difference between starving and not starving for many people. If you compare that to the alternative without globalization, that is: not getting a dollar a day and starve, that's good. The author isn't comparing globalization with pre globalization, he's comparing globalization with his fantasy, and calling the reality outside of his fantasy a lie. What a visionary.  And I'm so bloody tired of people not understanding resources. If these 63 people would throw their money to the poor that wouldn't make food magically appear, that would just make food prices go up, leaving the poor with as much food, but a bunch of useless paper-scraps as well.  for the 100:th time: communism doesn't work."]}
+{"query": "can the government or debt collectors garnish money from any bank account to which the debtor has access?", "corpus": ["There is a difference between an owner and a signer. An owner is the legal owner of the funds. A signer has access to withdraw the funds. In most cases, when a new personal account is opened the name is added as an owner&signer. However, that is not always the case. A person could be an owner, but not a signer, in a custodial arrangement. For example, a minor child may be an owner only on their account with a custodial parent listed as a signer. The minor could not withdraw from the account. A person could be a signer, but not an owner, in a business or estate/trust account. The business or estate would be the owner with individuals listed as signers only. The business employees do not own the funds, they are only allowed to withdraw and disburse the funds on behalf of the company. The creditor can only garnish/withhold funds that are owned by the indebted. If the second person on the account is only a signer, those funds cannot be withheld as part of a judgment against the second person (they don't own those funds). However, simply titling the second person as a signer only is not sufficient. If you share access with the second person and allow them to spend the money for their own benefit, they are no longer just a signer. They have become an owner because you are sharing your funds with them. Think of the business relationship as an example. The employee is a signer so they can withdraw funds and pay business expenses, like the electric bill. If the employee withdrew funds and bought herself a new dress, she is stealing because she does not own those funds. If the second person on the account buys things for themselves, or transfers some of the money into their own account, they are demonstrating that more than a signer-only relationship exists. A true signer-only relationship is where the individual can only withdraw funds on the owner's behalf. For example, the owner is out of town and needs a bill paid, the signer can write a check and pay the bill for the owner. A limited power of attorney may be worth looking into. With a limited POA, the owner can define the scope and expiration of the power of attorney. With this arrangement, the second person becomes an executor of the owner under certain circumstances. For example, you could write a power of attorney that states something like: John Smith is hereby granted the limited power to withdraw funds from account 1234, on deposit at Anytown Bank, for the purpose of paying debts and obligations and otherwise maintain my estate in the event of my incapacitation or inability to attend to my own affairs. This Power of Attorney shall expire on it's fifth anniversary unless renewed. If the person you have granted the power of attorney abuses their access, you could sue them and you would only have to demonstrate that they overstepped the scope of their power."], "neg": ["\"When Laurence Olivier took the role of Douglas Macarthur in the Unification Church's filming of Inchon, he told the press, \"\"People ask me why I'm playing in this picture. The answer is simple: Money, dear boy.\"\" Banking systems are typically decades old and subject to innumerable legal and technical restrictions. Moving money more quickly from one client's account to another would definitely be in the clients' interest, but\"", "I've done several deals in excess of that amount. However, I am confused what you are looking for exactly. Typically those amounts are syndicated and presented via a pitch deck to investors to secure financing. Is an example pitch deck what you are looking for? If not, are you looking for the actual legal agreement? Or are you looking for the credit memo? Think I can point you in the right direction either way. Best chance to find what you are looking for is to check comparable companies investor relations materials and sec filings.", "Read his press release. It's bullshit 90% of time. Musk trying to push meme that solar roof are cheaper than regular shingle when in fact it's 10 times more expensive.   Model 3 is selling for $35,000 base is a joke. It needs $5000 autopilot upgrade, $1500 paint upgrade to be competitive.  Model 3 begin production this week yet strangely all cars are sold to Tesla employees for testing.  Telsa can't even solve it [ridiculous parking problem](http://www.dailymail.co.uk/news/article-4403480/Tesla-parking-nightmare-employees-California.html). I don't have faith in the manufacturing quality of their products.", "\"The Facebook ad sales aren't \"\"concrete\"\" enough for you?  Look dummy, we know for a fact that Russia interfered with the election.  No serious person disputes that.  What we don't know is how far their efforts went, but that's what we should expect because until he's done building his case, Mueller isn't going to reveal what he knows.  At this point, while it's still somewhat reasonable to be skeptical about the extent of Russian interference, denying that it happened at all just makes you look stupid or insane.\"", "I was being sarcastic. Student loan crash is a major circle jerk in some Financial subs  If anything, it's more likely to manifest itself as OP described. Economic growth is going to be lower is a substantial portion of the populus is servicing debt than consuming goods.", "It is important to determine a constructing  and good inspector can suggest you on any precise troubles and feasible methods of repair. Get the coolest inspections group by means of Assured Building Inspections, we've got proper fantastic enjoy of the inspection the constructing. As a home consumer, you’re cautioned to have interaction an expert to undertake a pre-buy building inspection on a belongings earlier than you make a decision to buy. The motive of the property inspections is to understand any substantial structural damage, assets defects, or conditions likely to motive similarly damage. Pre-purchase assets  inspections will likely be in reality one in all the largest investments you may make in your existence.", "Step back and take a deep breath. Pay your mortgage. repeat 1 and 2 monthly until equity > mortgage."]}
+{"query": "What is Fibonacci values?", "corpus": ["Usually when a stock is up-trending or down-trending the price does not go up or down in a straight line. In an uptrend the price may go up over a couple of days then it could go down the next day or two, but the general direction would be up over the medium term. The opposite for a downtrend. So if the stock has been generally going up over the last few weeks, it may take a breather for a week or two before prices continue up again. This breather is called a retracement in the uptrend. The Fibonacci levels are possible amounts by which the price might retract before it continues on its way up again. By the way 50% is not actually a Fibonacci Retracement level but it is a common retracement level which is usually used in combination with the Fibonacci Retracement levels."], "neg": ["What I ended up doing was finding where each ticker of Novo was registered (what exchange), then individually looking up the foreign taxation rules of the containing country.  Luckily, most companies only have a few tickers so this wasn't too hard in the end.", "This right here is the mindset of the Democrat party (and why I will never vote for one until it changes).  It's class warfare.  Somehow people that have less money are worth more than people with money (even if they earned it through hard work).    I guess it pays to be a lazy asshole that leeches off the system.", "\"You absolutely, positively can land in jail in the United States of America for an unpaid, NON-governmental debt: \"\"In 2011, Robin Sanders was driving home when she saw the blue and red lights flashing behind her. She knew she had not fixed her muffler, and believed that was why she was being pulled over. She thought she might get a ticket.Instead, Sanders, who lives in Illinois, was arrested and taken to jail.As she was booked and processed, she learned that she had been jailed because she owed debt — $730 to be precise, related to an unpaid medical bill. Unbeknownst to her, a collection agency had filed a lawsuit against her, and, having never received the notice instructing her to appear, she had missed her date in court.\"\" So, a private company is able to marshal the power of the State to arrest a person for a non-criminal act: being in debt. https://www.themarshallproject.org/2015/02/24/debtors-prisons-then-and-now-faq#.kzmmbtcOZ\"", "Just short GS.  http://www.google.com/finance?q=gs  Much more fun.  That list looks like a global macro short list. Shorting XOM, JNJ are systemic risk plays.  The guys that stand out for specific risk: INTC AMZN ABT LMT BMY  AMGN  CMG AVB, I stopped reading after that.  fundamentally I would long INTC as them and AMD are the market for CPU's. Maybe people are betting against pc's...   AMZN has a retardedly high facebook like P/E.  I don't know enough about most of the risk.", "Money itself has no value. A gold bar is worth (fuzzy rushed math, could be totally wrong on this example figure) $423,768.67. So, a 1000 dollars, while worthless paper, are a token saying that you own %.2 of a gold bar in the federal reserve. If a billion dollars are printed, but no new gold is added to the treasury, then your dollar will devalue, and youll only have %.1 percent of that gold bar (again, made up math to describe a hypothetical). When dollars are introduced into the economy, but gold has not been introduced to back it up, things like the government just printing dollars or banks inventing money out of debt (see the housing bubble), then the dollar tokens devalue further. TL;DR: Inflation is the ratio of actual wealth in the Treasury to the amount of currency tokens the treasury has printed.", "Since you are not starting with a lot of cash the commissions may eat into your account. So go with somebody that has no inactivity fee and low/free commission. I think there are number of sites and the ING sharebuilder.com comes to mind. Scottrade also one of the cheaper ones that i used.", "Wow, I had never heard of this before but I looked into it a bit and Mikey was spot on. It seems that if you don't pay attention to the fine print when making credit card purchases (as most of us tend to skip) many companies have stipulations that allow continued charges if they are recurring fees (monthly, yearly, etc.) even after you have cancelled the card."]}
+{"query": "GnuCash, how do I book loan from credit card, being paid back with salary? [duplicate]", "corpus": ["\"When you pay the flight, hotel, conference attendance fees of $100: When you repay the credit card debt of $100: When you receive the gross salary of $5000: Your final balance sheet will show: Your final income statement will show: Under this method, your \"\"Salary\"\" account will show the salary net of business expense. The drawback is that the $4900 does not agree with your official documentation. For tax reporting purposes, you report $5000 to the tax agency, and if possible, report the $100 as Unreimbursed Employee Expenses (you weren't officially reimbursed). For more details see IRS Publication 529.\""], "neg": ["\"You avoid pattern day trader status by trading e-mini futures through a futures broker. The PDT rules do not apply in the futures markets. Some of the markets that are available include representatives covering the major indices i.e the YM (DJIA), ES (S&P 500) and NQ (Nasdaq 100) and many more markets.  You can take as many round-turn trades as you care to...as many or as few times a day  as you like. E-mini futures contracts trade in sessions with \"\"transition\"\" times between sessions. -- Sessions begin Sunday evenings at 6 PM EST and are open through Monday evening at 5 PM EST...The next session begins at 6 pm Monday night running through Tuesday at 5 PM EST...etc...until Friday's session close at 5 PM EST. Just as with stocks, you can either buy first then sell (open and close a position) or short-sell (sell first then cover by buying). You profit (or lose) on a round turn trade in the same manor as you would if trading stocks, options, ETFs etc. The e-mini futures are different than the main futures markets that you may have seen traders working in the \"\"pits\"\" in Chicago...E-mini futures are totally electronic (no floor traders) and do not involve any potential delivery of the 'product'...They just require the closing of positions to end a transaction.  A main difference is you need to maintain very little cash in your account in order to trade...$1000 or less per trade, per e-mini contract...You can trade just 1 contract at a time or as many contracts as you have the cash in your account to cover.   \"\"Settlement\"\" is immediate upon closing out any position that you may have put on...No waiting for clearing before your next trade.  If you want to hold an e-mini contract position over 2 or more sessions, you need to have about $5000 per contract in your account to cover the minimum margin requirement that comes into play during the transition between sessions... With the e-minis you are speculating on gaining from the difference between when you 'put-on' and \"\"close-out\"\" a position in order to profit. For example, if you think the DJIA is about to rise 20 points, you can buy 1 contract. If you were correct in your assessment and sold your contract after the e-mini rose 20 points, you profited $100. (For the DJIA e-mini, each 1 point 'tick' is valued at $5.00)\"", "So nothing preventing false ratings besides additional scrutiny from the market/investors, but there are some newer controls in place to prevent institutions from using them. Under the DFA banks can no longer solely rely on credit ratings as due diligence to buy a financial instrument, so that's a plus. The intent being that if financial institutions do their own leg work then *maybe* they'll figure out that a certain CDO is garbage or not.  Edit: lead in", "\"I'm sorry, I find it hard to believe that a prestigious firm would just \"\"give\"\" out work to some random person to do for free. The companies he's trying to get into aren't some mom and pop shops, and you don't \"\"infiltrate\"\" them by being friendly with janitors.  I'm not saying your advice is bad. I just don't think it applies to MBB.\"", "www.earnings.com is helpful thinkorswim's thinkDesktop platform has a lot of earnings information tied with flags on their charts they are free.", "Ask them to send a SWIFT payment [aka International Wire]. You would need to give them your bank details, essentially Bank Account, Bank Name & Address, SWIFT BIC, etc. Almost all Public Sector Bank and all leading Private scetor banks are members of SWIFT and can give you a the SWIFT BIC. If you are not sure about other party, it would be wise to open a new account and give the details of this account rather than your normal account.", "Probably because it's a question of Excel vs Access, not VBA vs SQL. You probably don't need VBA for any of the calcs that the OP mentions.  Excel is the one tool everyone uses in Finance. CR and SSRS require tools and permissions that the average guy simply won't have, and a level of expertise that is not useful for most front/middle-office analysis work.  I usually see these done in Excel. SSRS and CR seem like way overkill for something done trivially and transparently in Excel, whose presentation will change frequently anyway.  Depending on what OP is talking about, analysis is not reporting, and flexibility and transparency usually win. Especially when you want to poke around the underlying data and iterate with other people.  SSRS and CR only make sense when you know what you're looking for, that the data is appropriate for it and you don't expect it to change.", "Dividends. There are blue chip companies that have paid and raised their dividends for 20 or more years. As an example: Altria (MO). There are also ETFs that specialize in such stocks such as SDY."]}
+{"query": "Are stock prices likely drop off a little bit on a given friday afternoon?", "corpus": ["It is called the Monday Effect or the Weekend Effect. There are a number of similar theories including the October Effect and January Effect. It's all pretty much bunk. If there were any truth to traders would be all over it and the resulting market forces would wipe it out. Personally, I think all technical analysis has very little value other than to fuel conversations at dinner parties about investments. You might also consider reading about Market efficiency to see further discussion about why technical approaches like this might, but probably don't work."], "neg": ["citation obtained from this piece: [The Mindless Harm of Economic Sanctions](https://consortiumnews.com/2017/08/27/the-mindless-harm-of-economic-sanctions/)  Russia update: [Russian GDP could grow 2%-3% in 2017 - Volodin](http://www.interfax.com/newsinf.asp?id=773931)  [Visa, Boeing, Ford and other US-based giants stand against the introduction of further sanctions against Russia, CNN reported with reference to a source in US Congress.](https://np.reddit.com/r/russia/comments/6wfptm/visa_boeing_ford_and_other_usbased_giants_stand/)  [China says sanctions won't help as Trump targets Venezuela](http://www.euronews.com/2017/08/28/china-says-sanctions-wont-help-as-trump-targets-venezuela)  [The European Commission has again raised concerns over proposed US sanctions on Russia, as the bill is passed by the US House of Representatives. It is feared the ploy will damage EU energy independence.](http://www.euronews.com/2017/07/26/european-commission-concerned-as-russia-sanctions-bill-passes-in-us-congress)  [Germany's economics minister implores the US president to step up and discuss a joint approach to Russia in an exclusive commentary for Handelsblatt Global's sister publication.](https://global.handelsblatt.com/opinion/lets-talk-about-sanctions-808740)", "When I was pursuing my Business Degree in Canada we were told the standard notice period is 2 weeks on both sides. This means your employer is required to give you at least two weeks notice and you are required to give it as well. If you violate your notice requirement the employer can sue you for lost revenues and etc. for that time period. The converse side is if your employer failed to provide you with sufficient notice you could sue for lost wages for that time frame as well. I'm sure you can contractually agree to more than the legal minimum of two weeks.", "This sort of open data about government budgets and finances is sometimes referred to as Government 2.0, or Gov 2.0.  There are many countries who have their own open data websites. Several super-national entities also have open data about government expenditures available to the public. They aggregate information from multiple countries. The United Nations, the European Union and the World Bank are all reliable sources of open data, compiled on one website. Here's a list of some of the major open data government websites: U.S.A. Main open data site Data catalog How to access Open Data  United Nations Data catalog  European Union Open Data portal", "“First mover Advantage doesn’t go to the company that starts up, it goes to the company that scales up.” - Reid Hoffman  It's also important to note that for companies that copy a business that has a strong local component, like SpotHero, AirBnB, Uber, etc it's more of an operations game than winner takes all.  I think the general rule of thumb is that it's not always best to be first to market, as new competitors can let you take the majority of the risk, demonstrate that there is a market and strategically enter the market as a new entrant.   For example;  Friendster &gt; MySpace &gt; Facebook  Zimride &gt; Lyft &gt; Uber", "Non-target undergrad in the south, but I networked with right people. Through the finance clubs I got an equity research role for the school's investment fund and leveraged that for an interview at a home developer but the partners there ultimately went with someone else. They happened to be investors at the firm I currently work at and thought my background would make me a good fit. Once I started working there, I took on as many projects/responsibilities as I could. I'm actually in the process of partnering up with the trader to take on some outside investors and get his algos running. He's been trading for ~25 years and I couldn't believe what his returns were at first, so I'm fairly excited to work with him.", "This is not a supply side issue (bank), but a demand side (small business) and there is simply no demand.  Bank CEOs have been repeating that there is just no interest in borrowing right now, they would love to lend, but businesses are not taking the loans.    Businesses are trying to firm up their balance sheets and with concerns of a recession looming most small business owners don't want to borrow and risk defaulting.", "You may want to dive into the various scandals and further hefty settlements between blue chip brands and agency networks here. Ask around if Dentsu Aegie finances enjoyed being honest to their clients as to where the money was going and what kind of online advertising was actually in place, just to name a specific example.  Of course online ads find positive outcomes for lots of businesses. You don’t expect any less when you see Google revenues to be honest. It still doesn’t mean that the whole tracking and private information dragging framework isn’t wrong or that so many web experiences aren’t soiled by intrusive and nasty ads."]}
+{"query": "HELOC vs. Parental Student Loans vs. Second Mortgage?", "corpus": ["\"Thank God you have your child back, it is so awesome that you finally found a medical treatment that worked.  It must have been a truly trying time in your lives.   That situation is an important template in personal finance.  Through no fault of your own, a series of events occurred that caused you to spend far more money then you anticipated.  Per your post this was complicated by lost income due to economic situations.   What is to say that this does not happen again in the future?  While we can all hope that our child does not get sick, there are other events that could also fit into this template. Because of this I hate all options you present.  Per your post, you are pretty thin with free cash flow and have high income, and yet you are looking to borrow more.  That is a recipe for disaster with it being made worse as you are considering putting your home at risk. The 20K per year per kid sounds like a live at the university state school; or, a close by private school.  Your finances do not support either option.  There are times when the word \"\"No\"\" is in order when answering questions.   Doing a live at home community college to university will cost you a total of about 30K per kid rather than the 80K you are proposing.  Doing this alone will greatly reduce the risk you are attempting to assume.  Doing that and having your child work some, you could cash flow college.  That is what I would recommend. Given that you are so thin, you will also have to put constraints on college attendance.  No changing major three times, only majors with an employable skills, and studying before partying.  It may be worth it to wait a year of two before attending if a decision cannot be made. I was in a similar situation when my son started college.  High income, but broke.  He worked and went to a community college and was able to pay for the bulk of it himself.  From there he obtained a job with a healthy salary and completed his degree at the University.  It took him a little longer, but he is debt free and has a fantastic work ethic.\""], "neg": ["That is mostly true, in most situations when there are more buy orders than sell orders (higher buy volume orders than sell volume orders), the price will generally move upwards and vice versa, when there are more sell orders than buy orders (higher sell volume orders than buy volume orders), the price will generally move downwards. Note that this does not always happen, but usually it does. You are also correct that for a trade to take place a buyer has to be matched with a seller (or the buy volume matched with the sell volume). But not all orders get executed as trades. Say there are 50 buy orders in the order book with a total volume of 100,000 shares and the highest buy order is currently at $10.00. On the other side there are only 10 sell orders in the order book with total volume of 10,000 shares and the lowest sell order is currently $10.05. At the moment there won't be a trade unless a new buyer or seller enters the market to match the opposing side, or an existing order gets amended upper or lower to match the opposing side. With more demand than supply in the order books what will be the most likely direction that this stock moves in? Most likely the price will move upwards. If a new buyer sees the price moving higher and then looks at the market depth, they would most likely place an order closer to the lowest sell order than the current highest buy order, say $10.01, to be first in line in case a market sell order is placed on the market. As new buy orders enter the market it drives the price higher and higher until the buy orders dry up.", "In 2015 there's a $5.43M (That's million, as in 6 zeros) estate exemption. Even though it's $14K per year with no paperwork required, if you go over this, a bit of paperwork will let you tap your lifetime exemption. There's no tax consequence from this.  The Applicable Federal Rate is the minimum rate that must be charged for this to be considered a loan and not a gift. DJ's answer is correct, otherwise, and is worth knowing as there are circumstances where the strategy is applicable. If the OP were a high net worth client trying to save his estate tax exemption, this (Dj's) strategy works just fine.", "\"Agreed, the mix is best, at least as it has been done in Northern Europe. In the U.S., not so much a success.  The problems with capitalism are manifold: It does not scale well; it corrupts political systems where the intent and desire is for a society to govern itself; it willingly sacrifices any and all ethical considerations to the impulses of greed by the rich-of-the-moment; it has such a short-term view of the future that nothing gets fixed or improved beyond more money for the rich-of-the-moment, which is usually referred to as \"\"progress.\"\"  Capitalism only works when it's kept on a short, completely transparent leash; as soon as opacity and freedom to cheat are allowed, everything else shortly goes to shit. Capitalism and governance are forces in opposition and as for allowing capitalists to govern, well, look at the U.S. these past few decades and you see the steady degradation of everything except the coffers of the extremely wealthy. The final joke's on them though: Wealth never out-survives the source of it's creation: U.S. wealth will die with the U.S. or be stolen by the places where it's hidden away.\"", "Maybe the society will evolved into Wall-E's society where robots take care of everything and human just sit and get fat or more time to spend on creative tasks like creating a Mega-Gozilla!  Why do people always assumed the worst when the trend of automation/technology advance is inevitable.", "As always, the most important info is near the bottom: &gt; **Smith revealed that Equifax missed an opportunity to prevent the breach.** In early March, the Department of Homeland Security alerted Equifax about a critical vulnerability in its software. The company sent out an internal email requesting that the problem be fixed, but that was not done, Smith told lawmakers. By May, hackers found the software vulnerability", "\"I think your problem is using the word \"\"drone business\"\" to encompass self driving vehicles (trucks) and air based single delivery drones (drones).    It's funny, we don't even have good language worked out for this stuff, at least not in the public sphere.\"", "Because the population of NYC was shy of 7 million in the 1930s, now it's over 8.5.    If government weren't corrupt, they would have issued new medallions to meet the demands of a growing city.  But they were invariably entrenched with and thus beholden to the monopoly they created, so did nothing while medallion prices skyrocketed over a million dollars.    Remember that a medallion is an artificial shortage and a barrier to entry."]}
+{"query": "New York State - NY Tax on Foreign Sourced Income for NY Non-Resident", "corpus": ["\"For Non-Resident filers, New York taxes New York-sourced income. That includes: real or tangible personal property located in New York State   (including certain gains or losses from the sale or exchange of an   interest in an entity that owns real property in New York State); services performed in New York State; a business, trade, profession, or occupation carried on in New York State; and a New York S corporation in which you are a shareholder (including   installment income from an IRC 453 transaction). There are some exclusions as well. It is all covered in the instructions to form IT-203. However, keep in mind that \"\"filing\"\" as non-resident doesn't make you non-resident. If you spend 184 days or more in New York State, and you have a place to stay there - you are resident. See definitions here. Even if you don't actually live there and consider yourself a CT resident.\""], "neg": ["actually I don't mind at all. I am still playing the last word game really. You are the one attempting to make salient points. I made it clear long ago my intention was to make light of this from here on.  How LOW can we go!?", "Dividends would be a possible factor you are ignoring.  If Dell has another quarter or two to pay out dividends that could account for some of the difference there. I don't think there is a confirmed date of when the deal is done yet other than around the end of Dell's second quarter which was in the LA Times link you cited. There is also the potential for the terms of the deal to be revised that is another possibility here.  Have you examined other deals where a public company went private to see how the stock performed in the last few months before the deal closed?", "You should check this with a tax accountant or tax preparation expert, but I encountered a similar situation in Canada. Your ISA income does count as income in a foreign country, and it is not tax exempt (the tax exemption is only because the British government specifically says so). You would need to declare the income to the foreign government who would almost certainly charge you tax on it. There are a couple of reasons why you should probably keep the funds in the ISA, especially if you are looking to return. First contribution limits are per year, so if you took the money out now you would have to use future contribution room to put it back. Second almost all UK savings accounts deduct tax at source, and its frankly a pain to get it back. Leaving the money in an ISA saves you that hassle, or the equal hassle of transferring it to an offshore account.", "\"The problem is, who is going to be left holding the coins when the market is over?  That's one of the things that really turns me away from cryptocurrency. The idea of a decentralized currency, I really love. But I can't help but feel they are all basically Ponzi schemes.   People invent new types of cryptocurrency (like Ethereum) and the creators have the first chance to mine the coins with zero competition since no one else knows it's a currency yet. After they mine several million coins, they publicize the new currency and a bunch of short term investors buy into it and hoard up the coins because they are into it for short term gains. The price of this sexy new cryptocurrency spikes with all this interest, and then when the price is high the big early investors dump their coins on the \"\"casuals\"\" who frequent cryptocurrency forums. These users all proclaim how it's so much safer than the dollar and this particular cryptocurrency is better than the other cryptocurrencies so they buy into it... and meanwhile some hot new startup just spun up some even newer cryptocurrency and is mining it while investors hype it up...  There are over a dozen cryptocurrencies now, how many were hyped up as the next big thing with news headlines like this? How many tens of millions of dollars of hard earned savings were taken from cryptocurrency supporters who wanted a safe alternative to fiat currencies? It's just sad really, half these currencies are just exploiting people's fear of fiat currency and basically using that fear to scam them.\"", "\"That sounds like a particularly egregious version of exclusivity. However, the way that you could handle that is to include a \"\"contingency\"\" in your purchase agreement stating that your offer is contingent upon the seller paying the brokerage fee. The argument against this, and something your broker might use to encourage you not to do so, is that it makes your offer less attractive to the buyer. If they have two offers in hand for the same price, one with contingencies and one without, they will likely take the no-contingency offer. In my area, right now, house offers are being made without very common contingencies like a financing contingency (meaning you can back out if you can't finance the property) or an inspection contingency. So, if your market is really competitive, this may not work. One last thought is that you could also use this to negotiate with your broker. Simply say you're only sign this expecting that any offer would have such a contingency. If it's untenable in your current market, it will likely cause your broker to move on. Either way, I'd say you should push back and potentially talk to some other brokers. A good broker is worth their weight in gold, and a bad one will cost you a boat load. And if you're in Seattle, I'll introduce you to literally the best one in the world. :-)\"", "\"An index is just a mathematical calculation based on stock prices. Anyone can create such a calculation and (given a little effort) publish it based on publicly available data. The question of \"\"open source\"\" is simply whether or not the calculator chooses to publish the calculation used. Given how easy an index is to create, the issue is not the \"\"open source\"\" nature or otherwise, but its credibility and usefulness.\"", "\"I agree with this argument. Finance, legal, and tax compliance industries are bogus and add dubious value at best. The creation of more wealth helps those that created the wealth the most, but it oftentimes also does help everyone else as well (think: Steve Jobs &amp; his company's many creations).  But I also believe that if you had a \"\"full equalizer day\"\" and redistributed all the wealth in the US so that each of us had the same amount of money (we'd each roughly have $255,000 if my math is correct), then within 1 generation you'd already see a similar wealth distribution to what we have now. Most would consume more- rather than invest- and it would only be a temporary fix.  It's a rarity to find people advocating for changing the system that creates inequality (the Fed currently being the biggest perp) instead of simply trying to redistribute the results of that system.\""]}
+{"query": "Execute or trade an options contract?", "corpus": ["Your math shows that you bought an 'at the money' option for .35 and when the stock is $1 above the strike, your $35 (options trade as a contract for 100 shares) is now worth $100. You knew this, just spelling it out for future readers.  1 - Yes 2 - An execute/sell may not be nesesary, the ooption will have time value right until expiration, and most ofter the bid/ask will favor selling the option. You should ask the broker what the margin requirement is for an execute/sell. Keep in mind this usually cannot be done on line, if I recall, when I wanted to execute, it was a (n expensive) manual order. 3 - I think I answered in (2), but in general they are not identical, the bid/ask on options can get crazy. Just look at some thinly traded strikes and you'll see what I mean."], "neg": ["\"Writers for tech publications get paid less than peanuts. In all likelihood, this guy received two similar press releases/pitches from PR firms and he was like \"\"oh look, a trend\"\" and did no further research because he had to crank out five more articles in one day (which he did) to make enough money to survive.      (Source: I am not this guy, but I was just like him for about eight years.)\"", "&gt;They are just paper that is worth what it's worth because everyone agrees to accept it.  This is only partly true, and it's slightly misleading.  Fiat currencies' root value comes from *legal tender laws*, which stipulate that they are honored as settling all debts (both public and private).  So they have a distinct (and unfair) legal advantage over other potential currencies.  Americans don't arbitrarily choose to use USD, just like the Danes don't arbitrarily choose to use Kroner, or the Italians use Euro.  It's written in law.  Your OP's are also misleading in the fact they are talking about credit derivatives (currencies) as though they were *emergent money*.  They are not.", "Pay the the smallest balance first. The sooner you pay that off, the sooner you can pay more on the mortgage.", "Take a look at Google Checkout but keep in mind that there is a different list of countries that they support as sellers vs. buyers. The buyer list is much more comprehensive, and I believe covers CIS (Russia, Ukraine and Belarus) while the seller list does not (yet) which means that your client will need to create a U.S. or U.K. based entity to accept payments, however they will be able to accept payments from buyers both in CIS and internationally.  Удачи.", "P/E ratio is useful but limited as others have said. Another problem is that it doesn't show leverage. Two companies in the same industry could have the same P/E but be differently leveraged. In that case I would buy the company with more equity and less debt as it should be a less risky investment. To compare companies and take leverage/debt into account you could use the EV/EBIT ratio instead. Its slightly more complicated to calculate and isn't presented by as many data sources though. Enterprise Value (EV) can be said to represent the value of the company if someone would buy it today and then pay off all its (interest bearing) debt. EV is essentially calculated like this: (Market Capitalization plus cash & cash equivalents)  minus interest-bearing debt.  This is then divided by EBIT (Earnings before interest and tax) to get the ratio. One drawback of this ratio though is that it can't be used for financials since their balance sheet pretty much consists of debt and the Enterprise Value therefore doesn't tell us very much. Also, like the P/E ratio it is dependent on fresh numbers. A balance sheet is just a glimpse of the companys financial situation on ONE DAY, and this could (and probably will, although not drastically for bigger companies) change to the next day.", "Agree 100% with every post you made in this thread, with a caveat.  The traditional internet consumer-advertiser-provider model is heading to an existential crisis. We have total information overload, most people don't even use facebook ads ONCE through their whole facebook career. Google the originator of the model has outgrown its adwords roots.  I don't think we'll actually pay for shows, we're way too cheap to do that. But advertising is going to need to be revolutionized if it can maintain the status quo.  Zergboss completely misses the point. It's not about computer screens vs. tv's. It's not tv vs internet. The fundamental conflict is in the changing revenue flow in shows and movies. I don't care for season premieres if hulu has them tomorrow when I have more time. Because these shows are paid for by advertisers, providers must change their source of revenue or come up with new ways to entice consumers", "\"Unless you have a history of over-using credit (i.e. you've gotten yourself into debt trouble), then I think that the banker is giving you bad advice in telling you to get your own credit limit reduced.  Having more credit available to you that is left unused will make your utilization ratio lower, which is generally better for your credit score, according to this article on CreditKarma.com.  The \"\"sweet spot\"\" seems to be 1-20% utilization of your total credit.  (But remember, this is only one factor in your credit score, and not even the biggest-- having a long history of on-time payments counts the most.) My own personal experience seems to bear this out.  I have two major credit cards that I use.  One card has a high credit limit (high for me anyway) and I use it for just about everything that I buy-- groceries, gas, durable goods, services, you name it.  The other card has a limit that is about 1/3 of the first, and I use it for a few recurring bills and occasional purchases where they don't take the first card.  I also have a couple of department store cards that I use rather infrequently (typically 1 purchase every 3 months or so).  At the end of each month, when the respective statements post, each card has a balance that is 15% or less of the credit limit on that card.  I pay off the entire balance on each card each month, and the cycle repeats.  I have never been late on a payment, and my credit history for all of these cards goes back 10 years.  My credit score is nearly as high as it can go.  If having unused credit were a detriment, I would expect my score to be much lower. So, no, having \"\"too much credit available\"\" is not going to hurt you, unless you are not using it at all, or are tempted to abuse it (use too much).  The key is to use common sense.  Have a small number of cards, keep them active, spend within your means so you can pay off the balance in full after the statement posts, and never be late on your payments.  That's all it takes to have good credit.\""]}
+{"query": "Buying a car - advice needed", "corpus": ["\"I would actually disagree with MrChrister on this. You can afford yourself the car in this price range paid cash. I don't know how exactly you spend your income, but from my experience, in expensive California, saving $20K a year from $70K income with $800/mo rent is feasible. Having a loan on your credit report which is paid on time and in full will definitely help you rebuilding your credit. Your calculations re the costs of the loan are based on the assumption that you're going to keep the loan for the whole period. Don't do that. See #1 - you can repay this loan much quicker than the 3 years it should originally have been. 6 months of the loan which is then paid off will do marvels to your credit report and credit score. Yes, it is going to cost you some, but in your particular case I would argue that its worth it. You're an adult now, you need credit cards, you'll need a mortgage at some point, you need to rent a place to live - all these require a good credit report. Just waiting, as MrChrister suggests, will help, but much much slower.  Having said that, a seller that \"\"cannot discuss the terms over the phone\"\" is most likely a dishonest person. Once you're there and in front of him it is harder for you to verify information, resist signing papers, and negotiating.\""], "neg": ["Poke around in r/google and then tell me I'm wrong. ;)  Try to say something negative in even most lighthearted way in that sub, and watch yourself get showered with a brigade of downvotes, faster than you can say 'Eric Schmidit'.  EDIT: Lol, downvoted already. They must have 'heard' me.", "How realistic is it that I will be able to get a home within the 250,000 range in the next year or so?  Very unlikely in the next year.  The debt/income ratio isn't good enough, and your credit score needs to show at least a year of regular payments without late or default issues before you can start asking for mortgages in this range. You don't mention how long you've been employed at these incomes, this can also count against you if you haven't both been employed for a full year at these incomes. They will look even more unfavorably on the employment situation if they aren't both full time jobs, although if you have a full year's worth of paychecks showing the income is regular then that might mitigate the full time/part time issue. next year or so? If you pay down your high interest debt (car, credit cards), and maintain employment (keep your check stubs and tax returns, the loan officer will want copies), then there's a slight chance. And, from this quick snap shot of our finances, does it look like we would be able to qualify for a USDA loan? Probably not.  Mostly for the same reasons - the only time a USDA loan helps is when you would be able to get a regular loan if you had the down payment. Even with an available down payment of 50k, you wouldn't be able to get a regular loan, therefore it's unlikely that you'd qualify for a USDA loan. If you are anxious to get into a house, choose something much smaller, in the 100k-150k range. It would improve your debt/loan ratio enough that you might then qualify for a USDA loan.  However, I think you'd still have issues if you haven't both been employed at this rate of income for at least a year, and have made regular payments on all your debts for at least a year. I'll echo what others have suggested, though, strengthen your credit, eliminate as much of your high interest debt as you can (car, credit cards), and keep your jobs for a year or two.  Start a savings plan so you can contribute a small down payment - at least 3-5% of the desired home price - when you are in a better position to buy. During this time keep track of your paycheck stubs, you may need them to prove income over the time period your loan officer will request. Note that even with a USDA loan you still have to pay closing costs, and those can run several thousand dollars, so don't expect to be able to come to the table with no cash. Lastly, there's good reason to be very conservative regarding house cost and size.  If you can, consider buying the house as if you only had the 46k per year.  Move the debt to the person making the lower income, and if you buy the house in the name of the person only making 46k per year, then the debt/loan ratio looks very positive.  Further it may be that the credit history of that person is better, and the employment history is better.  If one of you has better history in these ways, then you might have a better chance if only one of you buys the house.  Banks can't tell you about this, but it does work.  Keep in mind, though, that if you two part ways it could be very unhappy since one would be left with all the debt and the house would be in the other's name.  Not a great situation to be in, so make sure that you both carefully consider the risks associated with the decisions made.", "There's only one real list that states what people think stock prices should be, and that's the stocks order book. That lists the prices at which stock owners are willing to buy stocks now, and the price that buyers are willing to pay.  A secondary measure is the corresponding options price. Anything else is just an opinion and not backed by money.", "I'll add this to others: Having non-deductible portion in your IRA requires additional tax forms to be attached to your tax return, and tracking. If you plan to have long-term investments in your non-deductible IRA (such as, say, target funds or long-term stock positions that you expect to hold till retirement) it may be better to keep them in a non-IRA account. This is because the income tax on the withdrawals from the IRA is at ordinary rates, and from the regular investment account is at capital gains rate. While the rates can definitely change, traditionally capital gains rates are significantly lower than the ordinary income bracket rates. So generally I think that having non-deductible IRA deposits is only useful if you're planning a ROTH conversion in a near future.", "The problem with short options is they expire and have to be covered. An inverse ETF is the way to go in my opinion. Because the real issue isn't if the market is overvalued but when will it correct. That's the risk and no one knows that answer", "Because they often say one thing with another in mind. For instance less people under the tax bracket is bad for the state. But making people think they are getting a raise while only putting more people in a taxable bracket and not actually putting anything in their pockets. It is a scam. But the poor eat it up and still end up being poor. But they think they got a raise so they vote for more policies that increase the states income and tithes.", "You might be right about that, but your previous posts don't say that.  In just the last one you said:  &gt;Because buyback decreases shares outstanding it **also decreases the company's total future dividend payouts as well**  This is indicating that you believe there is a difference somehow, no?"]}
+{"query": "Placing limit order and stop loss on same stock at same time", "corpus": ["Although this is possible with many brokers, it's not advisable. In many cases you may end up with both trades executed at the same time. This is because during the opening, the stock might spike up or down heavily, bid/ask spread widens, and both of your orders would get picked up, resulting in an instant loss. Your best bet is to place the stop manually sometime after you get filled."], "neg": ["\"&gt; What's their benchmark for considering the deal \"\"done\"\"? Getting out employee checks with the name of the new company?   Well, there's usually about an 18-month consolidation window after the deal closes to combine operations before the market really starts wondering why you're burning through cash supporting a closed M&amp;A. That's going to include the removal and/or consolidation of redundant business units from HR, to marketing, etc.   From an IT perspective though, the business *usually* completely ignores the fact that modern white-collar businesses are essentially different formulations of businesses leveraging IT or severely underestimates how reliant they are on technology. That is, the consolidation of business units needs to include the consolidation of IT for economies of scale to be realized. It's fine and dandy to say your direct reports are being consolidated under business unit X but what if your HR program PeopleSoft and theirs is successfactors? How much time and money is that going to take to select the best system and get all of your shit in one place? Rule of thumb? 4x whatever the buisness thinks and 1.5x what the IT guy says. What about your identity platforms? What if, god forbid, you are an entirely IBM shop and the acquired company is entirely Microsoft? What about those old fuckin mainframes plenty of insurance companies and banks are keeping around? All that data needs to get moved/consolidated/etc.   I'm there to annoy the shit out of the business so when the board says \"\"did this ever come up\"\" our VPs and CIO can say \"\"yeah, here are the documents\"\" and then they start firing management. :D\"", "Leaders come together from very different professional and business perspectives, such as functions, product, or lines of business. They often need to vie for resources, influence, and sometimes even their superior’s job. This is all part of the deal--to represent their unique perspectives, to have a say about their beliefs, and ultimately to run the place if they get the nod.", "Investors already can trade their assets - simply tokenizing a bond is unlikely to make it more liquid.  The key to liquidity is having a willing counterparty who wants to buy/sell what you are looking to sell/buy.  Because debt can be structured in a myriad of ways, markets for some bonds will be extremely thin, with limited buyers and sellers.  I don't see how tokenization will solve that problem.", "High taxes and tax breaks have done. Tax breaks can only be accessed if you can essentially afford a descent accountant. For that to makes sense you need to earn a large amount of money. So proportionally the middle classes end up paying the most tax and gets the least for it.", "I don't see how that would be an issue in any way.  Referral bonuses are very common.  I'm a little confused as to why you think this might be an issue (or why there would be advice to get a lawyer)... this is called networking.  Growing a business requires contacts you can rely on.  Make sure you're confident in his work, as your clients will likely not be happy with you if he doesn't perform well.", "My wife has been doing younique and some other health MLM drives be crazy cuz she's going no where fast.  I support her but she doesn't listen to the fact that she is spending more than making.", "&gt;&gt; loses from WaPo to reduce his tax bill  &gt; That's not even how taxes work!  Yes it does and I know it very very well.   Explain me why Bezos, a retail and technology guru would waste his time on WaPo, and old-fashion media? Is it to make money? Yes or no?  Of course not! They are losing money.   It's for his personal political agenda.  Not because of proper and unbiased Journalism."]}
+{"query": "What is the different between 2 :1 split and 1:1 split", "corpus": ["\"There is no such thing as a \"\"one for one\"\" split. It's either N for 1, or 1 for N in a reverse split.  And for either, N can't be 1.  Yes a 3:2 can happen, but I still read it as 1.5 for 1.\""], "neg": ["It is totally a demand problem.  Why aren't people buying things in Greece?  Because everyone's poor and there is no demand?  Why are people buying things in Germany?  Because the German Government spent their way out of their recession by spreading money around to the people that needed it.  Why did we get out of the great depression?  Because those without money were given some, which they then spent.  Companies aren't making stuff because no one is buying.  Historically, higher taxes on higher income people and businesses equate with a better economy.  I don't see any data, o. your side, just lots of hand-waving.  http://www.angrybearblog.com/2011/05/optimal-tax-rates-for-generating.html", "&gt;We are the second most charitable country on the planet (source: world giving index), if Granny can't find support, she isn't really looking.  Americans donated $212 billion to charity, sure, but the total Medicaid budget was $553 billion in 2016. The amount of support charity can provide just isn't as great as the amount public assistance can provide, and how could it? You will always get more money out of people when you point a gun at them than when you ask nicely.   &gt;The support is there for those genuinely in need.  I like how your assertion has a built-in way to move the goal posts. If she can't get support, then it *must* be because she didn't *genuinely* need help.   &gt;And, the money goes further because it doesn't have to pay bureaucrat salaries.  Do you not know how charities work?   They have bureaucrats too, and they don't work for free.", "\"As a human being, you don't exist in a \"\"field\"\". You have all sorts of different skills and interests. You're useful. Go find someone who needs knowledge you have, and do it for free if you can't make money on it. Then you're a consultant.\"", "\"Economics is built on the assumption that people make rational decisions based on the desire to increase their economic well-being. While economists have long known that isn't strictly true, Thaler was a pioneer in studying why people sometimes make irrational decisions, and how they can be encouraged to make smarter ones. He's made economics more human,\"\" said Peter Gärdenfors, a member of the commitee that awarded the prize.\"\"    So how come the business world still ignores him? And treat humans like machines?\"", "Most of the time when a stock splits to create more shares, it is done to bring the price per share down to a level that makes potential investors more comfortable. There are psychological reasons why some companies keep the price in the $30 to $60 range. Others like to have the price keep rising into the hundreds or thousands a share.  The split doesn't help current investors, with the possible exception that the news spurs interest in the stock which leads to a short term rise in prices; but it also doesn't hurt current investors. When a reverse stock split is done, the purpose is for one of several reasons:", "That is exactly the problem people aren't seeing. Automation. It makes things cheaper and more reliable than people. It also cuts the man hours needed down to a small fraction of what it was before. There haven't been enough new jobs created to make up for the jobs lost from automation.  In a perfect world, we would all just work a shorter schedule each and still live increasingly better lives as time went on but we all know that isn't going to happen, at least not without HUGE changes to the whole world.", "If she is a legitimate owner, you can't force her to sell her interest in the house. You can communicate indirectly with her, perhaps through a lawyer, and see if she is willing to sign something authorizing you to sell. Unless she is mentally incompetent, you will likely have a very difficult time of proceeding with a legal challenge. At minimum she should be paying you rent, if she is the sole occupant, and if she is unwilling to let you live in the house or pay you rent as co-owners, you could possibly proceed with a suit along those lines. This is a good example of why it's not ideal to co-own a home with someone you aren't legally married to, including a relative or someone you are dating, because there is no (relatively) simple process similar to divorce which determines the allocation of property in the case of a serious dispute. If living together, it may be preferable to have one party own the home and rent it to another. If inherited, it may be preferable for one party to buy out the others and rent it back to them or arrange for a portion of any money made through the sale or rental of the home. Best of luck - I hope you are able to reach an agreeable outcome."]}
+{"query": "What corporation tax am I required to pay as an independent contractor?", "corpus": ["\"The difference between the provincial/territorial low and high corporate income tax rates is clear if you read through the page you linked: Lower rate The lower rate applies to the income eligible for the federal small   business deduction. One component of the small business deduction is   the business limit. Some provinces or territories choose to use the   federal business limit. Others establish their own business limit. Higher rate The higher rate applies to all other income.    [emphasis mine] Essentially, you pay the lower rate only if your income qualifies for the federal small business deduction (SBD).  If you then followed the small business deduction link in the same page, you'd find the SBD page describing \"\"active business income\"\" from a business carried on in Canada as qualifying for the small business deduction.  If your corporation is an investment vehicle realizing passive investment income, generally that isn't considered \"\"active business income.\"\" Determining if your business qualifies for the SBD isn't trivial — it depends on the nature of your business and the kind and amount of income it generates.  Talk to a qualified corporate tax accountant. If you're looking at doing IT contracting, also pay close attention to the definition of \"\"personal services business\"\", which wouldn't qualify for the SBD.  Your accountant should be able to advise you how best to conduct your business in order to qualify for the SBD.  Don't have a good accountant?  Get one.  I wouldn't operate as an incorporated IT contractor without one. I'll also note that the federal rate you would pay would also differ based on whether or not you qualified for the SBD.  (15% if you didn't qualify, vs. 11% if you qualify.)   The combined corporate income tax rate for a Canadian-controlled private corporation in Ontario that does qualify for the small business deduction would be 11% + 4.5% = 15.5% (in 2013). Additional reading:\""], "neg": ["I agree.  Billing by the hour for a sole-proprietorship is the exception, not the norm.  You either usually sell a product for a fixed price or provide a service via contract for a total sum.  That and the term 'sole proprietorship' doesn't preclude you from having thousand of employees working for you.", "The price-earnings ratio is calculated as the market value per share divided by the earnings per share over the past 12 months. In your example, you state that the company earned $0.35 over the past quarter. That is insufficient to calculate the price-earnings ratio, and probably why the PE is just given as 20. So, if you have transcribed the formula correctly, the calculation given the numbers in your example would be: 0.35 * 4 * 20 = $28.00 As to CVRR, I'm not sure your PE is correct. According to Yahoo, the PE for CVRR is 3.92 at the time of writing, not 10.54. Using the formula above, this would lead to: 2.3 * 4 * 3.92 = $36.06 That stock has a 52-week high of $35.98, so $36.06 is not laughably unrealistic. I'm more than a little dubious of the validity of that formula, however, and urge you not to base your investing decisions on it.", "There is no special activity type (or provider) for this situation. Depending on the car rental agency, it is either a normal charge, and they later return the charge as necessary; or it is a normal authorization (like in a restaurant) that does never get confirmed (so it falls off the credit card after about three days).", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://econlog.econlib.org/archives/2017/06/american_bankin.html) reduced by 92%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; The importance of the unit banking laws is obvious when you consider than Canada had no bank failures during the Great Depression, despite a similar fall in NGDP. Today, that sort of decline in NGDP would wipe out virtually the entire US banking system.  &gt; The pattern is that the governments, on the one hand, protects banks in the forms of deposit insurance or government bailouts when a crisis happens, or give banks certain opportunities.  &gt; The way the governments get the banks to subsidize mortgage risk is by protecting the banks.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6fcfck/american_banking_socialism_or_laissezfaire/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~136658 tl;drs so far.\"\") | [Theory](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31bfht/theory_autotldr_concept/) | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr \"\"PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.\"\") | *Top* *keywords*: **Bank**^#1 **government**^#2 **deposit**^#3 **lend**^#4 **more**^#5\"", "When did it become a verb? Early 19th century: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Bootstrapping  You can keep on repeating yourself -- wow, that Amway comparison sure is powerful, don't wanna overuse it now -- but it's no use, really.   Oh, and the income stated is for 2011. I don't know if you realized this, but 2011 is basically over. Thanks.", "GPS can be a money saver to add as an aftermarket item as opposed to getting an integrated version with your stereo.  Typically, updates for the aftermarket stand-alone GPS units are cheaper as well.", "\"It won't hurt your credit score, but it may hurt your ChexSystems score. ChexSystems is another consumer reporting agency that doesn't keep track of your debts, but of your bank accounts. Banks (most but not all) check ChexSystems before you open an account to see if you bounce checks, overdraft, make a lot of teller visits, lose ATM cards, etc. They use this to estimate your profitability. Banks aren't allowed to discriminate against a protected class, but \"\"unprofitable\"\" is not a protected class. BTW, most banks don't make much money on checking accounts; they view them as \"\"get-you-in-the-door\"\" inducements so they can sell you the things they really want to like mortgages and investments.\""]}
+{"query": "How to keep control of shared expenses inside marriage?", "corpus": ["\"JoeTaxpayer's answer mentions using a third \"\"house\"\" account. In my comment on his answer, I mentioned that you could simply use a bookkeeping account to track this instead of the overhead of an extra real bank account. Here's the detail of what I think will work for you. If you use a tool like gnucash (probably also possible in quicken, or if you use paper tracking, etc), create an account called \"\"Shared Expenses\"\". Create two sub accounts under that called \"\"his\"\" and \"\"hers\"\". (I'm assuming you'll have your other accounts tracked in the software as well.) I haven't fully tested this approach, so you may have to tweak it a little bit to get exactly what you want. When she pays the rent, record two transactions: When you pay the electric bill, record two transactions: Then you can see at a glance whether the balances on \"\"his\"\" and \"\"hers\"\" match.\""], "neg": ["Yeah, hugely telling that it took 1500+ cancellations from one number before they noticed? None of their metrics or reports flagged this before? I've never used Lyft because that pink mustache is just ridiculous and looks amateur. This company seems to have a lot of gaps going on.", "Sydney Document Shredding Service is a proud Australian owned and operated shredding company providing secure document destruction, security bins and paper shredding services. We have years of hands on experience in the industry, visit us now if you are looking for secure document shredding services.", "Driver's license isn't relevant. If NYS considers you a part-year resident, they assess income tax on a pro rata basis. NY is broke now, so expect them to be really obnoxious about it if you make a lot of money. California probably has a similar policy. If you really make a lot of money, the demands of the states in these matters are insane. I've read of cases where a state has actually demanded that an individual provide documentation of their in-/out-of-state status for every day of the year!", "\"Read the book, \"\"Slicing Pie: Fund Your Company Without Funds\"\". You can be given 5% over four years and in four years, they hire someone and give him twice as much as you, for working a month and not sacrificing his salary at all.  Over the four years, the idiot who offered you the deal will waste investors money on obvious, stupid things because he doesn't know anything about how to build what he's asking you to build, causing the need for more investment and the dilution of your equity. I'm speaking from personal experience.  Don't even do this. Start your own company if you're working for free, and tell the idiot who offered you 5% you'll offer him 2% for four years of him working for you for free.\"", "So this is only a useful strategy if you already own the stock and want protection. The ITM put has a delta closer to 1 than an OTM put. But all LEAPS have massive amounts of theta. Since the delta is closer to 1 it will mimic the price movements of the underlying which has a delta of 1. And then you can sell front month calls on that over time. Note, this strategy will tie up a large amount of capital.", "&gt; The issue is that they aren't leaving, they're using a loophole to avoid paying corporate taxes even though their revenue, operation, manufacturing, and logistics base is still primarily within the United States.  They're obeying the law to the letter. Whose fault is it that you don't like the law? The company's, or the government's?", "Use one journal entry, and split the expenses into the appropriate accounts. This can happen even if you never mix business and personal on the same receipt: say you order office supplies (which where I live are immediately deductible as an expense) and software or hardware (which must be depreciated because they are assets) on the same order. We have an account called Proprietors Loan which represents money the company is lending to the humans who own it, or that the humans are lending to the company. Were I to pay for my personal lunch on a business credit card, it would go through that account, increasing the amount the company has lent me or decreasing the amount I have lent it. Similarly if I made a business purchase with a personal card it would go through that account in the other direction. Where I live, I can lend my company all the money I want any time, but if the company lends me money there can't be an outstanding balance over the corporate year end. If you make two credit card entries of 5 and 10 when you go to reconcile your accounts it will be harder because you'll have to realize they together match the single 15 line on your statement. Making a single entry (your A option) will make reconciling your statement much easier. And that way, you'll probably reconcile your statements, which is vital to knowing you actually recorded everything."]}
+{"query": "Investment property refinance following a low appraisal?", "corpus": ["Definitely don't borrow from your 401K.  If you quit or get laid off, you have to repay the whole amount back immediately, plus you are borrowing from your opportunity cost.  The stock market should be good at least through the end of this year.   As one of the commentators already stated, have you calculated your net savings by reducing the interest rate?  You will be paying closing costs and not all of these are deductible (only the points are).  When calculating the savings, you have to ask yourself how long you will be hanging on the property?  Are you likely to be long term landlords, or do you have any ideas on selling in the near future?   You can reduce the cost and principal by throwing the equivalent of one to two extra mortgage payments a year to get the repayment period down significantly (by years).  In this way, you are not married to a higher payment (as you would be if you refinanced to a 15 year term).   I would tend to go with a) eat the appraisal cost, not refinance, and b) throw extra money towards principal to get the term of the loan to be reduced."], "neg": ["Properties do in fact devaluate every year for several reasons. One of the reasons is that an old property is not the state of the art and cannot therefore compete with the newest properties, e.g. energy efficiency may be outdated. Second reason is that the property becomes older and thus it is more likely that it requires expensive repairs. I have read somewhere that the real value depreciation of properties if left practically unmaintained (i.e. only the repairs that have to absolutely be performed are made) is about 2% per year, but do not remember the source right now. However, Properties (or more accurately, the tenants) do pay you rent, and it is possible in some cases that rent more than pays for the possible depreciation in value. For example, you could ask whether car leasing is a poor business because cars depreciate in value. Obviously it is not, as the leasing payments more than make for the value depreciation. However, I would not recommend properties as an investment if you have only small sums of money. The reasons are manyfold: So, as a summary: for large investors property investments may be a good idea because large investors have the ability to diversify. However, large investors often use debt leverage so it is a very good question why they don't simply invest in stocks with no debt leverage. For small investors, property investments do not often make sense. If you nevertheless do property investments, remember the diversification, also in time. So, purchase different kinds of properties and purchase them in different times. Putting a million USD to properties at one point of time is very risky, because property prices can rise or fall as time goes on.", "The Avalanche method does not work because most people don't have enough money to make an avalanche.  If you somehow had a windfall that was greater or equal to your highest credit card balance, then by all means pay that one off.   However, most people do not have that kind of situation.  Instead they should use the debt snow ball method.  They only have regular income that is typically much smaller then the balances. Another part of your plan that is especially troubling is that you are continuing to utilize credit cards.  You need to cut them up, and stop using them.  First of course save $1000 for a small emergency fund, the pay them off smallest to largest.  Do a budget each and every month.  Work an extra job or three.  Any extra money that hubby brings in goes towards one of the credit cards. BTW you don't have a math problem you have a behavior problem.", "Computers and the software they run on are intangible products that can, and are, made by just about anyone.  Oil is a tangible, limited resource that, until recently, is not replaceable with anything else.  Apple and MS are replaceable.  Oil is not.", "You sound like a 1970's Italian claiming that American cars are bad because they are only fast in a straight line. Literally just fan-boy whining.   But Mustangs never stopped, while Alfa and Fiat were gone a few years later.  I'm looking forward to the all-electric Corvette and Camaro.", "In Keynes' day, money was gold. Convertible at a fixed exchange rate. His recommendation was that the government saved gold in good times, to ensure that it wouldn't run out of gold in the bad times.  That particular advice has zero relevance to a government that only borrows its own free-floating currency, as governments do not and can not run out of their own free-floating currency.", "\"I think the £35K band applies to the \"\"dividend income\"\" not the \"\"dividend paid to you\"\", and so you would only actually get £31.5K (90% of £35K) in your pocket before the next tax band kicked in. If your company will only supplying large VAT registered entities, then register for VAT yourself and elect the Flat Rate scheme - depending on your area of business, given that you have no expenses, your company will get an extra 7% - 14% on its income for free. Your clients won't care that you charge them VAT because they'll claim it back. Finally, depending on what your company is for, beware of the dreaded IR35\"", "&gt; Documents filed in federal court in Washington include a number of references to emails in which ING employees were told to take steps to hide the true identities of U.S.-sanctioned parties to ensure that their transactions cleared the U.S. sanctions net, but there is no sign that prosecutors plan to bring charges against any of the bankers involved in the email exchanges, Mazur said.   Ugh, while I'm not surprised they are not being prosecuted, this makes me want to throw things."]}
+{"query": "What is an “International Equity”?", "corpus": ["Assuming you're in the United States, then International Equity is an equity from a different country.  These stocks or stock funds (which reside in a foreign country) are broken out seperately becuase they are typically influenced by a different set of factors than equities in the United States: foreign currency swings, regional events and politics of various countries."], "neg": ["Your last sentence is key. If you have multiple accounts, it's too easy to lose track over the years. I've seen too many people pass on and the spouse has a tough time tracking the accounts, often finding a prior spouse listed as beneficiary.  In this case, your gut is right, simpler is better.", "You Need A Budget may be what you're looking for. It is focused on budgeting your expenses in advance, and looking forward instead of backward. (Disclosure: I am currently doing some development work for You Need A Budget.)", "Read the terms and conditions very carefully. Many zero percent deals have a requirement that you pay back at a certain date, and if you don't, you'll have to pay some enormous percentage. Nobody will remind you of the date, because the lender has the secret hope that you will forget.", "I dont think the author really understands why or how credit bureaus work, why they exist, and therefore where the blame exists for incorrect data. No credit bureau wants incorrect data, for obvious reasons, but it happens. That's one reason why they let you get access to your credit score, to check it the data is correct and make the 'product' (data about you) better. The source of the data is always to blame for something being incorrect though.  That's banks, utilities companies, etc.  A credit bureau can't check any more than they do already. But they can improve how they deal with mistakes or badly matched data. Not sure about how that works in the US, but here in EU there are strict rules about how mistakes are corrected, and how long it takes.  As for storing it in block chain.. That wouldn't really solve OPs problem with credit bureaus. Someone still needs to collect and match data, and that's arguably harder than securing the data in the first place.", "\"Generally, ETFs work on the basis that there exists a pair of values that can be taken at any moment in time: A Net Asset Value of each share in the fund and a trading market price of each share in the fund.  It may help to picture these in baskets of about 50,000 shares for the creation/redemption process. If the NAV is greater than the market price, then arbitrageurs will buy up shares at the market price and do an \"\"in-kind\"\" transaction that will be worth the NAV value that the arbitrageurs could turn around and sell for an immediate profit. If the market price is greater than the NAV, then the arbitrageurs will buy up the underlying securities that can be exchanged \"\"in-kind\"\" for shares in the fund that can then be sold on the market for an immediate profit. What is the ETF Creation/Redemption Mechanism? would be a source on this though I imagine there are others. Now, in the case of VXX, there is something to be said for how much trading is being done and what impact this can have. From a July 8, 2013 Yahoo Finance article: At big option trade in the iPath S&P 500 VIX Short-Term Futures Note   is looking for another jump in volatility.  More than 250,000 VXX options have already traded, twice its daily   average over the last month. optionMONSTER systems show that a trader   bought 13,298 August 26 calls for the ask price of $0.24 in volume   that was 6 times the strike's previous open interest, clearly   indicating new activity. Now the total returns of the ETF are a combination of changes in share price plus what happens with the distributions which could be held as cash or reinvested to purchase more shares.\"", "No. You owe taxes in the state you made the money. So unless you can convince the lottery company to retroactively move to Puerto Rico or such, you can't. As others said, if you win, that should not be your worries..", "Nowadays toughened glass is becoming popular choices for the showrooms &amp; offices who really want to impress their clients through extravagant look in entrances. The main advantage of choosing glass shopfronts is that gives incredible strength and reliability with their frameless build. Send us an email with your requirement at info@supremeshopfronts.com and our experts will get in touch"]}
+{"query": "Will I be liable for taxes if I work for my co. in India for 3 months while I am with my husband in UK", "corpus": ["The key factors here are  You will need to pay tax in the UK only if you live more than 183 days - that too in a tax year. Indian tax system will also classify you as a NR (Non-resident) if you live outside for more than 182 days in a tax year.  In your case, your income will be in India and will stay in India. So there should not be any UK tax until you try and get that money to the UK. I will not go into outlining what if you want to go down that road since it does not apply. As for tax in India, You will need to pay tax since the source of income is Indian.  Hope this helps."], "neg": ["\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.theguardian.com/environment/2017/jun/06/spectacular-drop-in-renewable-energy-costs-leads-to-record-global-boost) reduced by 75%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; &amp;quot;A global energy transition [is] well under way, with record new additions of installed renewable energy capacity, rapidly falling costs and the decoupling of economic growth and energy-related carbon dioxide emissions for the third year running,&amp;quot; said Arthouros Zervos, chair of REN21.  &gt; Vivien Foster, global lead for energy economics at the World Bank, said: &amp;quot;Over 2016 there has been a dramatic and sustained improvement in the competitiveness of renewable power generation technologies. The most spectacular renewable energy prices were revealed through auctions that are gaining in popularity in many countries.\"\"  &gt; At the end of 2016, more than 24% of global electricity was produced by renewables, dominated by hydropower and with wind contributing 4.0% and solar 1.5%. For all energy, renewable energy - excluding traditional wood-burning - contributed 10%, overshadowed by the 80% coming from fossil fuels such as oil and gas.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6freqm/spectacular_drop_in_renewable_energy_costs_leads/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~138341 tl;drs so far.\"\") | [Theory](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31bfht/theory_autotldr_concept/) | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr \"\"PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome.\"\") | *Top* *keywords*: **Renewable**^#1 **energy**^#2 **new**^#3 **capacity**^#4 **global**^#5\"", "Cart's answer is basically correct, but I'd like to elaborate: A futures contract obligates both the buyer of a contract and the seller of a contract to conduct the underlying transaction (settle) at the agreed-upon future date and price written into the contract. Aside from settlement, the only other way either party can get out of the transaction is to initiate a closing transaction, which means:  The party that sold the contract buys back another similar contract to close his position.  The party that bought the contract can sell the contract on to somebody else. Whereas, an option contract provides the buyer of the option with the choice of completing the transaction.  Because it's a choice, the buyer can choose to walk away from the transaction if the option exercise price is not attractive relative to the underlying stock price at the date written into the contract.  When an option buyer walks away, the option is said to have expired. However – and this is the part I think needs elaboration – the original seller (writer) of the option contract doesn't have a choice.  If a buyer chooses to exercise the option contract the seller wrote, the seller is obligated to conduct the transaction.  In such a case, the seller's option contract is said to have been assigned.  Only if the buyer chooses not to exercise does the seller's obligation go away.  Before the option expires, the option seller can close their position by initiating a closing transaction.  But, the seller can't simply walk away like the option buyer can.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.princeton.edu/rpds/events_archive/repository/Naidu040313/Flood_HN_Jan2013.pdf) reduced by 99%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Outcome Y in county c and year t is regressed on the fraction of county land flooded in 1927, state-by-year fixed effects, and county fixed effects: Yct = &amp;beta;t F ractionF loodc + &amp;alpha;st + &amp;alpha;c + \u0004ct Note that  is allowed to vary by year, so each estimated  is interpreted as the average difference between flooded counties and non-flooded counties in that year relative to the omitted base year of 1925 or 1920.  &gt; 53 In a modified version of equation, the fraction of county flooded is interacted with a dummy variable for whether the county is a &amp;quot;plantation county&amp;quot; and a dummy variable for whether the county is a &amp;quot;nonplantation county.  &gt; Column reports the within-state difference for each county characteristic by the fraction of the county flooded in 1927: the coefficients are estimated by regressing the indicated county characteristic on the fraction of the county flooded in 1927 and a state fixed effect, weighting by county size.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6q2327/when_the_levee_breaks_black_migration_and/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~177559 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*: **county**^#1 **ood**^#2 **Black**^#3 **agricultural**^#4 **estimate**^#5\"", "\"So this has been true... Forever. I mean can we agree that there is enough corruption to be the dividing line between the 1% and the rest of society? The system is built to protect the rich and grow the wealth of the already wealthy. The middle and lower class are being farmed like animals while food quality is disgusting due to FDA \"\"failure,\"\" medicine is becoming a periodical subscription because modern disease is trending towards \"\"lifelong\"\" sicknesses, health insurance is a for profit business that now has more investments than banks and while millions suffer and are bled dry of any savings. Keeping the middle east in turmoil is how we get cheap oil. Peace means they have the right to negotiate their exports. While desperate, we basically take it for free. EVERYTHING. IS. BASED. ON. MONEY.    Everytime I use quotes, just think: What if this is designed? I mean follow the MONEY. Medicine benefits if you're just sick enough to pay up every month and not die. The FDA approves all kinds of sickness inducing trash. Why? Isn't that their one job? To say oh this isn't healthy. It causes cancer. We will not allow it. Apparently not. What big pharma paid the FDA to allow crap food. The reason it's crap is because it's cheap. The food industry like McDonald's wants cheap food so they can become global billionaires... I mean c'mon.\"", "\"Follow the money and youll find the bullshit right there.   To be fair as well, where does a \"\"drug addicted looser\"\" go to get help in the United States? What risks as a community do we then inherit by ignoring such situations?\"", "\"i think we are roughly in agreement, but i should stress:  &gt; Can't blame capitalism for shitty politicians  shitty politicians are a natural result of capitalism out of control - the big owners call the shots. the politicians that take the bribes win elections bc the money buys exposure thru (once again private) media.   the politicians with any amount of ethics or servitude to their electorate will be starved of funds. they tend to lose. the evolution of the honorable politician to the corrupt one has been a consequence of obscene money. the sort of money that apple et al make. or the most insidious: the federal reserve, which is PRIVATELY owned by a cabal of the richest bankers. they get to print money to \"\"lend\"\" to the government at interest whenever the gov needs to issue bonds. they determine interest rates. their objective is to make more money for themselves. they are not there to provide a service to the people.   TL;DR you cannot get non-shitty politicians without controlling capitalism. adam smith warned us 250 years ago in his seminal wealth of nations that a business-dominated political system would allow a conspiracy of businesses and industry against consumers:  \"\"the interest of manufacturers and merchants .. in any particular branch of trade or manufactures, is always in some respects different from, and even opposite to, that of the public ... The proposal of any new law or regulation of commerce which comes from this order, ought always to be listened to with great precaution, and ought never be adopted till after having been long and carefully examined, not only with the most scrupulous, but with the most suspicious attention.\"\"\"", "There are some high-yield savings accounts out there that might get you close to 1 percent. Shorter term CDs might also serve you well here- rates are above 1 percent, even with 1-2 year terms: http://www.nerdwallet.com/rates/cds/best-cd-rates/"]}
+{"query": "Question about Tax Information from a Prospectus", "corpus": ["At the end of each calendar year the mutual fund company will send you a 1099 form. It will tell you and the IRS what your account earned. You will see boxes for: You will end up paying taxes on these, unless the fund is part of a 401K or IRA. These taxes will be due even if you never sold any shares. They are due even if it was a bad year and the value of your account went down. Most if not all states will levy an income tax yon your dividends and capital gains each year. When you sell your shares you may also owe income taxes if you made a profit. The actual taxes due is a more complex calculation due to long term vs short term, and what other gains or losses you have. Partial sales also take into account which shares are sold."], "neg": ["Why? Grocery stores had minimum wage employees as well. You made no sense at all there. People not being able to pay slave wages and still maintain huge corporate profits, OMG the horror! Yeah it's those god damn waiters and cooks needing to pay rent and bills fault! Yeah same to ya.  Oh and reading comprehension is a thing. I said I've run several businesses. One was a restaurant and bar too!", "\"So you being born where you were with the opportunities you were given, just because you made the most of them you feel that luck wasn't any part of it?  And a child born in a very poor, impoverished location without those opportunities should be expected to succeed just as well as you, and if they didn't then that means they just \"\"didn't work as hard as you\"\"?  I'm sorry, but fuck everything about that sentiment.  Sure, you worked hard, pat yourself on the back.  But dismissing everyone else in the world simply because you think they just didn't work as hard as you completely misses the Lewis' point.  You were lucky to even have those opportunities, you should at the very least be thankful that you were given those opportunities.\"", "Here are your options. While you remain an Australian citizen you cannot withdraw super just because you are residing overseas. You could renounce your citizenship - just make sure you have another one to fall back on.", "A government is there to serve the people. Under this logic, a government is doing a disservice to its people by allowing a corportation to have a signicantly lower tax rate in relation to the value a corportation would gain from doing business in that country.   For all I know, Starbucks would only do business in the UK if the value it sees from doing business there is at the tax rate it is paying out now. However, like a corportation testing the markets for price, the UK government is doing a disservice to its own people for not doing its own research on the value Starbucks is seeing.", "At every level in society, we have to limit our tolerance to the intolerant. The Paradox of tolerance, as theorized by Karl Popper in 1945, states that if a society is tolerant without limit, their ability to be tolerant will eventually be seized or destroyed by the intolerant.", "Lets say that college costs 100K per kid and they you have 3 (ages 8,9,10) and expect tuition and fees inflation of 8% per year; you are 40 and want to retire at age 65, and would have to replace 80% of you final years salary and expect your salary to increase 2% above inflation, but you do have a pension that based on the number of years of service you will have if you don't switch companies will replace 40% of you final salary, but if you leave now will only cover 15%; the equivalent of social security will replace 10%; your spouse works part time and has no company provided pension; your big single bucket of long term savings has 123,456. Are you on target? You can't answer the question without first determining how much money each of those individual buckets (kid 1, kid 2, kid 3, pension, social security and retirement) needs to have today and in the future. Then you take the money you do have and assign it to the buckets. Of course different accounts have different tax, age, deposit and use rules. Also what happens after the last child graduates, so the amount of money available each year will change significantly. The key to not stealing money from long term savings goals is to realize you also need an emergency fund and a life happens fund. That way an engine repair does require you to pull money from the education fund.", "World war 2 was what carried america out of the great depression.  Anything's possible, people do desperate things when they're hungry, most people will resort to cannibalism within 2 weeks without food.   It's too unpredictable, but my bet is that the coming collapse will be multiple times worse than the great depression."]}
+{"query": "Shares; are they really only for the rich/investors?", "corpus": ["Small purchases will have a disproportionate expense for commissions. Even a $5 trade fee is 5% on a $100 purchase. So on one hand, it's common to advise individuals just starting out to use mutual funds, specifically index funds with low fees. On the flip side, holding stocks has no annual fee, and if you are buying for the long term, you may still be better off with an eye toward cost, and learn over time.  In theory, an individual stands a better chance to beat the experts for a number of reasons, no shareholders to answer to, and the ability to purchase without any disclosure, among them. In reality, most investor lag the average by such a wide margin, they'd be best off indexing and staying in for the long term."], "neg": ["Cycle analysis indicates that the current bear market, which began in May/June, should last until late 2016 / early 2017. So if you want to trade the short side, then it's a great time to be short for the next 15-18 months.", "Hmm, if your financially savvy enough to have saved up half a million dollars, I'd think you would be savvy enough to spend it wisely. :-) I think I'd spend the cash before running down stocks and bonds, as cash almost surely has a lower rate of return.  I'd look into what rate of return you're getting on the rental property versus what you're getting from other investments. If the rental property has a lower return, I'd sell that before selling off stocks. (I own a rental property on which I am losing money every month. I'm still paying a mortgage on it, but even without that, the ROI would be about 4% under current market conditions.) Besides that, your plan looks good to me. Might need to add, 8. Beg on the streets, and 9. Burglary.", "\"The problem you are referring to has to do with the different financial terms between retailers. Amazon wants better terms all the time, that favor Amazon, so we give them better terms and bake those terms into cost. Walmart historically has had better terms that favor suppliers, to be an EDLP retailer you had to get suppliers on board with EDLC, to do this it meant simpler terms...   I know one company who has \"\"similar\"\" items on both sites, the supplier's internal margins at/and amazon's margins are much higher. They make less margin at Walmart and Walmart takes less margin, but volume makes up for that!  Source: Supplier to both\"", "\"&gt; How can one not get it?  I dunno, you tell me.  &gt;You need to ask yourselves why the actual battery companies balked at building plants for his cars  See my other comment, because that doubly didn't happen.  Not only have \"\"the actual battery companies\"\" increased capacity for Tesla, but they're partnering in the plant.  Please attempt to be informed about the things you talk about before you talk about them.  *Or* don't go into the conversation acting informed when you are not.\"", "Before everyone says he should just stay home, think of a one car household, much more likely in a rising market. Be trapped at home all night, or do one or two things you don't like along with that shopping that you needed to do anyway.   TL;DR: You get dragged places if you have only one car.", "\"I would look at the wording of the question.  \"\"Expect\"\" does not necessarily mean that they plan to work until they die, or that they want to work until they die. \"\"Expect\"\" here likely means that they think they will have to work until they die - in particular, think that they will not be able to save up enough to retire.  Thinking that you will have to work until you die doesn't mean you shouldn't save money - that's just giving up if you don't, right?  Instead you save up money and hopefully you're one of the luckier ones.\"", "\"This is called \"\"import duty\"\", and it is based on the value of the goods imported. The one to pay the duty is the importer/receiver. As long as you fill the correct information (including the description and value of the items sent) on the USPS customs form (which you'll have to attach to your USPS shipment), you're good to go.\""]}
+{"query": "Does a stock's price represent current liquidation of all shares?", "corpus": ["\"What if everyone decided to sell all the shares at a given moment, let's say when the stock is trading at $40? I imagine supply would outweigh demand and the stock would fall. Yes this is the case. Every large \"\"Sell\"\" order results in price going down and every large \"\"Buy\"\" order results in price going up. Hence typically when large orders are being executed, they are first negotiated outside for a price and then sold at the exchange. I am not talking about Ownership change event. If a company wants a change in ownership, the buyer would be ready to pay a premium over the market price to get controlling stake.\""], "neg": ["If the older generation had adopted MySpace before Facebook came along, they would have had a near impossible time converting them to Facebook. See Google +.   MySpace was lacking sure, but so is Facebook. But once you capture the older base, you're set for a gen or two.", "Uber should have crushed Lyft by being the first to market a long time ago. Instead they blew their lead by dumping all their money into   1. Warring with Google, which they will lose, and were always bound to lose, because nobody at Uber has ever heard of NDAs or sunk cost fallacies   2. Tolerating PR scandals until the point where customers actively sought out an alternative not because the product was bad, because Uber was in many ways a superior product, but because they saw Uber as a bad company. And it takes a lot to lose customers in that situation.   What a stupid company.", "&gt; was it too hard for the server to catch the wings that obviously looked uncooked  Servers almost never bring the food out at places like this.  There is a person on the line that plates the food that was made and another person to bring out the order.  Sometimes that second person is the server but most of the time it isn't.  It does sound like you got bad service from the server though.  I honestly don't know why servers exist at places like this.  Just let me order from a terminal and have the person bring out the food.", "An auto title loans are typically utilized by those that wish to obtain a funding with bad credit rating or no credit in any way. An auto-mobile title lending frequently called a vehicle title lending or merely title funding as well as pink slip funding’s. You merely should have a vehicle that is paid off or nearly paid off and also you could make use of the auto title as security to obtain the cash money you require, enabling you to continue driving your vehicle while paying your loan.   Get Auto Title Loans in Hemet CA and nearby cities Provide Car Title Loans, Auto Title Loans, Mobile Home Title Loans, RV/Motor Home Title Loans, Big Rigs Truck Title Loans, Motor Cycle Title Loans, Online Title Loans Near me, Bad Credit Loans, Personal Loans, Quick cash Loans   Contact Us: Get Auto Title Loans Hemet CA 7210 Simpson Road,  Hemet, CA 92545 951-330-3101 hemetgatl@gmail.com http://getautotitleloans.com/car-and-auto-title-loans-hemet-ca/", "\"I love how you're being downvoted even though you're providing a very basic answer that is easy to look up and see that you are correct, no the majority of people Linhares just listed aren't \"\"economists\"\" - but then again redditors vote based on they feel, irregardless of the facts. I also love how everyone now feels as though the financial crisis was easy to spot - I bet if we went back and asked them in 2007 they would have all foreseen it as well. Yes, a few exceptionally intelligent people (Roubini, Shiller, Grantham etc.) foresaw it, but then again thousands of intelligent people make forecasts on financial markets every day and the majority fail to outperform it. The survivor bias in action I guess.\"", "Here are the specific Vanguard index funds and ETF's I use to mimic Ray Dalio's all weather portfolio for my taxable investment savings. I invest into this with Vanguard personal investor and brokerage accounts. Here's a summary of the performance results from 2007 to today:  2007 is when the DBC commodity fund was created, so that's why my results are only tested back that far. I've tested the broader asset class as well and the results are similar, but I suggest doing that as well for yourself. I use portfoliovisualizer.com to backtest the results of my portfolio along with various asset classes, that's been tremendously useful. My opinionated advice would be to ignore the local investment advisor recommendations. Nobody will ever care more about your money than you, and their incentives are misaligned as Tony mentions in his book.  Mutual funds were chosen over ETF's for the simplicity of auto-investment.  Unfortunately I have to manually buy the ETF shares each month (DBC and GLD). I'm 29 and don't use this for retirement savings. My retirement is 100% VSMAX. I'll adjust this in 20 years or so to be more conservative. However, when I get close to age 45-50 I'm planning to shift into this allocation at a market high point.  When I approach retirement, this is EXACTLY where I want to be. Let's say you had $2.7M in your retirement account on Oct 31, 2007 that was invested in 100% US Stocks. In Feb of 2009 your balance would be roughly $1.35M. If you wanted to retire in 2009 you most likely couldn't. If you had invested with this approach you're account would have dropped to $2.4M in Feb of 2009.  Disclaimer: I'm not a financial planner or advisor, nor do I claim to be. I'm a software engineer and I've heavily researched this approach solely for my own benefit. I have absolutely no affiliation with any of the tools, organizations, or funds mentioned here and there's no possible way for me to profit or gain from this. I'm not recommending anyone use this, I'm merely providing an overview of how I choose to invest my own money. Take or leave it, that's up to you. The loss/gain incured from this is your responsibility, and I can't be held accountable.", "If I had known about this promotion and were less lazy, I would probably have taken advantage of it myself. Would it be theft? Maybe, maybe not, but I'm kind of antisocial, and doing something illegal/unethical, getting away with it, and making a profit would give me some pleasure."]}
+{"query": "What are the primary investment strategies people use and why do they use them?", "corpus": ["\"There are two umbrellas in investing: active management and passive management. Passive management is based on the idea \"\"you can't beat the market.\"\" Passive investors believe in the efficient markets hypothesis: \"\"the market interprets all information about an asset, so price is equal to underlying value\"\". Another idea in this field is that there's a minimum risk associated with any given return. You can't increase your expected return without assuming more risk. To see it graphically:   As expected return goes up, so does risk. If we stat with a portfolio of 100 bonds, then remove 30 bonds and add 30 stocks, we'll have a portfolio that's 70% bonds/30% stocks. Turns out that this makes expected return increase and lower risk because of diversification. Markowitz showed that you could reduce the overall portfolio risk by adding a riskier, but uncorrelated, asset! Basically, if your entire portfolio is US stocks, then you'll lose money whenever US stocks fall. But, if you have half US stocks, quarter US bonds, and quarter European stocks, then even if the US market tanks, half your portfolio will be unaffected (theoretically). Adding different types of uncorrelated assets can reduce risk and increase returns.  Let's tie this all together. We should get a variety of stocks to reduce our risk, and we can't beat the market by security selection. Ideally, we ought to buy nearly every stock in the market so that  So what's our solution? Why, the exchange traded fund (ETF) of course! An ETF is basically a bunch of stocks that trade as a single ticker symbol. For example, consider the SPDR S&P 500 (SPY). You can purchase a unit of \"\"SPY\"\" and it will move up/down proportional to the S&P 500. This gives us diversification among stocks, to prevent any significant downside while limiting our upside. How do we diversify across asset classes? Luckily, we can purchase ETF's for almost anything: Gold ETF's (commodities), US bond ETF's (domestic bonds), International stock ETFs, Intl. bonds ETFs, etc. So, we can buy ETF's to give us exposure to various asset classes, thus diversifying among asset classes and within each asset class. Determining what % of our portfolio to put in any given asset class is known as asset allocation and some people say up to 90% of portfolio returns can be determined by asset allocation.  That pretty much sums up passive management. The idea is to buy ETFs across asset classes and just leave them. You can readjust your portfolio holdings periodically, but otherwise there is no rapid trading. Now the other umbrella is active management. The unifying idea is that you can generate superior returns by stock selection. Active investors reject the idea of efficient markets.  A classic and time proven strategy is value investing. After the collapse of 07/08, bank stocks greatly fell, but all the other stocks fell with them. Some stocks worth $100 were selling for $50. Value investors quickly snapped up these stocks because they had a margin of safety. Even if the stock didn't go back to 100, it could go up to $80 or $90 eventually, and investors profit. The main ideas in value investing are: have a big margin of safety, look at a company's fundamentals (earnings, book value, etc), and see if it promises adequate return. Coke has tremendous earnings and it's a great company, but it's so large that you're never going to make 20% profits on it annually, because it just can't grow that fast. Another field of active investing is technical analysis. As opposed to the \"\"fundamental analysis\"\" of value investing, technical analysis involves looking at charts for patterns, and looking at stock history to determine future paths. Things like resistance points and trend lines also play a role. Technical analysts believe that stocks are just ticker symbols and that you can use guidelines to predict where they're headed.  Another type of active investing is day trading. This basically involves buying and selling stocks every hour or every minute or just at a rapid pace. Day traders don't hold onto investments for very long, and are always trying to predict the market in the short term and take advantage of it. Many individual investors are also day traders.  The other question is, how do you choose a strategy? The short answer is: pick whatever works for you. The long answer is: Day trading and technical analysis is a lot of luck. If there are consistent systems for trading , then people are keeping them secret, because there is no book that you can read and become a consistent trader. High frequency trading (HFT) is an area where people basically mint money, but it s more technology and less actual investing, and would not be categorized as day trading.  Benjamin Graham once said: In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine. Value investing will work because there's evidence for it throughout history, but you need a certain temperament for it and most people don't have that. Furthermore, it takes a lot of time to adequately study stocks, and people with day jobs can't devote that kind of time. So there you have it. This is my opinion and by no means definitive, but I hope you have a starting point to continue your study. I included the theory in the beginning because there are too many monkeys on CNBC and the news who just don't understand fundamental economics and finance, and there's no sense in applying a theory until you can understand why it works and when it doesn't.\""], "neg": ["$500 should not have a massive impact on your credit. Why not at the beginning of each month buy a $500 prepaid Visa instead of using your credit card? That way you set a hard limit, but you still have the option of using credit in an emergency.", "When you buy a property the house or the building goes down in value every year (it gets depreciated) similar to when you drive a new car out of the lot. However, it is the land that increases in value over time. As land becomes scarcer the value of land in that area will increase in value, as does land in sought after areas. If more people want to live in a particular suburb the land value will keep on increasing year after year. Sometimes established areas with houses built in the 1980s or even earlier can be worth much more than newly built areas. It comes down to the supply and demand of land and houses in a particular area. You might even get a situation where a run-down dilapidated house in a very sought after suburb sells for more than a brand new house in a less sought-after suburb nearby. Properties can be a very good investment and they can be a very poor investment. It can largely depend on the decisions you make in buying your investment property. The first thing you need to make a decision on is the location of the property. If you buy a property in a good area that is well sought after you can make good capital and rental returns over the long run. If you buy poorly in an area no one wants to live in then you might have problems renting it out or only be able to rent it out to bad tenants who cause damage, and you may not get any capital gains over many years. The second thing you need to decide on is when in the property cycle you buy the property. If you buy at the right time you can get higher rents and make some quick capital gains over a relatively short time. I can provide a personal example of this situation. I had bought a house (in Australia) in 2007 for $240,000 at a time when interests where at their highest (9%), no one was buying property and rents were on the increase (with low vacancy rates). Today, eight years after, we are getting $410 per week rent and the house next door (in worse condition than ours) has been put on the market asking for between $500,000 to $550,000 (most houses in the area had been selling during this year for over $500,000). So you can say that our house has more than doubled in 8 years. However, up to a few months ago houses were selling within 2 weeks of being listed. The house next door however, has been listed for over a month and has not had very much interest. So from this you can conclude that in 2007 we had bought near the bottom of the market, whilst now we are near the top of the market. What you also need to remember is that different areas of a country can have different cycles, so there is not just one property cycle but many property cycles in the same country.", "\"&gt; (NK and Iran with nuclear weapons, both say publicly \"\"death to America\"\").  Iran's nuclear facilities are under 24/7 inspections by the US and IAEA. The claim that Iran has a nuclear weapons program is US/Israeli propaganda -- pure and simple. Even all of our dozen-plus \"\"intelligence\"\" agencies state Iran has no nuclear weapons program.  North Korea likely has a half-dozen or so nukes.  But on the other hand, what would *you* do if the world's most aggressive, war-loving nation refuses to end the still-officially-ongoing Korean War?  North Korea has offered to end their nuclear weapons program, to re-join the Nuclear Non-Proliferation Treaty, and allow full UN inspections -- in exchange for the US ending the Korean War and giving non-aggression guarantees. We (the Bush administration) rejected that offer.\"", "If you get counterfeit money, then you're dealing with the criminal who is going to be punished by the law for doing that. The portion of the total sum that was paid with the counterfeit currency is considered unpaid and you can claim the money from the criminal and sue him, while he's in jail. He'll work hard on those license plates to pay you off. However, making false statements and assisting in a tax evasion scheme compromises your ability to go to the law enforcement in case of any wrongdoing, and then you should worry about the counterfeit money, because the law won't be on your side to help you. And you don't even get anything out of it... Why on earth are you willing to take this risk? Just so you know, it may also be money laundering, which may get you in trouble even more with the law.", "EVs aren't perfect yet. The internal combustion engine has had 100 years of fine-tuning.   There are more than enough EV early adopters to satisfy supply. If you're sensitive to the current EV limitations, simply wait. Somebody will love taking your place in the queue.", "\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://thehill.com/homenews/administration/348374-top-trump-economic-adviser-told-dems-only-morons-pay-the-estate-tax) reduced by 71%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; Gary Cohn, the director of the National Economic Council, told a group of Senate Democrats during a meeting earlier this year that &amp;quot;Only morons pay the estate tax,&amp;quot; according to a New York Times report.  &gt; President Trump has publicly railed against the estate tax - often referred to as a &amp;quot;Death tax&amp;quot; - and has vowed to fully repeal it.  &gt; The estate tax is levied on the transfer of property for deceased individuals with an estate worth more than $5.49 million.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6xuvf3/top_trump_economic_adviser_told_dems_only_morons/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~203616 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 **Cohn**^#2 **percent**^#3 **Trump**^#4 **Times**^#5\"", "That is right, and instagram is okay with that.  They don't make anything on user advertisement.  Why would they want to host it?    Most instagram users consume content but don't post ads themselves.  That's the bulk of instagram's ad revenue."]}
+{"query": "Equity or alternative compensation in an LLC?", "corpus": ["I'm not sure 1099-MISC is what you should expect. Equity means ownership, and in LLC context it means membership. As an LLC member, you'll get distributions and should receive a K-1 form for tax treatment, not 1099 or W2. If the CEO is talking about 1099 it means he's going to hire you as a contractor which contradicts the statement about equity allocation. That's an entirely different situation. 1) Specifically, would the 1099-MISC form be used in this case? 1099-MISC is used to describe various payments. Depending on which box is filled, the tax treatment may be as of employment income (subject to SE taxes) or passive income (royalties, rents, etc - subject to various limitations in the tax code). 3) If this is the only logical method of compensation (receiving a % of real estate sales), how would it be taxed? That would probably be a commission and taxed as employment income. I suggest to get a professional tax adviser consultation on this issue, with specific details, numbers, and kinds of deals involved. You can get gain or lose a lot of money just because you're characterized as a contractor and not LLC member or employee (each has its own benefits and disadvantages, and you have to consider them all). 4) Are there any advantages/disadvantages to acquiring and selling   properties through the company as opposed to receiving a % of sales? Yes. There are advantages and there are disadvantages. For example, if you're using a corporation, you can get salary, if you're a contractor you cannot. There are a lot of issues hidden in this distinction (which I've just discussed with KeithS in this argument)."], "neg": ["I have had similar thoughts regarding alternative diversifiers for the reasons you mention, but for the most part they don't exist.  Gold is often mentioned, but outside of 1972-1974 when the US went off the gold standard, it hasn't been very effective in the diversification role.  Cash can help a little, but it also fails to effectively protect you in a bear market, as measured by portfolio drawdowns as well as std dev, relative to gov't bonds. There are alternative assets, reverse ETFs, etc which can fulfill a specific short term defensive role in your portfolio, but which can be very dangerous and are especially poor as a long term solution; while some people claim to use them for effective results, I haven't seen anything verifiable. I don't recommend them. Gov't bonds really do have a negative correlation to equities during periods in which equities underperform (timing is often slightly delayed), and that makes them more valuable than any other asset class as a diversifier.  If you are concerned about rate increases, avoid LT gov't bond funds.  Intermediate will work, but will take a few hits... short term bonds will be the safest.  Personally I'm in Intermediates (30%), and willing to take the modest hit, in exchange for the overall portfolio protection they provide against an equity downturn.  If the hit concerns you, Tips may provide some long term help, assuming inflation rises along with rates to some degree. I personally think Tips give up too much return when equity performance is strong, but it's a modest concern - Tips may suit you better than any other option.  In general, I'm less concerned with a single asset class than with the long term performance of my total portfolio.", "Simply put, expansionary capex is seen as an investment and maintenance capex is seen as a cost.  In terms of valuation, free cash flow will not include expansionary capex because you are valuing the company as its current business. It's important to note that this approach will usually undervalue companies with strong investment opportunities.  Also, like /u/scarletham said, please edit out the identifying information to avoid any disclosure problems.", "They haven't been doing very well for a while. Their stock was in a downward trend since October 2006. They had an upward trend since 1986, then in 2006 they transitioned to a downward slope. Their stock plummeted in 2008, then rebounded shortly after (due to the bailout?) to continue its downward trend.", "America and the rest of the West should stop looking backwards and forwards towards developing an advanced, service based economy. Really, if your job can be done by an immigrant with limited English skills or by an overseas worker in China, do you really deserve to have that job?", "Many in this thread appear to have little knowledge about the history of anti-trust law in the US. 50 years ago it would be inconceivable for any one firm to have as much market dominance as any of these 3. We need a rethinking of anti-trust law that properly addresses internet monopolies.   If you haven't read it yet, I highly recommend this paper by Lina Khan on Amazon's market dominance and anti trust: https://www.yalelawjournal.org/pdf/e.710.Khan.805_zuvfyyeh.pdf  Barry Lynn and the Open Markets Institute are doing great research here as well.", "\"I can answer this question for my jurisdiction (Florida, USA), because I lived through it. My Dad (\"\"Alice\"\") passed away in 2008, just as the housing crisis was starting to heat up. What happened to the Mortgage? My Dad had a will in place.  It was an old will (from the 1980's), but never-the-less, a will.  We had to provide paperwork to the court that my Mom had already passed away, and my oldest brother was living out-of-state (he would have been the executor, otherwise).  With the proper paperwork, I became the Executor, and the property passed in to probate.  At this point, the \"\"Estate\"\" was responsible for the house and the mortgage on it (meaning me, as I was the Executor). We decided to sell the house, so we hired a realtor, and set an asking price about $40k over what was owed on it.  As we waited for it to sell, I had to make monthly mortgage payments, and payments to the HOA (otherwise the HOA could put a lien on the property, making it more difficult to sell, should we find a buyer). Is it Automatically Transferred? In most jurisdictions, I would say not \"\"automatic\"\".  I definitely had get an estate lawyer and file the proper legal paperwork with the local county courthouse.  Some states have an easier probate process (\"\"Summary Administration\"\" in Florida), that eases the requirements for small estates. Is Bob expected to pay it off all at once? No, the mortgage holder was happy for me to make payments (out of other estate assets) in lieu of my Dad.  The were earning interest, after all.  This is probably true in most cases. Can the House be Foreclosed on? Yes.  In our case, being 2008, we had a hard time selling the property.  The asking price quickly went from $40k over what was owed, to $20k over, to $10k over, then to being equal to the mortgage value.  Finally, I approached the bank about options.  They suggested a \"\"Deed in Lieu of Foreclosure\"\" process.  It was easier for us, and the bank had to pay less lawyers and such.  Otherwise, a \"\"Deed in Lieu\"\" is effectively the same as a Foreclosure.  At that point, we stopped making payments.  Eventually, me and all my siblings (the \"\"heirs\"\") had to sign the proper paperwork giving the house over to the bank. In our case, the bank did not pursue us (or rather, the Estate) for the difference between final (auction) sale price and the mortgage balance (it was an FHA loan, so the US Government wound up picking up the difference).  From what I understand, this could have happened, and we would have wound up with basically nothing out of the Estate. Can the Lender Force the Sale? I can't give a definite answer on this, but it probably depends.  If you don't pay?  Yes they sure can--it's usually part of the standard mortgage contract!  I see 2 other options:\"", "\"There are only two things you can directly do with the money in an Amazon gift card: you can keep the gift card, or you can put the money into your Amazon account.  There aren't any other options.  You can't deposit the value into a bank account or anything like that.  So, as far as safety, those are the only options you need to consider, because there's nothing else you can do. (Okay, there is one other thing you can do: you could sell the card to someone else, or barter it for something you want.  But you can do that with anything.) The \"\"gift card\"\" is basicaly just a string of numbers and letters that you put into your Amazon account and it credits you with the appropriate amount of money.  So yes, it can be stolen.  If you haven't redeemed it yet, someone could find the code by hacking your email or looking over your shoulder or whatever.  If they redeem it, you won't be able to do so. As for your edit: If I don't transfer the balance of the Amazon egift card to my Amazon account, can I transfer the balance to other accounts or use the card to buy other gift cards? If you don't transfer it to your account, you can transfer the balance to another account by giving the code to someone else and letting them deposit it in their account.  You still won't be able to buy other gift cards with it, because you can't buy anything with it until it's deposited in an Amazon account, and once it's deposited in an Amazon account, you can't buy gift cards with it because of their policy. If you don't want the restrictions imposed by Amazon, don't buy Amazon gift cards; instead, just use your actual money to buy things.  If you're worried about the cards being stolen, just deposit them into your account right away and you eliminate the risk of them being stolen.  If, as you say, you bought the cards for yourself, there's no reason not to do this; presumably you bought them so you could buy things on Amazon, and you'll have to deposit them into your account eventually anyway to do that, so just put them in right away. I don't know specifically how Walmart cards work, but I assume they're the same.  In general, anything called a \"\"gift card\"\" offered by a particular retailer works the same way: you can't do anything with it except buy products at that retailer. The only thing that really makes Amazon different is that the only way to use your card is to add the money to your Amazon account, because the only way to pay for things on Amazon is with an Amazon account.  There's no way to spend just some of the value; you have to deposit it all into your account.  With gift cards for retailers with physical locations, you can usually use the value up piecemeal, by actually going to a store and spending just enough to buy something.  (I assume Walmart works this way, although I don't know if you can use an e-gift card this way there.)\""]}
+{"query": "How do taxes work with donations made to an individual, e.g. for free software I wrote?", "corpus": ["Do I report it as income? Is it subject to just the same amount of   taxes (~30%) as regular income? Are there any restrictions on how it   can be used? It is income. You can deduct the costs of maintaining the web page and producing the software from it (have an accountant do that for you, there are strict rules on how to do that, and you can only deduct up to the income if its a hobby and not a for-profit business), but otherwise it's earned income like any other self employment income. It is reported on your schedule C or on line 21 of your 1040 (miscellaneous income), and you're also liable for self-employment taxes on this income. There are no restrictions, it's your money. Technically, who is the donation even being made to? Me, just because   I own the webpage? Yes. This is for the United States, but is there any difference if the   donations come from overseas? No, unless you paid foreign taxes on the money (in which case you should fill form 1116 and ask for credit). If you create an official 501(c) organization to which the donations are given, instead of you getting it directly, the tax treatment will be different. But of course, you have to have a real charitable organization for that. To avoid confusion - I'm not a licensed tax professional and this is not a tax advice. If in doubt - talk to a EA/CPA licensed in your State."], "neg": ["The only way this suggestion works is if you can realize a higher rate of return on the investment than the payoff of the loan.  There's no guarantee of that, so it can be a risky strategy from the standpoint that you'll end up paying more for the car when all is said and done.", "The time value decay is theoretically constant.  In reality, it is driven by supply and demand, just like everything else in the market.   For instance, if a big earnings announcement is coming out after the close for the day, you may see little or no time decay in the price of the options during the day before. Also, while in theory options have a set value as related to the trading price of the underlying security, that does not mean there will always be a buyer willing to pay a premium as they come close to expiration (in the last few minutes). You can't forget to account for the transaction fees associated with buying the options, or the risk factor involved.   It is rare, but there are times I've actually had to sell in the money calls at a penny or two LESS than they're actually worth at the time just to unload them in the last few minutes before the market closed on expiration day.", "Ok, so you like posting on reddit.   but you won't actually do the work to make sure you're making sense or are correct.  Gotcha.   I'm someone who knows her in real life. As I've stated in this thread elsewhere, her and I have disagreed on things we've talked about professionally, we don't work togeather, but I respect her success, and my ONLY purpose here is to talk about how most of you are calling her out for sounding dumb, and accusing her of not knowing anything, when she actually DOES!  You may not agree with her perception of the world as it is. You may not like what she's suggesting.  And I have had disagreements with her on other topics,  but watching people look like complete assholes and accusing her of ignorance when she isn't, and its EASY to find that out... is what I can't stand.", "Article quotes AT&amp;T CEO:  &gt;Every $1 billion in tax savings would create 7,000 well-paying jobs, Mr. Stephenson went on to say.  Let me check those numbers with out even disputing them: ~143K / year per job. I mean... those are some expensive jobs! I can think of a number of better ways to spend 1 billion.", "\"If they'd just let me cast stuff from an app like I do with 90% of the stuff I watch off Netflix I'd probably watch stuff a ton more from it.  Netflix + chromecast is so brainless that I can just toss on any old thing without investing much time or effort.  Watching Prime stuff is, like I said, an inconsistent hassle.  Like... I just fired up the Amazon app on my phone.  Oh, there's the new Tick show right at the top.  I click on it.  The only option is to add it to my \"\"Watchlist.\"\"  What's that noise?  What if I just want to watch it now on my phone?  Where even is that watch list useful?  I really feel like Amazon is too worried about selling their relatively cheap hardware.  If they just let me actually watch their content, I'd be able see some actual value in it.  And yeah, the hardware is cheap, so why not just get a fire stick?  Because then I have another fucking power cord I have to route through my wall and another input to manage on my TV.  I already have a streaming device for everything else that offers a consistent and stable experience for every other stream service I use.  Why can't Amazon just play nice?!  Oddly, I think they want to sell their hardware to help push their content... but I'm _trying_ to watch their content already!\"", "Those surveys suck.  I've seen them jump all over the place.  Not too long ago the northeast one was way up.  Real live recessions don't usually happen unless the yield curve is inverted.  This muddling along crap is pretty characteristic of a recovery from a financial panic.  Lots of slow deleveraging fed by easy money.  I'd be really surprised to see a real recession.  I do think corporate earnings are going to start missing estimates.  But that is more about some mean reversion than anything else.", "\"Considering that I can't find anything on Chase's web site referencing a \"\"Money Market IRA\"\" I suspect that this is a type of account that they aren't actively supporting anymore, but aren't forcing you to cash it in.  I would call Chase to find out for sure, however. That said, a money market is not a good investment if you are looking for any kind of growth.  They are basically a savings account that pay (currently) a small amount of interest.  You can get much better return from other low-risk investments.  You can rebalance periodically if you want to keep a certain amount of \"\"cash\"\" available.\""]}
+{"query": "What are “preferred” stocks? How are they different from normal (common) stocks?", "corpus": ["It is just a different category of stock issued by a company that gives its owners different treatment when it comes to dividend payment and a few other financial transactions. Preferred stock holders get treated with some preference with regard to the company's profits and assets. For example, dividends are typically guaranteed to preferred stock holders whereas the leadership in the company can elect at any time not to pay dividends to common stockholders. In the event the company is liquidated, the preferred stockholders also get to be in line ahead of common stockholders when the assets are distributed."], "neg": ["There is no requirement to open a company. You can work as freelancer. You need to report income and file returns. If your income is more than exempt limit, pay taxes. Apply for a PAN number if you don't have one yet.", "Two companies I worked for in the DC area also did WageWorks. The commuting money could be used for the Subway, Bus, and commuter rail. A separate pot of money was used for parking.  We had to estimate the amount of money that would be used the next month. We had to decide by mid-June how much we would spend in July. The money was automatically added to the metro fare card on the first business day of the month. When I first started they put the money on a special debit/credit card that could only be used at commuter system. It would be rejected at the department store. If parking couldn't be paid using a special card, there was a way to claim the money with or without receipts. If the company, like the US Government does for their employees, paid the commuting expenses any excess funds at the end of the month were pulled back from the card. They were just starting to do this in 2012 for employee pre-tax funds. They were supposed to add it to your next paycheck any excess at the end of the month. There was also a way to use post tax funds from your paycheck so that all your commuting expenses could be on one card. Of course any post-tax funds would be left on the card. There was no real way for them to audit this because the system would never know if you were going to work or going to the dentist. I ended up using two cards, one for work and one for non-work usage.", "Talk to the property manager and explain your situation. They may be more willing to work with you than you think. At the very least they will tell you if you should even bother filling out the application. In most cases they are obligated to do a background and credit check so you will have to provide them with the required information one way or another. What they are really looking for is your ability to pay the rent. Property managers take a lot more things into consideration than a mortgage company would for a loan. If you have a history of paying on time in the past (a reference from a previous landlord perhaps) and if you show proof of the ability to pay now and in the future they will usually take that into consideration regardless of what the credit check says. It all depends on how motivated they are to fill the rental and how willing they are to take on a potential risk. Keep in mind property managers don't make money on empty rentals.", "The salary of a coal miner with a couple years of experience is $29/hour.  After a couple years at Arby's a good worker might make shift supervisor at $10/hr.  Thousands of products are made from coal including pharmaceuticals, soap, dyes, solvents, plastics, nylon, and carbon fibers.  Miners would still be needed even if coal wasn't used for energy.  Fast food workers could disappear tomorrow and we'd just be healthier.", "You could buy shares of an Exchange-Traded Fund (ETF) based on the price of gold, like GLD, IAU, or SGOL. You can invest in this fund through almost any brokerage firm, e.g. Fidelity, Etrade, Scotttrade, TD Ameritrade, Charles Schwab, ShareBuilder, etc. Keep in mind that you'll still have to pay a commission and fees when purchasing an ETF, but it will almost certainly be less than paying the markup or storage fees of buying the physical commodity directly. An ETF trades exactly like a stock, on an exchange, with a ticker symbol as noted above. The commission will apply the same as any stock trade, and the price will reflect some fraction of an ounce of gold, for the GLD, it started as .1oz, but fees have been applied over the years, so it's a bit less.  You could also invest in PHYS, which is a closed-end mutual fund that allows investors to trade their shares for 400-ounce gold bars. However, because the fund is closed-end, it may trade at a significant premium or discount compared to the actual price of gold for supply and demand reasons. Also, keep in mind that investing in gold will never be the same as depositing your money in the bank. In the United States, money stored in a bank is FDIC-insured up to $250,000, and there are several banks or financial institutions that deposit money in multiple banks to double or triple the effective insurance limit (Fidelity has an account like this, for example). If you invest in gold and the price plunges, you're left with the fair market value of that gold, not your original deposit.  Yes, you're hoping the price of your gold investment will increase to at least match inflation, but you're hoping, i.e. speculating, which isn't the same as depositing your money in an insured bank account. If you want to speculate and invest in something with the hope of outpacing inflation, you're likely better off investing in a low-cost index fund of inflation-protected securities (or the S&P500, over the long term) rather than gold.  Just to be clear, I'm using the laymen's definition of a speculator, which is someone who engages in risky financial transactions in an attempt to profit from short or medium term fluctuations This is similar to the definition used in some markets, e.g. futures, but in many cases, economists and places like the CFTC define speculators as anyone who doesn't have a position in the underlying security. For example, a farmer selling corn futures is a hedger, while the trading firm purchasing the contracts is a speculator. The trading firm doesn't necessarily have to be actively trading the contract in the short-run; they merely have no position in the underlying commodity.", "You should write a demand letter immediately, send the letter by certified mail, and then wait 30 days. Here is a sample demand letter for the state of california that you can send: http://www.courts.ca.gov/11151.htm It seems like most of the demand letters assumed that you tried to cash the check and incurred a service fee. Personally, I wouldn't risk incurring even most cost. Instead, after 30 days, I would take him to small claims court and show all the evidence you have (checks, receipts, and letters of correspondence).", "I'm a bot, *bleep*, *bloop*. Someone has linked to this thread from another place on reddit:  - [/r/talkbusiness] [Here's Walmart's Latest Attempt at Making Life Easier and Getting You Off Amazon](https://np.reddit.com/r/talkbusiness/comments/77zn6v/heres_walmarts_latest_attempt_at_making_life/)  [](#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)"]}
+{"query": "How do I find a good mutual fund to invest 5K in with a moderately high amount of risk?", "corpus": ["Just find a low cost S&P 500 index fund, and spend your time reading The Great Mutual Fund Trap instead of wasting your time and money picking actively managed funds."], "neg": ["In my opinion, the average investor should not be buying individual stocks. One reason why is that the average investor is not capable of reading financial statements and evaluating whether a stock is overpriced or underpriced. As such, they're often tempted to make buy/sell decisions based solely on the current value of a stock as compared to the price at which they bought it. The real reasons to buy (or sell) a stock is the expectation of future growth of the company (or continued profit and expected dividends). If you aren't able to analyze a company's financial statements and business plan, then you really aren't in a position to evaluate that company's stock price. So instead of asking whether to sell based on a recent drop in stock price, you should be investigating why the stock price is falling, and deciding whether those reasons indicate a trend that you expect to continue.  If you buy and sell stocks based solely on recent trends in the stock price, you probably will end up buying stocks that have recently risen and selling stocks that have recently fallen. In that case, you are buying high and selling low, which is a recipe for poor financial outcomes.", "\"People seem to think that Yelp serves businesses or the public.  It doesn't.  It serves Yelpers.  Yelpers want reviews from other Yelpers – and that's it.  If you don't review things frequently on Yelp, they don't care about your opinion.  Sorry.  Nothing personal, but this website is only interested in reviews from people who use the site frequently.  You might be the most upstanding person in the world, and you might post a great review of a business, but this isn't your blog.  You're not entitled to have the world see your review here.  They only want the opinion of regular Yelpers.  If you want to be a part of the Yelp community, keep making reviews, and they'll un-filter your reviews.  There are people who say that businesses that pay Yelp get more reviews, but it's not true.  The article even states that she was paying $350/month *before* these reviews got filtered out.  The article also says a court case against Yelp was thrown out because there was no evidence showing bias.  People who claim this are just butt-hurt and want to justify their bias by claiming that Yelp is greedy and unscrupulous.  The fact of the matter is this: Yelp has a powerful community.  Business owners see Yelp as possibly affecting their business.  They want to have control over that, but they can't.  In fact, Yelp goes out of their way to prevent that.  Many business owners simply aren't mentally capable of grasping how some things work, and when things don't go their way, they get angry and make accusations.  This particular woman, who is currently taking 3 hours of \"\"social media classes per week\"\" (WTF), thinks “there maybe needs to be some rules on the net that aren’t there now.”  No offense lady, but you probably shouldn't be writing internet laws until you're done with your \"\"internet for dummies\"\" classes.  You might think that this is not a good model for a review website.  If so, don't use it.  It's not a government institution and you're not obligated to use it.  Go find another review site.  Better yet, if you think Yelp is so horrible, go make your own review website that allows anyone to review things.  I'm sure it will be great and everyone will love it.  Whatever you choose, stop trying to ruin Yelp.  The people who use it like the way the it is and don't want some butt-hurt non-users fucking it up.\"", "If it was me, I would outsource as much as possible with the desire to receive up front payment from financing companies for originating a loan.  Why? The biggest risk to newer businesses is cash flow.  The amount of work a new business owner has to do is daunting.  If you can outsource some of that work it will increase your chance of success and make your life easier.  Focus on selling cars. The upfront origination will help with your cash flow. If you can outsource the credit decision making and paper work you have leveraged your time and can focus on more important things.", "Probably start by looking up other stores in your field nationwide and seeing how they did.  There were three Etsy sourced stores in SF.  They all closed faster than stores usually do here.  Not trying to be a dick, but if I can get it on Etsy, why would I pay the markup to cover your store's rent and salaries to get it from you?", "All they care about right now is market share. The profit will come later (see Facebook for example).   Or better yet, read about the marshmallow experiment (wiki:  https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Stanford_marshmallow_experiment).  The same rationale is why Uber, Lyft, Tesla and all of these other tech companies are valued so high.   That being said, I do not know that Snap, Inc. will be a success. I'm just saying that it's naive to say that Evan is a fool. For all we know, he's creating the next AR (insert buzzword) technology. We don't know.", "\"Starting with small amount of money is definitely a good idea, as it is a fact that majority of the online traders lose their initial investment. No wonder that for example in the UK, FCA decided to make steps to raise the chances of clients staying in business by limiting leverage to 1:50 and 1:25. http://www.financemagnates.com/forex/bloggers/new-fca-regulations-going-affect-retail-brokers/ Trading leveraged products is risky and you will lose some, or all your money with very high chance. But that doesn't mean necessarily it is a \"\"bad investment\"\" to trade on your own. Imagine you have a $1000 account, and you trade max 0,1 lot fx position at once maximum (=$10.000 position size, that is 1:10 leverage max). Beginner steps are very challenging and exiting, but turning back to your initial question: is there a better way to invest with a small amount of money Obviously you could purchase a cheap ETF that follows a broad market index or an already existing successful portfolio.\"", "Customers also have different needs and the more extreme the need, the more likely they're going to rate you. So even if you completely fulfill a customer's need, unless it was an extreme need or they were in a predefined emotional state, you're not likely to get a review.  As an example, we used to actually fix things at our Radio Shack, with solder and such. In store. A FEW people would give us feedback about that. We were also allowed leeway on what we could take for returns (receipt, 30 day limit, etc.). So if the customer came in and started telling me how our products sucked, and they were calling the BBB it's unlikely they would receive the queen bee treatment. They also gave reviews (Yelp wasn't around at the time).  In short, despite the fact we gave the vast majority of our customers way above par treatment, the people most likely to give reviews were self-entitled pissants. Despite what people say about turning customers around (from angry to nice), this only happened with maybe 1 out of every 5 pissy customers. Another two would probably be shown to be attempting to scam the store in some manner and a fourth would likely have to be shown the door."]}
+{"query": "How to diversify IRA portfolio given fund minimum investments and IRA contribution limits?", "corpus": ["There are fund of funds,e.g. life cycle funds or target retirement funds, that could cover a lot of these with an initial investment that one could invest into for a few years and then after building up a balance large enough, then it may make sense to switch to having more control."], "neg": ["&gt; The racial angle at the end cheapens your argument, though.   Thanks for pointing that out. Removed race and replaced with 'low income families'   &gt; The principles behind creating and keeping those entities are reasonable, civilized, and economically sound  I disagree 100%. If banks did not have a big brother to bail them out of loans that went bust whenever they wanted, they would be a lot more careful in who they loaned money too. No one is promised a house and a lawn in this life. Some of us will be renters in apartments for life, and there is nothing wrong with that.", "\"&gt;Darden, based in Orlando, Fla., has made cost cutting a priority in recent years as sales growth and traffic have stalled at its flagship chains...  &gt; Given the challenging job market, Darden has been able to offer lower pay rates to new hires. Bonuses for general managers have been reduced as sales have stagnated. Servers at Red Lobster are handling four tables at a time, instead of three.  &gt;And last year, the company also put workers on a \"\"tip sharing\"\" program, meaning waiters and waitresses share their tips with other employees such as busboys and bartenders. That allows Darden to pay more workers a far lower \"\"tip credit wage\"\" of $2.13, rather than the federal minimum wage of $7.25 an hour.    So their food sucks and they're cheap.\"", "There is a basis for that if you consider the power of compounding. So, the sooner you re-invest the dividends the sooner the time will give you results (through compounding). There is also the case of the commissions, if they are paid with a percentage of the amount invested they automatically gain more from you. Just my 2cents, though the other answers are probably more complete.", "\"Declaring bankruptcy is not \"\"stealing\"\", as you forfeit the property once you repudiate the debt.  The article correctly states that consumers should exercise the same rights as mega corporations to walk away from bad deals, and not feel bad about it.  I agree strongly with the article.\"", "The Brokerage firm will purchase shares for the dividend paid in a omnibus account for the security of the issuer and then they will distribute fractional shares among all their clients that chose Div Reinvest.  They will only have to buy 1 extra share to account for the fractional portion of what they allocate.  The structure of the market does not permit trading of fractional shares. There is generally not any impact to the market place for Div Reinvest with the exception of certain securities that pay large dividends that are not liquid. sometimes this occurs in  preferred securities where a large amount of Div reinvestment could create a large market order that has market impact.  Most brokers place market orders for the opening on the day following the payment of the dividend. When you sell the fractional portion same process as full shares are sold into the market and the fractional if traded between you and the brokers omnibus account.  if it creates a full share for the broker (omnibus has .6 shares and you sell him .5 they would likely flip that out to the street with the full share portion of your order. This would not have impact to outstanding shares and all cost are operational and with the broker handling the Div reinvestment service.", "So a significant portion of that money went to the financial clusterfuck he inherited.  But in an effort of make sure we don't get ourselves back into that mess, he initiated Dodd-Frank.  What are your thoughts on the current administration's effort to reverse it?", "This will have no effect on your credit score.  Even though your credit card account number is changing, it is still the same account, so your history of payments and age of accounts will remain unchanged."]}
+{"query": "The board of directors in companies", "corpus": ["Boards of Directors are required for corporations by nearly all jurisdictions.  Some jurisdictions have almost self-defeating requirements however, such as in tax havens. Boards of Directors are compensated by the company for which they sit.  Historically, they have set their own compensation almost always with tight qualitative legal bounds, but in the US, that has now changed, so investors now set Director compensation.  Directors are typically not given wages or salary for work but compensation for expenses.  For larger companies, this is semantics since compensation averages around one quarter of a million of USD. Regulations almost always proscribe agencies such as other corporations from sitting on boards and individuals convicted of serious crimes as well.  Some jurisdictions will even restrict directories to other qualities such as solvency. While directors are elected by shareholders, their obligations are normally to the company, and each jurisdiction has its own set of rules for this.  Almost always, directors are forbidden from selling access to their votes. Directors are almost always elected by holders of voting stock after a well-publicized announcement and extended time period. Investors are almost never restricted from sitting on a board so long as they meet the requirements described above."], "neg": ["\"At times the issue seems to be one of  reading comprehension and general information processing. Regardless of length or depth, an email allows for both clarity of message and a persistent record to refresh from. Yet people default  to these hugely inefficient meetings.   Modern meetings also seem to suffer from an issue with mob rule. Very rarely do meeting \"\"coordinators\"\" do anything but kick off meetings, instead of acting as a whip/coordinator. Everyone puts more value on a faux-friendly workplace than an efficient one, so no one is willing to be the heavy that keeps the meeting focused and on schedule.\"", "\"You've cited nothing but your own outlandish claims. Aside from the original USAToday article, you've not provided one link to substantiate any of the many, many assertions that you have made.    &gt; none of the people doing any of these things are \"\"true economists\"\".  **unsubstantiated**  &gt;It's a subconscious bias thing... they all inherently belive that an \"\"inflationary currency\"\" is a good &amp; necessary thing... ergo they do not really TRY to disprove that dogmatic assumption. **unsubstantiated**  &gt;... and that \"\"confirmation\"\" was the entire goal of the project. **unsubstantiated**  **Not one link**.   End of discussion. This is a waste of my time.\"", "Have you checked the reviews for those products? I wonder if other people have the same complaints. TBH I don't know if there is a consumer protection agency that tests all the products for effectiveness and whether their claims regarding chemicals are in fact true.", "&gt;Can't be that much more sustainable, isn't China also building ghost cities at break neck speeds here?  Most ghost cities fill up eventually. There are some major fuckups, but that's always been the case with urbanization, and China still has a shitton of peasants tied to the land its trying to slowly get into the cities. Cf many other urbanization processes which resulted in huge numbers of people living in hastily built structures unsuitable for human health, and then dying in a fire / plague.", "\"Yes, you effectively need to \"\"double count\"\" when shifting balances between foreign accounts.\"", "\"As already noted, options contain inherent leverage (a multiplier on the profit or loss). The amount of \"\"leverage\"\" is dictated primarily by both the options strike relative to the current share price and the time remaining to expiration. Options are a far more difficult investment than stocks because they require that you are right on both the direction and the timing of the future price movement. With a stock, you could choose to buy and hold forever (Buffett style), and even if you are wrong for 5 years, your unrealized losses can suddenly become realized profits if the shares finally start to rise 6 years later. But with options, the profits and losses become very final very quickly. As a professional options trader, the single best piece of advice I can give to investors dabbling in options for the first time is to only purchase significantly ITM (in-the-money) options, for both calls and puts. Do a web search on \"\"in-the-money options\"\" to see what calls or puts qualify.  With ITM options, the leverage is still noticeably better than buying/selling the shares outright, but you have a much less chance of losing all your premium. Also, by being fairly deep in-the-money, you reduce the constant bleed in value as you wait for the expected move to happen (the market moves sideways more than people usually expect). Fairly- to deeply-ITM options are the ones that options market-makers like least to trade in, because they offer neither large nor \"\"easy\"\" premiums. And options market-makers make their living by selling options to retail investors and other people that want them like you, so connect the dots. By trading only ITM options until you become quite experienced, you are minimizing your chances of being the average sucker (all else equal). Some amateur options investors believe that similar benefits could be obtained by purchasing long-expiration options (like LEAPS for 1+ years) that are not ITM (like ATM or OTM options). The problem here is that your significant time value is bleeding away slowly every day you wait.  With an ITM option, your intrinsic value is not bleeding out at all. Only the relatively smaller time value of the option is at risk. Thus my recommendation to initially deal only in fairly- to deeply-ITM options with expirations of 1-4 months out, depending on how daring you wish to be with your move timing.\"", "Please. Say what you will about Trump, but let's not pretend the ACA was working, or that it was good for young people. It did *nothing* to rein in the healthcare and pharmaceutical corporate-cartels. Under the ACA, Americans still had the most expensive drug costs in the world.  Young people were also the group most screwed by the ACA. The entire plan rested on forcing young people to pay for the health care of boomers. One of the reasons the program was failing so badly is that young people turned out to not be stupid -- and they were opting out in numbers vastly higher than bean counters had predicted.   The ACA was literally written by health insurance companies and Big Pharma. Anyone who doubts this should pull up a chart of healthcare, insurance and pharmaceutical sector stocks for the time-period the ACA was signed. If the ACA had been anything other than a forced buy-in to an already ridiculously overpriced sector, those stocks would have cratered. Instead they soared. If you want to know who got screwed by the ACA, it was people under 35 -- whose healthcare spending *rose* per capita as a result of that atrocious tax.   And let's not forget that the annual price-tag for all of us was climbing by unsustainable rates every year. (Along with those fat healthcare stocks).  That turd was failing of its own accord. It was a terribly crafted bill. If you want to fix healthcare in the US you need to get rid of money in politics, and by cutting the absurd legal/financial protections granted to the insurance and pharmaceutical industries.  (Which by the way, Trump isn't doing either. We *still* don't have a candidate on either side of the aisle with the balls it takes to fix this extremely busted industry. And it starts with campaign finance reform)"]}
+{"query": "Can I fully deduct capital losses against discounted capital gains?", "corpus": ["The short answer is no - the CGT discount is only applied against your net capital gain. So your net capital gain would be: $25,000 - $5,000 = $20,000 Your CGT discount is $10,000 You will then pay CGT on $10,000 Of course you could sell ABC in this financial year and sell DEF next financial year.  If you had no other share activities next financial year than that net capital loss can be carried forward to a future year. In that case your net capital gain this year would be $25,000 Your CGT discount is $12,500 You will then pay CGT on $12,500 Next year if oyu sell DEF, you'll have a $5000 net capital loss which you can carry forward to a future year as an offset against capital gains. Reference: https://www.ato.gov.au/General/Capital-gains-tax/Working-out-your-capital-gain-or-loss/Working-out-your-net-capital-gain-or-loss/"], "neg": ["If you have made $33k from winning trades and lost $30k from loosing trades your net gain for the year would be $3k, so obviously you would pay taxes only on the net $3k gains.", "The best source of financial statements would be from the company in question. On corporate websites of public listed companies, you can find such financial statements uploaded in the Investor's Relations section of their website. If their company does not have an online presence, another alternative would be to go to the website of the exchange the company is trading in (e.g. NYSE or NASDAQ) for financial data.", "Nope.  If there is no prepayment penalty go for it.  Find another credit source to use (like a credit card you pay off every month) if you want to get a long history. Saving money on interest is more important to me than minutia in a credit score.", "Mervis Diamond is a onestop destination for buying diamonds and diamond ornaments. They specializes in diamond engagement rings and wedding bands, diamond studs, and much more. With their roots at diamond mines in South Africa, they maintain strong relationships and import all their own diamonds. Mervis has a reputation you can trust. For any budget, they will get you the biggest and most brilliant diamond possible, and save you some dollars in the process.", "No, no they don't. No more so than wages do. A pension is not some magical pot of money that you retire and suddenly are a billionaire. A pension payment replaces your wages. It is retirement savings.   This is like saying we should eliminate 401K's, Roth, and Keogh IRA's and simply take the money. This is like saying we should seize homes and other properties. You need to elaborate why you think paying out pensions is going to raise inflation, that doesn't make sense.", "They didn't license it from themselves. They licensed it from another business entity. Cross-entity charges are common.  &gt; But as a citizen and a taxpayer, I don't want global corporates to get away with tax evasion.   Then you should be voting for Romney then, as a major part of his platform is to restructure the tax code to discourage this.", "\"1. That's a really complicated answer. In short, I think we need to make accounting rules much simpler (I say this as an accountant) in combination with financial education in K-12 school. Most adults in this country can't tell you which is a better investment: something that returns 5% monthly or something that returns 10% annually. They don't know that accounting income and cash flow are different things and what they mean. Accounting rules are sometimes ridiculous. Look at the balance sheet of even a moderate size company. What's in \"\"Other Comprehensive Income\"\" and why is that different than net income? Why is it that American Airlines, one of the largest airlines in the world doesn't have a single airplane on their balance sheet?  2. That might be a step in the right direction, but I'm just not sure how effective something like that would be. More comprehensive might be better, but then there's going to be less people that want to take the time.\""]}
+{"query": "Can you short a stock before the ex-div. date to make a profit?", "corpus": ["When you short a stock and the stock goes ex-div. you have to pay out an amount equal to the dividend. So in your example, GG would short the stock at $10.00, buy back at $9.00 and be charged $1.00 for the dividend. Net effect $0.00."], "neg": ["I would just like to point out that the actual return should be compared to your down payment, not the property price. After all, you didn't pay $400K for that property, right? You probably paid only 20%, so you're collecting $20K/year on a $80K investment, which works out to 25%.  Even if you're only breaking even, your equity is still growing, thanks to your tenants. If you're also living in one of the units, then you're saving rent, which frees up cash flow. Your increased savings, combined with the contributions of your tenants will put you on a very fast track. In a few years you should have enough to buy a second property. :)", "\"In general, I agree with Alex' \"\"don't do it.\"\" If I dig deep for any reasons to transfer from a Roth into a Roth 401(k) there might be 2:\"", "The big box retailers weren't really a monopoly.  It was just a better business model.  There were many of them and they were very competitive with each other (we'll match our competitor's price). Many of them even went out of business because the profits were driven down to such low levels.", "&gt;Banks benefit from lower interest rates because it decreases the rate at which they can borrow from the Federal Reserve from.  But what matters is the spread: if rates on the borrowing and lending side go down, the spread % shrinks, which makes banks less profitable. That's why bank stocks go up when higher rates are anticipated. You can think of a bank stock as being long interest rates.  That's why bank stocks have lagged the rest of the market during this long bull market.  &gt;Bank's Assets aren't all debt  The vast majority is for most banks. GS and MS are the rare exceptions.", "I use RetailMeNot all the time. I don't bother keeping pizza coupons anymore. If I want to order delivery, I just get a coupon code from there, order online, and save myself a few bucks.", "\"So let's say, as a counterfactual, that Obama did not bail out the banks: what would happen? The world economy would have collapsed. Every creditor and their funds to endless bankruptcy stays. All credit would have been frozen. No businesses would have been able to pay off their loans or pay their employees' salaries. The banks, sadly, were too big to fail because everyone and everything depended on them for funding. The issue is not the bailout, but the activites of the banks that forced the bailout. This is why all of the current legislative schemes being put into operation are looking at way to limit systemic risk to both prevent future catastophic bankruptcies and limit their impact on the credit markets.   As a last note: notice how inflation did not significantly increase since the bailout, despite Bernanke printing trillions of dollars. Cleary, \"\"printing money\"\" has not caused harm in and of itself. Its only harm is reinforcing the too big to fail mentality. This can be cured, but by not bailing out the banks, we would have seen a catastophic collapse.\"", "I use it for work to automatically fill in building features which are spelled differently and are classified differently by architects (for some reason). It's mainly vlookups, I'm not sure if it'll solve your problem but that's how I solved my problem. The only problem this creates is that the master list is pretty long and that you'll need to update your sheets when you open 'em."]}
+{"query": "Tax On Unsold Mined Bitcoin", "corpus": ["Based on my research, the answer is both. You would pay taxes on the bitcoin you mine as income, and then capital gains tax when you sell them for a profit (or capital loss if you lose value on the sale).  You can write off a portion of your electricity bill and hardware purchased for the use of mining as a business expense, but it's recommended that you consult a tax professional for determining the proper amount that is eligible for a deduction.  From Forbes: New Bitcoin are being issued by the system roughly every 10 minutes by   a process called mining. In mining, computers running the Bitcoin   software around the world attempt to solve math problems and the first   computer to come up with the solution adds the most recent   transactions to the ledger of all Bitcoin transactions, plus receives   the new bitcoins created by the system, called the block reward. If you are a miner and win the block reward, you must record the fair   market value of Bitcoin that day and mark that as an addition to your   personal or business income. Also note the date and timestamp at which   your coins were mined. Later, when you dispose of those Bitcoin, you   will subtract the date of acquisition from the date of disposal, and   you will be taxed a long-term capital gains rate on any Bitcoin you   held for more than a year, and a short-term capital gains rate on any   Bitcoin you held for a year or less. (The timestamp isn’t absolutely   necessary, but is helpful to validate the order of multiple   acquisitions or disposals within a day.) The amount you pay in taxes on a long-term capital gain will depend on   your income-tax bracket, while short-term capital gains are taxed the   same as ordinary income. From bitcoin.tax:  Another clarification in the IRS's March notice was how mining should   be treated. Mining is income, on the day of receipt of any coins and   at the fair value of those coins. This means that if you mined any   Bitcoins or alt-coins either solo, as part of a pool, or through a   cloud provider, you need to report any coins you received as income. Where it is less clear, is what that dollar value might be, since the   fair value is not always as easy to determine.  Bitcoins, Litecoins,   Dogecoins, are all examples of where there is a direct USD market and   so you can easily find out their value of any given day. However, a   newly created alt-coin that was mined in its early days has no direct   market and so how do you determine its value? Or for any alt-coin,   e.g. ABC coin, that has no direct USD market but does have a BTC   market. Does it have a value? Do you have to make a conversion from   ABC to BTC to USD?  Since there is no clarification yet from the IRS on   this issue you should discuss how to proceed with your own tax   professional. BitcoinTaxes has taken a prudent approach and calculates   value where a fiat or BTC market exists, converting an alt-coin to BTC   to USD as necessary. And from Bitcoin magazine: The IRS also stated mined bitcoins are treated as immediate income at   the market value of those mined coins on their date of mining. “Most don’t know they can write off any losses they have,” said Libra   founder Jake Benson. “The IRS allows you to offset income by up to   $3,000 per year on capital losses.  If you have losses and you aren’t   writing them off, then it’s like throwing money away. Nobody likes   doing taxes, but if you can owe less or increase your return, then   doing your Bitcoin taxes often results in a benefit. In fact, the   majority of our users are filing a capital loss, which means they’ve   actually saved money by using our tool.”  Benson also gives insight for miners.  “Mining is considered income, so know the price of Bitcoin at the time   you mined it,” he said. “If you make money on Bitcoin trading, the IRS   requires that you report gains with line level detail.”  The   appropriate form for that is 8949, a sub-form of schedule D. Gains and   losses, as outlined above, are treated like every other capital asset."], "neg": ["\"This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://news.ehealthinsurance.com/news/affordable-care-act-health-insurance-will-be-unaffordable-in-2018-for-many-middle-income-american-families-ehealth-analysis-shows) reduced by 94%. (I'm a bot) ***** &gt; The Affordable Care Act considers health insurance to be &amp;quot;Unaffordable&amp;quot; when annual premiums for the lowest-priced plan in a market cost more than 8.16% of a household&amp;#039;s modified adjusted gross income.  &gt; eHealth, Inc. owns eHealth.com, a leading private online health insurance exchange where individuals, families and small businesses can compare health insurance products from brand-name insurers side by side and purchase and enroll in coverage online and over the phone.  &gt; eHealth offers thousands of individual, family and small business health plans underwritten by many of the nation&amp;#039;s leading health insurance companies.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/73ecm7/ehealthcom_has_just_published_a_new_study_that/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ \"\"Version 1.65, ~219483 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*: **plan**^#1 **health**^#2 **insurance**^#3 **eHealth**^#4 **City**^#5\"", "The only fair thing to do is to let each of you pay their own loans. That way, your brother will probably get out of debt faster and starts saving or investing (assuming equal down payments), while you'll be stuck with your loan for a while longer. If you want to minimize the interests you have to pay, you could simply borrow money from your brother. That way, he'll contribute towards your loans, and you will know exactly how much you owe him. Your brother may lend you money interest-free, or you could agree on an interest rate which is lower than what you pay on your loans, which will somewhat compensate your brother and still be beneficial to you. It still won't be fair though, because your brother might be able to invest his extra money with better interest rate, and lending money to you would prevent that.", "Tax cuts do lead to economic growth, and why not?  More money circulating in the private economy is good for everybody.  It’s why the stock market is up big on the prospect for tax cuts.  The problem is the rosy growth projections that accompany these plans.  The growth will occur, but the pace of growth is a big question and very hard to model.  So a prudent policy proposal would be to cut spending as well while the growth materializes.  Then (hopefully) that spending cut becomes permanent as the economy grows so the private economy grows at the expense of the state.", "\"I didn't say \"\"not at all available outside of work hours\"\".  I said \"\"not checking work email\"\".  If something urgent comes up at the office when I'm out where it makes more sense for someone to call me and ask for help, sure, they can call, and I'll answer if I can, or get back to them when it's reasonably convenient to do so.  I'm not going to waste my non-work hours looking for work to do, though; if it's not urgent, it waits until the next time I'm in the office.\"", "A person name Matthew Drury or a similar name owes money on their loan, and it has gone to collections. The collections company is trying to match the account to a real person with money. They sent a letter to somebody (your grandmother) with the same last name. The debtor may have even lived in that town at sometime.  The reason you received the letter is because your grandmother forward it on. Because the rest of your info (SSN and birth date) don't match the loan it is unlikely they can attach the debt to you. Unless you provided your address to the company you could in the future receive a letter from them. But I doubt they are going to send letters to everybody with the same name. I would not worry about it unless they actually send a letter or call you directly.", "\"I see the problem more that the controversial is banned.  The mods took control of this subreddit under a pro-banking industry agenda.  To filter out criticism of the banking industry resulting from 2008 event including \"\"debate the morality of central banking\"\". r/finance is the most successful astroturfing of reddit I know of.  This has led to a filter of the controversial.  Throughtful, philosophical and scholarly posts [such as this one](http://www.reddit.com/r/finance/comments/ncez0/greece_will_default_minutes_after_its_last_major/) are either banned or pre-filtered.  The concern with pre-filtering things that the mods think are wrong, is that the mods haven't claimed any special expertise that makes them more knowledgeable than every submitter.  Personally, I've only been attacked ad hominem-ly without a discussion of presented ideas or concepts by mods here.  So it is possible to be too close-minded.  Leads to insular views without discussion.\"", "\"Diversify between high risk, medium risks investments as well as \"\"safe\"\" ones like bonds authored directly from the EU.  All in all you re much better off than lending money to the bank through a savings account for no more than 1% in interest rate(given the current NL situation).  Congratulations on becoming financially independent(your investments covering your living expenses) in as low as 9-15years from now.\""]}
+{"query": "How do I pay my estimated income tax?", "corpus": ["Congratulations on starting your own business. Invest in a tax software package right away; I can't recommend a specific one but there is enough information out there to point you in the right direction: share with us which one you ended up using and why (maybe a separate question?) You do need to make your FICA taxes but you can write off the SE part of it. Keep all your filings as a PDF, a printout and a softcopy in the native format of the tax software package: it really helps the next tax season. When you begin your business, most of the expenses are going to be straightforward (it was for me) and while I had the option of doing it by hand, I used software to do it myself. At the beginning, it might actually seem harder to use the tax software package, but it will pay off in the end. Build relationships with a few tax advisors and attorneys: you will need to buy liability insurance soon if you are in any kind of serious (non hobby) business and accounting for these are no trivial tasks. If you have not filed yet, I recommend you do this: File an extension, overpay your estimated taxes (you can always collect a refund later) and file your return once you have had a CPA look over it. Do not skimp on a CPA: it's just the cost of running your business and you don't want to waste your time reading the IRS manuals when you could be growing your own business. Best of luck and come back to tell us what you did!"], "neg": ["You make a great point. For a large part of America, their support for Trump was reactionary, not based on his qualifications.   For better or for worse, is a bad electoral strategy it alienate voters with valid criticisms of a celebrity they like. Like you say, they will just stop listening. Instead they will react with an intense desire to stick it to those dirty liberals for being mean, and elevate that priority above the well-being of the republic.", "Investors who are themselves Canadian and already hold Canadian dollars (CAD) would be more likely to purchase the TSX-listed shares that are quoted in CAD, thus avoiding the currency exchange fees that would be required to buy USD-quoted shares listed on the NYSE. Assuming Shopify is only offering a single class of shares to the public in the IPO (and Shopify's form F-1 only mentions Class A subordinate voting shares as being offered) then the shares that will trade on the TSX and NYSE will be the same class, i.e. identical. Consequently, the primary difference will be the currency in which they are quoted and trade. This adds another dimension to possible arbitrage, where not only the bare price could deviate between exchanges, but also due to currency fluctuation. An additional implication for a company to maintain such a dual listing is that they'll need to adhere to the requirements of both the TSX and NYSE. While this may have a hard cost in terms of additional filing requirements etc., in theory they will benefit from the additional liquidity provided by having the multiple listings. Canadians, in particular, are more likely to invest in a Canadian company when it has a TSX listing quoted in CAD. Also, for a company listed on both the TSX and NYSE, I would expect the TSX listing would be more likely to yield inclusion in a significant market index—say, one based on market capitalization, and thus benefit the company by having its shares purchased by index ETFs and index mutual funds that track the index. I'll also remark that this dual U.S./Canadian exchange listing is not uncommon when it comes to Canadian companies that have significant business outside of Canada.", "Yeah I guess those prices are ok, though we will get a heavier tobacco tax next year. The beer is cheap in supermarkets, but I have to add this is just your regular dutch beer brands (Heineken, Amstel, Hertog Jan, etc.) with 24 33CL bottles. In a cheap bar you pay around $3.50-4.50 for those brands though (not to mention clubs with sometimes prices of $15+ for a beer).", "If this will be your sole income for the year, going self-employed is the best way to do this: So, here's how to go at it: Total cash in: £2000 Total Tax paid: £0 Admin overhead: approx 3 hours. Legit: 100%   :) Edit:  Can you tell me that in my case what are the required fields on the invoice? If you're non-VAT registered, there are no legal requirements as to what information you need to put on the invoice -it literally can be a couple of numbers on a napkin, and still be legit.  With that said, to make a professional appearance, my invoices are usually structured as follows: Left side: ( Sidenote: why client-specific incremental numbering? Why, so they can't make educated guesses to the number of clients I have at any given time :)  ) Right side: Center table: And so far, none of my clients missed any fields, so this should have everything they need to :) Hope this helps, but keep in mind, all of the above is synthetic sugar on the top -ultimately,  the relationship you share with your Clients is the thing you will (or will not) get paid for! Edit#2: The voices in my head just pointed out, that I've totally omitted National Insurance contributions in the above. However, and I quote HMRC: If your profits are expected to be less than £5,315 you may not have to pay Class 2 National Insurance contributions. Hence, this won't change the numbers above, either -just make sure to point this out during your registration in the office.", "You can anything you want with your 401K. It is not a good idea to borrow against yourself unless there are some critical situations you are facing.", "Bake backup to azure into their new powercli releases. Force poor saps like me who certify with microsoft products learn about their cloud so we can parrot back the marketing material to our corporate masters. Build a pretty flexible product that isn't junk (so I hear).  EDIT: My VMware is showing. Powercli should be Powershell.", "Chaos theory is two essays combined as a book. It's short.  You could probably read the whole thing in under 2 hours.  Also [here is a print version](http://www.daviddfriedman.com/Libertarian/Machinery_of_Freedom/MofF_Chapter_29.html) of David Friedman's theory.  I do have a longer, more detailed explanation, but it's in video form (about an hour)."]}
+{"query": "Is it worth having a pension?", "corpus": ["\"Paying someone to look after your money always costs something - it doesn't matter whether you're inside a pension or not. Fees are highest for \"\"actively managed\"\" funds and lowest for passively managed funds or things where you choose the investments directly - but in the latter case you might pay out a lot in dealing fees. Typically pensions will have some small additional costs on top of that, but those are hugely outweighed by the tax advantages - payments into a pension are made from gross salary (subject to an annual limit), and growth inside the pension is tax free. You do pay income tax when you take the money out though - but by then your marginal tax rate may well have dropped. If you want to control your own investments within a pension you can do this, subject to choosing the right provider - you don't have to be invested in the stockmarket at all (my own pension isn't at the moment). I wrote an answer to another question a while ago which briefly summarises the options As far as an annuity goes, it's not as simple as the company taking the money you saved when you die. The point of an annuity is that you can't predict when you'll die. Simplifying massively, suppose the average life expectancy when you retire is 20 years and you have 100K saved, and ignore inflation and interest for now. Then on average you should have 5K/year available - but since you don't know when you'll die if you just spend your money at that rate you might run out after 20 years but still be alive needing money. Annuities provide a way of pooling that risk - in exchange for losing what's left if you die \"\"early\"\", you keep getting paid beyond what you put in if you die \"\"late\"\". Your suggestion of taking the dividends from an index tracker fund - or indeed the income from any other investment - is fine, but the income will be substantially less than an annuity bought with the same money because you won't be using up any capital, whereas an annuity implicitly does that. Depending on the type of investment, it might also be substantially more risky. Overall, you only need to secure the income you actually need/want to live on. Beyond that level, keeping your money outside the pension system makes some sense, though this might change with the new rules referred to in other answers that mean you don't have to buy an annuity if you have enough guaranteed income anyway. In any case, I strongly suggest you focus first on ensuring you have enough to live on in retirement before you worry about leaving an inheritance. As far as setting up a trust goes, you might be able to do that, but it would be quite expensive and the government tends to view trusts as tax avoidance schemes so you may well fall foul of future changes in the rules.\""], "neg": ["\"But you also can't use a comparison to a cell phone battery; they are not the same chemistry either despite both having \"\"lithium\"\" in the name, and EVs limit themselves to a far narrower range of charge than a cell phone does.  My point was that Toyota, didn't base their longevity claims on nothing; they did a shitload of testing of their battery before putting it out, and the \"\"you'll need a new pack after five years\"\" crowd was ultimately proved wrong.  GM has made similar claims about the longevity of their packs, based on similar shitloads of research and testing, and I see no reason why they won't ultimately enjoy the same vindication.  As for Nissan, they are reaping the effects of cheaping out and omitting a liquid cooling system from their cars battery packs. Heat kills batteries of any chemistry!\"", "It's all about keeping your employees happy and ensuring they feel like they're part of something other than a job. Make them feel like they're part of a family and support system. Throw in other things besides pizza parties once a month. Have corporate parties at your house on a weekend, or frequent happy hours. Have an employee of a month kind of thing or recognize your employees for the hard work they do. BUILD, SUPPORT, and SUSTAIN.", "There are other answers here about how much you can deduct for a home office. What seems unique is the question of whether you can deduct it for both your LLC and for your employment. Unless your LLC owns the home, you cannot deduct the depreciation directly. Instead you have to charge your LLC rent for the time that you are using the space for the LLC. That rent must be declared as income on your personal tax return, and you can then offset some of it with the time you spend in that space working for your employer and depreciation for time it is being rented to your LLC. Using a strategy this complex may save you a few bucks on your return, but this is definitely an area where a tax professional is worth the expense making sure you get it right.", "Self-insure a $250K+ house that's deemed to be in a flood zone? Wake up, have coffee. If you don't change your mind, have another cup.", "Organic product Circle Cereal Diamond CBD Hemp oil will help you to remember a bowl of sweet fruity enhanced grain loaded with drain, similar to the one we as a whole love for breakfast.  Precious stone CBD is a top of the line CBD Tincture oil which is mixed with premium CBD rich hemp oil.", "The hospital likely has a contract with your insurance company which makes them obligated to bill the insurance before billing you! I had a similar occurrence that was thrown out when my insurance company provided a copy of a contract with the hospital to the judge. So if there is an agreement they must file with the insurance in timely manner.", "Doterra oil products in the Doterra shop come from the compounds in flowers and plants, seeds, bark, stems and roots. They do not include fatty lipids or acids like you would find in vegetable or animal oils, instead they are clean and extremely absorbent through the skin."]}
+{"query": "Should I make partial pre-payments on an actuarial loan?", "corpus": ["The contract is not very clear. As much as I can understand it will still help if you make part prepayments. In an Rule 78 or Actuarial method, the schedule is drawn up front and the break-up of interest and principal for each month is calculated ahead. At the beginning both the reducing balance method as well as Actuarial method will give the same schedule.  However in Actuarial method, if you make part prepayments, they get applied to the future principals, the interest are ignored. However the future interests are not reduced. Example: Say your schedule looks something like this; Monthly Payments say 100; Month | Principal | Interest 1 | 10 | 90 2 | 20 | 80 3 | 30 | 70 4 | 40 | 60 5 | 50 | 50 6 | 60 | 40 7 | 70 | 30 8 | 80 | 20 9 | 90 | 10 So lets say you have made 3 payments of 100, in the 4th month if you make 150 [in addition to 100], it would get applied to the principal of 4th, 5th and 6th month. So essentially you would save interest of 4th, 5th and 5th month. It would also reduce the total payments to 6. i.e. you will only have 7th, 8th, 9th due. The next payment you make of 100 will get applied to row 7. The disadvantage of this method over reducing balance is that the interest calculated for rows 7,8,9 don't change compared to reducing balance. However if you prepay in full, the unearned interest is calculated and returned as per the Actuarial Tables."], "neg": ["\"But what's the point of even saying that? You could get killed in a car accident tomorrow.   Should I just follow you around and post that any time you have some victory or good news? \"\"Yeah, you got a promotion, but you could get killed in a car accident tomorrow.\"\" \"\"Hey, glad she accepted your proposal; but you could get killed in a car accident tomorrow.\"\"  I could mix it up - \"\"You could have a *c. dificile* infection festering in your intestine right now - your days are numbered.\"\" \"\"Heading to your kid's graduation? Plane could fall out of the sky on the way.\"\"  I started all this by saying that the OP was a complete waste of time. It gives no advice, passes on no wisdom. There's nothing about it that anyone could act on to change their life. It offers zero value. Hell - the time I spent reading it (and arguing about it) I could've spent masturbating and been better off.   In closing - your success is *affected* by random chance. Also, the sky is often blue and more often than not water is wet at room temperature. Have a nice day.\"", "Keep in mind a good lawyer will have the contract cover the five D's: Its really best to lay these things out ahead of time.  I watched, first hand, two friends start a business.  When they were broke and struggling the worked very well together.  Then the money started rolling in.  Despite exceeding their dreams they were constantly at each other's throats fighting and bickering over stupid stuff.  In the end, because they had decent legal docs, they both were able to pull money out of the business.   Had that not been worked out they would have destroyed the business so that no one would have profited.", "Party bus rentals will give the alternative of satellite TV for your amusement needs. Encompass sound stereo are added to get high caliber in sound. For immovability, class and style, Boulder party buses are outstanding decision and it will give you everlasting voyaging background.", "could I decline it so the money would be returned back to the account they were transferred from? As a general banking practise, there is nothing automated that will allow you to mark something as return the funds. You would have to approach your Bank with a written statement mentioning that you don't recognise this credit as belonging to you and request the bank to take appropriate action.", "One major benefit to being able to buy discounted company stock is that you can sell in-the-money covered calls and potentially make more than you would selling at strike.", "https://www.ato.gov.au/Business/GST/ Some of the costs are indeed related to the conversion rate, which, as we all know,changes daily. You don't say whether you're using a credit card. If so, some cards do charge foreign transaction fees; some do not. However, Australia, like many European countries, does use a VAT system. Therefore your charges will be increased. Please be aware that these taxes are built into the economic system. In many cases, you van apply for and receive a waiver to be reimbursed if the purchase is made through a duty free store.", "Not generally in my experience.  It is no more difficult than giving up all the extras us Americans feel like we are entitled to.  Just giving some of that shit up, internet, computers, cable/satellite/cellphones, can save an average person hundreds a month.  Don't take long to get to 5k doing THAT.  They choose to be unable to afford it, not that they aren't *actually capable of it* - there are outliers of course but not as many as the average of the bell curve."]}
+{"query": "How can I estimate business taxes / filing fees for a business that has $0 income?", "corpus": ["Is the business an S-Corp, LLC or Sole Prop? I am going to guess based on the question that it is an LLC that you never closed with the state and you live in a state (NY) that charges a fee for having an LLC in the state in which case you owe those fees to the state. I am not aware of any taxes on the mere existence of a business by the IRS. I think you are going to find out that the are no taxes owed to the IRS for this nonexistent activity."], "neg": ["Ok, so by doubling down you mean when I said that ms as well as 3/4 of the country don't consider sexual orientation a protected class...ok, then apparently I am not the only one who has their mind made up.   You entire argument is based on it being a protected class...it is, but only in a few states. Ms is not one of them. I agree that they should not think like that and their business should hurt because they are bigots...but that does not mean another business can do the same thing because you agree with them.  It is ok to have a difference of opinion but you seem to think that a company providing a service based on their bias is ok for some and not for others. How can you not see the similar aspects of the two.   I agree with you that ms is wrong in this case, and I also agree that the nazi wannabes are wrong...We are on the same side...but I don't think that PayPal should get a free pass when it aligns with my thinking. They are not offering service based on an ideal, the businesses in ms were as well. So, I think they are both wrong and should be blasted in public...either you can show biased when dealing with customers or you can't. It is that simple.   You are agreeing with a company choosing to do business with whom they want to, but then you are doubling down on having another business doing the same thing because you think that sexual orientation is a protected class everywhere.  If it was we would not be having this discussion, but here we are. You are trying to have it both ways. I don't know how else to explain it.", "\"Margin trades let you post a margin of a certain proportion of the value of the trade as collateral against the price of a trade and pay off the difference between the current price and the price that you bought at. Any losses incurred are taken from the margin so the margin has to be maintained as prices change. In practice this means that when the price moves significantly from the buying price a \"\"margin call\"\" is triggered and the buyer has to increase their posted margin. The vast majority of the foreign exchange trades done every day are margin trades as (effectively) are all spread bets. Margins get reset overnight whether or not a call has occurred.\"", "Unless you're going to claim that humans lack free will, you can't reduce human action to deterministic processes that you can test in a particle accelerator.  You reference experiments, but there have been no experiments. If you really are a physicist, I find it seriously disconcerting that you'd so flippantly conflate experimental data with observational data. They are not the same thing.   If you happen to know any statisticians, it might be worth your while to have a refresher chat on this distinction with one of them.  To put is very simply: the tools of physics are inappropriate for an analysis of any phenomenon that involves human choices, and if you insist on an empirical approach when key variables (the internal state of the mind) are not measurable, you are wrong.", "Exactly. that is paying double the money for no better coverage. It makes no sense. The paperwork when you file a claim will ask you if there is coverage from another policy. Making the same claim to two different policies, without telling them,  would be considered insurance fraud. For that kind of money the insurance company would be involved with paying the re-builder money periodically. Obviously only one re-builder is involved, and they would notice if they were getting paid more than was required. While you could decide to take the money and not rebuild, but that wouldn't work if you had a mortgage. The lender would want their money or force you to rebuild.", "Thanks for your feedback! I do see the 2 million cell limit being issues with big datasets sometimes. I think it just reassures me that if other companies have made the transition and are running well after, then we can get through this transition as well lol", "When they stop paying fines and damages for these issues and stop losing money by screwing up? When they do illegal things on a wide scale in the portion of business that actually matters in terms of profit and revenue - IB and corporate services.   Why would they be a criminal Enterprise after having 2 widely publicised issues that realistically affect a tiny portion of its business?", "Honestly, if you're going to restrict the online payment on your card over this, you may as well just restrict it permanently. Because this is definitely not the only time anyone has had an opportunity to retrieve the information on your card. There isn't really that much information on there - anyone taking more than a cursory look could in theory remember it and use it. We're talking waiters and checkout chicks, anytime you've given your card to anyone really. Banks know this. Credit card numbers are not really secure. They factor this in. And they  have software for fraud detection - looking at large or unusual transactions and transactions in foreign countries etc. Of course it's not fool proof, but the best thing you can do isn't to cripple your card, but just be a little bit more diligent about checking your statements, making sure the transactions make sense. Some banks also allow you to set up an alert system so anytime any transactions occur you are notified immediately."]}
+{"query": "Whole life insurance - capped earnings", "corpus": ["\"The question that I walk away with is \"\"What is the cost of the downside protection?\"\" Disclaimer - I don't sell anything. I am not a fan of insurance as an investment, with rare exceptions. (I'll stop there, all else is a tangent) There's an appeal to looking at the distribution of stock returns. It looks a bit like a bell curve, with a median at 10% or so, and a standard deviation of 15 or so. This implies that there are some number of years on average that the market will be down, and others, about 2/3, up. Now, you wish to purchase a way of avoiding that negative return, and need to ask yourself what it's worth to do so.  The insurance company tells you (a) 2% off the top, i.e. no dividends and (b) we will clip the high end, over 9.5%.  I then am compelled to look at the numbers. Knowing that your product can't be bought and sold every year, it's appropriate to look at 10-yr rolling returns. The annual returns I see, and the return you'd have in any period. I start with 1900-2012. I see an average 9.8% with STD of 5.3%. Remember, the 10 year rolling will do a good job pushing the STD down. The return the Insurance would give you is an average 5.4%, with STD of .01. You've bought your way out of all risk, but at what cost?  From 1900-2012, my dollar grows to $30080, yours, to $406. For much of the time, treasuries were higher than your return. Much higher.  It's interesting to see how often the market is over 10% for the year, clip too many of those and you really lose out.  From 1900-2012, I count 31 negative years (ouch) but 64 years over 9.5%. The 31 averaged -13.5%, the 64, 25.3%.  The illusion of \"\"market gains\"\" is how this product is sold. Long term, they lag safe treasuries.\""], "neg": ["The Dexmet MicroGrid® EM series of expanded metal foils (EMFs) are versatile, effective materials for shielding against electromagnetic interference (EMI). EMFs are formed from solid metal foil in a proven, economical “slit-and-stretch” process. For more information email us at: sales@dexmet.com or call us at 800-714-8736/(203) 294-4440 and Fax at (203) 294-7899. Visit our website: www.dexmet.com.", "I wonder why they continue to allow sponsored links from fiverr, then (they sell upvotes).  I have reported them before, and was told by hueypriest that they would suspend the ads pending investigation, but then they returned and I got no response to my second inquiry.", "it is possible that if you do not accept the offer, they will try offering you an even lower rate.  if they offered you close to 0%, you could start carrying a balance and find a better use for the cash you would have spent paying it off. there are plenty of investments with a guaranteed return of over 0%. personally, i am using a 0% offer from one of my cards to invest in the stock market.  i might lose that bet, but on average over the last 10 years, i have not. a pretty safe bet would be paying down your mortgage, or buying a cd that matures when the offer ends. that said, even a 10k$ balance might only pay you around 300$. is that worth the hassle to you?", "\"This is a really interesting question and something a lot of work is being done to understand.  I'm going to look at the closely related question \"\"Do non market-cap etf weighting methods consistently outperform once you take into account their investment biases?\"\" Let's use revenue weighting as a reason why investment biases are so important.  In revenue weighting, you would own almost no fast-growing tech companies as they generally have little revenue.   This sounds great if we are talking about say Pets.com in the late 90s but you also would miss most of the rise of Google. To believe in these ETFs consistently outperform (adjusted for risk) you would have to have a strong reason to believe that earnings, sales, or dividends are a better predictor of company value than market value.  Market analysts include the above three metrics and many more when pricing stocks so out-performance using only one of the above metrics seems unlikely. There is one caveat to this and that is value and small cap stocks have been shown to give slightly better risk-adjusted returns in the very long run (see Fama/French) and many of these alternative weighting methods will have a value or small cap bias.  First, it is unclear if this out-performance will continue now that it is more widely known.  Second, even if you believe this will continue you can more easily and cheaply get this bias though value/small-cap etfs than these weighting schemes. In the end, the only thing that is perfectly clear is that higher fee investments will generally under-perform.\"", "Your original example is a little confusing because just shorting for 1k and buying for 1k is 100% leveraged or an infinitive leverage ratio. (and not allowed) Brokerage houses would require you to invest some capital in the trade.  One example might be requiring you to hold $100 in the brokerage.  This is where the 10:1 ratio comes from. (1000/10) Thus a return of 4.5% on the 1000k bond and no movement on the short position would net you $45 and voila a 45% return on your $100 investment. A 40 to 1 leverage ratio would mean that you would only have to invest $25 to make this trade.  Something that no individual investor are allowed to do, but for some reason some financial firms have been able to.", "First, accept the fact that you are not going to be able to predict the ups and downs of the market well enough for that to be a viable strategy. In the long run these schemes tend to be losers because it forces you to guess correctly twice (When to get out, when to get back in) and missing either date can cost you. A better strategy to benefit from market volatility:", "\"&gt; How can one not get it?  I dunno, you tell me.  &gt;You need to ask yourselves why the actual battery companies balked at building plants for his cars  See my other comment, because that doubly didn't happen.  Not only have \"\"the actual battery companies\"\" increased capacity for Tesla, but they're partnering in the plant.  Please attempt to be informed about the things you talk about before you talk about them.  *Or* don't go into the conversation acting informed when you are not.\""]}
+{"query": "Price graphs: why not percent change?", "corpus": ["The actual price is represented on charts and not the change in price as a percentage, because it is the actual price which is used in all other parts of analysis (both technical and fundamental), and it is the actual figure the security is bought and sold at. A change in price has to be relative to a previous price at a previous time, and we can easily work out the change in price over any given time period. I think what you are concerned about is how to compare a certain actual price change in low priced securities to the same actual price change in a higher priced securities.  For example: $1.00 rise in a $2.00 stock representing a 50% increase in price; $1.00 rise in a $10.00 stock representing a 10% increase in price. On a standard chart both of these look the same, as they both show a $1.00 increase in price. So what can we do to show the true representation of the percentage increase in price? It is actually quite simple. You view the chart using a log scale instead of a standard scale (most charting packages should have this option). What may look like a bubble on a standard scale chart, looks like a healthy uptrend on a log scale chart and represents a true picture of the percentage change in price. Example of Standard Price Scale VS LOG Price Scale on a Chart Standard Price Scale  On the standard scale the price seems to have very little movement from Mar09 to Jan12 and then the price seems to zoom up after Jan12 to Mar13. This is because a 4% increase (for example) of $0.50 is only $0.02, whilst a 4% increase of $7.00 $0.28, so the increases seem much bigger at the end of the chart. LOG Price Scale  On the LOG chart however, these price changes seem to be more evenly displayed no matter at what price level the price change has occurred at. This thus give a better representation of how fast or slow the price is rising or falling, or the size of the change in price."], "neg": ["\"&gt;The question confronting us all is not if, but how will civilization evolve from the unsustainable centralized control of industrialization to the freedom of technologically enhanced open systems?  Industrialization and central control aren't even relate-able concepts. Unless you count that you learned about them both in \"\"Social Studies\"\".  Additionally, the author has no concept of how finance operates.\"", "$1160 per month, lets say you only have one kid.  Oh, wait, taxes are taken out.  You really only have about $1,000 to work with.  Cheapest rent in my area is about 400 a month, and then you're living in the ghetto.  Seriously, a really not great place to raise a kid but I'm being generous here to prove a point.    What's this?  Walmart is not within walking distance of the ghetto?  Damn, you need a car.  Lets say you have about $100 a month in car payments for a pretty cheap car that just goes from A to B.  Liability only insurance (being generous since if you're making payments you probably need more than liability only) also for another $40 a month.  So we're already at 540.  But since you need to drive to work, we need gas, too.    Let's say you live between 5-10 miles from work.  That means you drive about 20 miles a day, at least.  Your car only gets about 20 miles to the gallon, probably less with city driving, and gas is about $4 a gallon, so $4 per day times 20 days a month (we'll assume you only work $5 a day) and there's another $80.  $620 dollars so far.   Assuming you actually cook at your house instead of eating out.  $75 dollars is average for two people for food for a week, so that's $300 a month (4 weeks.)  $920 so far.  $80 left.  Let's average your utility bill out.  Lets say you don't even have AC, as you can go without it and just be incredibly uncomfortable in a temperate climate.  Just normal electricity and heat in the winter, we'll GENEROUSLY make that a $50 a month bill to average out for the entire year.  $30 left.  In one full year, you've saved up $360!  You're rich!  No, wait...that kid you have probably needs school supplies.  They're growing, too, so they probably need clothes.  For that matter, you also need new clothes.  Even used clothes from Goodwill can be costly over a year.  I really hope your car doesn't break down because that can set you back at LEAST $200 most times.  Also, better hope you don't get sick, because you don't have insurance and a doctors visit or emergency room visit could EASILY break that budget.  No preventative care, either, so your risk of getting sick is substantially hire to begin with than the insured.  I also have not included ANY luxury utility bills, let alone any kind of phone at all or especially internet.    Also, all of this assumes that you work full time, which at WalMart most employees do NOT because Walmart wants to avoid being forced to give benefits to employees.  Do you REALLY want to continue to sit on your high horse and tell me that people can make it raising a family on minimum wage?", "It's an old problem that extends from intellectual property rights which were designed around inventions and patients. Given the current popularity of the 'mash-up' generation that sees value and merit in using part or most of anothers work and calling it original, there is a large disconnect when it comes to where and how usage should be permitted. The laws governing this particular publication depend on when it was published, what was precedent then and what addendums have been added in between.", "", "You can take out the contributions to your Roth tax and penalty free.  That's the good thing. Anything above the amount you contributed that you withdraw early will cost you ordinary income tax (which is higher than capital gains tax) plus a 10 percent penalty on that amount. So if you have $15,000 in the account and $5,000 is gains and you withdraw $11,000, then you owe tax and penalty on $1,000.  The penalty is 10% and your taxes (high taxes!) are added to that.  Pretty bad deal. If you kept it in a normal account and paid capital gains tax, you just pay 15% (or whatever) on your gains and you get to offset income tax with your losses via tax loss harvesting. So back to your question: your idea works even better than you suggested if you only withdraw up to the amount that you contributed (you pay no tax!).  Take out any of the gains and you will be penalized more than you would if you just paid capital gains on them.  Leave those in until you are old enough to take them out penalty and tax free. To me, contributing to a Roth, making a bunch of gains on it, and withdrawing only the contribution part whenever you want seems to make good sense.", "\"My simple rule to avoid impulse buys is that if you see something you want, you can get it.... but not today; go back and get it tomorrow (or wait even longer, for big-ticket items). This way you'll have time to think about it rather than just doing it. That won't address all your wasteful spending, but it's a good way to avoid \"\"why did I think this would be a good idea?\"\" type situations.\"", "A: Rollover the cash from the previous account into the new one a low-cost IRA like Vanguard. This, and only this.  Because your mortgage is, less than 4%, while your retirement plan will earn 7% over the long term. I have no 'retirement' plans because Because you're 28. and essentially will be happy working until I die Unless circumstances change. but as far as I see it this is not such a bad deal because it is like paying taxes on income. (Principal says I will lose up to 30%) You're ignoring the 10% early withdrawal penalty. I am wise with my money for the most part Then don't piss away $3,000 just for a temporary feel good. I earn a high salary in a tech job.  As a result of being under 20%, I am paying mortgage insurance of about $300/mo. So -- after building up an Emergency Fund -- throw as much as possible of your high salary against your mortgage to get rid of the PMI."]}
+{"query": "What is a decent rate of return for investing in the markets?", "corpus": ["Don't ever, ever, ever let someone else handle your money, unless you want somebody else have your money. Nobody can guarantee a return on stocks. That's utter bullshit. Stock go up and down according to market emotions. How can your guru predict the market's future emotions? Keep your head cool with stocks. Only buy when you are 'sure' you are not going to need the money in the next 10 years. Buy obligations before stocks, invest in 'defensive' stocks before investing in 'aggressive' stocks. Keep more money in obligations and defensive stock than in aggressive stocks. See how you can do by yourself. Before buying (or selling) anything, think about the risks, the market, the expert's opinion about this investment, etc. Set a target for selling (and adjust the target according to the performance of the stock). Before investing, try to learn about investing, really. I've made my mistakes, you'll make yours, let's hope they're not the same :)"], "neg": ["The thing is Spain really isn't like Greece and their financial crises are fundamentally different but unfortunately interconnected.  Greece's issue is too much sovereign debt and a banking sector that lent far too heavily to their own government. Spain's problems derive from a private banking sector crisis as they over lent particularly to fund an insane property boom that went really really bad really quick. The root cause is far more akin to the US crisis than the Greek one, however being caught up in the Eurozone and having banks exposed to the debt of other nations has really fucked them over in terms of borrowing and debt to gdp ratio.  Spain was one of the few Eurozone nations that stuck to the max 3% og GDP borrowing rule, not even Germany stuck to that, they were fiscally responsible. Then having to provide a huge bailouts to a financial sector, as the economy was tanking from the global recession amd the bubble bursting and a crisis emerging in other EU nations (and a lack of a central bank) has been their ruin.", "Some countries in European Union are starting to implement credit history sharing, for example now history from polish bureau BIK and German Schufa are mutually available. Similar agreements are planned between polish BIK and bureaus in the Netherlands and United Kingdom.", "- This is a simple solution because you don't have to monitor a person's trades over time, or even their frequency. Implementing this in the modern computer exchanges seems trivial to me. Asking an exchange to monitor each trader's trades to ensure no HFTs seems full of loopholes (ask a computer to execute HFTs across multiple trader IDs, for example), and I think is a distraction suggestion.  - The reason that I think these taxes don't get implented is, as ChaosMotor correctly states, these taxes empower the government, which is something that a lot of political players (republicans, libertarians, and anarchists) don't want. I have always wondered what would happen if these fees were imposed by the government, implemented by the exchanges, but all money went to, say, the American Red Cross. I think that that would be a pretty good idea.  - Finally, I also want to mention that the government plays a large role in markets already. For example, enforcing contracts, managing bankrupcties, and preventing fraud are all things that the government does to ensure that markets work well. This is another simple thing the the government can do to reduce market uncertainty and make our financial markets work better.", "\"simplicity and roi are often at odds. the simplest plan that also supports a reasonable investment return would have 3 accounts: if you want to get better returns on your investments, things can get much more complicated. here are some optional accounts to consider: besides the mechanics of money flowing between accounts, a budget helps you understand and control your spending.  while there are many methods for this (e.g. envelopes of cash, separate accounts for various types of expenses), the simplest might be using mint.com.  just be sure to put all your spending on a credit or debit card, and you can see your spending by category when you log into mint. it can take a bit to get it set up, and your bank needs to be compatible, but it can give you a really good picture of where your money is going.  once you know that, you can start making decisions like \"\"i should spend less on coffee\"\", or \"\"i should go to the zoo more\"\", based on how much things cost vs how much you enjoy them. if you feel like your spending is out of control, then you can set yourself hard limits on certain kinds of spending, but usually just watching and influencing your own choices is enough. notes:  if you have a spouse or partner, you should each maintain your own separate accounts. there are many reasons for this including simplicity and roi, besides the obvious. if you feel you must have a joint account, be sure to clearly define how it should be used (e.g. only for paying the utilities) and funded (x$ per month each). particularly with your house, do not do joint ownership. one of you should be a renter and the other a landlord. some of these statements assume you are in the usa. on a personal note, i have about 20 credit cards, 2 checking accounts, 2 ira's, 2 brokerage accounts, and 3 401k's. but i consider myself a personal finance hobbyist, and spend an absurd amount of time chasing financial deals and tax breaks.\"", "Worked my way through college, 40-50 hours a week making minimum wage at KFC until I got promoted to assistant manager. Yes it's hard, but not so hard that you can't still have a life outside of school and work. Having kids would change all that I have no idea what it's like to try and juggle work school and kids but that's the risk you take when you have kids wether on purpose or accident.", "https://www.onlinesbi.com/nri/accounts_deposits/sbinri_ad_nro.html  attached a link from India's premier bank SBI, confirming that you can move your regular saving account money, to NRO", "It's definitely something to keep on top of. Who knows if he's right, in the long run. I'm 100% positive cryptocurrency in general is here to stay and will complement fiats, but the question is whether another coin than Bitcoin can deliver something truly more useful. What exact idea will beat it? if you can answer that, you'll be a billionaire yourself, but imagining that someone will have such an idea is not hard at all. It's harder to imagine that no one ever will. And when that happens, it will probably happen fast and it's going to sting. Many people will be once bitten twice shy after that, and the total crypto market cap may take some time to recover."]}
+{"query": "What is the stock warrant's expiration date here?", "corpus": ["\"These warrants do not have a fixed expiration date, rather their expiration date is dependant upon the company completing an acquisition.  Thirty days after the acquisition is complete the warrants enter their exercise period.  The warrants can then be exercised at any time over the next five years.  After five years they expire. From the \"\"WARRANT AGREEMENT SOCIAL CAPITAL HEDOSOPHIA HOLDINGS CORP.\"\": A Warrant may be exercised only during the period (the “Exercise Period”) (A) commencing on the later of: (i) the date that is thirty (30) days after the first date on which the Company completes a merger, share exchange, asset acquisition, share purchase, reorganization or similar business combination, involving the Company and one or more businesses (a “Business Combination”), and (ii) the date that is twelve (12) months from the date of the closing of the Offering, and (B) terminating at the earliest to occur of (x) 5:00 p.m., New York City time on the date that is five (5) years after the date on which the Company completes its initial Business Combination, (y) the liquidation of the Company in accordance with the Company’s amended and restated memorandum and articles of association, as amended from time to time, if the Company fails to complete a Business Combination, and (z) 5:00 p.m., New York City time on, other than with respect to the Private Placement Warrants, the Redemption Date (as defined below) as provided in Section 6.2 hereof (the “Expiration Date”); provided, however, that the exercise of any Warrant shall be subject to the satisfaction of any applicable conditions, as set forth in subsection 3.3.2 below, with respect to an effective registration statement Source : lawinsder.com\""], "neg": ["Their headquarters are just north of Sioux City, Iowa, across the river in South Dakota.  They located there for tax reasons, same as Gateway Computers back in the 1990s.   Much of the area's wealth is located just across the river in South Dakota and starves Sioux City of the taxes it needs to serve the overall population. It's one of the quirks of being in a three-state metro area (source: this is my hometown).  I could tell you more about Beef Processing Inc (BPI) around here.  They're one of the biggest sources of wealth in the area, the owners are heavily involved in the charitable scene here, too.", "No, at least not noticeably so. The majority of what HFT does is to take advantage of the fact that there is a spread between buy and sell orders on the exchange, and to instantly fill both orders, gaining relatively risk-free profit from some inherent inefficiencies in how the market prices stocks. The end result is that intraday trading of the non-HFT nature, as well as speculative short-term trading will be less profitable, since HFT will cause the buy/sell spread to be closer than it would otherwise be. Buying and holding will be (largely) unaffected since the spread that HFT takes advantage of is miniscule compared to the gains a stock will experience over time.  For example, when you go to buy shares intending to hold them for a long time, the HFT might cost you say, 1 to 2 cents per share. When you go to sell the share, HFT might cost you the same again. But, if you held it for a long time, the share might have doubled or tripled in value over the time you held it, so the overall effect of that 2-4 cents per share lost from HFT is negligible. However, since the HFT is doing this millions of times per day, that 1 cent (or more commonly a fraction of a cent) adds up to HFTs making millions. Individually it doesn't affect anyone that much, but collectively it represents a huge loss of value, and whether this is acceptable or not is still a subject of much debate!", "A trust is a financial arrangement to put aside money over a period of time (typically years), for a specific purpose to benefit someone. Two purposes of trusts are 1) providing for retirement and 2) providing for a child or minor. There are three parties to a trust: 1) A grantor, the person who establishes and funds a trust. 2) A beneficiary, a person who receives the benefits. 3) a trustee, someone who acts in a fiduciary capacity between the grantor and beneficiary. No one person can be all three parties. A single person can be two of out those three parties. A RETIREMENT trust is something like an IRA (individual retirement account). Here, a person can be both the grantor (contributor) to the IRA, and the beneficiary (a withdrawer after retirement). But you need a bank or a broker to act as a fiduciary, and to handle the reporting to the IRS (Internal Revenue Service). Pension plans have employers as grantors, employees as beneficiaries, and (usually) a third party as trustee. A MINORS' trust can be established under a Gift to the Minors' Act, or other trust mechanisms, such as a Generation Skipping Trust. Here, a parent may be both grantor and trustee (although usually a third party is a trustee). A sum of money is put aside over a period of years for the benefit of a minor, for a college education, or for the minor's attaining a certain age: a minimum of 18, sometimes 21, possibly 25 or even older, depending on when the grantor feels that the minor is responsible enough to handle the money.", "One thing is for sure, no matter how you look at it, Obama's 8 years will prove to be lost years in America. Gridlocked congress, Health Care Reform, and the inevitable double dip recession/ depression will be the blame, and most of it will be directed towards the policies of the last 16 years.  I used to be a stone cold republican. Super Conservative. That is when I thought I had the entire world ahead of me. Now, with having to work a minimum wage job, and paying back my student loans to clear my debt, my views have changed a little   I want to believe that America will take their eyes away from Fox News and MSNBC and look outside of both the Dems and GOP point of view, and invite a third party into the discussion. I believe the Libertarians may be able to bridge the gap. Most Americans would fit their beliefs and political platform, and they do raise some great questions. I just hope it does not get sabotage by the extremest like the tea party did.  But in short, if their is no unity, and a split in America, things could get ugly by 2018.", "Keep in mind this is a great primer on *macro*economics, or how the economies and money supplies of societies as a whole work.  It's equally fascinating and important to learn about the basics of *micro*economics, the other side of that coin (pun intended), or how individual people and businesses make decisions about production and consumption. You've probably heard of the laws of supply and demand which are really important for understanding things like how and why prices change and why some businesses and industries are more successful than others.", "\"Thank goodness you replied again before i did i completely forgot to respond and that notification was a good reminder. Im genuinely enjoying the conversation and sorry about the name calling most of my political and economic debates happen with family where name calling is not only accepted but expected lol.    &gt; Too many people walk into the emergency room uninsured, or under-insured. They get emergent care that they are not covered for, and the hospitals jack up the prices greatly in the hopes of getting a larger portion reimbursed by Medicare  [this link] (https://insight.kellogg.northwestern.edu/article/who-bears-the-cost-of-the-uninsured-nonprofit-hospitals) seems to contradict that statment. i dont know enough about the system to say youre wrong but it doesnt sound very real to me.   &gt;Again, Switzerland has lower tax rates than the US, but they don't even crack the top 20 when it comes to countries with low taxes.  Youre obviously not wrong but there are many places on that list id love to retire in. Amongst the developed world from what im seeing [here] (https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/List_of_countries_by_tax_rates) has the 27th lowest individual income tax rate when it applies to there highest bracket. now i use the term \"\"developed\"\" very loosely here as there are countries ahead of them on that list that clearly arent part of the developed world but its not up to me to decide what the swiss rank is.  &gt;So you work in construction, an industry in which commercial is notorious for underbidding a contract (whether to government or to private), and then running into unexpected overages that cause the job to go over schedule, over budget.  This is dangerously false. The industry isnt known for underbidding and going over budget. Only really really really bad contractors do that. What a lot of good contractors do is, when you know a general contractor for a long time or youre trying to to build a relationship you do eachother favors so they will say for instance \"\"hey man i dont have the budget to pay you what you need so take a loss on this one and we'll take care of you on the next one\"\" or they will find some money unaccounted for in the budget and throw it your way in the form of extra work done.   &gt;Its not like the government just sits around and takes it. I know of at least one federal contractor who went to federal prison for fraudulently winning contracts in my part of the country.  In my line of work they really do just sit back and take it, from what ive experience you have to be super greedy and really fuck up to get their attention. 1 job i did, i was only there for 3 weeks total and in that 3 week period i saw all types of osha violations, rescource waste, time waste and plenty of govenrment workers who didnt really know what they were doing \"\"checking\"\" on the job to make sure progress was being made.   &gt;It is because government has tremendous resources that they can throw at a problem.  This is where we really do differ, i see this as a bad thing. I see it as them not spending money efficiently money that they got from me and my hard work. Look at the f22 raptor for instance it is now 3 times over budget from the projections for how much of an upgrade? Whats the point of a contract if someone can just go over budget 3 times over without anyone blinking an eye. Why not just say \"\"get it done and bill us\"\". I understand your point of view completely i just vehemently disagree with it especially because i think the government source of revenue is based around theft.\"", "You should read the provisions in your offer and any counteroffer that was signed before paying the earnest money, but generally if the appraisal comes in low, the price has to be adjusted. If you can't get a mortgage (because the appraisal is too low) the next guy usually can't either. Unfortunately without more information (the documents that were signed and the locale, to know which laws might be applicable) I can't tell you with certainty that you'll get your earnest money back."]}
+{"query": "Self Employed, but not required to pay estimated taxes?", "corpus": ["\"The annualized method allows you to take a look at each quarter independently and pay the tax in the quarter that you earned it. -- According to Linda Durand, a certified public accountant with Drolet & Associates PLLC in Washington, D.C., from the Bankrate article \"\"Paying quarterly estimated taxes\"\"  And after paying annualized quarterly estimates, you can still owe up to $1000 at tax time without penalty.\""], "neg": ["Well, yeah.  Costco sells items in bulk, Whole Foods does not.  A better comparison would be Whole Foods against Aldi, Albertson's, Smith's, Vons, WinCo, etc.  These are the companies that sell groceries in similar sizes, but perhaps of lower quality.", "Jobs don't mean anything by themselves. If you are increasing part time positions but not full time there may be no gain in income/productivity. Also if wages aren't increasing but debt is that means the portion of average take home wage that goes towards interest is increasing as well.", "maybe it would turn into an Oligopoly on it's own, but regulation as that pervasive is what I'm trying to avoid here.  I advocate Worker Co-ops as the best examples for these firms because they actually allow a sense of welfare taken up by the workers who can self provide with actual trades (and because their co-ownership allows a voluntary loophole in minimum wage laws, you get a real chance to vindicate/prove Adam Smith's theory of flexible prices and wages based on economic activity.).  With self-provided welfare, the Government can pull out of both transfer payments as well as financial regulations because these markets have become more differentiated to a diversity of opinions, so Government can step back and focus on its more important role of Researcher and Developer, which it tends to do better at than other roles.  Firms can't do this if they are breaking even, like they would in perfect competition.", "&gt; (1) The value of the MBA is in the network  Really?  That's the value?  No, it's the letters behind your name that people look at when you submit an application / resume.  If it's not there they pass you by.  Furthermore, an MBA isn't the only way to build a network.  Also, congrats on finding some great entry level jobs.  When this kid is thinking about his 1st promotion and his peers already have an MBA, he's screwed.  Great for the kids at your school... they're not eligible for anything other than entry level jobs without one.  You're behind the trend.  Sorry, you're giving the kid bad advice.  It will not do him any harm to get it right away.", "&gt; Amazon used steep discounts to turn its Echo speaker line into a best-seller. Even if Amazon loses money on the device sales, it gets a toehold for its Alexa digital voice-assistant platform to become more connected to shoppers who can use it to check the weather, stream music, hail an Uber, order pizza -- and of course buy more from Amazon -- by voice command.", "I'll repost a [comment I posted the other day](https://www.reddit.com/r/AskUK/comments/6pmtzr/askuk_weekly_what_makes_0_sense_to_you/dkv8qg6/?context=2) regarding Snapchat, as it fits just as well here....  &gt; &gt; Ah, snapchat before it got monetised.  &gt; I don't even think it's that.  &gt; Tech companies that become popular tend to go on hiring sprees and all those new developers feel compelled to justify their existence within the company. As such they start churning out additional 'features' that nobody asked for and which only serve to complicate their service and turn their product into the very thing people were trying to get away from when they started using the service in the first place.  &gt; ...then the 'next big thing' comes along and the cycle repeats.", "It's called correlation. I found this: http://www.forexrazor.com/en-us/school/tabid/426/ID/437424/currency-pair-correlations it looks a good place to start Similar types of political economies will correlate together, opposite types won't. Also there are geographic correlations (climate, language etc)"]}
+{"query": "Sell or keep rental Property?", "corpus": ["Sell the house, in the scenario you describe he is using the property as an investment with a $250 per month buy-in. This investment doesn't make a return right now and when you add in the cost of dealing with the tenant (even if he doesn't have those cost now, he will when they move out)he is out of more than $250 a month and he has no direct knowledge that the value will definitely increase. He would be better spent selling the house and putting the funds into an investment, even a risky investment. It will have less maintenance cost associated with the risky investment than the rental property.  Besides sitting on the property for 10-15 years would cost him 30-45k plus the cost of re-renting the house when empty.Not to mention the inevitable increases in taxes over that time which will either increase his deficit or eat up the rent increase he is able to charge. Don't take the loss on the sale, just short sale it and take the money and invest! One last thought... An alternative is to creatively finance a sale (take payments from a buyer until they can buy outright) that will cover the FULL mortgage and get him the price he needs. You can look up owner financing to find out more on how to do this. Hope this helps!"], "neg": ["Yes,  if you choose to live within the benefits provided by a system *and* choose to illegally not pay for your part, then yes expect armed men to show up at your door - and rightfully so.  Try joining a family you don't know at a restaurant, start helping yourself to their food and see what happens...", "A couple things. First of all, most people's MAIN source of income is from their job, but they have others, such as bank interest, stock dividends, etc. So that income has to be reported with their wage income. The second thing is that most people have deductions NOT connected with their job. These deductions reduce income (and generate refunds). So it's in their interest to file.", "\"What do you mean by 'make'?  I am in the US, but I'm sure it's typical that any business has a \"\"bottom line\"\", the profit after all costs including paper losses for things like depreciation. This is then taxed, either at the business level or to the individual. The individual's person expenses don't come into play, unless those expenses are tied to the business, e.g. Some kind of function at their house which includes clients/customers.\"", "Programmer here. Getting into business is more than just tech knowledge. It's great that you were able to get some money for what you did. But setting up a business requiring figuring out a solution to a problem. When it's easy to identify a problem, it's not easy to come up with a viable solution (otherwise someone else would have already solved it). At other times, you figure out a very limited scoped problem and figure out a solution, but it's not very scalable.   My advice to you. Keep learning. You are very young and there is a lot of fun things you can do. If you think you are already standing out with your skills, get an online profile going. Get popular. Try all channels. Should be fun.", "We all live in a smart world and this technically smart world is operated on mainly two operating systems that are always working hard to outshine each other in more than one ways to mention. These two operating systems are Google’s Android and Apple’s iOS system predominantly used in smart phones and tablets.", "\"Actually, banks do issue their own money, it's just not embodied as a piece of paper, it's called checkbook money and in the US, it's backed by 3$ per every 100$ promised, that's the magic of \"\"fractional reserve banking.\"\"\"", "\"In the US, stocks are listed on one exchange but can be traded on multiple venues.  You need to confirm exactly what your data is showing: a) trades on the primary-listed exchange; or b) trades made at any venue. Also, the trade condition codes are important.  Only certain trade condition codes contribute towards the day's open/high/low/close and some others only contribute towards the volume data.  The Consolidated Tape Association is very clear on which trades should contribute towards each value - but some vendors have their own interpretation (or just simply an erroneous interpretation of the specifications). It may surprise you to find that the majority of trading volume for many stocks is not on their primary-listed exchange.  For example, on 2 Mar 2015, NASDAQ:AAPL traded a total volume across all venues was 48096663 shares but trading on NASDAQ itself was 12050277 shares. Trades can be cancelled.  Some data vendors do not modify their data to reflect these busted trades.   Some data vendors also \"\"snapshot\"\" their feed at a particular point in time of the data.  Some exchanges can provide data (mainly corrections) 4-5 hours after the closing bell.  By snapshotting the data too early and throwing away any subsequent data is a typical cause of data discrepancies.   Some data vendors also round prices/volumes - but stocks don't just trade to two decimal places. So you may well be comparing two different sets of trades (with their own specific inclusion rules) against the same stock.  You need to confirm with your data sources exactly how they do things. Disclosure: Premium Data is an end-of-day daily data vendor.\""]}
+{"query": "Can a retail trader do bid-ask spread scalping through algo-trading?", "corpus": ["\"In US public stock markets there is no difference between the actions individual retail traders are \"\"permitted\"\" to take and the actions institutional/corporate traders are \"\"permitted\"\" to take.  The only difference is the cost of those actions.  For example, if you become a Registered Market Maker on, say, the BATS stock exchange, you'll get some amazing rebates and reduced transaction prices; however, in order to qualify for Registered Market Maker status you have to maintain constant orders in the book for hundreds of equities at significant volumes.  An individual retail trader is certainly permitted to do that, but it's probably too expensive. Algorithmic trading is not the same as automated trading (algorithmic trading can be non-automated, and automated trading can be non-algorithmic), and both can be anywhere from low- to high-frequency.  A low-frequency automated strategy is essentially indistinguishable from a person clicking their mouse several times per day, so: no, from a legal or regulatory perspective there is no special procedure an individual retail trader has to follow before s/he can automate a trading strategy.  (Your broker, on the other hand, may have all sorts of hoops for you to jump through in order to use their automation platform.) Last (but certainly not least) you will almost certainly lose money hand over fist attempting bid-ask scalping as an individual retail trader, whether your approach is algorithmic or not, automated or not.  Why?  Because the only way to succeed at bid-ask scalping is to (a) always be at/near the front of the queue when a price change occurs in your favor, and (b) always cancel your resting orders before they are executed when a price change occurs against you.  Unless your algorithms are smarter than every other algorithm in the industry, an individual retail trader operating through a broker's trading platform cannot react quickly enough to succeed at either of those.  You would have to eschew the broker and buy direct market access to even have a chance, and that's the point at which you're no longer a retail trader. Good luck!\""], "neg": ["No. The value of the dollar will continue to decline, in turn adding to the value of gold. The current prices are not high for metals, although not rock bottom prices. Especially given what central banks are going to do. (QE).  We are nowhere near a gold bubble.", "But the notes are always called at par, no? So you have a fixed yield which depends on the coupon and price you bought it at. I still don't see how the company doing better than expected changes the yield on your investment.", "Take your problem-solving skills to the next level while learning to build. Game design courses allow students to create their own unique virtual worlds with blocks of material mined from the ground. Children interested in games, such as video or computer games, and how they work may enjoy attending some Game Design Programs. These Game design programs &amp; courses give children a great opportunity to learn the basics of game design and computer programming. Checkout us online: http://www.homebuiltairplanes.com/forums/member.php?u=46848", "What if you do need to fly for business? Also, what if you want to get to Europe in less than a few days?  Regardless, TSA has intentions to find their way to all types of transportation as well. End the TSA. Let the airports handle security.", "I think your understanding is correct as far as you describe, but you don't mention a critical detail to me.  You also imply some penalty details for early withdrawal / cancellation but you don't state those terms in detail. Where and when is the interest paid?  Does it go into the same CD for compounding?  Does it get paid to another account?  The description does say that it is priced at par, so we at least know that the interest doesn't have to be stuck unpaid within the CD until maturity, but it also means you don't necessarily get compounding at the CD rate. Without knowing where the interest goes, and if it's available for compounding, be careful in how you compare it to other CDs / savings accounts.  A compoundable structure might be a better option, even at a lower APY.", "Try downloading a finance app like yahoo finance. Follow a few stocks, read through the articles - look up terms you don’t understand. Search them on YouTube, Investopedia, - note book recommendations. Learn some economics as well.  Even if you’re not interested in trading, this should help you learn the language enough to get an idea of what’s out there - how money is thought of in different time periods, etc.  Finance can be very opaque when you first dip your feet in. You’ll find you only understand 75% - 25% of what you’re reading but that’s ok just keep looking things up. I guarantee your understanding of what “finance” means will slowly evolve as you keep learning.   Expect to spend maybe a few years to a lifetime figuring this stuff out.", "\"I worked one summer at WalMart.  The company song was a complete shock to me and I found it to be one of the creepiest things ever devised.  (there are \"\"moves\"\" that go along with the song/chant).  Some people actually seemed to be into it.    The song was just the beginning of the meeting though, where they would discuss how much revenue/profit the store made in the previous day (or week maybe I don't remember).  All I could think about was a) at least I don't actually have to do any work while I'm over here b) why to hell do I care what this fucking dump made yesterday?  I'm making minimum wage and I'll be making minimum wage tomorrow.\""]}
+{"query": "How should I decide whether to buy more shares of a stock when its price drops?", "corpus": ["\"A key principle of economics is: Sunk costs are irrelevant. You bought the stock at 147 and it has now fallen to 144. That's too bad. This has nothing to do with whether it is wise or foolish to buy shares at 144. The only relevant thing to consider is: Do I expect the stock to go up or down from 144? You have lost $3 per share on the original buy. Buying more shares will not \"\"reduce your loss\"\" in any way. Suppose you bought 100 shares at 147. The price then drops to 144. You have lost $3 per share, or $300 total. You buy another 50 more shares at 144. The price stays at 144. So your average purchase price is now (147 x 100 + 144 x 50) / 150 = 146. So I guess you could say that your \"\"average loss per share\"\" is now only $2. But it's $2 x 150 shares instead of $3 x 100 shares. You still lost $300. You didn't reduce your loss by a penny. Maybe it made you feel better that you reduced your average loss per share, but this is just an arithmetic game. If you believe that the stock will continue to drop, than buying more shares just means you will lose even more money. Your average loss per share may go down, but you're just multiplying that average by more and more shares. Of course if you believe that the stock is now at an unjustifiably low price and it will likely go back up, then sure, buy. If you buy at 144 and it goes back up to 147, then you'll be making $3 per share on the new shares you purchased. But I repeat, whether or not you buy more shares should have nothing to do with your previous buy. Buy more shares if you think the price will go up from the present price; don't buy more shares if you don't think it will go up. The decision should be exactly the same as if you had never previously bought shares. (I'm assuming here that you are a typical small investor, that you not buying enough shares to have any significant effect on the market, nor that you are in a position to buy enough shares to take control of the company.)\""], "neg": ["I'm confused. Are you asking why or telling us that you're bullish? Yes the stock will go up for a merger at a premium, but buying in now only gives you ~0.5% gain if it closes at $21.50. They won't trade over 21.50 unless a competing bid comes in or the bid is increased.", "Having separate savings account for your kids college fund, retirement fund, holiday fund etc is one way to compartmentalise savings. Downside to this is the management of these funds especially if you have them with different banks. Like others here have pointed out, keeping track via spreadsheet is relatively easy and especially most banks now like OCBC, HSBC , DBS, POSB etc offer online banking, however from a financial standpoint, spreading your funds doesn't allow you to get as much interest as you would from one account that has the highest interest rate.", "Retirement calculation, in general, should be based on the amount of money needed per year/month and the expected life expectancy. Life expectancy, if calculated to 90 years (let's say) indicates that post retirement age (60 yrs.) your accumulated/invested money should generate adequate income to cover your expenses till 90 years. The problem in general is not how long you shall live but what would be your expected spending from retirement to end of life expectancy. The idea is at the minimum your investments should generate income that is inflation adjusted. One way to do this is to consider your monthly expense now i.e. the expense that is absolute minimum for carrying on (food, electricity, water, medicines, household consumables, car petrol, insurance, servicing, entertainment, newspaper etc.) this does not contain the amortizable liabilities (home loan, child's education, other debts). It is better to take this amount per family rather than per person and yearly rather than monthly (as we tend to miss a lot of yearly expenses). This amount that you need today will increase at a Compounded Annual Growth Rate (CAGR) of the average inflation. For example, if today you spend 100 per year in 7 years you will need to spend appx. 200 at 10% inflation. Now, your investments will not increase post your retirement, so your current investment needs to do two things (1) give you your yearly requirement (2) grow by a fixed amount so that next year it can give you CAGR adjusted returns. In general, this kind of investment grows by high net amounts initially and slowly the growth decrease. The above can be calculated by Net Present value (NPV) formulae (http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Net_present_value). The key is to remember that the money that is invested when you retire should be able to give you inflation adjusted returns to cover your yearly expenses. How much money you need depends on your life style/expectation and how much return is received depends on the instruments that you invest on. As for your question above on the difference between the age of you and your spouse, it better to go with the consolidated family requirement and get an idea of how much investment is necessary and provision the same as soon as possible from your as well as your spouse's income. Hope this helps.- thanks", "Yeh I agree with amazon I would own only 2 shares. But what do u think about Nvidia? 196$. plus gpus are needed for  self driving cars, cryptocurrency mining, ai, and vr. So stock I think would go up. And it's not as expensive as google and and microsoft. Do you think that price is good? Or to high for my available money.", "The health specs is actually our cooking techniques and cleaning procedures of the restaurant. I'm not 100% certain, but I think they tracked that the E. Coli was from a distributor defect and not as much the restaurant. And GMO is not bad at all, I never said that, just that the non-GMO ingredients are obviously different, so they're gonna taste different than GMO produce and food.", "And that's the rub, you didn't win a fucking thing. You are not part of a team. You are just brainwashed by the politics you choose to isolate yourself with. Trump won, not you, and he won on accident and on lying to people that supported him foolishly.  He was expecting to lose, and the day before and day of election Tuesday his campaign was pushing a narrative that democrats cheated to win.  We all fucking lost. You lost worse that I did, because you continue to put your hope in a lying scumbag who has no morals, scruples, or sense of decency whatsoever, and it is too painful to admit your monumental fuckup.", "\"Oh sorry maybe I misread your question. The article didn't have anything concrete. I just watched the video to see the there was some clear examples or data but I didn't really catch anything. He said something about Trump not wanting to create jobs and said \"\"Chinese are working on AI\"\" because the gov't announced a plan. But he offered no real data for his views at all from what I heard. I'm not a specialist in economics so maybe I missed something obvious that someone else can clue us in on\""]}
+{"query": "Is it true that if I work 6 months per year, it is better than to work for 1 calendar year and take a break for 1 year?", "corpus": ["In many cases spanning across years will indeed be beneficial. Deductions: You get to take twice as much in deductions (twice the standard deduction, or itemizing - if you can) when you span over two years than in one.  IRA: You can only contribute in years when you have earned income. You have all the income in year 1 and none in year 2 - you can only contribute in year 1. You have half of the income in year 1 and half of the income in year 2 - you can contribute in both years (up to the limit/earned income, whichever is less). Social Security: You get 4 credits for each year you earned ~16K in. You earned 32K in year 1, and nothing in year 2 - you get 4 credits. You split it in half for each year - you get 8 credits. The list can go on. If you can do the planning ahead of time and can chose the time periods of your work freely (which is not something most people can do), you can definitely plan ahead with taxes in mind. This is called Tax Planning."], "neg": ["Seriously, I get downvoted every time I point out that he is in fact a convicted criminal multiple times over.   People don't even know anything about him despite his wikipedia article being readily available and listing out charges and convictions.  But his new scam, I mean service, will be totally awesome!", "Oh yes! My policy is 5 stars unless something awful happened then detract based on how I feel. For example, a driver who was 10 minutes away to 35 minutes to get to me and called me a liar over the phone because I was at 1st ave N and not 1st ave W like he thought because he only knew W. He got 1 star...", "Silvrback is the best blogging platform for programmers. With a minimalistic design and jargon-free platform, Silvrback offers programmers a space where they can work without distractions. The platform offers efficiency, security and freedom to create content that you want. Our platform is designed for a wide range of programmers and provides a simple but highly effective solution for less.", "Note that the formula for Price to Book ratio is:  Stock Price / {[Total Assets - (Intangible Assets + Liabilities)] / Stock Outstanding}  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-bookratio.asp  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental/03/112603.asp  There's a number of factors that could lead to a lower than 1. The primary reason, imho, could be the company is in a state of retiring stock with debt. The company is selling penny stocks (only to get people more interested in it's later development) which are inherently undervalued. There may be other reasons, but definitely check out both articles.", "To your first question: YES. Capital gains and losses on real-estate are treated differently than income. Note here for exact IRS standards.  The IRS will not care about percentage change but historical (recorded) amounts.   To your second question: NO  Are you taxed when buying a new stock? No. But be sure to record the price paid for the house. Note here for more questions. *Always consult a CPA for tax advice on federal tax returns.", "This is surprising, I'm not sure if they do this anymore. I got an overdraft fee a couple months when they tried to pay the balance on my CC. I had plenty in savings to cover it. I called and argued with them because they re-ran the draft to pay the CC the next day too, when they should have been well aware there weren't funds in the checking account, but they wouldn't do anything about it.  The first time I've ever had a gripe with them.", "For the financial year 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015 as you have / will be spending more than 182 days outside of India, you are Non-Resident from tax point of view. For the period 1 April 2014 to Aug 2014, any salary / income you have earned in India is taxable and tax need to be paid. For the period Aug 2014 to 31 March 2015 the income you have earned in Saudi is not taxable in India. You can transfer money to India or keep in Saudi, it has no effect on the taxes. Any interest income you earn, or rental income you earn, or any other source of income in India is taxable. You would need to file returns accordingly. An NRE Accounts allows you to transfer funds out of India without any questions. So if you intend at some point in time in future to move funds out of India [say settling down in Saudi or UK or US etc] it is advisable to have NRE account. If you are sure you don't want to transfer funds out of India, you should open an NRO account."]}
+{"query": "Recommended education path for a future individual investor?", "corpus": ["\"For a job doing that kind of stuff, what is PREFERRED is 4 year undergrad at ivy league school + 2 year MBA at ivy league school, and then several more years of experience, which you can sort of get by interning while in school this will of course saddle you with debt, which is counterintuitive to your plans basically, the easy way up is percentage based compensation. without knowing the right people, you will get a piss poor salary regardless of what you do, in the beginning. so portfolio managers earn money by percentage based fees, and can manage millions and billions. real estate agents can earn money by percentage based commissions if they close a property and other business venture/owners can do the same thing. the problem with \"\"how to trade\"\" books is that they are outdated by the time they are published. so you should just stick with literature that teaches a fundamental knowledge of the products you want to trade/make money from. ultimately regardless of how you get/earn your initial capital, you will still need to be an individual investor to grow your own capital. this has nothing to do with being a portfolio manager, even highly paid individuals on wall street are in debt to lavish expenditures and have zero capital for their own investments. hope this helps, you really need to be thinking in a certain way to just quickly deduce good ideas from bad ideas\""], "neg": ["Also, people who come for golf aren't going to want to go native. They can build a self-contained resort on the cheap and locals will work in support jobs just like when resorts are built in shithole countries.", "As you own a company, you need to know what your role is. You can never just move money into or out of the company, you have to identify the role in which you are doing it, and do it properly.  There is Company, and there is You, in three different roles. You are the sole shareholder and director of Company. You are the sole employee of Company. You are also just a private person. You need to keep these three roles separate. As the sole shareholder, you own the company. However, you don't own any assets of the company. The company is yours, but the money in its bank account isn't.  As a private person, you give a loan to your company. You write on a sheet of paper that You personally, give a loan to the company, how much a loan is, what interest is paid, and when the loan will be paid back (that could be 'whenever You demands the money paid back'). Then you move the money from your private bank account to the company bank account, and the company has the money it needs to fund its operation. Assume it wasn't you who loaned the money, but I gave the loan to the company. You can imagine that I would have this loan written down and signed before I hand over the cash. And you must have exactly the same papers that I would have.  How do you get money from the company? The company can pay back your loan. That should be written down again, in the same way as the loan itself was written down. Other than that, there are three ways how you can get money out of the company: The company can pay You, in your role as its employee, a salary, which it can deduct from its profits. The company can pay money into a pension of the company director (that's You in your role as company director) up to £40,000 or so a year; that money is deducted from its profits again. The company pays 20% tax on its remaining profits. Then the company can pay You, in your role as company director, a dividend, usually twice a year. Each of these payments has to be written down and given to HMRC properly.  Best by far to use an accountant to do all the paper work for you and advice you what to do. You can lose a lot of money by just not getting the paperwork right, by filing late etc., which the accountant will get right. The accountant will also tell you what are the optimal amounts for salary and dividend (best is a small salary, about £10,000 a year, dividend of about £30,000 a year, pension as much as the company can afford, which is then all tax free to you). You can't pay more dividend then the company can afford (paying a dividend and then not being able to pay your suppliers is criminal), and if you want higher dividends, then you will have to pay taxes on them.", "There are 2 schools of thought in determining the price of a future contract in a day prior to expiration.  The cost of carry model, states that the price of a future contract today is the spot price plus the cost of carrying the underlying asset until expiration minus the return that can be obtained from carrying the underlying asset.  FuturePrice = SpotPrice + (CarryCost - CarryReturn)  The expectancy model, states that the price of the futures contract depends on the expectation about the spot market's price in the future. In this case, the price of the future contract will diverge from the spot price depending on how much the price is expected to rise or fall before expiration.  A few glossary terms: cost of carry For physical commodities such as grains and metals, the cost of   storage space, insurance, and finance charges incurred by holding a   physical commodity. In interest rate futures markets, it refers to the   differential between the yield on a cash instrument and the cost of   funds necessary to buy the instrument. Also referred to as carrying   charge. spot price  The price at which a physical commodity for immediate   delivery is selling at a given time and place. The cash price.", "Keep in mind a good lawyer will have the contract cover the five D's: Its really best to lay these things out ahead of time.  I watched, first hand, two friends start a business.  When they were broke and struggling the worked very well together.  Then the money started rolling in.  Despite exceeding their dreams they were constantly at each other's throats fighting and bickering over stupid stuff.  In the end, because they had decent legal docs, they both were able to pull money out of the business.   Had that not been worked out they would have destroyed the business so that no one would have profited.", "\"The issues are larger than taxes.  If one of you receives the check, then breaks off 25% of it for themselves and sends three checks out to each of you that will be indicated on that person's taxes.  You three will then all recognize your portion of the income on your taxes and it's all settled.  It's no big deal, it's a bit rag-tag but it'll get the job done.  I've done little ad-hoc partnership work with people this way and it's not a problem. This is why you should really be more formal.  What if this entity contracting you guys sues you?  Who has the liability, if only one of you was paid?  What if the money is sent to one of you and that person dies before paying you?  What if you all get another client?  What if this contracting entity has another project?   The partnership needs to have the liability.  The partnership needs to receive the money.  The partnership needs to be named on whatever contract you all sign.  The partnership can be a straight partnership, or maybe the four of you take a 25% stake in an LLC or Inc arrangement.  Minimally, you should sit down with your partners so everyone knows everyone else's responsibilities, and you should write it all down.  It probably sounds like overkill, and I'm sure your partners are you buddies and \"\"we're tight and nothing bad could come between us.\"\"  I've done some partnership work with more than one friend, we've always been fine.  Some ventures are successful, some aren't; I'm still very good friends with all of them.  Writing things down manages expectations and when money starts moving around, everyone is happier when everyone has a solid expectation of who gets what.\"", "I interned at GS last summer and I am returning fulltime after graduation. In my experience and those I've encountered, it is very much dependent on where, front vs back, in the bank you work. Most software development jobs at GS seem to be 9-5. If you write software in front-office parts of the bank like trading, though, hours generally get worse (but pay is better!).", "&gt;This buildup of excessive debt started so long ago -- Levy dates it to the 1980s in the U.S. -- that people no longer know what's prudent.  This is echoed elsewhere.  At this time, people that use capital don't truly know how much it's worth because it's so abundant.  Consequently, creates difficult in making business decisions."]}
+{"query": "Stocks taxed just for selling, or just when withdrawing?", "corpus": ["Outside of a tax sheltered IRA or 401(k) type of account your transactions may trigger tax liability.  However, transactions are not taxed immediately at the time of the transaction; and up to a certain limits capital gains can be offset by capital losses which can mitigate your liability at tax time.  Also, remember that dividend receipts are taxable income as well. As others have said, this has nothing to do with whether or not money has been moved out of the account."], "neg": ["I can't tell if it's very clever marketing or very foolish; I'd settle on a combination, especially since the former chief executive admitted that it is due to cases like this, where people were encouraged to live beyond their means, that took a needle to the property bubble in 2008.   It's quite dangerous, as you say, to present adverts as news. What's slightly more insidious in my eyes is in the way in which it's presented as a blog piece, which comes with connotations of informality and honesty, constructed to leave a feel-good affect on the reader.   The advert seems to have struck a chord with a lot of people, who were very vocal in their disappointment. Critiques of the article were leads in two of Ireland's biggest newspapers, The Irish Times and the Irish Independent. Either way it's great publicity for Bank of Ireland, I guess.", "If a business owner works for no salary, put time and effort into the   business, can those hours be considered a capital investment? No.", "\"What do I mean by infrastructure? Well, if you're doing algorithmic trading, you have to have something monitoring data and making decisions on its own, presumably. How do you set that up? There are many ways, and some are better than others.  First is a problem of scale. If you're a newbie starting out with some small set of equity tick data, perhaps just trades for instance, you can whip together something that can handle that pretty easily. Check out http://www.marketdatapeaks.com/ though. That's your messaging rates you have to deal with once you go full data feeds direct from all the exchanges. 6.65 million messages/events per second. That's a lot. And if you fall behind, you lose your lunch.  Building a robust system that allows you to easily backtest and deploy strategies is crucial as well. The speed at which you're able to conduct the backtest matters a lot. Doing that rapidly, and accurately is not easy. For a broad market-data handling algo design (and now, clearly, for very specific things you can design one that'll handle stuff better for that one corner case, but this is for general algo trading), optimally you have some sort of setup where you have a:  [feed handlers] -&gt; [tickerplant] -&gt; [mkt data subscribers/CEP] -&gt; [order management system] -&gt; [broker]   in this setup you have feed handlers that are taking the raw exchange feeds and pushing them to a consolidated tickerplant, where CEP subscribers can come through and sub to the data they want (perhaps I just want ES futures on one, and only want to arb CMCSA and CMCSK on another -- you dont want each CEP subscriber getting your full feed for all tickers all the time, its a waste). so more or less, each independent strategy is its own subscriber to the tickerplant, taking whatever data it wants and only that data (could be \"\"give me all the trades and quotes for all nasdaq stocks, but not book depth\"\" for instance).  your CEP does whatever maths it has to do to figure out trading decisions, and when it does, it sends it to your order management system which does your risk checks, etc (\"\"do you have enough money to place this trade?\"\" \"\"do you already have a position in this?\"\" \"\"are you trading against yourself?\"\" ... million other things). your OMS knows how to talk to your broker/directly to the exchange depending on your setup. Assuming all your risk checks pass, off the order goes to the exchange, and it deals with the fill msgs, etc.  Now, as far as speed is concerned - try to do all of this at 6.5 million events/second. It's hard. Some strats/cep subscribers will run faster than others, some are slower, some need to keep a full book to work while some work on just trades. Your OMS depending on if youre using only market data sources may need to keep its own book to place orders on behalf of your subscribers if they lack information about various markets (think all the twitter trading bots these days for instance), etc.  If you look back at the above setup as well, you'll notice some interesting things. [tickerplant] -&gt; [cep subscriber] portion can stay the same for live trading or backtesting. This is huge. The only thing that changes here for backtesting is that if you're trying to backtest, you can take historical data (query it out of your hopefully column-store database) and push it into your tickerplant rather than having it come from a live feed through the feed handler. Your tickerplant and cep subscriber will never know the difference, so you can use the same exact code for backtesting as you can for live. On the other end, you obviously cant send historical orders to your live broker, so you need to code a simulated OMS that does the backtest simulation (another huge piece of software to code that is hard to do well). But, for backtesting, your setup is staying largely the same except those two end pieces. This means that testing/deving/deploying strats can be pretty rapid, and uses the same code base for live and historical, which helps you eliminate bugs and have to code everything twice.  Backtesting design: [historical mkt data db] -&gt; [tickerplant] -&gt; [mkt data subscribers/CEP] -&gt; [order management system simulator/backtester]  These are just a few of the many problems that you hit when trying to dev good infra. There are like a million more. Point was simply, it's complicated. And C++ is a good lang. I use a wide variety of languages depending on exactly whats going on and how fast the code needs to be. With a proper tickerplant design, youre using some ipc protocol so a subscriber can be coded in any language. Check out http://www.zeromq.org/ -- thats an excellent piece of software to use to make a tickerplant out of, think they even have a design for one in the docs if I recall. With that, your CEP subscribers can be in any language - perhaps pure C if you need the speed, perhaps .NET or Java if you dont (check out http://esper.codehaus.org/ for a Java implement of a CEP subscriber, nEsper for the C# port of that I believe). But I use C, C++, C#, python, R, x86 asm for a few very minor things, and a lang or two I can't mention here.\"", "Idk why Banks are so opposed to holding just a bit more capital. It helps them avoid becoming suddenly insolvent should something happen. It's like they only care about personal short term gain and care little about being in the game for the long term.", "If I was you I would not borrow from my 401K and shred the credit card offer.  Both are very risky ventures, and you are already in a situation that is risky.  Doing either will increase your risk significantly. I'd also consider selling the rental house.  You seem to be cutting very close on the numbers if you can't raise 17K in cash to refi the house.  What happens if you need a roof on the rental, and an HVAC in your current home?   My assumption is that you will not sell the home, okay I get it.  I would recommend either giving your tenant a better deal then the have now, or something very similar.  Having a good tenant is an asset.", "\"I cannot definitively say this is illegal, but we'll apply some cold hard logic to it: If this were as easy as it sounds, why aren't they using their own account/card instead of yours? Ask them this question directly.  They will probably say something along the lines of \"\"I don't have a card\"\" or try to guilt you into doing it. You should do two things:  Tell them no. Report them to the police/the bank/etc. In all likelihood, they will end up doing something illegal or they are laundering money.  When push comes to shove, you will be the one the police come after asking questions.  They have complete deniability as it is your card.  This is no different than the \"\"Cash this big check and send me half of it\"\" scams that are common.\"", "ML is a brokerage firm. Tell them to sell. If you can't or don't know how to do it on-line - call them and do it over the phone. Your citizenship might come in effect when tax are withheld, you need to fill form W8-BEN if you haven't done so yet. If US taxes are withheld, you can file 1040NR to request refund, or get it credited against your local tax liabilities."]}
+{"query": "Investment for young expatriate professionals", "corpus": ["That's a broad question, but I can throw some thoughts at you from personal experience.  I'm actually an Australian who has worked in a couple of companies but across multiple countries and I've found out first hand that you have a wealth of opportunities that other people don't have, but you also have a lot of problems that other people won't have. First up, asset classes. Real estate is a popular asset class, but unless you plan on being in each of these countries for a minimum of one to two years, it would be seriously risky to invest in rental residential or commercial real estate. This is because it takes a long time to figure out each country's particular set of laws around real estate, plus it will take a long time to get credit from the local bank institutions and to understand the local markets well enough to select a good location. This leaves you with the classics of stocks and bonds. You can buy stocks and bonds in any country typically. So you could have some stocks in a German company, a bond fund in France and maybe a mutual fund in Japan. This makes for interesting diversification, so if one country tanks, you can potentially be hedged in another. You also get to both benefit and be punished by foreign exchange movements. You might have made a killing on that stock you bought in Tokyo, but it turns out the Yen just fell by 15%. Doh. And to top this off, you are almost certainly going to end up filling out tax returns in each country you have made money in. This can get horribly complicated, very quickly. As a person who has been dealing with the US tax system, I can tell you that this is painful and the US in particular tries to get a cut of your worldwide income. That said, keep in mind each country has different tax rates, so you could potentially benefit from that as well. My advice? Choose one country you suspect you'll spend most of your life in and keep most of your assets there. Make a few purchases in other places, but minimize it. Ultimately most ex-pats move back to their country of origin as friends, family and shared culture bring them home."], "neg": ["We are one the best digital marketing company in the Dubai, UAE, we have an expert in digital marketing who have years of experience. Along with these things you can hire  experts from   our company to increase in your sales and products. Seo-daddy offers various types of packages and apart from this you can hire dubai seo expert from our company for your seo and smo activities. For instant reports and analysis you can talk to our professionals and our experts are waiting for your queries with instant solutions.", "&gt; “**It is important that we get our economy growing again through savings and investment, not more debt and deficit spending**. But we can’t turn the economy around until we fix the root of the problem: an unaccountable Federal Reserve. A complete and thorough audit of the Fed will finally allow the American people to know exactly how their money is being spent by Washington.”   Why don't the US people get this simple fact is beyond me &gt;&lt;", "Those compensated by commission, not your moneyed elite. Those types are going to get out of taxes anyway.  Capital gains crush the middle and upper middle class like no other. BTW, now you sound even less like you know what you're talking about.", "\"Assuming U.S. law, there are \"\"safe harbor\"\" provisions for exactly this kind of situation. There are several possibilities, but the most likely one is that if your withholding and estimated tax payments for 2016 totaled at least as much as your tax bill for 2015 there's no penalty. For the full rules, see IRS Publication 17.\"", "&gt;How will making energy cheaper help?  Cheaper energy is equivalent to a pay raise, only it's also good for business interests.  That (theoretically) can allow more competitive pricing of other products, since businesses aren't trapped by high energy costs forming a price floor.  That part depends on how competitive each individual market is.", "Yup. I scrutinize the income statement I receive from my employer every year. What I make vs what the company actually invests in me as an employee is really astounding. Beyond my hourly wage, the company pays for my health insurance premium (all but $10/check), and pays for a medical flex-spending account. On top of this (I know this isn't taxes but it's still an expense and government sanctioned) if I do some dumbass thing to get myself hurt at work, they'd pay all medical bills since it happened on their property.   We recently had a bit of a wake-up call this summer, as the board of directors warned everyone that the current medical plan our company provides to us is not sustainable, and will have to undergo changes (we're going to either start paying for our premiums, decrease our flex accounts, or charge smokers additional fees) beginning Jan 1st. Lots of people are complaining about this. I don't think they're aware of the horde of expenses and fees that the company swallows for them in other ways.  There's property taxes, business income taxes, excise taxes, customs/duty taxes, state taxes... along with meeting the restrictions and standards of certain governmental agencies (like OSHA). I don't know how a small business owner could ever maintain control over all of this financial mess and be able to help their customers or other employees.   There's OSHA, a profit-seeking (through citations) business now, instead of a partner and ally to businesses. A typical 'violation' is $70K, and a 'repeat' violation is $140K. Imagine running a small grocery store, and having to pay this fine because you accidentally had a piece of styrofoam lying on top of a cooler not built to withstand overhead weight. Or because someone wasn't wearing safety shoes in the store. You'd simply go out of business.", "Your ETF will return the interest as dividends.  If you hold the ETF on the day before the Ex-Dividend date, you will get the dividend.  If you sell before that, you will not.  Note that at least one other answer to this question is wrong.  You do NOT need to hold on the Record date.  There is usually 2 days (or so) between the ex-date and the record date, which corresponds to the number of days it takes for your trade to settle.  See the rules as published by the SEC: http://www.sec.gov/answers/dividen.htm"]}
+{"query": "What is the dividend if yield is 3.04?", "corpus": ["From the hover text of the said screen; Latest dividend/dividend yield Latest dividend is dividend per share paid to shareholders in the most   recent quarter. Dividend yield is the value of the latest dividend,   multiplied by the number of times dividends are typically paid per   year, divided by the stock price. So for Ambev looks like the dividend is inconsistantly paid and not paid every quarter."], "neg": ["\"I would add to the other excellent answers that another factor besides just high unemployment numbers is the fear people have regarding the \"\"financial\"\" aspects of the country, that is the value of stocks and the value of the dollar.  When the economy is sluggish it means people aren't buying enough, therefore companies aren't making enough, therefore their profits are too low and people start to divest from them, and stock prices drop.  Or even the fear of this happening can induce people to sell off shares.   The point is, people are worried \"\"in this economy\"\" because if--due to unemployment, low spending/consumer confidence--the stock market crashes again as it did in 2008/09, that represents a lot of savings lost, e.g. 40-50% of what one was counting on to retire with, particularly if you panic sell at the bottom.  Now suddenly it's as if you had a huge robbery, and you will have to work longer into your retirement years than you'd planned.  Similarly, if, due to monetary policy, the U.S. inflates the dollar, what one saved for retirement may not be sufficient.  (These arguments are true for shorter periods than just one's retirement, but just taking that as an example). So it's not just unemployment that is worrisome \"\"in this economy\"\".  This said, I agree with George Marian that one ought to be careful and plan well regardless of the winds of the economy.  I guess for most people (and companies), though, \"\"in this economy\"\" means they can't get away with the kind of carelessness they might have during a boom.\"", "HSBC exchange spread between HKD and USD was 483 bps (1 bps is 0.0001) on their 24 hours exchange network a few weeks ago when I checked. It is very high for a pair of linked currencies which has very little fluctuation. One should expect less than 5 bps or even 1 bps. I did my currency conversion at a US brokerage which can take HKD currency and then I was able to pick the time/rate and amount I like to make the conversion. Basically, the currency pair runs within a tight band and you just need to buy USD with HKD at the time when it is near the edge of the band to your advantage. There is usually no fee on currency conversion. They make money through the spread. HSBC premier allows you to wire free among countries. I forget whether they offer tighter spread or not.  Rob was right on about the cost of transferring money overseas. The majority of the cost is in the conversion, not the wiring.", "\"Well if they offer free shipping that would be one thing and regardless if they raise the total cost that will likely result in fewer sales.  Of course, I'm not sure what the alternatives are for \"\"elderly people who live hundreds of miles from a pharmacy.\"\"\"", "\"Why does the article, which refers to the 2006-2008 boom as a gilded age use the same time period as a basis for labor participation calculation? Should they not use a more wise approach and make the basis around 2005 or 2004 and then calculate the amount of labor participating in order to account for the \"\"false high\"\" of 2007? Maybe I missed something in my education but if a specific time counts as an anomaly, then it should not be the base calculation when deriving a hypothesis about that time period. For example wage growth between 2005 and 2007 increased x% but between 2007 and 2009 decreased 3x% so we are really in for it now. It should be the base period of 2005 shows a growth of x% to 2007 and from 2005 to 2009 shows a growth of only one tenth x%.   Of course this would make for much less sensationalist journalism and may not sell as many news stories as a sensationalist story would.\"", "\"The amount of \"\"if they don't like it, they shouldn't work there\"\" in this thread is fucking appalling. People have a right to decent wages. In this case, I think we all understand that simple boycotting and educating won't work.   Someone in the upper chain of command in the US needs to come out and say something, as well as re-haul a disgusting system that lets people live so distraught while others live so comfortably.\"", "One big advantage that the 529 plan has is that most operate like a target date fund. As the child approaches college age the investment becomes more conservative. While you can do this by changing the mix of investments, you can't do it without capital gains taxes. Many of the issues you are concerned about are addressed: they are usable by other family members, they don't hurt financial aid offers, they address scholarships, they can be used for books or room and board.  Many states also give you a tax break in the year of the contribution.", "Mr. Raphael Lilla is a business enthusiast, a philanthropist and an honoured member of the International Society of Business Leaders. He comes with over 20 years of experience working in the Swiss and International financial markets and is currently operating as the Executive Director of SBC Group AG, Switzerland, and as Managing Director of Swiss Bullion Company International LLC, Dubai."]}
+{"query": "Investing in low cost index fund — does the timing matter?", "corpus": ["If you're worried about investing all at once, you can deploy your starting chunk of cash gradually by investing a bit of it each month, quarter, etc. (dollar-cost averaging).  The financial merits and demerits of this have been debated, but it is unlikely to lose you a lot of money, and if it has the psychological benefit of inducing you to invest, it can be worth it even if it results in slightly less-than-optimal gains. More generally, you are right with what you say at the end of your question: in the long run, when you start won't matter, as long as you continue to invest regularly.  The Boglehead-style index-fund-based theory is basically that, yes, you might save money by investing at certain times, but in practice it's almost impossible to know when those times are, so the better choice is to just keep investing no matter what.  If you do this, you will eventually invest at high and low points, so the ups and downs will be moderated. Also, note that from this perspective, your example of investing in 2007 is incorrect.  It's true that a person who put money in 2007, and then sat back and did nothing, would have barely broken even by now.  But a person who started to invest in 2007, and continued to invest throughout the economic downturn, would in fact reap substantial rewards due to continued investing throughout the post-2007 lows.  (Happily, I speak from experience on this point!)"], "neg": ["\"Confused on amortization of intangibles.   Let's say I'm running a DCF on a firm that has lots of valuable customer contracts. Those contracts are amortized over 10 years. The annual intangible amortization amount is pretty high.  However, nowhere in their 10K do I see a correspondingly high CapEx number. Based on the footnotes, it seems that the contracts are \"\"cheap\"\" to acquire (just sales people salary) and don't have high CapEx.  Fundamentally I don't understand how they can amortize something at a rate higher than its cost basis (in terms of upfront cash out the door).\"", "\"Construction loans are typically short term that then get rolled into conventional mortgages at the end of the construction period. Since the actual construction loan is short term, you cannot combine it with a long-term land loan as well. You could do the two separate loans up front to buy the land and finance the construction, then at the end roll both into a conventional mortgage to close out the land and construction loans. This option will only work if you do all three through the same lender. Trying to engage various lenders will require a whole new refinance process, which I very much doubt you would want to go through. These are sometimes called combo loans, since they aggregate several different loan products in one \"\"transaction.\"\" Not a lot of places do land loans, so I would suggest first find a lender that will give you a land loan and set an appoint with a loan representative. Explain what you are trying to do and see what they can offer you. You might have better luck with credit unions as well instead of traditional banks.\"", "Many economists think that in a free market there would be more insider trading as they're able to more efficiently transmit pricing signals to the rest of the market.  Can you come up with an argument how insider trading makes markets less free? What exactly is your definition of a free market?", "When all you have is a hammer...  It's not the marketers fault that the margins on their industry have been pushed to the point that cheesy planned obsolescence, 'value size' repackaging and other gimmicks are the go-to fads embraced by the product management teams.  They've no choice but to polish and rack the consumer-mindset-exploiting turds they're paid to shill.  What gets me is the generational divide in response to advertising.  The older generation can't help but trust it it seems.  Whereas, most younger folk I know simply cannot conceive why anyone would trust a product marketed to them- all the incentives seem fundamentally geared towards rip-off and exploitation.  Why play a rigged game if you can avoid it?", "I'm an idiot. Certainly not worthy of all this fancy formatting and linking you've done.   I confused the Gen X cut-off with Baby Boomers.   I implied that Gen X, as middle managers, had direct operational control over decisions that led to financial crisis. You chose to ignore that point entirely.", "\"This answer is to supplement the answers about what CD laddering is and what its benefits are. I'm going to talk about its risks. CD ladders are subject to risk. They are not subject to very much credit risk and investment risk (they're federally insured! Barring the dissolution of the United States government as we know it, you will get all your money back!). However, they are subject to inflation risk and a little bit of interest rate risk. A CD is basically a promise for a certain amount of money after a certain amount of time. Inflation risk happens when there's inflation and the money that you've been promised isn't worth as much anymore, because everything's gotten more expensive. Interest rate risk happens when you buy a CD in a very low interest rate environment (like, oh, the year 2010) and rates subsequently rise. You might have been somewhat better off waiting for rates to rise before buying the CD. (Also, if you were to try and re-sell it, you would get an inferior price - enough to make up for the interest rate difference.) Note that interest rates tend to rise if there is a significant amount of inflation, so these two risks go together. Interest rate risk and inflation risk are higher for longer-term CDs (at least right now) because there's more opportunity for inflation and interest rates to rise. 2010 has been marked by the extraordinarily low interest rate environment which prevails, and the Federal Reserve has announced that it is trying to bring about a higher rate of inflation (you may have heard something about a \"\"second round of quantitative easing\"\"). A quick look at interest rates show that 2-5 year CDs yield about 1.50% these days. You could, alternatively, get a savings account that yields 1.4%, preserves your liquidity, and will raise the rate it pays you on savings in the event that inflation and interest rates rise (or, if they don't raise it, you can move the account, unlike a CD). In summary, as of right now (October 2010), fixed-income investments like CDs don't pay you very much and have elevated levels of risk, especially for long-term investment. This is one of the worst times possible to invest in a CD ladder.\"", "It is definitely legal and will be accounted by the IRS as earned income."]}
+{"query": "Why do employers require you to spread your 401(k) contributions throughout the year to get the maximum match?", "corpus": ["If one makes say, $10K/mo, and the company will match the first 5% dollar for dollar, a 10%/mo deposit of $1K/mo will see a $500/mo match. If the employee manages to request 90% get put into the 401(k), after 2 months, he's done.  If the company wished, they could continue the $500/mo match, I agree. They typically don't and in fact, the 'true up' you mention isn't even required, one is fortunate to get it. Many companies that match are going the other way, matching only after the year is over. Why? Why does any company do anything? To save money. I used to make an attempt to divide my deposit over the year to max out the 401(k) in December and get the match real time, not a true up."], "neg": ["&gt;The only explanation I can imagine is that production costs are too high.    I think this is precisely it.  It costs too much to produce in the us, so production is outsourced.  Given that many people are payed based on working in production jobs, outsourcing leads to less money.  So eventually, the US will lose money until the point where production in the US is cheap enough to bring it back.    But anyway, my point was that interpretation of Keynesian economics by a few people does not mean that Keynesian economics are wrong.  These people may simply have an interest in not mentioning the exporting of production jobs.  In which point they would be willfully manipulating the paradigm.", "And who said high finance isn't criminal half the time? Did any one important go to jail for inflating the housing market and defrauding people in 2008? Of course not...  But back to your point about paying people a lot of money to save lives which is repeated ad nauseam. It isn't relevant because it assumes smart people only discover things to make a lot of money. Ya go tell that to academics who spend their lives in labs etc discovering things and building science from the ground up, I wonder how much they get paid vs. pharma execs.   And even if it proves true to some people I think most would agree that say doctors and drug inventors who actually save lives should be paid well but that's not the people we are dealing with here. We are dealing with financial vultures who just make money off of this because they can and nobody is there to regulate them.", "\"Volume is measured in the number of shares traded in a given day, week, month, etc. This means that it's not necessarily a directly-comparable measure between stocks, as there's a large difference between 1 million shares traded of a $1 stock ($1 million total) and 1 million shares traded of a $1000 stock ($1 billion total). Volume as a number on its own is lacking in context; it often makes more sense to look at it as an overall dollar amount (as in the parentheses above) or as a fraction of the total number of shares in the marketplace. When you see a price quoted for a particular ticker symbol, whether online, or on TV, or elsewhere, that price is typically the price of the last trade that executed for that security. A good proxy for the current fair price of an asset is what someone else paid for it in the recent past (as long as it wasn't too long ago!). So, when you see a quote labeled \"\"15.5K @ $60.00\"\", that means that the last trade on that security, which the service is using to quote the security's price, was for 15500 shares at a price of $60 per share. Your guess is correct. The term \"\"institutional investor\"\" often is meant to include many types of institutions that would control large sums of money. This includes large banks, insurance companies, pooled retirement funds, hedge funds, and so on.\"", "No. Current account is not a requirement. You can use savings account. You would need to pay taxes on interest. Savings account have limitation on number of withdrawal in a quarter, hence most sole proprietorship have current account.", "Secura Bags, a division of National Document Shredding is a proud Australian owned and operated shredding service providers who work with companies to ensure secure document destruction. We have years of hands on experience in the industry, visit us now to know more.", "\"It won't hurt your credit score, but it may hurt your ChexSystems score. ChexSystems is another consumer reporting agency that doesn't keep track of your debts, but of your bank accounts. Banks (most but not all) check ChexSystems before you open an account to see if you bounce checks, overdraft, make a lot of teller visits, lose ATM cards, etc. They use this to estimate your profitability. Banks aren't allowed to discriminate against a protected class, but \"\"unprofitable\"\" is not a protected class. BTW, most banks don't make much money on checking accounts; they view them as \"\"get-you-in-the-door\"\" inducements so they can sell you the things they really want to like mortgages and investments.\"", "Haven't read this but will, thanks.  I would agree with you that there are certain aspects and forms of private equity that could be considered reprehensible. First, carried interest probably isn't the fairest thing in the world. But that's not going to last much longer. I think you could also argue that SOME hostile takeovers approach the reprehensible. An example off the top of my head would be Carl Icahn and TWA. I would argue on the whole, however, that most hostile takeovers are accretive in the sense that you're taking out management that is either being tremendously negligent, or destroying value all together.   In both of those instances you can make succinct and well thought out arguments. But this isn't what's happening with Bain. On the whole I would disagree and argue that PE backed restructurings are accretive to the economy as a whole."]}
+{"query": "Is Real Estate ever a BAD investment? If so, when?", "corpus": ["\"No, it can really not. Look at Detroit, which has lost a million residents over the past few decades. There is plenty of real estate which will not go for anything like it was sold. Other markets are very risky, like Florida, where speculators drive too much of the price for it to be stable. You have to be sure to buy on the downturn. A lot of price drops in real estate are masked because sellers just don't sell, so you don't really know how low the price is if you absolutely had to sell. In general, in most of America, anyway, you can expect Real Estate to keep up with inflation, but not do much better than that. It is the rental income or the leverage (if you buy with a mortgage) that makes most of the returns. In urban markets that are getting an influx of people and industry, however, Real Estate can indeed outpace inflation, but the number of markets that do this are rare. Also, if you look at it strictly as an investment (as opposed to the question of \"\"Is it worth it to own my own home?\"\") there are a lot of additional costs that you have to recoup, from property taxes to bills, rental headaches etc. It's an investment like any other, and should be approached with the same due diligence.\""], "neg": ["The affordability of homes pales in comparison to the cluster fuck that would come about with a drop in population, who’s going to pay for your pension and all the other things that prop up modern society’s. The current pensioners have spent all our wealth, and we in turn have heavily indebted the next generation(s). It’s a ticking time bomb in Europe, Germany is just ahead of the game... as usual.", "To start with, I should mention that many tax preparation companies will give you any number of free consultations on tax issues — they will only charge you if you use their services to file a tax form, such as an amended return. I know that H&R Block has international tax specialists who are familiar with the issues facing F-1 students, so they might be the right people to talk about your specific situation. According to TurboTax support, you should prepare a completely new 1040NR, then submit that with a 1040X. GWU’s tax department says you can submit late 8843, so you should probably do that if you need to claim non-resident status for tax purposes.", "If you were going to pay off an 18% credit card and had no hope otherwise, I might agree you should do this. 5.5% student loan, I wouldn't do it.  You have multiple issues going on. I would find a bank or broker that will keep the IRA with no fee. Zero. If you buy stocks, there might be a commission, but I'd stick with a low cost index mutual fund. At 10%, the account might double every 7 years, even 35 years till retirement offers 5 doubles or 32X your money. Literally, $100K more for retirement. As a semi-retired old guy, I thank my younger self for putting aside the $3000, so we have over $100K more now.  Your student loan is manageable. Save, enjoy yourself, but don't let $7500 at 5.5% keep you up at night.", "\"No stock is risk-free. Some of the biggest companies in the country, that seemed incredibly stable and secure, have suffered severe downturns or gone out of business. Twenty or thirty years ago Kodak ruled the camera film market. But they didn't react quickly enough when digital cameras came along and today they're a shadow of their former self. Forty years ago IBM owned like 90% of the computer market -- many people used \"\"IBM\"\" as another word for computer. Sears used to dominate the retail department store market. Etc.\"", "Don't borrow money to buy a car. That is just stupid.  People who save, then buy what they want, spend a very much larger amount of money over their lifetime, compared to a person with the exact same income, who borrows to buy things.  The only difference between the two, is the time it takes to save up that first amount of money. After that there is no difference, except the savers spend a shit-ton more money, and get better stuff.", "Fresh bulk mini calla lilies for your wedding event. We ship premium calla lilies direct from our awarded calla lily farms. Lola Blooms is a wholesale supplier of fresh mini calla lilies. We offer the bride beautiful colors in a wide mini calla lily assortment for their dream calla lily wedding.", "\"For equities, buy direct from the transfer agent. You have to buy one full share at a minimum but after that dividend reinvestment is free.  There are others like share builder and foliofn that let you buy fractional shares. As the other poster said their roster is limited so you cannot buy every ETF out there.  With your example of not wanting to spend $200 I agree with the others that you should invest in a mutual fund. Vanguard will have every index fund you need and can invest as little as $50, as long as you sign up for a systematic investment draft from your bank. Plus vanguard typically has the lowest fees in the industry.  The most important thing is to start investing as soon as possible and as regular as possible. \"\"Pay yourself first\"\"\""]}
+{"query": "How to rebalance a passive portfolio if I speculate a war is coming?", "corpus": ["At a risk of stating the obvious: a passive portfolio doesn't try to speculate on such matters."], "neg": ["MBA here. I had a relatively well-paying job with great benefits and tuition reimbursement. I ended up leaving it for a much lower-paying job though.  Why did I do that? I was miserable. The job was to do only as I was told. Also, they changed my project scope to something completely different after 4 months. I also was in a terrible city with no friends. I hated my job and eventually I hated my life.  I've since moved back to where I went to college.  I hate that business publications talk about MBA's like we're all mindless robots looking for the highest paycheck at Goldman Sachs. I'll gladly take friends, a better location, and a comfortable salary over anything else.", "You can't pay your bills with equity in your house. Assuming you paid off the mortgage, where would the money come from that you plan to live off of? If that is your whole retirement savings I'd say do neither. Maybe an annuity (not variable) for SOME of the money, keep the rest invested in conservative investments some of it in cash for emergencies.", "When you ask people to differentiate between a condominium and an apartment, they usually base their answers on the structure itself. A condominium is, more often than not, a high-rise building filled with dozens of living spaces while an apartment is usually two to three stories high with only a handful of units.", "**[Julian Rinaldi](http://www.swspar.com/about/newspage.php?newsid=64)**, who owns Musbury Garage near Axminster, has been elected to the Wessex Guild of **[SPAR.](http://www.swspar.com/)**  Julian joins 11 other Retailers from throughout the South and West on the Wessex Guild. He is pictured here (left) being welcomed by Wessex Guild Chairman Nick Kenworthy.  Each committee member represents a designated area throughout the Guild and Julian will represent an area covering South Somerset and East Devon. “I see the Guild as an important link between the Retailer and Appleby Westward,” he said.  Julian joined SPAR three years ago when he converted his garage shop into a 1,000 sq.ft. SPAR forecourt store serving the local community.  He took over Musbury Garage when his parents Frank and Barbara retired in 2008. They had originally acquired the site in April 1981. It originally opened as a garage in the 1930s under the ownership of a Mr. Snell who later sold the business on to Jim Hendin before he in turn sold it to Frank and Barbara.", "First off, you have done very well to be in your financial position at your age. Congratulations.  I first started investing seriously about 10 years ago, and when I started, I had a similar attitude to you. Learning how to invest is a journey, and it will take you a while to learn both the intellectual and emotional sides of investing. First off, there is nothing wrong with having a chunk of cash that you aren't investing effectively. It is far better to be losing earning power WRT inflation that it is to make a bad investment, where you can lose all your money quite quickly. I have perhaps 15% of my capital just sitting around right now because I don't have any place where I'm excited to put it. For your IRA, I would look at the options you have, and choose one that is reasonably well diversified and has low costs. In most cases, an index fund is a reasonable choice. My 401K goes into an S&P 500 index fund, and I don't have to worry about it. Beyond that, I suggest spending some time learning about investing, and then making some small and conservative investments. I've learned a lot from the Motley Fool web site.", "If you can make the trip to BC yourself, I'd recommend opening an account with TD Canada Trust.  They allow non-citizens to make accounts — apparently the only Canadian bank to do so.  The customer service is great and they have a good online banking site that will allow you to manage it from the US. If you have an account with TD Bank in the US, it's also very easy to set up a TD Canada account through them that will be linked on their online site (though you will still have separate logins for both and manage them separately).  I've done the reverse as a Canadian living in the US.  You can set it up over the phone; their Cross-Border Banking number is listed here.  They also offer better currency conversion rates than their standard ones when you do a cross-border transfer. You could also look into HSBC as well.  They operate in Washington as well as across the border in BC.  If you can't open a CAD account locally, they can help you open and manage one in Canada from the US.  It may or may not require having a small business account instead of a personal account.", "Yes, the US dollar is the standard for all global trade - IMF driven  And China has been going for that title for the past decade and this is a very smart and tactical way to do it  If this goes through, gold &amp; oil might become really good place to be. The US has been in a supply run and kept the price of oil low.  Things are changing quick..."]}
+{"query": "Do people tend to spend less when using cash than credit cards?", "corpus": ["\"I found the study \"\"The irrationality of payment behaviour\"\" accidentally while searching on the term \"\"DNB Study\"\" instead of \"\"D&B Study\"\".  This study, which, when I followed the link, went to the web site dnb.nl (Dutch National Bank), instead of dnb.com (Dun & Bradstreet).  It mentions all the salient points that I hear Dave Ramsey and others mention when they talk about studies on this subject of credit vs cash.  Also, it cross references to many other studies by various researchers, banks, and universities.  Is this the \"\"missing mythical DNB study?\"\"  I'll let you decide.  Relevant \"\"coincidental\"\" points from the study: To be fair and complete, I should mention that clearly the relevant parts of this DNB study are talking about discretionary spending.  Auto-paying your mortgage with a card is clearly not going to cost you more (unless you somehow forget to pay off the card or some other silliness).\""], "neg": ["\"I mean, best of luck for this company, but there are empirical reasons why many companies do not strongly favor very old employees.  From a business perspective, it doesn't make sense to hire someone unless they are the best for their job. Anything else is not really \"\"business\"\" and is more on the charity/socialism side of things.\"", "Yep.  Like I said, I'm riding it out while it lasts.  No skin off my nose if they go under.  That being said, this guy is a cofounder of Netflix, and with all the press this thing is getting, nobody is calling it a scam.  I have to believe that they have something up their sleeve.", "A 401(k) is an investment just like any other investment. You generally get two types of return lumped into that number, but there can be more and you should read your funds prospectus carefully. If you aren't investing in direct companies, you're using mutual funds for instance, then you should read the funds prospectus to see how they handle these situations for the underlying securities they hold for you. Although I think this is the basic answer to the question as you asked.", "It would be unusual but it is possible that the expenses could be very high compared to your income. The IRS in pub 529 explains the deduction. You can deduct only unreimbursed employee expenses that are: Paid or incurred during your tax year, For carrying on your trade or business of being an employee, and Ordinary and necessary. An expense is ordinary if it is common and accepted in your trade,   business, or profession. An expense is necessary if it is appropriate   and helpful to your business. An expense doesn't have to be required   to be considered necessary. The next part lists examples. I have cut the list down to highlight ones that could be large. You may be able to deduct the following items as unreimbursed employee   expenses. Damages paid to a former employer for breach of an employment contract. Job search expenses in your present occupation. Legal fees related to your job. Licenses and regulatory fees. Malpractice insurance premiums. Research expenses of a college professor. Rural mail carriers' vehicle expenses. Tools and supplies used in your work. Work clothes and uniforms if required and not suitable for everyday use. Work-related education. If the term of employment was only part of the year, one or more of the these could dwarf your income for the year. Before deducting something that large be sure you can document it. I believe the IRS computers would flag the return and I wouldn't be surprised if they ask for additional proof.", "\"&gt;I'm playing devil's advocate mostly  I should hope so, because it seems disingenuous to suggest that viewing \"\"tons of photos\"\" is equivalent to seeing and touching something in real life, particularly shoes or clothes.  Also, say, for example, you go to your local shoe store and try on a pair of shoes. Your usual size is 9.5, so you try that on first. But it feels big, and a 9 fits you better. If you'd gone to Amazon without going to the store first, even though they offer free exchanges, you'd still have to deal with the costs of printing out a return label, boxing them up, going to the post office, waiting two days for them to arrive at Amazon, and waiting two days for the new pair. But going to the store first saved you that cost, and the store doesn't get any reward for it.  I'm not condemning you or anyone else for doing this. But I would feel guilty about it, and I'm trying to explain why.\"", "\"Such a \"\"duh\"\" article, but depressingly this happens in reality too much.  Years ago I was called into an EVP office who asked why my projects continued much longer than the average in the company (good thing - my projects kept going to get more results).  I was flummoxed by the very question.  Um, I answer questions, I deliver, I talk with the client, I'm above board.  What's the freaking magic?  Nothing - I am a person and so are the clients.\"", "It depends on the broker. The one I use (Fidelity) will allow me to buy then sell or sell then buy within 3 days even though the cash isn't settled from the first transaction. But they won't let me buy then sell then buy again with unsettled cash. Of course not waiting for cash to settle makes you vulnerable to a good faith violation."]}