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| 11/23 |
| 2005/12/23-28 [Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Investment] UID:41130 Activity:nil |
12/22 http://biz.yahoo.com/ap/051223/economy.html?.v=10 median price in oct: 234800 median price in nov: 225200 "However, sales fell in all other areas, led by a 22.1 percent drop in the West, the biggest decline in this region since February 1995." \_ How is this going to affect the interest rate? \_ Finally. I've been watining for this to come for a long time. Now maybe I can afford something close to work. It's about time, damnit. -bitter home buyer, 32 years old \_ How do you figure? Rates are going up so your monthly will be the same (roughly) on the same house even if the buy price is lower. If you're a home owner now, your house will sell for less also. If you're bitter because you're a renter, then you don't even have th eold house to help offset the cost of the new. This is sum zero for you, guy. The prices and #s sold are slipping because rates are going up. I feel bad for you but this isn't going to help you at all unless you're a high cash buyer. If you had that kind of cash you'd own now. \_ Another 85% and my house will be back where I bought it. \_ And with a higher interest rate. |
| 2005/12/22-24 [Politics/Foreign/Asia/Others, Finance/Investment] UID:41122 Activity:low |
12/22 For my motd investment buddy.
I was looking at TKF (Turkish Investment Fund) and I noticed the
following:
http://www.etfconnect.com/select/fundPages/global.asp?MFID=3857
Closing NAV: $18.97
Closing Share Price: $23.85
Premium/(Discount): 25.72%
As a comparison, IFN (India Fund) has a premium of 5.05%
And the CEE you also recommended has a discount of 3.9%
Would you be worried about the 25.72% premium?
\_ Yeah, it worries me. Especially since I own some TKF. I wish
there was some other way to get exposure to Turkey. Do you
know of any?
\_ I don't know any other. Thanks for the CEE tip.
I will sell half my EUROX first thing 2006, and buy
CEE with the money. 2006 so I don't pay capital
gains until 2007. |
| 2005/12/22-24 [Politics/Foreign/Asia/Taiwan, Finance/Investment] UID:41121 Activity:kinda low |
12/22 Hi guys, I'm going to be visiting Taiwan next week. What's the best
way to exchange USD for Taiwan dollars? My guess is to buy AmEx
travelers checks (as an AmEx cardholder) in cash at an AmEx office, and
exchange the checks for NT$ at an AmEx office (for free) in Taiwan.
Is changing U.S. dollars in cash at the CKS airport for NT$ that much
worse? Thanks.
\_ before you leave airport, use your ATM card and withdraw local
currency. I do this all the time everywhere I go.
\_ AAA sells travellers' checks to members without fees.
\_ Yeah, I was looking at that. I even have a AAA-branded credit
card I can charge it to (no cash advance fee for travellers
checks). I'm just wondering what the fee is to cash them at
CKS airport I guess. My friend from Taiwan also says, "People
in Taiwan only know AmEx travellers checks", although the bank
and airport booth people probably know know Visa checks.
You buy Visa checks at AAA offices I believe.
\_ Are you sure AAA sells Visa checks? I remember last
time I bought traveler's check at AAA it was AmEx. This
was about 2 years ago, so things may have changed. As
changing money at CKS, I did it last time I was there.
However, I don't remember what rate "premium/fee" was.
\_ Not sure, but they only mention the Visa stuff on AAA web
pages now. The AmEx web page still mentions AAA though.
\_ This is true for Europe; that ATMs are usually your best deal in
terms of exchange rates. I tend to stay awake from Trav Chqs or
money changers. See if your ATM card has a Visa/Mastercard logo on
it, and you would only be charged the standard 1% foreign
transaction fee. Most ATMs in Europe and Singapore (don't know
about Taiwan) do not charge cash advance fee like in the U.S., so
you would only pay your home bank for doing business with other
ATMs. And if you carry certain balance with your bank (Citibank
comes to mind), they waive all ATM fees when you use other bank's
ATMs. If you bank with BofA, for example, they have affiliate banks
worldwide so that you won't get charged. Ask them for a list.
\_ If you do decide to go with the ATM route, make sure the ATMs
at your destination will accept your PIN. The last time I
travelled internationally, I found that a lot of ATMs,
particularly in airports, would only work with 4-digit PINs.
It took me a while to find a bank whose ATMs would work with
my longer PIN. -gm
\_ Oh, also remmeber a lot of non-US ATMs do not have alphas
on it, so if you're used to memorizing 4-alpha, get used
to memorizing the digits instead. |
| 2005/12/14-16 [Finance/Investment] UID:41021 Activity:high |
12/14 "ILF up 66%, BZF up 74%, EWY up 44%, CEE up 64%. But I only hold
about 10% in each. You are holding too much risk with an
undiversified portfolio like that for my taste."
\_ That's impressive, nice returns betting on different regions.
How do you plan on investing in 2006?
\_ Thanks, I only posted the best ones though. There is an EWG up 9%,
and a bad bet on CPN bonds (lost 50% so far) that bring the
overall return down to about 30%. I am still working on my
end of year adjustments, but I will certainly hold the above,
to start with. I try not to sell winners, but in CEE's
case it went up so much I had to sell half of it to avoid
overbalancing my portfolio. I moved the proceeds into EEM.
Recent purchases include TKF and PCU, a copper miner. I am
probably going to reduce my overseas allocation from 70%
\_ Thanks, I only posted the best ones though. There is an EWG
up 9%, and a bad bet on CPN bonds (lost 50% so far) that
bring the overall return down to about 30%. I am still work-
ing on my end of year adjustments, but I will certainly hold
the above, to start with. I try not to sell winners, but in
CEE's case it went up so much I had to sell half of it to
avoid overbalancing my portfolio. I moved the proceeds into
EEM. Recent purchases include TKF and PCU, a copper miner.
I am probably going to reduce my overseas allocation from 70%
back down to 50%, but other than that, I haven't figured it
out yet. Any suggestions?
\_ Funny how the motd financial gurus only post their winners
and the biggest ones at that and everyone has large double
digit gains in everything. It feels like 1998 all over
again everyday on the motd.
\_ 30% yearly gain is nothing to sneeze at.
\_ This is true. My gain is 20%/year over the last 5-6
years but there were down times in there as well. I'm
not picking on this person in particular, more the
general batch of "I'm a guru! I got lucky on these
3 stocks! Don't look at the losses under the rug..."
people posting here.
\_ 20% per year is impressive, especially given that
your 5-6 years included 2000 to late 2002. I
have a 35% annual gain since late 2002, which
was when I got out of the post internet bubble
stock investment funk. I definitely lost money
from 2000 till 2002. Luckily I didn't have
too much money then.
your 5-6 years included 2000 to late 2002.
\_ Like I said, there were some down times. I bought
in while the market was still dropping so I was at
a loss for a while but now I'm well above. My
only regret was not trusting myself and getting
scared and not buying more at one key point where
I had my finger on the "buy" button but chickened
out. That was the low point. Oh well. I did ok.
\_ I missed Korea entirely. What prompted you to pick Korea
(EWY)? I have EUROX, but it was trounced by your CEE in
the past year, even though it had good long term
performance and has been slightly less volatile.
I know little about Turkey. What's your reasons for
buying it? When is it joining the EU?
\_ About three years ago, I decided that China was the
real growth engine of the world, but I don't want to
buy Red Chinese stocks for obvious reasons. So I decided
to buy stocks in the nations that I thought would benefit
from China's rise, including most of its neighbors: EWH,
EWS, EWY and TTF (later sold when the Thai economy went
into a recession). CEE is very heavy on Russian oil and
into a funk). CEE is very heavy on Russian oil and
gas producers, so be careful with it. I bought Turkey
mostly because The Economist keeps saying good things
about the Turkish economy and chances for EU admission.
They still have a bunch of hurdles to jump, but it looks
like 2012 or so for Turkey.
\_ I bought some EWJ (japan) and also had MJFOX
\_ I have bought some EWJ (japan) and also had MJFOX
(japan) since late 2003. Everyone is saying buy
Japan. What do you think? The other thing I've
been looking at is blue chip US companies. So
far, I've bought just GE though. You don't like
India? Totally missed the 20% semiconductor
run up recently. Thanks for the Turkey tip. I
will definitely look at that.
\_ I have a bit of Japan, will probably sell some
emerging market and move into it and SPX when
I rebalance. The US economy has all the same
problems it had three years ago, but at least
the valuations are looking more reasonable. I
guess I should buy some IFN, but I missed the
big runup and hate buying high. Any other
good ways to get into India? |
| 2005/12/14-16 [Finance/Investment] UID:41018 Activity:low |
12/14 anyone have ameritrade? should i store my cash in the
reserve fund (money market) while i am not trading?
\_ I do. I figure a percent or 2 of growth is better than nothing.
I noticed on a couple occasions the money market *lost* small
amounts of money but Ameritrade gave me a 'gift' to cover the loss.
\_ can you buy stocks fast with it being in the money market acct?
\_ Yes, it just makes you have negative cash until they transfer
money out of reserve at the end of the day.
\_ do they charge $35 if you take out cash before 90 days?
\_ where do you specify whether to store cash in the
reserve fund? I can't find it anywhere on the account
website.
\_it's on your home page.. enroll in reserve... righthandside
\_ I think it's only available for IRA accounts. Are you
using an IRA account?
\_ yeah.. it's only in my ira accts.
\_ I've had ameritrade for several years (ever since they bought
ndb). I normally keep my cash in the reserve fund b/c it gives
a decent return. |
| 2005/12/13-15 [Finance/Investment] UID:40992 Activity:nil |
12/13 Which is better for an individual investor, savings bonds or treasury
bonds/notes?
\_ Bill Gross, the king of bonds, recommended FAX, an asian bond fund
with 7.30% yield. It's a closed end fund that's trading at 10% below
its NAV (net asset value). I am buying it tomorrow.
with 7.30% yield. It's a closed end fund that's trading at 10%
below its NAV (net asset value). I am buying it tomorrow.
\_ 47% in Australia. It is not really diversified.
\_ neither is not good. Liquidity gets pretty bad. I would go for
bond mutual funds instead. |
| 2005/12/13-15 [Finance/Investment] UID:40984 Activity:kinda low |
12/13 Hello self proclaimed stock gurus. It's time to prove yourselves
that you are a true guru by winning the motd stock contest. Entering
the contest is easy: predict the Google stock price in 6 months,
1 year, and 2 year intervals from now. To receive the title of a
True Motd Stock Guru, you must sign your real name. I will
start.
\_ dunno about goog but made killing on EMRG (in at .36)
\_ 420, 350, 300 -junior
\_ Anyone who claims to be able to predict the price of a stock
with as much immaturity and volatility as Google is not
an investment guru. -tom
\_ why do I have to agree with tom. Let's not predict price.
Just choose stocks.
\_ yes, choosing stocks is better, but usually, to win,
one has to do a risky bet (eg. all oil stocks) and
then has some luck. A more reasonable portfolio
would finish above average but will not win.
\_ to win what?
\_ best performing portfolio of the year.
\_ Investing is a marathon, not a 100-yard dash. If you
treat it as a sprint, you're more likely to end up
screwed or breaking even. *You* might have gotten
lucky, but as an investment strategy this is fuck
stupid.
\_ One year is a very reasonable time frame to
judge stock picking performance. Good long
term investors may not beat the market each
month, but they tend to beat the market year
after year, with a bad year once in a while.
\_ one year is not enough. Ten year is more
accurate. You can evaluate trading, and
position trading in one year, but not
long term investing.
\_ well, you need to make an evaluation
or judgement call at least once a
year in my opinion. But you do need
to consistently make good calls for
several years at least before you can
be considered a good investor, so I
don't disagree with you.
\_ A stock can easily appreciate 20% in a
few weeks, turning it from undervalued
to fully valued, and hence a candidate
for selling. This is called value
investing. It's not trading.
\_ 50% GAGEX, 50% VGPMX. Up 55% and 32% respectively and I think they
will go higher, especially GAGEX.
\_ PBR 79% gain since 12/27/04.
\_ That's a single stock. GAGEX and VGPMX are mutual funds, in
energy and precious metals.
\_ Yes, but I am not sure if GAGEX is necessarily less
volatile since it is highly dependent on the price of a
single thing: crude.
\_ ILF up 66%, BZF up 74%, EWY up 44%, CEE up 64%. But I only hold
about 10% in each. You are holding too much risk with an
undiversified portfolio like that for my taste.
\_ why not join http://marketocracy.com
\_ can you play if you're a GOOG employee? |
| 11/23 |
| 2005/11/30-12/3 [Finance/Investment] UID:40780 Activity:nil |
11/30 Presume you had $90,000 to play with: It seems that you could make
0.1-0.2% profit per day just exchanging shares of BRK.A and BRK.B.
Since BRK.A shares are convertible to BRK.B shares, they always trade
at about a 30.3:1 ratio. But since BRK.A has less liquidity that ratio
swings a couple tenths of a % in the course of a day. Is this an
unexploited arbitrage opportunity or am I missing something?
\_ The BH website has a page on this topic.
\_ It discusses A->B conversion when B goes above A/30, and the fact
that the market does not let B goo too far below A/30, but it
does not discuss day trading off the swings in B's range.
conventional day trading has the risk that your stock might
drift in the wrong direction, but with this there is a built-in
limiter to how far they can drift apart.
\_ People with a lot more money than you are already taking
all the profit available in these kinds of arbitrage schemes.
-tom |
| 2005/11/4-6 [Finance/Investment] UID:40447 Activity:kinda low |
11/4 What's the purpose of having codenames for projects? To me, it's just
yet another piece of info per project that I need to remember.
\_ To facillitate communication across departments.
\_ Why not use the real name of the product?
\_ Because you get version number differences, branched products,
etc. Not every dev team requires codenames, but it's a common
thing to do just to keep everyone on the same page.
\_ Also, it depends on how you define "project". If it's a
product, it will have a name, but that name may change or
be unwieldy to use on a regular basis. If it's a version,
the business types could change the version name at any time
to support sales or marketing. If it's a set of features, it
may not have a well-defined short name, and "the code that
does all that new stuff" isn't terribly descriptive. -gm
\_ 1) project hasn't been named yet
2) project name is long and unwieldy
3) it's just a version change and maybe saying you're working
on "5.8.7" is annoying
Those are just off the top of my head --dbushong
\_ Project version number changes at last-minute.
\_ You can't say the full name of the project without laughing
\_ They're more fun
\_ Just ask Butt-Head Astronomer. -tom |
| 2005/10/30-11/1 [Finance/Investment] UID:40341 Activity:nil |
10/30 How to solve Iran's stock market woes? Hang the investors!
http://www.iranfocus.com/modules/news/article.php?storyid=4208
\_ Threatening other countries, torturing/killing others will solve
all problems -- just ask the Bush administration |
| 2005/10/28-31 [Finance/Investment] UID:40326 Activity:high |
10/28 Hi, does it make sense now that interest rates are rising and that
the housing bubble appears to be peaking, that there will be a flux of
$$$ from housing to stocks? Evidence of this would be the Dow Jones
average increasing noticeably over the next 6-12 months.
\_ Rising interest rates usually hurt the stock market.
\_ but it will eventually end, and rates will start going down
again.
\_ or it will go up, and then oscillate at a higher level
for a very very long time.
\_ economy/stock market starts to go down, slow too much,
and interest rates will start going down again.
\_ if inflation remains high, which do you think
the fed would pick: inflation or recession?
\_ why do you think they would 'choose' either bad
thing? why do you think they have that kind of
power over the economy? if they had the power
to 'choose' the state of the economy, they would
always choose a strong/healthy/robust economy.
was there a point to your question?
\_ Err ... the fed does one main thing, adjust
the interest rate up or down. To fight
recession, they would lower the interest
rate, to fight inflation, they would raise
the interest rate. That's what is meant
by the fed "choosing". I think most
people understood that.
\_ Ok then. In that case, they would still choose
to attempt to get to the magical place in
between those two states since either of the
other states can/will kill the economy if the
condition goes too far. It is much harder to
pull the economy out of a tail spin than it
is to keep it from doing so in the first place
since both recessionary and inflationary
states feed on themselves in a cycle of doom
without more and more serious intervention.
It is that intervention that the Fed is in a
continuous state of attempting to perform. It
is like asking a surgeon if he'd prefer his
patient died from a heart attack or a stroke
while on the operating table.
\_ or it could be a surgeon deciding
whether he should save a man's leg,
but possibly risk the man's life,
or amputate the infected leg.
\_ well except that it can't be. both
economic conditions are horrible if
they slip beyond a reasonably small
range and feed on themselves. would
you rather a) destroy the economy or
b) destroy the economy.
\_ how would they "feed on
themselves"? Do explain.
\_ well sometimes inflation and
recessions will happen and there
is nothing you can do about it.
The only choice you get is pick
one. why do you believe that only
good things are allowed to happen?
because you said "it can't be"?
bwahahahaha!
have you heard of the term
"stagflation"?
\_ Buy gold, an AK-47 and stock up on ammunition.
\_ Uhhhhh, when is this *not* a good idea?
\_ When you live in CA. You CAN NOT buy anything close to
an AK-47 here. Not even the semiautomatic version. Just
a .22 LR rimfire superfacially similar looking one.
BTW, I am the proud owner of a Bulgarian AK-47 and 75rd
drums, with plenty of 7,62 x 39 mm ammo. :)
\_ Rising interest rates will lead to the rising of the dead. Move
away from large cities.
\_ The dead will be raised -- for fuel.
\_ From 9/14:
"http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050914/od_nm/germany_cats_dc
German invertor creates renewable fuel. A newspaper say he
uses dead cats as the source but he denies it. Fucking
Krauts."
\_ not a good idea. best investment now could be the I bonds.
almost 100% probability that it will be more than 6% when
they set the rate for the next 6 months on 11/1.
they set the rate for the next 6 months on 11/1 cause the
variable part of the rate will be 5.7% and the "fixed"
rate is 1.2% but may be lowered, but should still be
more than 0.5% |
| 2005/10/21-24 [Politics/Domestic/SocialSecurity, Finance/Investment] UID:40213 Activity:nil |
10/21 Alan Greenspan translation for the average American is here:
http://www.lewrockwell.com/thornton/thornton13.html |
| 2005/10/19-21 [Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Investment] UID:40188 Activity:nil |
10/19 Housing boom/bust links from swami the magnificent:
http://tinyurl.com/cv3mt (thestreet.com)
http://www.patrick.net
http://tinyurl.com/bl5rm (finance.yahoo.com on stock prices) |
| 2005/10/16-19 [Finance/Investment] UID:40128 Activity:nil |
10/16 dear motd financial adviser,
i'm interested in learning about investing in the stock market and
would like to hear recommendations about books to read on this
subject. I am not looking for general advice on "what to do with your
money" but specific advice on methods and strategies for picking
stocks and mutual funds to invest in for someone without a lot of
experience and no background in economics.
\_ Wow, psb hasn't answered yet. I'm incapable of imitating psb, but
he would tell you to read "A Random Walk Down Wall Street." ok tnx.
\- 1. i was at the opera. 2. good advice. --OTpsb
\_ I would read a Peter Lynch book. Then I would try yahoo finance
and all the news on the particular stock you are interested in.
WSJ is always good, and Economist helps too, but is not
essential, since it doesn't need to be too complicated. The
basic but important things are careful research on the company
(the industry it is in, competitors, products, business model,
risks, valuation, etc. etc.), patience and discipline
(let good stock run, cut loss early on bad picks).
Also, resist the urge to start trading instead of investing.
Of course, don't forget asset allocation, but I have mixed
feelings about that. I think sometimes one should go for it.
If you can do the above well, you should be fine. You can
learn other more fanciful, but not necessarily more useful,
stuff as you go along. Before buying a stock, be able to
give a 1 minute explanation on why you are getting it, and
what are the possible risks and downsides for the stock.
Oh, also Smartmoney magazine is pretty decent for picking stocks
and funds.
\_ start with Investing for Dummies or Personal Finance for Dummies.
After that, let us know.
\_ in addition, that Peter Lynch book, and maybe also
writings by William O'Neil (How to Make Money in Stocks),
and Jim Cramer (latest book).
\_ http://www.investopedia.com/articles/basics/03/050803.asp |
| 2005/10/16-19 [Finance/Investment] UID:40124 Activity:nil |
10/16 So, what happens to shareholders in a mutual fund if the mutual fund
company goes belly-up?
\_ I imagine they stand in line with the other Chapter 7 bankruptcy
debtors. They probably stand pretty close to the front though.
\_ That sounds mighty suspicious. -op
\_ The "mutual fund company" just manages the fund. Each fund is its
own separate entity under the Investment Act of 1930something, and
owns its assets on behalf of its shareholders, with its own
board and everything. The managers and its debtors have no legal
claim on the fund's assets.
\_ So if the mutual fund place closes shop, do they liquidate the
funds and return to shareholders, or what?
\_ yes. |
| 2005/10/14-15 [Finance/Investment] UID:40085 Activity:nil |
10/14 http://www.thisislondon.com/films/articles/20638955 In choosing the next Bond (probably because Brosnan was too expensive): "Hugh Jackman ... was 'too fey', Colin Farrell 'too sleazy', Eric Bana 'not handsome enough' - and Ewan McGregor 'too short' at 5'10"." |
| 2005/10/13-14 [Finance/Investment] UID:40075 Activity:nil |
10/13 Was watching Jim Cramer on Mad Money. Guy was calling in on
how likely Fed is gonna raise rates. Jim Cramer says it's
simple, Fed is going to continue raising rates until the housing
bubble pops.
\_ Err, isn't the Fed raising rates because of inflation?
\_ I wonder how directly the interest rate now ties into rising
prop values. Sure, the initial huge gains were triggered by
low rates. But later it has been the spectacle of previous
huge gains that drive investors to keep buying and flipping
to each other without much regard to interim monthly payments. |
| 2005/10/13-14 [Politics/Domestic/California, Finance/Investment] UID:40068 Activity:high |
10/13 Why I don't think the real-estate will ever bubble. Many young
people seeking for opportunities from inland move to coastal metro
CA. Most asian immigrants to move to CA. The people from the border
love to move to CA. Kids are born and raised in CA. People who
already stay in CA like to stay in CA. The fact of the matter is,
regardless of the economy the CA population is still rising and
there is a shortage of land. We talk about bubble as if people will
all of a sudden will lose their jobs or move to apartments or
move out of the state. Wouldn't such a movement trigger an apartment
rental boom, which is unlikely since many are already close to full
occupancy anyways? Real-estate bubble-- wishful thinking,
it'll never happen.
\_ Do you have statistics to show that the Bay Area population is
growing? I read an article that claimed the opposite.
\_ There's an artificial shortage of land, in reality there is
no shortage of land in CA. If the population does increase to
a certain size we'll just expand the burbs is all. All you have
to do is travel down interstates between the two large metropolitan
areas of LA-OC-SD and the Bay Area and you can see the large
amount of empty room still available. But real statistics show
that the Bay Area has been losing population, contrary to
popular belief, and that the growth has been in SoCal and
Sac.
\_ I think it's a matter of perspective. The housing bubble is not
going to be like the stock market bubble. Houses won't end up
being worthless. The problem are those people who are betting
their property will continue to increase in worth by double digits
and those who will get caught by the increasing high interest.
The bubble will be stagnant markets, or slightly depressed prices.
\_ actually considering that most people are financing their homes,
likening it to stock merket would be likening it to a stock
market heavy on margin traders. If someone only puts up 10% down
on real eastate, it only takes a 10% drop for them to lose it
all. Because of the heavy leverage, small changes in the
market can produce big losses!
The one saving grace is real eastate is not very liquid. It
won't take a week for the market to crash ; it'll take months.
\_ Sorry, but people from the border can't afford the million $
homes. As for CA kids, they will all just live with their
parents. For speculators, if home prices don't rise, they will
be bleeding money, and hence looking to sell. Inflation is
rising and the fed is forced to keep raising rates. Add to
that outsourcing, trade deficit, budget deficit, high consumer
debt, and an overall ugly economy, and even though I wish to
say housing would just calm down and stagnate, I have to be
honest, and tell you that, more likely, it would pop and fall
like 20%. - worried homeowner
\_ If this real estate bubble is anything like the last one in the
Bay Area, I wouldn't worry too much. Even if prices start
falling, it won't do dramatically. Incomes and prices are high
enough that you can sell if need be.
\_ Actually, the new immigrants are able to afford quite a lot.
How? They share. It's common for several families of new Mexican
immigrants to share a house. In this way, I've seen even day
laborers buy a $400K house. Yes, this constrains prices
because at some point income is always a limiting factor. By
the way, why are you worried about a 20% drop? That's
nothing. So your $500K house falls to $400K. BFD.
\_ if you spent $100k down on that $500k house, after the 20%
drop, that $100k of equity is GONE. If you borrowed it all,
you're now $100k in debt; selling the house would leave you
still well in the red.
\_ Uhm no. If I put $100k down on a $500k house and the sell
price drops 20% I have the option of "not selling" since I
live there. If I was a speculator I'd probably take a hit
since a 20% drop is unlikely to recover quickly in which
case I'd lose a tiny amount of the millions I'd made over
the last 5-10 years. Too bad I wasn't a speculator. ;-)
\_ Not selling is all fine and dandy if everyone took
out 30 year fixed mortgages. Unfortunately, there are
too many 1 year, 3 year ARMs, no interest, blah blah
mortgages these days. I am not worried about my own
home per se, but a deflating housing bubble pulling
the whole economy down. IIRC, something like half of
the jobs created lately are real estate related.
\_ I think the real estate market in CALIFORNIA will be a good
investment IN THE LONG RUN precisely because the population
here is growing quickly. However, this is not true in most
places.
\_ Yea, in the long run, stock market goes up too, but like my
old Numerical Analysis TA says, "Why are we learning this
faster algorithm? Cause LIFE IS SHORT!"
\_ Look, do you want to invest or are you trying to win the
lottery? If you're not in it for the long-term then just
go to Vegas already. Many people have long-term goals and
accomplish them by staying the course. That doesn't mean
to ignore short-term fluctuations, but most of us here are
quite far from retirement age and have time on our side.
\_ "Yea, things are overpriced, but you need to get in or
you will miss the boat. Just invest for the long term."
That's what they say at the height of the internet
bubble too.
\_ Maybe. On the other hand, I thought we were at the
top 4 years ago (when I bought). I needed a place
to live. I wouldn't buy an investment property
right now. However, I'd buy a 'home' if I needed
one and could afford it.
\_ How far off is the DOW/NAS/etc now from where they were
at the top of the dotocm bubble?
\_ nasdaq: 5000 (top of bubble 5+ years ago), 2000 (now)
\_ The End Is Nigh:
http://www.golyon.com/images/sacsvs.png
http://www.golyon.com/pricingtrends_f.htm |
| 2005/9/24-26 [Politics/Domestic/RepublicanMedia, Finance/Investment] UID:39851 Activity:high |
9/24 http://tinyurl.com/atl2o A Housing Crash Will Soon Hit America -- Find out Sir John Templeton's Advice and Prepare for the Coming Catastrophe \_ When? When?! \_ John Snow is in Beijing pressing China to revalue RMB again. If Snow gets what he wanted (40% increase in RMB value), we will see how fast housing market crashes. \_ I am an economic fool. How is a 40% increase in RMB going to cause the housing market crash? \_ 40% increase in RMB value will whipe out all trade surplus China has with USA. Consider that China is running trade deficits with virtually all nations except USA, this means China won't have spare cash to buy a billions of US treasuries a month. US 30-yr bond need to raise interest rate to attract investors, and morgage rate is tied to 30 yr bond... \_ 40% is ridiculous and won't happen, but if it does, it means inflation since walmart, etc. will have their costs increase, and inflation will force the fed to keep on raising rates, supposedly. The other factor is how the asian central banks react to a currency revaluation of say 10%. I guess the reasoning is that once PRC allows revaluation, the other asian central banks won't be under as much pressure to keep buying US treasuries to keep their currencies just as cheap. This will force the US treasury to increase its rates in order to continue attracting money to service US debts. \_ This is just one big long fucking ad. Why show us this? And most people agree that the housing market's in a precarious state right now, but predicting exactly when it'll blow, or if it'll deflate with a hiss instead of a bang, no one can do, including "Sir John Templeton". --PeterM \_ I believe the income vs. mortgage ratios are still lower than the last 2 times housing got thumped and even then all that happened was a 20% drop followed by years of decreased _growth_ back *way* above where it was. When I bought 5-6 years ago, I thought it was high then but was simply tired of being a rental victim. I feel bad for all the folks who have been bitterly waiting for some giant corrective event that is simply unlikely to happen to any large degree. If housing prices dropped in half because of all the risky loans all choking at the same time, all you'd really see is those houses being bought up at auction by people who do have money and can afford to rent at a loss for years until incomes/rental prices catch up. The sky is not falling. Even a 20% drop in housing would simply put prices back 6-18 months (depending on location) which is still higher than when people started screaming bust. Going in after some not-yet-happened 20% drop would be worse than having bought in 6-18 months ago at the same price since in the meantime the angry renter would have lost all the rent money, have a higher interest rate, started owning later in life, and suffered the extra stress and bitterness to get a house further away from their ideal location. I didn't read the link and didn't see a point given the title. Anyone hyping their stuff with "...Prepare for the *C_O_M_I_N_G* *C*A*T*A*S*T*R*O*P*H*E* !!@@!!@1111" doesn't deserve a click. \_ Well, I bought a house, just not in CA. (Buying in CA would have been silly since I live in NM.) Regardless of what you said, I still think that housing is in a precarious state, and that there will be some sort of correction, but I've no clue whatsoever when/how bad, and no one has any such clue. --PeterM |
| 2005/9/22-23 [Finance/Investment] UID:39820 Activity:nil |
9/22 ETrade is offering money market for 3.65% APY for the first 3
months plus $50 credit to you. Is it possible to open up one,
then close an existing one and get the credit?
\_ Are you sure there is no fine print already in place against
existing customers?
\_ ETrade has a gay ass withdrawal fee of like $50 or something. |
| 2005/9/20-22 [Finance/Investment] UID:39775 Activity:kinda low |
9/20 Two people on motd actually think Alan Greenspan's doing a good
job. Why do you think he's done such a great job?
\_ Why do you think he hasn't? It's partly because of his amazing
balancing act that the country hasn't been in a deep depression so
far. Maybe it's just buying time. History will show that.
However, what could anyone have done better?
\_ The crazy dot com lasted for several years, well passed the
recession. It could have been controlled with a steady rise
of interest rates. Greenspan instead did NOTHING till the last
few years in a failed attempt to catch up. Now we're seeing the
same thing. The housing boom is crazy, and has been crazy for
the last few years. What did Greenspan do? Nothing. Now he's
trying to catch up, once more. The man is old and his reaction
is slow. This man fucked up TWICE and deserves no praise.
\_ http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/business/26fed.html
"But another key principle of the Greenspan Fed, which most
experts have come to accept, is that the central bank should
focus on economic fundamentals and not try to prematurely pop
a market bubble in stock prices or real estate prices."
Of course, you are entitled to your opinion. Unfortunately,
it seems that the European Central Bank also disagrees with
you. "For the ECB, the Maastricht treaty mandated that price
stability would be the primary objective. The treaty also
established that the ECB should support the general economic
policies of the European Community, aiming at growth and
employment but only insofar as price stability is not
endangered." http://csua.org/u/dg6
But, again you are certainly entitled to hold your own opinion.
But, again you are certainly entitled to hold your own
opinion.
\_ nytimes is charging for the article. Forget it
\_ "While there are some negatives in the record, when the score
is toted up, we think he [Greenspan] has a legitimate claim to
being the greatest central banker who ever lived. His performance
as chairman of the Fed has been impressive, encompassing, and
overwhelmingly beneficial--to the nation, to the institution,
and to the practice of monetary policy."
"Understanding the Greenspan Standard", Alan Blinder and Ricardo
Reis, Princeton University. link:csua.org/u/dg8
Of course, you are entitled to your own opinion and you are free
to disagree.
\_ I think this is one of those things that will only be correctly
judged in at least a decade's time. --haven't made my mind
\_ For greatest central banker who ever lived? Sure. Straight
up good/bad job? I don't know of anyone serious who thinks
this is controversial. Of course, MOTD knows better than
most (or in this case all) professionals. I would love to
read a serious claim from a credible source (say a paper
published in a refereed journal) that that Greenspan has
done an overall bad job.
\_ green span is overrated. what's so hard about his job. read
data, read news, decide whether to lower rate or raise rate,
don't do anything drastic so he won't get blamed. that's about
it.
\_ There are 2 kinds of people who will tell you that something
is trivial to do: someone who has never done it before, and
someone who has done it many times.
\_ it's similar to making a call on where the economy, market
is going. Most investors have to make such calls many
times in their investing career. in fact, an investor's
job is probably harder, since he has to look forward,
whereas, fed tends to make its decision based on what has
already happened. it's his job important?
yea. is it really hard? no.
yea. is it really hard? no. kind of like an airplane
pilot.
\_ Like I said, there are two kinds of people.
\_ He kept us from having a major recession after the dot com
bubble collapsed. That was pretty impressive. |
| 2005/9/17-19 [Finance, Finance/Investment] UID:39731 Activity:nil |
9/17 Let's redistribute the wealth of rich universities to poor ones:
http://www.taemag.com/issues/articleID.18722/article_detail.asp
\_ I totally agree. Let's do everything at once. School, tax, etc. |
| 2005/9/16-17 [Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Investment] UID:39709 Activity:moderate |
9/15 Uh oh. Consumer confidence at 13 year low.
http://news.yahoo.com/s/nm/20050916/bs_nm/economy_consumers_dc
\_ And the housing boom continues. It is dawn of the NEW MARKET
and housing will continue to boom forever!
\_ seconded. housing is the most essential and limited asset
you can buy in the US, hence the boom! Peak median price
should reach 30 * median annual income, that's how long
most people have mortgages anyway.
\_ it's a good time to buy second homes too. since even if
it doesn't appreciate, you can always rent it out.
\_ where are you finding the renter to cover that mortgage?
rents aren't that high so if it doesn't appreciate, you
lose.
\_ I believe the ppp (to whom you replied) was kidding.
Were you kidding, ppp?
\_ :-)
\_ Because people don't need to eat and can afford to put 100%
of their income into a mortgage?
\_ if you watch your pennies, food can be a very small
% of your income. You should see my Chinese parents!
\_ All I ate the first year after I bought my first house
were free company meals and instant noodle. My
monthly food cost was < $10.
\- did you become a puffy supergiant?
\_ I ended up consuming fewer calories than I would
otherwise, though those calories are of undeniably
lower quality.
\_ How big is people's monthly food budget generally?
\_ Housing will only boom till eternity in Prop-13 places. |
| 2005/9/9-12 [Finance/Investment] UID:39588 Activity:nil |
9/9 Whoa. I'm saving about 50% of my take-home. What's the canonnical
asset class mix for investing money to be used in 5 years?
\_ I'm in a similar position, although I am certainly no
investment guru. I think for short term it's usually about 20%
equity, 80% bonds. This is about what I'm doing. I'm
getting 5.5% on the bonds right now.
\_ To be used for what? An idea of your goals would help.
\_ world domination, duh.
\_ 50% is a lot. Big salary, not that much expenses?
What are your goals with your extra money?
\_ Yes, yes. Marriage/house/kids.
\_ Found this on google:
http://personal.fidelity.com/planning/retirement/saving/content/strategies.shtml
http://tinyurl.com/bgrtj
\_ Bonds, according to SmartMoney. |
| 2005/9/2-5 [Finance/Investment] UID:39441 Activity:nil |
9/2 I don't like where the market is going, and want to do
some shorting, but all the ETFs are shorted to death
by the hedge funds and I can't find any shares. Anyone
knows any good individual stocks as short candidates,
or any ETF where you can still find shares to borrow?
\_ Have you considered puts?
\_ I haven't tried options before. Can you suggest
something specific?
\_ Not really as I am new to buying puts myself. I just
opened a minor put on a major homebuilder. |
| 2005/9/1-2 [Politics/Foreign/Europe, Finance/Investment] UID:39411 Activity:nil |
9/1 Euro-denominated investments were all the rage on motd. Did anyone
actually go through with the investments? How did people do?
\_ I did badly. I started around April and the strong dollar kept
fucking the investment up. I've lost maybe 8% from New Zeland and
Euro. Euro a bit worse. That's ok. Warren Buffet lost even more.
I think he lost well over 200 million over his billion dollar
investment overseas. I'm not worried though. This is for the
long term investment. Just as the Japanese yen took decades to
decline, the US economy is looking a lot like Japan 15 years ago,
so I still believe in Warren Buffet. I am sticking to my guns.
Don't get me wrong, I know Buffet started it in the early 2000s
and did pretty well whereas I started late, at the worst possible
point. However, Buffet isn't pulling out his 31 billion investment
overseas, and I'm not pulling out my mine (in the thousands) either
\_ Buffet can afford to take risks and losses and wait in a way
I doubt you can.
\_ I've owned LOGI for a long time, +156%.
Since the election I've bought SAP (+10.7%), PHG (+4.3%), and
MAPTX (+6.2%). -tom
\_ I have EUROX since 11/2003. +89%. But it's only half EURO, since
it also invests in Russia.
Like Tom, I have MAPTX (+42% since 11/2003), but that's AsiaPac,
not EURO.
Others - MACSX (+28% 11/03) (AsiaPac conservative)
MJFOX (+28% 11/03) (Japan)
TAVIX (+12% 12/04) (int'l)
IFN (+81% 11/03) (india)
MCHFX (+12% 11/03) (china)
(I think I am dumping this soon since I bought china
internet stocks (snda, ntes, ctrp)).
also lots of foreign stocks: crxl, rtp, pbr, btm,
rio, snda, ntes, ctrp, idbe, mbt, ...
my only us holdings are: ffiv, nile, dvy, brufx, mot,
desc (got lucky with desc - doubler in 3 months)
brufx is a really cool 1 man fund. check it out.
(I think I am dumping this soon and buy china
internet stocks (those with nice profit)).
\_ I posted a nice long reply, but someone stomped it. No way
I am typing all this in again. The short answer is, yes. -ausman
\_ Please post it again, I wanna know. Also, what are you
investing in these days? |
| 2005/8/30-31 [Finance/Investment, Finance/Banking] UID:39348 Activity:low |
8/30 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050830/ap_on_go_ca_st_pe/census_poverty Poverty level in the US rises to 12.7 percent. Luckily, the wealthiest people in the US are also one of the most generous in the world. I'm sure they'll start building more art museums and donating expensive softwares to enrich everyone's lives. \_ It is important that someone uses all those old copies of Office. \_ Microsoft is the leader in this regard -- donating its own software to settle the antitrust lawsuit. software to settle the antitrust lawsuit. I wonder if it doesn't even bother burning CDs and just offer free downloads which costs it next to nothing. software to settle the antitrust lawsuit. I wonder if they don't even bother to burn CDs and just offer free downloads which costs them next to nothing. \_ And yet the news of the jobless claims going down doesn't get reported. \_ Eliminate unemployment compensation entirely and the jobless claims will drop to zero! How could such such an awesome idea to fix the economy have escaped the republicans thus far? \_ I see reports of it all the time. What are you reading that you don't see it? It is in the business section, granted.... \_ Wal-Mart Stores said it would donate $1 million to the Salvation Army for relief assistance such as meals for victims and emergency and rescue personnel. See? They're generous. \_ *pshaw* Only to people that don't work for them. \_ Someone clue me in on what I'm missing: "The number of people without health insurance coverage grew from 45 million to 45.8 million last year, but the number of people with health insurance grew by 2 million." Is it that there are 2.8 million births? -mrauser \_ Dependants relying on parents'/spouses' coverage, maybe? \_ Immigrants. |
| 2005/8/28-29 [Finance/Investment] UID:39325 Activity:low |
8/28 http://www.msnbc.msn.com/id/8873875 Personally, I think that Greenspan is doing a really lousy job. Everyone knows that during the crazy dot com days the rate should have been climbing and go much higher, but instead Greenspan failed to react, and finally responded in late 1999 and CRASH! Then as the housing sector started to go crazy in 2002, he failed to react again. He finally realized it in 2004 started to play a little bit of catch up. It seems as if Greenspan the old man can't keep up with the pace of modern economy. The sudden drop and gain reminds me of how old men drive. They brake and accelerate really fast, because they simply don't have the reflexes to react to the world around them \_ Personally, I think you know little of what you speak. \- IAOC, M. FRIEDMAN once analogized an active monetary policy to a fellow sitting in the back seat reaching over now and then and giving the steering wheel a yank. [this was a call-continuation of the metaphor used in "The Economic Steering Wheel" by A. LERNER]. ok tnx. \- in an odd coincidence, M. FRIEDMAN once analogized an active monetary policy to a fellow sitting in the back seat reaching over now and then and giving the steering wheel a yank. [this was in response to the metaphor used "The Economic Steering Wheel" by A. LERNER]. ok tnx. \_ I agree with you on the dot com bubble, but the housing bubble is happening during a period where the economy isn't doing that well, and he is under the constraint of not pushing it into recession. \_ "The biggest risk for his successor could turn out to be a collapse in housing prices after the frenetic run-up that has resulted in part from the Fed's policy of keeping interest rates so low [because the Fed was worried about the slim possibility of a broad deflation]. But another key principle of the Greenspan Fed, which most experts have come to accept, is that the central bank should focus on economic fundamentals and not try to prematurely pop a market bubble in stock prices or real estate prices." [I guess it's now ok to split infinitives.] http://www.nytimes.com/2005/08/26/business/26fed.html |
| 2005/8/27-29 [Finance/Investment] UID:39303 Activity:nil |
8/27 http://news.yahoo.com/s/ap/20050827/ap_on_bi_ge/greenspan Greenspan says housing will cool off. PREDICTION: Housing will go even higher for a year or so, simply because the market has a history of being defiant of what experts say. \_ As long as there is a "greater fool" that will pay even more, housing will keep going up. There will probably be another S&L type crisis when the bubbles start popping and that will probably mean the end to low mortgage rates for another generation or two. \_ Home prices will start to fall in Q4 of 2005 and reach a nadir on Nov 17, 2007. -Swami the Magnificent (from 03/05) \_ aus^H^H^HSwami the Magnificent, do you think there will be a secondary recession soon? What do you think about the US currency (vs. foreign currency)? And why do you hate America? Are you a gay sympathizer? Do you like sodomy? \_ No recession. Probably a further slowdown, but no actual recession. I think the dollar is overvalued, but then again so is the Euro. All my 401k money is in overseas stocks, mostly developing economies. I don't hate America, I love America. I consider myself a patriot. I do hate idiot warmongering Republicans, though. I am defintely a gay Republicans, though. I am defininetly a gay symapthizer. I love sodomizing yermom, though. \_ Stop lying! There is no bubble! Lalalalalalalala! \_ Just tell Chinese stop buying those treasure notes that is hurting America! |
| 2005/8/19-20 [Finance/Investment] UID:39174 Activity:nil |
8/18 San Diego, San Jose, Santa Ana and Oakland -- had a more-than 50%
likelihood of price declines, according to the index.
http://tinyurl.com/ap6bm (WSJ)
\_ We've been hearing about this for years. |
| 2005/8/10 [Computer/SW/Graphics, Finance/Investment] UID:39082 Activity:insanely high |
8/10 In the http://www.yahoo.com page there is this picture in the ad for "The Skeleton Key": http://us.a1.yimg.com/us.yimg.com/a/1-/java/promotions/universal/050810/w1.jpg Is that her left nipple exposed near the bottom of the picture? \_ I think it's her hand or something moving blurring by. \_ No: link:csua.org/u/czn \_ I see. Never mind. |
| 2005/8/8 [Finance/Investment] UID:39042 Activity:kinda low |
8/8 I was trying to short BIDU (Baidu) just now, and it says, "Currently
no shares available for shorting". Anyone has experience with these
things? Would it help if I call in to the broker?
\_ Basically it means that not enough shares are held by other clients
of your broker. When you short you're generally borrowing shares
from other clients. If few shares of BIDU are held in your broker's
other accounts, or those have already been shorted, you can't short
it without causing an uncovered (naked) short. Your broker *may*
be able to borrow shares from another broker.
\_ thanks, tried a few times to short starting from $146 all the way
down to $130 but no luck. calling scottrade up also didn't help.
now it's $116. oh well.
\_ thanks, tried a few times to short starting from $146 all the
way down to $130 but no luck. calling scottrade up also didn't
help. now it's $116. oh well.
\_ Buy options then
\_ I think options are usually not available for stocks that just had
its IPO.
\_ I think options are usually not available for stocks that just
had its IPO.
\_ "Now the shares' meteoric rise have captured the attention of short
sellers, who are wondering when it will be time for them to move
in. Sources said the shares aren't yet available at Wall Street
lending desks, but are expected to show up by mid-week after the
initial purchases of the stock are settled."
Answering my own question. - op |
| 2005/8/2-4 [Finance, Finance/Investment] UID:38941 Activity:nil |
8/2 This was an interesting read about an rich vs. poor riot in China.
http://csua.org/u/cvy
\_ Note to self: If surrounded by an angry mob, do not smirk and
wave dismissively.
\_ I hate to say this, but... I'm with the people. I don't agree
with the senseless destruction of precious goods like Toyota
sedans, but I think they really should have beat the shit out of
Wu and his two body guards who act like mafias in the 40s.
\_ herein lies the answer to the question "what's social justice [or
lack thereof]" below.
\_ Note how the rich dude and his two bodyguards got through completely
unscathed (except for rich dude's car), while the computer-guy bike
rider was left needing wires for his jaw and a nose job.
The only person who lost out was the supermarket owner, who actually
did the people a service having lived there 20 years.
\_ If you're rich in China, you can get away with beating people.
If you're rich in America, you can get away with murder.
If you're rich in Mexico, you can do anything you want.
It is good to be rich.
\_ Not in a real communist country. Check out what happened to
the rich in China in the 50s. All rich guys were
automatically labeled "evil" and tortured.
\_ Well, most of the wealthy rich people escaped to HK
Taiwan or Phillipines so that they can continue using
their wealth and power to influence politics that
support their agendas. |
| 2005/8/1 [Finance/Investment] UID:38911 Activity:nil |
8/1 Tell me if this is legal and feasible. We all know about the
housing boom and possible bubble. The bubble hasn't happened
yet, but if it happens, it'll burn a lot of individual
investors. Since it's a risky business, how about starting
a corporation that borrows money from banks and from individual
investors to buy up huge amount of properties, and maybe even
buy sections of big cities? They can make huge profits by
renting out properties or flipping them to other individual
investors? If things go sour, the corporation shares the risks
so no one gets burned badly, and worst case comes they can
always declare bankruptcy. Is this legal? Possible? Can
corporations buy blocks of land or buy cities and make huge
profits since they have no competitors? |
| 2005/8/1-2 [Finance/Investment] UID:38906 Activity:low |
8/1 I placed a limit order on eTrade to sell at $20.80, and later it was
exercised at $20.85. That's nice. eTrade could have bought my shares
at $20.80 and sold to the other party at $20.85, pocketing the $0.05.
\_ Um, that's what traders do all the time. That's one of the ways
they make money.
\_ So eTrade decides not to make money this way?
\_ how do you know they didn't exercise it at $20.95 ?
\_ No I don't, but the point is that they could have satisfied my
order by giving me only $20.80 in exchange of my share.
\_ nah, I don't think they can do that. you can see the
bids and asks right? however, etrade does (or at least
used to) play games with orders made before the market
opens. they say datek doesn't do it, but datek is
now part of ameritrade, so I don't know if it's still
true.
\_ I don't know about this, but I read that some brokers do the
thing where if they see large number of buy orders for a stock
placed during the off hours, they would place their own buy
order first, and then send in the larger number of buy orders.
same for sell orders (or they would buy after first sending in
all the sell orders).
all the sell orders). that's why you should place your orders
only during market hours, and try to avoid the first hour
after market opens, and possibly also the half hour before
market closes. |
| 2005/7/28-31 [Finance/Investment] UID:38860 Activity:nil |
7/28 I am new to windoze and have a silly problem that's driving me crazy.
When I click on a window or its corresponding tab, the gui seems to
decide on a whim whether to make it the front window or just change
focus to it. What setting should I change?
\_ Some apps choose to raise on focus. Examples I've seen include:
Lotus Notes and Microsoft Visio. This _really_ sucks when you're
using XMouse where mousing-over-the-window = focus. Then you happen
to stray across one little corner and wham.. it takes over your
screen.
\_ I have the same problem with only IE or any program running. This
must be some thing trivial but I can't figure it out! - op |
| 2005/7/20-22 [Science/GlobalWarming, Finance/Investment] UID:38743 Activity:nil |
7/21 http://www.resourceinvestor.com/pebble.asp?relid=10958 Ugliest dog. \_ That thing is ALIVE? It looks like some kind of mummified rat. \_ Poor thing. yeah it's fucking ugly, but it's got all sorts of horrible diseases. old diseased, toothless, skin and bones people in their deathbed don't look too hot either. \_ Here's another picture of it: http://xo.typepad.com/blog/2005/07/another_image_o.html \_ That dog looks like Salacious Crumb. True Star Wars geeks will know who Salacious Crumb is. |
| 2005/7/12-14 [Finance/Banking, Finance/Investment] UID:38569 Activity:nil |
7/12 I ran out of money market checks from Etrade and reordered them
online. I was surprised that it's free, but they only gave me 5 at
a time. Anyways, the new checks do NOT come in checkbooks, but in
a long piece of paper. Is that normal?
\_ I got the same treatment. In fact, I didn't even realize that
was the checks I ordered, so I told them I didn't receive the
checks and they sent me one book worth for free. Oh well. I
only need one per month, and it's easy to reorder on-line, so
it's not that big of an issue. |
| 2005/7/12-13 [Finance/Investment, Reference/RealEstate] UID:38549 Activity:low |
7/11 http://money.cnn.com/best/bplive/topten/earners.html Saratoga has the 7th highest median income in the US, trailing behind Great Falls VA, Darient CT, New Canaan CT, Wilton CT, and others. What the heck do people do in VA and CT that make them rich? \_ Pretty shocking that these are ahead of places like Beverly Hills. Anyway, the CT people work in NYC. The VA people rip off the government. \_ The residents of places like Beverly Hills and Brentwood probably don't have high incomes but instead high net worth. \_ Brentwood is not a city. BH's median income was $91K (2000). What you say is true, but you don't buy a $2M house by making $91K. The "slums of Beverly Hills" must drive down the median. \_ Also, many SoCal places (e.g. Manhattan Beach and Laguna Beach) have had a huge run-up in the last few years. Long time residents might not have the income of people who might be buying in now. \_ I went to Maggiano's once and overheard 3 real estate agents talking about how hot the market is, and one of them said his dream house is to buy this condo in Santa Monica, 1100 sq ft, is really close to 3rd Street and overlooks the beach. It starts at 1.5 million dollars. Then he said he sold one of them last week, and the other agent said "Jesus! What kind of people buy these places?" and he replied "Oh, she works for the Judge Judy production." \_ Only for cities with population over 14000, thus eliminating the truly posh towns. \_ The amusing list is the top 10 priciest homes. http://money.cnn.com/best/bplive/topten/homes.html \_ What's so amusing about it? If you have money, anywhere is a good place to live. \_ It's amusing that 9 of 10 are in CA. \_ It'll more amusing when they go down by 20% of their value in 3 years. \_ Drat, so in 3 years I'll only be up 115% since I bought my house? \_ :-) \_ I piss in your general direction. \_ Actually, no. Some places are awful to live in, especially if you have money. |
| 2005/7/11-13 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:38540 Activity:moderate |
7/11 I have a confession to make. I followed Warren Buffett's footsteps
and put a LOT of money in foreign money using http://everbank.com. I've
lost about 10% of my assetts in the past 3 months because US dollar
is going back up. Putting money in everbank was the worst decision
I've ever made, ever. Now that I've told you why I'm an idiot, it's
your turn.
\_ You're an idiot for many reasons. hmm. this is kind of fun.
\_ You're an idiot, but not because you invested in foreign money.
-tom
\_ Nono, I'm not asking you to reiterate what I said. What I mean
is that it's your turn to tell us about your bad decision, if
you've made any. I made my decision based on the fact that Mr.
Buffett, my hero, invested BILLIONS into foreign money, citing
Euro trend, US's huge deficit, rising oil price, war,
Buffett, my hero, invested 20 billion into foreign money,
citing Euro trend, US's huge deficit, rising oil price, war,
instability, and huge spending and outsourcing in other
countries.
countries. -op
http://www.forbes.com/free_forbes/2005/0110/036.html
\_ You are stupid because you don't understand *why* you
invested in foreign money, not because foreign money
went down 10% in three months. If your investment
horizon is 3 months, you shouldn't be following Warren
Buffett. -tom
\_ yea, but buffet was in foreign money since 2 years ago,
so he still made money, and is going to make more
money.
\_ You should invest in foreign stocks or bonds, not cash.
\_ Once something is hyped up a lot, it's probably a matter of time
before the smart money cashes out and the suckers get left holding
the bag.
\_ Isn't there a website for this sort of thing???
\_ http://grouphug.us
\_ I sold all my stock in my overhyped dotcom in 2000 and re-invested
in.... you guessed it, other over-hyped dotcoms. Oh well, I lost
like half of it, but did much better than if I had stuck
with my company, like almost all my coworkers.
\_ I cheated on my psycho girlfriend with a hottie 19 year while
she was out of the country... who am I kidding, that was the
smartest move I ever made! I lost a pyscho girlfriend and had
an affair with a 19 y.o. hottie...
\_ I wired $8k to a phoney escrow site to buy a diamond so I could
propose to my fiance.
\_ 1) When my company stock shot up from $1 to $7 in one day because
of a press release saying "Amazon.com is investing in it", I wanted
to sell all my shares knowing that it would drop very soon after
people realizing that the investment was just a one-time buyout, but
my gf argued that I should hold because it would keep going up. I
made a compromise by selling only half of the shares. The next day
it kept on dropping, and she let me sell the other half at $1.43
lower. So I lost $8400 in one day. Days later the price returned
to its original level. 2) Years later when my company stock went up
to $48 for no real or apparent reason, I wanted to sell all my
shares knowing that the company has no future, but she (now my wife)
argued again, and I compromised again by selling only half. Now the
stock is worth pennies. I lost $30k. Mind you that I'm not into
stocks and I've only make two stock predictions in my life. In both
times I was right.
stocks and I don't BS about stock prices every day. I've only made
two stock predictions in my life, not on some random company in the
market but on a company that I've worked at for years. However she
didn't listen.
\_ Well, on the face of it it's stupid to listen to this gf who
should know less than you since you work at the company. On the
other hand, if you hadn't compromised and were wrong, you'd have
had to endure lots of hell from said gf... this way you have
it over her and maybe that's worth it :)
\_ Why would you want to "have it over her"? I see the smiley,
but really. Find someone you care about who cares about you
instead of competing with your SO.
\_ Dude, it doesn't matter who your SO is. You could be so
besotted you'd donate an organ just for her asking; she
could be a living saint. Doesn't matter. The reality is
you will fight; you will act like a jerk; she will be a
total bitch. Might not be all the time. Might not be
very often at all. But it will happen. And when it does,
you will be glad you have that you-lost-me-$30k metaphoric
bazooka you can pull on her.
\_ You didn't look hard enough for your SO then.
\_ Not all of us are interested in a Stepford wife.
Indeed, I find it incredible that there is *any*
long-term relationship that does not experience
some amount of conflict and disagreement.
\_ You're putting your words in my mouth. There is
conflict and disagreement but the answer is not
to find some childish "hold" over your SO. My
wife doesn't pull that garbage on me and I don't
do it to her. You're still talking in terms of
"winning" and "scoring points". You just don't
get it. I feel bad for anyone stuck with you.
\_ How enlightened of you. How do you and your
wife resolve disagreements? What if she
wants to buy a stantion wagon and you want
an SUV?
\_ Since we're both reasonably intelligent
people who care more about each other than
random 'stuff' like that, we discuss what
would be best for our needs and do that.
Is this some big shock? Why the sarcasm?
Have you really never met anyone in a
good relationship? You probably have and
just mocked them for not abusing each other
for some bizarre concept of one-upping
their mate.
\_ I like intelligent Stepford Wives 2.0 who is
better than you at chess, driving, poetry,
music, literature, AND is good in bed. Modern
liberal women are bitches who don't cook and
take care of the kids and run off to some other
random guy to fuck when she's bored with you.
\_ Conservative war-brides! -- ilyas |
| 2005/6/28-30 [Finance/Investment] UID:38341 Activity:moderate |
6/29 http://yahoo.businessweek.com/bwdaily/dnflash/jun2005/nf20050628_2860_db006.htm "Well, I'm glad you're not shorting Google. If you're buying puts, you've got a limit on how much you can lose. I think it might be a good bet, because frankly Google is a classic case of how silly the debates are about company valuation. I mean, Google is like a mirror. People talk about whether it's overvalued or undervalued, but are really telling you more about themselves than Google. If they think it's undervalued, they're saying they're major bulls, but if they're saying it's grossly overvalued, they're saying they have a very traditional view of investing -- they don't want to overpay for what future earnings flow may be. One thing I'm fairly confident in about Google is that ultimately it can't keep growing at the rate it has been growing, at which point the stock will take a hit, just as eBay's (EBAY ) did. So it will reach a limit, but I can't tell you where that is. I would consider that put a rational bet, but on the other hand I wouldn't be able to tell you if it'll work or not." \_ ^Google^real estate I know a couple who just spent $930K on a place in San Jose, but not everyone has sufficient stock options to pay $530K down. \_ And they will live as peons, paying ever-increasing tithes to the landed gentry. \_ Actually the landed gentry are usually busy having grill parties in their tiny backyards because they're too bushed from cleaning up the leak in their basement or fixing the roof to do anything else while we go out and have fun. -John \_ The non-retard landed gentry got the FUCK out of the bay are where they can own plenty of land and a solid house for the money that would get them a dirty little hut in the middle of a shooting gallery back in the Bay. \_ And in 20 years they'll have no rent and a massive wad of cash while you'll be complaining that your upstairs of cash while you are complaining that your upstairs neighbor's stereo is too loud. \_ And then they'll die. \_ I stand to inherit about 3 houses. In the meantime I prefer the ability to pack up and piss off abroad when I choose. In 20 years I will earn enough to not give a shit about loud stereos because there WONT'T BE ANY ABOVE ME (not that there ever have been) while the landed gentry will have a plugged septic tank and neighbors' backyard grill smells wafting into their living room. -John \_ So, in other words, someone else was smart enough to make good decisions for you. We can't all be so lucky. Some of us don't stand to inherit shit. \_ And some of us came from the 'land of the Common Good.' -- ilyas |
| 2005/6/23-25 [Finance/Investment, Computer/Companies/Ebay] UID:38270 Activity:nil |
6/23 Lunch with Warren Buffet to be auctioned off on Ebay starting today:
http://www.forbes.com/facesinthenews/2005/06/15/0615autofacescan02.html |
| 2005/6/23-25 [Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Investment] UID:38264 Activity:nil |
6/23 Even Warren Buffet is talking housing bubble these days:
http://csua.org/u/cho
\_ Assuming the housing bubble is a form of momentum investing, how
much talk of a potential bubble burst do you think it will take to
trigger the burst?
\_ I don't know, but I do know quite a few people in Livermore
trying to get out of the market and finding it harder to
sell...
\_ "...certainly at the high end, people who buy houses today may
have some periods when they regret it." That is extremely mild
for a comment from Buffett. -tom |
| 2005/6/21-22 [Finance/Investment] UID:38228 Activity:moderate |
6/21 How aggressive are you in your stock portfolio?
\_ so aggressive that i quit jobs just so i can
put all my 401k into Iras so I can buy individual stocks
\_ very aggressive with my own money. more conservative managing my
mom and my girlfriend's money. while their holdings are beating
\_ My company's 401k has an option to buy individual stocks myself
instead of mutual funds. But I chose a mutual fund anyway.
\_ very aggressive with my own money. more conservative managing
mom and my girlfriend. while their holdings are beating
the market, mine have been hitting home runs since oct 2002, when
I regrouped after the bubble.
\_ So what are your 'home run' picks past and present?
\_ gains or losses > 30%
homeruns:
crxl 8/03 ~ 540%
nvda 10/02 11/02 66%
bby 11/02 12/02 31%
hele 11/02 10/03 123%
hele 11/02 11/03 123%
utsi 3/03 9/03 91%
gric 3/03 5/03 75%
fosl 5/03 6/04 111%
vip 8/03 10/03 46%
tlk 8/03 10/03 40%
cyd 7/03 11/03 277%
ivan 9/03 10/03 95%
arlc 10/03 2/04 132%
ach 10/03 1/04 55%
bhp 11/03 5/05 47%
mbt 11/03 4/04 75%
rio 7/04 ~ 84%
pbr 12/04 ~ 31%
crxl 8/03 ~ 540%
ifn 11/03 ~ 47%
eurox 11/03 ~ 55%
maptx 11/03 ~ 35%
strikeouts
ysp.ca 11/03 12/03 -44%
cyd 11/03 11/04 -48%
utsi 12/03 11/04 -53%
nxg 2/04 6/04 -30%
asx 2/04 11/04 -35%
spil 2/04 6/04 -33%
current holdings - held for some time:
held for some time:
crxl, rio, pbr, tsm, mbt, rtp, ifn, mchfx, epp
macsc, eurox, mjfox, maptx, tavix, dvy, bjbix
macsx, eurox, mjfox, maptx, tavix, dvy, bjbix
current holdings - bought in the last 2 months:
recent buys (few days to 2 months)
desc, nile, sgtl, atyt, mot, snda, tm, fdx, vz |
| 2005/6/21-25 [Finance/Investment] UID:38226 Activity:nil |
6/21 I can understand why GM's stock is in the dumps, but why is
Toyota's (symbol TM) stock so cheap, with trailing PE of 11?
\_ Yeah, HMC is even cheaper, which is why I loaded up on
a bunch back in 2003. Japanese stocks in general are very
cheap, mostly for good economic reasons, but these two
have solid growth prospects. |
| 2005/6/1-2 [Finance/Investment] UID:37919 Activity:high |
6/1 I've often heard you should keep 3-6 months of current expenses on hand
fo an emergency or if laid off. I could of course keep it in checking
but that earns under inflation. My broker's money market pays shit
too. What would the MOTD finance gurus suggest?
\_ Some cash is a good idea. I keep a few months' worth around--I
know I lose interest money on it, but I'm paying for the
convenience of having easily accessible money. -John
\_ I think having them in stocks and mutual funds is fine since these
can be easily converted into cash. of course don't have all your
money in one volatile stock. A diversified bunch of stocks and
funds should be good enough. I keep the money in my checking
and money market savings accounts to a minimum.
\_ Stocks and mutual funds are not fine for emergency expenses,
as the last thing you want is to be in an emergency situation
(just lost your job/had major medical expense) and have to
sell your assets at a significant loss (which can happen no
matter how diversified you are). -tom
\_ What's wrong with selling at a loss? I would be more
concerned with prematurely selling a stock that has
significant gains and thus taking a tax hit. Sure, if
you sold at the bottom of a cycle, you would miss
the run up, but if your asset is in cash, you would've
missed the run up (or several of them) anyway. I stand
by my recommendation. The important thing is not cash
per se, but more liquid assets that can be converted to
cash within a short time. I would much rather have
60K in stocks and mutual funds and minimal cash
than have 30K in cash. Unemployment insurance and
severance, if your company has it, would provide even
more room for maneuvre, so you don't really need to
sell everything at one go, just what you need for the
expenses of the coming month.
\_ Sorry, I didn't get any further than "what's wrong with
selling at a loss?" -tom
\_ it's okay, it's more for others than for you.
you obviously need more investing-fu to follow.
\_ ooh yeah, I haven't figured out the brilliant
strategy of selling stocks at a loss to cover
living expenses. -tom
\_ all other things being equal, it's better
than selling stocks with gains, but I
guess that's beyond you.
\_ Nice job deleting the discussion when you
were proven to be a moron. -tom
\_ huh? imagining things again?
\_ Yes, stupidity is beyond me. -tom
\_ feel free to let your money
rot in the bank, or just hide
it under your bed.
\_ Gee, my money's doing a lot better than
the stock market over the past 5 years.
And the point isn't that you should
put all your money in cash; it's that
you should have some reserve aside,
in cash, in case of emergencies.
If you had all your emergency cash in
stocks in March 2000, and you had an
emergency later that year (like, say,
you lost a job and couldn't get one
due to a flooded job market...gee, that
kind of thing never coincides with
a stock market downturn, right?) you
would have taken a bath. -tom
\_ Not true.
\_ <raising my hand> --scotsman
to my credit, the wash i took was
because of an idiotic and possibly
fraudulent accountant against whom
I probably would have had a case if
1) I had had money to pay a lawyer,
and 2) had any chance of getting
anything out of him.
\_ nobody said you should put all
all your money in tech stocks.
Even heard of bond funds and
value funds? Sorry to know
you took a bath on tech stocks
since Mar 2000. Do you even
know what diversification means?
\_ My portfolio is worth more than it
was in March 2000. Moron. -tom
\_ heh, you have pretty low
standards.
\_ you do know you only pay taxes on the gain portion
not the entire thing, gains are always better than losses
\_ yea, but sometimes you get lucky and holds a
stock with a 400% gain, with good prospects for
further gains. In such cases, you want to hold
and hold, instead of being forced to sell.
\_ just sell it, use the money for the
emergency and just invest the gains back into
the same stock since that is supposedly extra
money
\_ And this happened to you...when? and more than
once? You're really dumb in this area. Talk to
a professional.
\_ actually, if you are an above average
stock investor, it's not hard to get one or
two 5 baggers, and a bunch of doublers
every few years. as for "professionals",
most earn their keep by taking your money.
spend some time to learn to invest, don't
be a lazy arse.
\_ ING isn't bad. Pays about 3% and it's pretty quick to get your
money out. (about 3 days). Of course, I'm no finance guru.
\_ Netbank is 2.7%, and can be accessed by check or bank card,
no fee for 6 or fewer withdrawls per month.
\_ ING is very stable but keep in mind that even with a 3% payback
your money is still depreciating faster than ever due to the
weakening dollar and the rise of relative cost of living in the
United States. So far I've put 1/2 of my savings into ING and
1/2 into foreign money. Of the foreign money, 2/3 are in New
Zeland 3 month CD (+5% interest) and 1/3 are in Euro. They're
doing a lot better than ING. There's a reason why many people
are moving money out of US. Warren Buffet already moved +100
billion dollars out of US.
\_ I heard that 3-6 months is for during okay economy. In a bad
economy it should be 12 months if you have a mortgage.
\_ I keep 1/3 in a money market account and 2/3 split between
two 6-month CDs with maturity dates offset by 3 months.
That is, every three months one of the two CDs matures.
I like the balance of some money available right away
and the rest available soon yet earning some interest. |
| 2005/5/27-31 [Finance/Investment] UID:37855 Activity:nil |
5/27 http://www.nytimes.com/2005/05/27/opinion/27krugman.html?hp "That's why it's so ominous to see signs that America's housing market, like the stock market at the end of the last decade, is approaching the final, feverish stages of a speculative bubble." \_ Ever read any of Krugmans' other OP-ED pieces? The guy has issues \_ Sour grape? |
| 2005/5/18-19 [Finance/Investment] UID:37742 Activity:nil |
5/18 I find this amusing, after all the housing bubble talk on the motd:
http://biz.yahoo.com/edu/qc?n=5486
\_ Well if 70% of the people think the market will go up, then they
will make it true (by re-investing in it).
\_ That's not "70% of people in the market". That's 70% of people.
As it continues to grow faster than wages or inflation, fewer
people can enter the market, so the positive reinforcement of
this belief is ... limited.
\_ In addition, interest rates are already rising and will
continue to do so. A two point increase is big when
you've leveraged $600,000 over 30 years. Rates have
been as high as what, 12-15% in the past. There is nothing
that says rates will not rise to that in the future.
With record number of people utilizing AMR and doing a 100%
mortgage with options to pay interest only it's a wonder
if people will ever actually ever own the home they bought...
\_ bubble investing! It feels like late 1999's stock market!
Where's Greenspan's new "Irrational Exuberance" quota?
\_ according to today's wsj, a recent survey shows that 17% of
new mortgages these days are interest-only, and 60+% are ARMs. |
| 2005/5/6-7 [Finance/Investment] UID:37560 Activity:high |
5/6 Damn this economy! Only 274K jobs added in April, and unemployment is
at 5.2%.
\_ the question is, how many of those jobs are relevant to YOU (are
they mostly blue collar jobs?) Yes, they are. The economy is good
for the Red States.
\_ http://csua.org/u/bz4
Hourly wages are up, average workweek is longer. Your knee-jerk
is showing.
\_ Hourly wages have been alternatively just keeping pace w/
inflation or falling behind, according to the report in
question.
http://bls.gov/news.release/empsit.t17.htm
-- ulysses
\_ Real wages are down, you know the inflation adjusted kind.
And down even more if you subtract for the rising cost
of health care. So this news is great if you are an
investor, pretty cruddy if you are an employee.
\_ I'm thinking you missed the sarcasm.
\_ So, you know computer nerds who are having trouble finding a
job?
\_ Yes, "nerds" being the key word. -John
\_ I haven't checked for this recent report, but the last time I saw
numbers like this, the average salary was quite good--40-50K
IIRC.
\_ Average hourly pay is $16/hr. That is alot of overtime to
get 40k. You recall incorrectly, I think.
\_ I meant the average of the new jobs, not all jobs.
\_ http://www.uswa.org/uswa/program/content/1663.php
New jobs pay an average of $9/hr.
\_ Yeah, it's all Bush's fault! Damn him! |
| 2005/5/2-3 [Finance/Investment] UID:37443 Activity:nil |
5/1 The Oracle of money speaks. Also, Buffett bets 21 billion dollars
against US dollars. I don't like Buffett but I share his view on
the strength of US dollars (go everbank!!!):
http://money.cnn.com/2005/04/30/news/fortune500/buffett_currency.reut
http://money.cnn.com/2005/05/01/news/fortune500/buffett_talks
\_ Heh, these guys don't hold anything back, do they?
\_ Buffett: "We're like an incredibly rich family that owns so much
land they can't travel to the ends of their domain. And they sit
on the front porch and consume a little bit of everything that
comes in, all the riches of the land, and they consume roughly 6
percent more than they produce. And they pay for it by selling
off land at the edge of the landholdings that can't see. They
trade away a little piece every day or take out a mortgage on a
piece.That scenario couldn't end well. And we, also, keep
consuming more than we produce. It can't go on a long time. The
world has demonstrated a diminishing enthusiasm for dollars in
the last few years as they get flooded with them every day
there's $2 billion more going out than in. I have a hard time
thinking of any outcome from this that involves an appreciating
dollar." YEAH FUCK US DOLLAR. -Bush and US Hater |
| 2005/4/28 [Finance/Investment] UID:37407 Activity:nil |
4/28 On my Etrade Investment Account statement, I see something called
E TRADE FUNDS GOVERNMENT MONEY MKT FD, $-144.79. What the hell is that?
\_ A money market is like a mutual fund that generally invests only in
highly liquid short term low-risks interest-bearing investments,
in this case government bonds. My broker put all my spare cash into
a money-market which charges high fees and barely makes money at
the moment. It's slightly better than plain old cash, but I think
it's mainly so the broker can make more money on the plain cash its
clients keep on hand. |
| 2005/4/28 [Politics/Domestic/California, Finance/Investment] UID:37406 Activity:nil |
4/28 I have a lot of stocks and I get to vote for amendments. I see the
following A LOT: "Approval of amendment and extension of the executive
officer incentive plan" or "Amendment of bonuses and options to
officers." I always vote no, yet, I always see them getting approved.
What the fuck?
\_ Unless you own or control 51% it doesn't matter what you vote for.
\_ You don't have a lot of stock. get 100,000 shares and then you
still don't have a lot of stock in terms of moving those votes.
\_ You know how you always read shit like "And the board of directors
awarded the C*O with 14,000,000 shares of stock" -- That's money AND
more votes for themselves. |
| 2005/4/26-27 [Computer/SW/Unix, Finance/Investment] UID:37366 Activity:low |
4/26 So I have a problem with vmware. It is unable to shrink my / drive
and says it is an Unsupported partition. When I do the following,
I see:
tommy ~]# df -k
Filesystem 1K-blocks Used Available Use% Mounted on
/dev/mapper/VolGroup00-LogVol00
81892056 4140772 73591388 6% /
I don't remember mounting it as /dev/mapper. What does this mean
and how do I change it as a supported partition? Thanks.
\_ /dev/mapper is RHEL 4. That's an LVM volume. I've heard you can't
resize / with LVM, and I wasn't able to do it in RHEL 3.
Sorry, don't know vmware... -ax
http://www.redhat.com/archives/fedora-test-list/2004-March/msg02016.html
claims it's possible under fedora, might work under RHEL. -ax |
| 2005/4/22-23 [Finance/Investment] UID:37326 Activity:high |
4/22 Why does cygwin have a hippo as their icon now and why is there NO
discussion of the change that I can find. Paranoid people like me
FEAR CHANGE. Anyone know what's up wid dis?
\_ Maybe they got hacked.
\_ Dat's WHAT I'M AFRAID OF! (i doubt it though). |
| 2005/4/14-15 [Reference/Tax, Finance/Investment] UID:37194 Activity:high |
4/14 So it seems like TIPS (Treasury Inflation-Protected Securities) are the
safest bonds to buy. It doesn't seem like they're at all affected by
market conditions (bad or good), and they have a guaranteed rate of
return after inflation (CPI adjustments). So what's the catch?
Is the only downside of this tiny risk investment a tiny post-inflation
yield of ~ 1.8%? Anyone with experience? I think I can buy these
direct from the government, too. Thanks!
\_ AFAIK the low yield is the drawback.
\_ well, yes, the catch is you can get better rates elsewhere. for
example, top cd rates today are rather higher than the comparable
TIPS rate. if inflation were to go crazy, TIPS could be a
better deal. but otherwise...
\_ Over the last few years interest rates have dropped below
that of inflation. While inflation rates weren't "crazy,"
lots of fixed income households were hurt. TIPS is supposed
to solve this.
\_ If you can count on the government to report inflation accurately.
I don't think you can, personally.
\_ So if Dubya's people say CPI is overstating inflation and manage
to drop the CPI calculations by 1 or 2 points, I get screwed
right?
\_ Hey, maybe one of those Bush guys took Econ 100b! "The CPI
overstates rates of price increase by 1/2 to 1.5 percent per
year (and the GDP deflator has similar biases)."
http://csua.org/u/bpg
\_ Which leads us back to Social Security which uses the CPI
to determine how much to increase payouts. Messing with
the CPI means messing with SS. Neat stuff, huh?
\_ You know, when it shows up in Econ 100b, it's probably
not a controversial issue whether the CPI overstates
or not. So, the question is would you prefer to run
Social Security based on a CPI you know is faulty, or
would you prefer to run it based on something that
economists can agree is more realistic.
\_ It showed up in Jan 1996 lecture notes.
I believe CPI calculations have already been
adjusted downwards since then.
The question is, well, how accurate is it now?
\_ Well, apparently Greenspan is still pushing
for using a chained CPI, which was recommended
by the Boskin Commission back in 1996.
\_ Makes sense. You need a big gun opposite
Greenspan to challenge him. Otherwise,
he's probably right on that point.
\_ There have been a lot of arguments that the
CPI _under_estimates inflation. I think
overall it is probably a decent number if
people argue both ways.
\_ The catch is, as far as I can tell, that you have to pay taxes on
the increased value of the bond when it adjusts, which sucks.
From http://www.kiplinger.com/basics/archives/2002/11/story14.html
"Another caveat: If you buy TIPS directly from the Bureau of Public
Debt you're liable for federal taxes on the inflation adjustment,
even though it's not a cash payout. That's in addition to the tax
you must pay on the interest income. (You don't pay state or local
income tax on Treasuries.) For that reason, it's best to hold TIPS
in a tax-deferred or nontaxable account, such as an IRA." |
| 2005/4/14-15 [Finance/Investment] UID:37193 Activity:moderate |
3/14 Related to the below (same poster): If I open an ING Direct account
for 3% yield, and people are figuring inflation is 3.2% per year, I'm
actually losing money (post-inflation), right, until inflation drops
below the nominal yield?
\_ Yes.
\_ TIPS was created to appeal to people whose rely on interest
rates as income.
\_ Until inflation drops below the nominal yield minux tax.
\_ Foreign currency, higher interest rate AND stronger currency. I
invested in Euro 2 years ago and never looked back. US dollar is
FUCKED regardless of inflation and interest rate.
\_ I think the Euro has appreciated about all it is going to
against the dollar. They will be back nearer to each other
soon enough. |
| 2005/4/14-15 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:37189 Activity:moderate |
4/14 Any ideas on why Apple stock has dropped 15% in two days?
\_ People are realizing the prospects for the company don't merit
the current valuation. -tom
\_ why does that make sense right after they announce numbers that
soundly beat everyone's expectations? i think the poster below's
point is valid. also, i think ppl wanted earnings to be 20x
year over year, not a measly 6x.
\_ Because even with the numbers that soundly beat everyone's
expectations, and even if they're able to keep that level
of revenue coming in, the company's still not worth 45
times earnings. Prospects for growth from this Q's
revenues are pretty small in the near term. -tom
\_ yes, i understand that. but why wasn't there a selloff two
weeks or two months ago when the ratios were even worse
(higher stock and lower numbers)?
\_ The stock market is not efficient. -tom
\_ Buy on rumors, sell on news. |
| 2005/4/10-5/25 [Academia/Berkeley/CSUA, Finance/Investment] UID:37137 Activity:nil |
4/10 Thank you to everyone who cleaned up their stuff in /csua/tmp. This
is just to remind people, going forward, that this volume is not
intended as long-term storage and we reserve the right to delete
files at-will and without warning. We're reasonable people and
care about you, our dear users, but this is just a "heads up". =) |
| 2005/4/9-10 [Politics/Foreign, Politics/Foreign/Europe, Finance/Investment] UID:37129 Activity:nil |
4/8 Free Trade killed the Neanderthals:
http://www.newscientist.com/article.ns?id=dn7221 |
| 2005/4/8-9 [Politics/Domestic/President/Clinton, Finance/Investment] UID:37121 Activity:nil |
4/8 Dear motd guy who pointed the census graph, I imported data to
Excel and it's clear to me that the top 5% are gaining yearly income
at a rate much faster rate than the poorest. The exaggerated data point
is 1992 when the top 5% richest got 24.3% increase in income and the
poorest got a measly 1.57%. I mean, we can stop arguing whether income
gap is increasing or not because clearly it is. I mean, what is your
stance on this now? Do we start arguing whether income gap is a good
thing or not? FYI: http://www.census.gov/hhes/income/histinc/f03.html
I think that our argument is becoming more and more similar to M$
lawsuits. First M$ lawyers argue that they don't have a monopoly,
and when they failed to convince people otherwise they argue that
monopoly is GOOD for the industry (by unifying standards, etc).
\_ I thought the argument was about whose fault it was (Clinton's).
\_ How so? The chart showed the gap growing steadily over the last
twenty five years. Note that I am not discounting this line of
reasoning, as the hollowness of the Clinton boom shows up in
other sources. This source did not lead me to that conclusion,
though. -- ulysses
\_ Perhaps, but it's easier to say there's a growing disparity
in wealth (like, no, really?) than to assign blame for it to
Clinton.
\_ Because one is true, and the other is trollish.
\_ What this may be missing is that the top 5% richest people are
not always the same people. People's income (and wealth, which
is not the same) goes up and down over time. What if I said
that the gap was increasing, but that 10 years from now the
people in the bottom 5% would be in the top 5%? (Not true, but
illustrating the point.) Would the gap matter so much? To me,
what matters most is turnover. How hard is it to get into the
top x% and how hard is it to stay there? Historically, wealthy
people lose their wealth within 3 generations. There is pretty
good wealth turnover in this country unlike in, say, Europe.
\_ If you lose your wealth after only 3 generations, then it means
that you're either not Jews or Asian. In another word, just
another regular Joe white trash.
\- Check out this book (Perfectly Legal): http://csua.org/u/bmb
It is a bit tendentious, but much of the stuff is really
disturbing and some of the statistics are so over the top
[like in wealth distribution] it's not a matter of marginal
interpretation. BTW, reading this during tax season can
lead to depression. --psb
\_ "Perfectly Legal, The Covert Campaign to Rig Our Tax
System to Benefit the Super Rich - and Cheat Everybody
Else". Partha, you already know this is happening, and
so does everyone else. Why should I spend $16 on Amazon
(who by the way donates 1/2 mil to Republicans) to read
about something I already know is happening?
\- then dont buy/read it. or get it from the lib. --psb
\_ Is this an anti-Republican, pro-Democrat book in disguise?
\_ Oddly enough, it's an old Chinese proverb that wealth doesn't
last pass 3 generations.
\_ Look jackass, I pointed out that graph to prove to you that
your contention that the poor got poorer during the Clinton
Administration was demonstratably false. I never said anything
about the rich getting richer. That is your trip. I even agreed
with you. Keep ranting on about it if it makes you feel better. |
| 2005/4/1-2 [Finance/Investment] UID:37016 Activity:moderate |
4/1 Are you living in a bubble area? Now you know from our good 'ol
reliable http://cnn.com:
http://money.cnn.com/pf/features/lists/home_valuations
\_ I wonder if the author has taken into account the immigrants. In
the Bay Area, many of them buy houses with all cash.
\_ The local Chico paper investigated our ranking and the study has
some serious flaws. For one, it considered the "fair price" based
on historical trends and population density--but they used the
population density for all of Butte County to come up with the
population for Chico (and Chico has by far the highest population
density in the county). I don't know how much stock I'd put in it.
-emarkp
\_ I agree. I noticed this for Portland. Essentially, the study
concludes that expensive = bad value and inexpensive = good
value, which is useless. This is similar to the studies that
calculate 'affordability' based on the average salary. True
information, but useless.
\_ I don't think you understood the study.
\_ I think you have a point, but I think the study is more useful
than you think.
Let's take an example so everyone understands:
E.g., let's say my West Los Angeles home was worth $250K
in 1999. Let's say my salary back then was $62.5K/year.
Let's say today the house is worth $800K.
Let's say today the house is worth $640K.
Let's say my salary today is $80K/year.
The multiple in 1999 was 4x.
The multiple in 2005 is 10x.
The multiple in 2005 is 8x.
This means buying a new home in the area is a bad value.
(ignoring the obvious case of a buyer who thinks the multiple
will rise to 10x in a couple years and turn a tidy profit) |
| 2005/3/30-31 [Finance/Investment] UID:36980 Activity:moderate |
3/30 What's a good source to get historical data of VOLUME
and price of home sales? Something like Etrade data for real estate.
\_ Look. Here's the deal. The real estate market in CA is nearing
a top. If historical patterns hold, prices will decrease
somewhere about 30% over the course of a couple of years and
then stay flat for another 5 years or so. After about 7 years
they will be back to where they are now and eventually they
will surpass current prices. If you are buying a house as a
short-term investment then don't. If you need a place to live
and are renting then do it if you find a place you can
comfortably afford to keep for 7-10 years. Will saving 15-30%
on your house price be worth it to you to wait and see what
happens? I guess that depends on your situation.
\_ Yeah, but if housing prices go up again 20% this year, your
advice would be terrible.
\_ nah, that just means a harder landing in the future.
\_ No, it's not terrible in that case. The advice is to buy
a place if you can comfortably afford it. If you can't
now then you won't then either. However, it seems obvious
to everyone that the 20% annual appreciation is going to
take a breather. I don't think anyone is on that boat. |
| 2005/3/28-30 [Finance/Investment, Reference/Tax] UID:36925 Activity:moderate |
3/28 tom, can you please tell me how to invest overseas? -anon coward
\_ Give all your money to John. -tom
\_ come on, I'm being serious.
\_ So is Tom. -John
\_ Mutual funds/bond funds, of course.
\_ Vanguard Pacific Stock Index Fund,
Vanguard European Stock Index Fund,
Vanguard Emerging Markets Stock Index Fund
(Disclosure (Recommendation?):) I have holdings in all of the
above funds. I particularly like the Emerging Markets fund
because it has been aggressively growing the percentage of the
fund that is invested in China and Taiwan over the last few
years. -dans
\_ Thanks dans. I checked all 3 and they're available from ETrade.
Is that what you're using? Also, how come I can't see any
historical data? Also, what is the monthly fee I have to
pay (I plan to just buy and hold for a while), and what is
the tax implication on EFT? Thanks.-ok thx
\_ If you're planning to buy and hold (especially for
retirement), put the first $nk (I think n is currently 4
and will be 5 next year, but double check) in as your
yearly IRA contribution. Unless you're planning to retire
in less than a decade, you should get a ROTH IRA (pay tax
now, don't pay taxes when you withdraw) as opposed to
Traditional IRA (pay no taxes now, pay taxes when you
withdraw). If you're investing in anything you should get
a prospectus, this will include historical data. You can
order a prospectus (free of charge) via Vanguard's
website, and I believe you can also download a prospectus
in PDF form. I don't know all the tax implications since
all of the mutual funds I hold at present are retirement
savings in ROTH IRA's so the tax implications are nil in
my case. Otherwise, I believe that it's your standard
investment taxation rules for capital gains. My holdings
are directly with Vanguard. Their fees are very low
compared to other long-term investment oriented firms
(Charles Schwab is comparable, many supposedly premier
fund firms, e.g. Oppenheimer are much higher). -dans
\_ The miniscule tax advantages of a Roth IRA are not
enough for me to keep numerous accounts like that.
So I just max out my 401k at work.
\_ So there's really not much effort involved with
keeping IRA's/ROTH IRA's. From a tax standpoint,
the 401k and Traditional IRA are identical. You pay
no taxes now, but you pay when you withdraw your
funds. The nice thing about 401k vs. IRA is that
the yearly cap for 401k contributions (I think 25%
of gross income) is much higher than that for IRA
($4-$5K). That said, the tax advantages of a ROTH
IRA vs. Traditional IRA/401K are *huge* if you're
not going to be retiring for at least a decade.
ROTH IRA, you pay no taxes when you withdraw your
funds which has been compounding exponentially for
30+ years. One useful trick is that after changing
employers, you can rollover your 401k to a
Traditional IRA, and then convert the Traditional
IRA to a ROTH IRA. This allows you to have a ROTH
IRA where you contributed more than the yearly IRA
cap. -dans
\_ $3k/yr is not much money, even over 30 years.
Even if the tax difference was 25%, I don't
think I would find it worthwhile to deal with
the extra hassle. Unless tax rates go way up,
in which case I will wish I had done what you
are doing.
\_ Ahem interest compounding *exponentially*.
Run the numbers, what you have at the end is
not chump change. And a 25% cut of $100K is
25K, which is not the kind of money I can
throw around with reckless abandon. YMMV, I
guess. -dans |
| 2005/3/28 [Finance/Investment] UID:36911 Activity:moderate |
3/28 Warrent Buffett isn't investing, why should you?
http://www.foxnews.com/story/0,2933,151542,00.html
\_ No man, stocks will always go up, and housing is NOT overvalued,
and things will always be more expensive in the future so you
have to buy now! There is no bubble, believe me!
\_ Warren Buffett is investing; unlike average investors, he is
able to buy companies instead of stocks. -tom [BRKb holder]
\_ yea, but he also put $20 billion in foreign short term
bonds, meaning he thinks dollar will fall? also, the
article said he couldn't find any good companies to buy.
\_ I happen to agree that there aren't a lot of bargains out
there in the US stock market, and I've also put some money
in overseas investments. But that's just my style (and
Buffett's); there are plenty of reputable money managers
who think otherwise. -tom
\_ $20B is chump change for WB. He is just hedging.
\_ entire berk's market cap is only like $130B.
$20B ain't no "chump change".
\_ 15% of his holdings. I have way more than that
in overseas stocks. |
| 2005/3/26-28 [Finance/Investment, Finance/Banking] UID:36896 Activity:nil |
3/26 Interesting thoughts on the future direction of interest rates,
inflation, the murkiness of macroeconomonic policy, etc.
http://www.morganstanley.com/GEFdata/digests/20050325-fri.html#anchor0
\_ Dense reading, difficult to understand for those who didn't major
in world economics or business (I'm just a dumb EECS major, I know
a lot about circuits but nothing else). Can you PLEASE summarize?
\_ Inflation is going up, interest rates are going up. This is
happening in Europe too. Japan is still having a deflation
problem, but it might start to go away. |
| 2005/3/25 [Finance/Investment] UID:36875 Activity:low |
3/25 Is there any disadvantage to placing a limit order when the market is
closed vs. waiting for it to open?
\_ The only disadvantage is that news which occurs before the market
opens could hurt you; if the stock gaps up or down on the open you
could wind up missing a transaction, or getting the transaction
filled at a less than optimal price. -tom |
| 2005/3/24 [Finance/Investment] UID:36845 Activity:nil |
3/23 A guy blathers about bubbles.
http://www.washingtonpost.com/wp-dyn/articles/A58600-2005Mar22_2.html
\_ They used to just call this inflation.
\_ Your brain == small |
| 2005/3/20-22 [Finance/Banking, Finance/Investment] UID:36783 Activity:high |
3/20 I'm an ignorant engineer and I never took an econ/business/political
class. Having that said, if both US and Europe have big
deficits who loans the money and who's gaining? Switzerland?
Japan? In another word, who's the big banker?
\_ Mostly Asian countries, in particuar Japan and China. As I
understand it, China's overall share is growing rapidly. Check out
\- As I understand it, there is a bit of a difference
between what is going on in Japan and China. You can
accumulate dollars because you are selling a lot
of stuff to americans who are paying you in dollars
and that is a different matter from taking "your
own money which is not in dollars" and turning it
into dollars. China is both selling a lot of stuff
to america and gas a pretty narrow exchange rate
snake against the USD, so they need to hold fx
reserve to defend rates, sterilize flows etc.
And in china, i suppose the private/public
distinction is a little more gray ... like
where do the dollar profits of wholly/partially
state owned businesses wind up. india recently
cut the USD %age of its FX reserve by something
like 25%, if memory serves.
\_ For a bunch of commies, China seems to have
a pretty good understanding of economics.
\_ China isn't really communist any more. It's
behavior borders on aggressively capitalist.
The catch is that there's a pretty constant
back and forth between the more modern factions
in the government who talk like communists but
make policy like capitalists and the hardliners
who manage to crack down on the capitalist
advances every couple of years. If this is of
interest to you and you're still a student, I'd
highly recommend taking a class taught by
Carolyn Wakeman, a professor in the Journalism
school who focuses on Media Studies and China.
I forget the title of the class I took from her
(China and the Media?), but it was really
interesting, I learned a great deal, and it
significantly altered my perception and
understanding of modern China. -dans
\_ dict irony
Paul Krugman's editorial column in the New York Times, he talks
about this frequently. -dans
\_ URL please?
\_ http://csua.org/u/bgj
\_ The largest debtholder is Japan. Next is China. Third is Great
Britain. I think that Britain is being largely ignored, but
their economy is doing great and they have shunned the Euro.
I'd almost rather buy Pounds Sterling than Euros as a hedge.
\-If you really want a framework to think about this stuff,
first you should learn a little about the domestic case
[closed economy] and then a toy version of the open economy
[incorporating more nuanced theories of international finance
and trade gets pretty complicated since there are a lot of
not agreed up assumptions and causal relations and equillib
conditions] ... if you are an engineer, you should be able
to follow say the first 5 chapters of something like dornbusch&
fischer. It really is important to have this framework rather
than a random assortment of factoids. An important identity
in the domain of your question is:
Private Sector Public Sector
Saving - Investment = [(GovtSpend + Xfers) - Taxes] - NetExports
This tells us Net Domestic Private Sector Savings is equal to
the Budget Deficit + Trade Surplus.
So this tells us a few things: 1. budget deficits complete
with the private investment sector for savings dollars. 2. you
should not look at bilateral deficits but aggregate flows.
The Aggregate Demand for dollars, which in turn defines the
exchange rate (an exchange rate is a price ... and as we
know price is a function of supply and demand), has a number
of components and is beyond the motd.
of components and is beyond the motd. 3. the us public and private
debt competes with others to suck up international saving ...
i believe the us's demand on world saving is around $4T now.
finally, the motivation for the asian banks [i am not sure
about GB vs SKorean and Taiwan] to keep buying us dollars
is partly self-serving ... to keep the dollar from weakening
more and from interest rate going up and choking off some
consumer borrowing ... but yeah, this cant go on forever.
"who is gaining" is a toughie ... if you work for ibm and you
hold 100 shares of ibm, you arent going to be laughing at
a "chump" with 10,000shares of ibm if the stock tanks. --psb
\- if you want a very detailed breakdown of these various
categories, google("federal reserve", "flow of funds") for
the "Z.1" document. --psb
\_ The Bank of Japan (BOJ) has been lending the US Treasury
$100s of B of dollars over the last few years. I know the
official reasoning is that they are doing this to keep the
Yen down, but since Japan already runs huge budget deficits,
there is more going on here than meets the eye.
\_ Er, You dont understand what is going on.
\_ Please enlighten me.
\_ I am pretty cool Bevis, but that is beyond my power.
\_ In other words, you have no idea what you are talking
about. Why not just say that?
\_ I have no idea what I'm talking about.
\_ Too bad, I had hoped that you knew the answer to
something that has been puzzling The Economist
for a long time. |
| 2005/3/20-21 [Finance/Investment] UID:36778 Activity:very high |
3/20 After not really investing seriously in the past, I'm ready to get
serious about saving both for retirement and buying a house. I have
a pretty good idea what I want to invest in, but no idea how to go
about doing it. Since I mostly want to do exchange-traded funds (ETFs)
I don't care too much about the specific fund offerings of a broker.
I'm looking for a reputable broker with a full-service website, low
fees, and the ability to invest in both domestic and foreign mutual
funds and stocks. What would you guys reccomend or warn me away from?
\_ what's wrong with Etrade?
\_ For retirement, just dump the money into an IRA. Get something like
ING if you want safety. For the rest, I guess you could just go
and buy QQQ for nasdaq and a Vanguard index fund for the S&P.
If you want international there's index funds for various stuff
also. That's bascially all you really need to know about
investing your money. You don't need to really buy any other
mutual fund. You can also buy bonds if you want real safety.
Also, it's somewhat doubtful that you will be able to invest
in a mutual fund that beats an index fund over the long run.
Most of them will lose out on the S&P.
Don't buy individual stock, don't buy precious metals, don't
buy commodities.
\_ what's wrong with precious metal? Gold's beating US dollar like
hell. In fact everything's beating US dollar.
Iraq+war+deficit+Bush=fucked US dollar.
\_ More like Bush->(Spending+Tax Cut+War)->Deficit->F*CKED Dollar
\_ Because buying gold is stupid. You need to take a look at
a historic graph. If you are going to invest seriously
for your retirement, you don't need to invest in knee-jerk
shit like gold or silver. If you are old enough, you'll
remember the silver run-up of the early 80s, or the gold run
up some time after. Precious metals just do not appreciate
at the rate of a good CD over time. Also, if you really
believe that the U.S. economy is going to be fucked long
term, you're better off putting the money into foreign
currency. Again, historically this is very risky.
\_ I think you're off-base talking about "history" and
comparing gold to a CD. Economic realities change, and CDs
are a fairly new instrument, without very much history
behind them. Gold has thousands of years of history,
and it's been a good investment for nearly all of that
time. -tom
\-I doubt that is true. Talking about 100s of
years ago is silly ... you cant compare
today's world to a world without real property
rights, "money" etc. If central banks holding
gold continue to sell [since gold holdings
dont pay interest], that cant be good for the
price of gold. Also while today you can hold
gold "on paper", historically there would
also probably have been a cost associated with
storing gold cheaply. There are many other reasons
comparing 1600 and today doesnt work.
\_ Ah, so "history" starts in 1975. Right. -tom
\- Where did that come from? Gold may have been
a resonable "store of value" but that is
different from an investment.
\_ Bwahahahahaha! Okay, tom, you can go ahead and live
in the medieval ages if you want. In a modern fiat
based economy gold isn't a good investment. What
are you gonna do, propose we invest in railroads or
PG&E? Gimme a break.
Oh, here's a link that will tell you why you shouldn't
invest in gold as a long term investment:
http://www.fool.com/Fribble/1996/Fribble960305.htm
Apparently even the experts believe that buy and
holding gold is not a way to make money. You have
to essentially buy/sell gold to make money. This
is as bad as buying any other commodity.
\_ I'm not saying you should invest in gold, but I
am sure that history says nothing about the value
of CDs vs. gold. Look at the doofus above; he's
claiming on the one hand that "CDs historically
perform better than gold", and then says you have
to discount virtually all of the history because
the world has changed. Here's a hint: The world
can change more. -tom
\_ Gold is a hedge, not an investment itself.
\- maybe you should "invest" in guns as a hedge
against uncertain change.
\_ don't use "long term" too much. try making
money today.
\_ If you don't care about fancy stuff, try scottrade. It's
cheap, and customer service is good, and there are local
branches where you can go in and talk to someone. I used
E*trade, Scottrade and Datek/Ameritrade before. I didn't
like E*trade because it's more expensive, and service is
poor. Scottrade and Ameritrade each have their strong points.
Ameritrade is stronger at mutual fund offerings and after hours
trading, etc., but scottrade has local branches and is also
cheaper.
\_ Your simplest, and arguably best, bet is to invest in a set of
funds that covers as broad a portion of markets/commodities as
possible. Don't forget to invest internationally, and consider
checking out Real Estate Investment Trusts (REITs) as a way to
invest in Real Estate without losing your shirt. I'd highly
recommend reading Malkiel's "A Random Walk Down Wall Street" to
understand why this strategy is worthwhile: http://csua.org/u/bfx
As a previous poster indicated, an ING savings account is a safe
place to keep your short-term liquid cash flow, but will give you
poor returns overall if it is your only investment vehicle.
Personally, I'm a fan of Vanguard for mutual funds. They don't
fuck over small investors (i.e. they were not indicted in some of
the recent stock/mutual fund accounting scandals that a number of
more institutional oriented firms weere), they have solid
educational resources, and low fees. I've heard good things about
Schwab as well, but can't speak from experience in that regard.
Be sure to max out your IRA every year, I believe the maximum
contribution for 2005 is $4000. Also, since you're young, you
should put your money into a ROTH IRA (as opposed to a Traditional
IRA). With a ROTH IRA, you pay tax on the money you put in now,
but get to withdraw your earnings when you retire tax free (if the
benefit is not immediately obvious, here's a hint: compound
interest grows on an exponential curve, which end of the curve do
you want the gub'mint to take its bite out of?). Finally, try to
put together a down payment and purchase a house sooner than later.
The interest on your mortgage is tax deductible, which can be
really helpful if you're in a typical nerd tax bracket. Also, even
if you move and sell the place, you should get the money you paid
in plus appreciation back out as equity. Compare to rent which
just makes a scary sucking sound as it takes a nasty bite out of
your paycheck each month. -dans
-dans
\_ I'm a starving grad student barely making $15,000 a year and
almost all of it goes to rent and living expenses. What is your
recommendation for me?
\- what makes sense for you depends on your
expectation of future income prospects.
if you are an EE or ChemE from Berkeley,
"deficit spending" or running no surplus
may make more sense than if you are in a
10yr phd program in latin grammar with no
future prospect of reasonable income.
Just avoid credit card debt and dont go hog
wild when you start making real $. --psb
\_ I agree with psb on this. Though,
personally, I'm somewhat risk averse with
respect to any debt, but that's a personal
decision. -dans
\_ 15k??? That SUCKS! What type of program are you in?
--not-so-starving grad student
\_ Well, in theory, as a grad student you're making a
(reasonable, unless you're in the humanities :) bet that your
advanced degree will result in enough of an increase in
earning power to offset the cost of tuition and, more
importantly, the opportunity cost of additional years spent
outside of the work force. I've heard that someone did a
study and found that if you want to optimize your lifetime
earning potential via education then you should get a
Masters, and then start working. I'd like to see the actual
study, but the result seems plausible since a PhD candidate
usually spends at least 4 years longer in school than someone
who leaves with his/her Masters. That said, you could just
keep doing the subsistence thing and count on the extra
earnings your advanced degree will generate, and you'll
probably do okay for yourself. If you *can* find a way to
save some money now (even something little, like $100 a
month), it's really worth it. As I said above, compound
interest grows exponentially, so even a small sum invested
now can pay off nicely in the future. As for where to put
it, that's a no-brainer: ROTH IRA invested in a broad-based
no-load (this is just broker speak for low fees) index fund.
If you're just investing in a single fund, I'd suggest
Vanguard's Total Stock Market Index Fund. If you already
have an account at some other brokerage firm, e.g. Schwab,
they should have something equivalent. Just be wary of high
fees as they can really put a dent in your investments over
time. Both Schwab and Vanguard's fees are quite reasonable.
One caveat to that fund is that it only covers the US market,
but you can expand into foreign markets in the future when
you have more income. What's important is to develop good
saving/investment habits. I've seen a lot of investment
advice that suggests putting aside 10% of your gross
income, for you, that's $1500 which is just a touch above
the $100 a month I suggested above. If you can, set up a
mutual fund account that will automatically deduct $100 from
your bank account at the beginning of each month. It's an
easy way to enforce savings discipline and it lets you take
advantage of something called dollar-cost averaging:
http://csua.org/u/bfy
-dans
\_ if you're a first time home buyer, buying sooner rather than
later is probably not too smart, considering we're probably
in sort of a real estate bubble at the moment.
\_ That's a nice idea, and I agree that we're in a real estate
bubble, but that's been the case for a long time. True, it
has to pop sooner or later, but that could be later, as in
five or ten years from now, and holding one's breath and
preying it pops seems like a bad strategy to me. I've seen
advice that suggests you should buy a residence if you are
going to be living in the same area for at least two years.
I think that's better advice than speculating on a bubble
that we're `probably in sort of'. Just by way of comparison,
New York city is, like San Francisco, in a real estate
bubble. Problem is that a) prices just keep climbing, b)
nobody who owns his/her place in New York is about to leave
the city (unless forced to at gunpoint), so demand outstrips
supply and will continue to do so, perhaps till doomsday.
Ten years ago, you could still buy something cheap in Harlem
because it was perceived to be a slum. Then Bill Clinton
sets up office there, and lots of people flock there, buying
burnt out buildings and either renovating them or tearing
them down to put new ones up. Today you can easily drop $1M
on a place in Harlem, and young white folks think of it as
a nice place to raise their kids. When that kind of
gentrification is fueling your bubble, what will it take to
pop it? -dans
\_ uh oh, someone started a circular, never-ending debate
\_ Depending how much time you want to spend. If you want to spend
minimal time, buy broad based index funds and aim for an 8%
return. If you want a higher average annual return, you need to
spend more time (which has cost), and you may be able to push
your return to 15-20% or higher.
\_ FLPSX has a 60+% return since I switched my 401(k) to it from
FDGFX two years ago. That's 30+%/yr.
\_ You would have gotten a similar performance if you switched
to DVY. Interesting that DVY's chart is so similar to FLPSX's
even though you would think it should look more like FDGFX's
since both are dividend funds. 2003 is an especially good
year though, and 2004 is not bad too, but I am talking about
the long term, so 15-20% is more realistic. I had like a
75% return in 2003, but I started the year with some risky
non-diversified bets on individual stocks (BBY, NVDA, HELE,
etc.) so it should not be used as a gauge. I have been
switching gradually to mutual funds, index funds and close
end funds since end of 2003 cause I don't have time to follow
individual stocks now.
end funds since end of 2003 cause I no longer have time to
follow individual stocks.
\_ Wow. Thanks for all the advice on investing strageties and all but
I'm really asking about brokers. I already know about mutual funds
REITs, ETFs, Roths vs. IRAs, risk/reward tradeoffs, hedging, and all
that. Since I'm young I'm putting most retirement money in high
risk/growth funds and some in foreign emerging markets funds. The
money for a house in a few years is going into a mix of large-cap
funds and some in non-treasury bonds. -op
\_ Vanguard. 'nuff said. -dans
\_ Is their website full-featured, or will I have to get them on
the phone to trade?
\_ I am going to go against the crowd here and recommend that you put
your future down payment in a low or no risk instrument like a
T Bill or Bond or CD. Your retirement money belongs in a Roth IRA
with the most risk you can stand. -ausman
\_ What broker do you like and why? |
| 2005/3/17-18 [Finance/Investment, Recreation/Dating] UID:36732 Activity:moderate |
3/17 How much would you tip for a 14 dollar haircut, assuming they did a
good job?
\_ $2 or $3.
\_ 3-5 dollars depending on how much of a mess it was beforehand.
\_ I refuse to pay $14 for a haircut.
\_ Do you go with the popular 'bowl' or buzzcut styles?
\_ I went with buzz cuts for many years. Now that I'm
married my wife does a decent rendition of the Barber
shop standard men's haircut.
\_ Where can you get a haircut for less $14?!
\_ Naval base barber.
\_ Get coupons.
\_ Chinatown.
\_ Forget it, Jake. It's Chinatown.
\_ My local chinese barber does it for $10. I usually
tip her $2-$5, depending on how depressed she is
re her family that day.
\_ Damn, no wonder so many sodans look so bad. $40 is minimum
for something that actually looks good.
\_ Planning to post a picture of yourself any time soon?
Didn't think so.
\_ That kind of investment requires: A) Knowledge what looks
good, and B) the desire to keep it looking good daily. I
have niether of these.
\_ And C) where to get such a haircut.
\_ Damn, no wonder so many sodans are virgins. Looking and
smelling good is the minimum for getting laid.
\_ 10-20 haircuts, 10 dollar pants, 20 dollar shoes,
and I get laid! (Though I do shower and stuff.)
Not being a total twat goes so much farther than
throwing money at the problem.
\_ I don't know, dans doesn't have either and he
seems to do ok.
\_ Yay for anonymous slander!
\_ How much would you tip for a $25 haircut? That pretty much looks
like a $14 haircut?
\_ -$11
\_ http://tipping.org/tips/TipsPageBarberShop.html.
15%. -tom |
| 2005/3/16-17 [Finance/Investment] UID:36712 Activity:kinda low |
3/15 Yes, people should look into BHP and RTP. These Australian,
British global commodity giants capture all 3 of these trends:
(1) Falling dollar - Being foreign, they are a dollar hedge
(2) Inflation and rising interest rates - Commodity
(3) China growth - strong demand for all kinds of commodities
Either hope for a pull back or buy for the longer term. I have
BHP (pe 17) for some time and I think I am going to add some RTP
(pe 12).
The other choice is RIO (CVRD) which is cheaper but also less
diversified (strong concentration in iron ore).
\_ Thanks. How do I do this, via ETrade or some sort? I'm asking
because you have to deal with tax implications, whereas if you just
open up an account outside of US, it might be a different story
\_ All 3 are available as ADRs which are traded like stocks
on US exchanges, so yes, you can just buy it on Etrade like
any other stock.
any other stock. If you are thinking about buying overseas
so you can not pay uncle sam taxes, I am not sure how. I
guess these are listed in their respective country's stock
exchanges at the very least.
\_ Once everybody knows something like this, it is probably too
late to make any real money doing it.
\_ Those had stellar growth in the last year... but there's no reason
to think they'll maintain that. The price probably already has
those factors built in.
\_ I don't disagree with you guys that it would be better if
you entered last year (or even before), but I think these
still have room to go. A lot of money is very short-termed,
but these trends are mid to long term. Also, just because
but these trends are mid to long term. Just because
everyone thinks the dollar will fall doesn't mean it will
fall immediately. It hasn't fallen much against asian
currencies for instance. And there are people who think
currencies for instance. It hasn't fallen much because,
as investors, the asian central banks are "stupid" and
kept buying US treasuries. Also, there are people who think
commodities will come back down once production can be
revved up, which I disagree, at least not anytime soon.
With China and India joining the global economy in full
force, labor, including skilled ones, is limitless, so
where is the future bottleneck? Commodities. That's
where inflation will be seen. |
| 2005/3/15-16 [Finance/Investment] UID:36704 Activity:moderate |
3/15 http://CNN.com now has bar charts linked in from the front page with before and after annual benefits comparing (1) the current system and (2) a new system with 4% of wages contributed to private accounts and indexing of minimum benefits to prices rather than wages. For a person born in 2005, the guaranteed benefit of a low-income individual would be $3,000/year, compared to $15,500/year under the old system! (Yes, this assumes that Mr. Loser invests all of his private account into "approved mutual fund gone broke". Guess who will be supporting Mr. Loser and his failed private account? I guess his kids or some private charity. Yay!) Granted, the $15,500/year figure assumes we don't change the system at all, which doesn't make sense if there isn't enough money to cover all payments starting in 2042. Any bar charts should really be comparing (1) The Democratic Proposal vs. (2), so people should really start providing graphs for (1). What is the Democratic Proposal? Raising the retirement age by a year from 67 to 68, or increasing the income bracket taxed for SS. Hmm, actually, that would make the graph look like (1) the current system, wouldn't it? \_ Does the system actually go broke in 2042 or does it simply pay less benefits? \_ Depends on how you look at it, but I guess "less benefits" is better. \_ I think in the classic bankruptcy definition there's a big difference. \_ the wording has been updated -op |
| 2005/3/11 [Finance/Investment] UID:36654 Activity:high |
3/11 Housing Bubble About To Pop:
http://csua.org/u/bc9
\_ My favorite troll! You just made my day.
\_ Housing prices will increase until population growth stops.
\_ Hey, how long ago did you first posit that the housing bubble
was about to pop? -tom
\_ About a year ago. I also told everyone that tech stocks were
overvalued in 1998. Turns out I was right about that one, too.
\_ Good job, Karnak. No one could have forseen the business-
plan-less tech bubble bursting.
\_ The funny thing about financial markets is that they
naturally tend to ebb and flow; sometimes quite radically.
A funny think about know-it-all engineers is that in their
desire to prove their worth and be right, they ignore the
fact that if you say the say thing consistently for a long
enough span of time, you'll eventually be right.
\_ Gee, you're brilliant; so you told people they should have
sold a year before their houses went up 20% in value, and
they should have gotten out of NASDAQ before their
investments more than doubled in value in just 2 years.
Maybe you should run a mutual fund. -tom
\_ If you got out in 1998 and put your money in savings,
you would be better off than if you held on to today.
Sure, I missed the bubble, but I missed the crash, too.
\_ wrong; the money I had in the market in 1998 earned
a lot more than a savings account would have. (And
it paid for my house in 1999, which has since also
doubled in value). I'm sure you're doing just great
with your 2.5% annual return. Have fun. -tom
\_ Nasdaq in 1998 = 2000. Nasdaq today = 2000.
I got a nice CD in 1999 that paid me 6% for
five years. I will probably put that money back
in the market now.
\_ You are not only a moron, you are completely
full of shit. The average price of the Nasdaq
in 1998 was less than 1800, and its low was
below 1600. If you bought indexes at 1600 and
sold at 2000, that's a 25% increase; even if
you were completely asleep for the past 7 years
and didn't take any of your profit when you were
up over 100%.
And CDs were not paying 6% then or now.
Here's a real-world scenario; put $20K into
Qwest at 34, sell at 91 in less than 2 months,
use that money as down payment on a house, and
see that leveraged investment rise to a value
over 10 times the initial outlay.
How's that fictional 6% CD looking now?
Incidentally, even if you don't include this
transaction, my portfolio is worth more now
than it was at the market peak in 2000, and at
least 3 times what it was worth in 1998. -tom
\_ http://www.moneycafe.com/library/compare.htm
I got 5 yr 6% CD from my credit union in 1998.
Too bad you can't accept that fact. I am glad
you got lucky speculating in the bubble market,
but most people got burned. If you took $20k
to Vegas and bet it all on black and won,
that would be about the same thing. If you
\_ Uhm, no -- only if you have the financial
savvy of a kumquat. The primary category
of people that got burned were
non-financially savvy engineers with stars
in their eyes. Your comparison highlights
your wishful thinking wrt your own choices.
Get over it, son.
have really tripled your investment in 7 years
without adding any new money, it is you who
should be opening a mutual fund.
Nasdaq on 12/31/1998 - 2100+
http://csua.org/u/bcc
\_ How are those grapes? Probably a little
sour, right? -tom
\_ No, I actually feel very lucky to have
escape the crash that devastated the
finances of so many around me.
\_ hey cmlee, if that's you could you
sign your name, so we know we're
dealing with the true anti-analyst?
-tom
\_ Q trades at $3 today, much much
less than what you bought it at,
by the way. Was it overvalued in
1998 or undervalued today?
\_ I think it was a reasonable
purchase at $34. Not all
reasonable purchases work out.
-tom
\_ I think housing is way overvalued but it's because people
with money have dumped it into real estate and it's feeding
on itself. How would it pop though? Are there large numbers
owners waiting to flip their property for cash? They keep
dumping it back into the market. Maybe if we get some
major economic Thing happen. Inflation? Don't homeowners
do well in inflation?
\_ inflation -> interest rates rise -> recession -> pop!
\_ I agree that prices will come off the peaks, but
the question is how much. If my house loses 50%
of its current value I am still even or perhaps
even better if one considers the deductions I've
made. |
| 2005/3/7-8 [Politics/Domestic/Election, Finance/Investment] UID:36553 Activity:moderate |
3/7 ING Direct U.S. pays 2.6% interest rate now. I looked up and ING in
Canada pays 2.4%, ING in Australia pays over 5%, and ING in Spain
pays 6%. That got me curious. I'm pretty sure this is all irrelevant
unless I know what the inflation rate is, and how each currency
exchanges relative to US dollar. Is there a site somewhere that can
give me historical data on inflation and historical exchange rates
all in one chart or one site? Thanks.
\- Hello, For a bt of theoretical perspective, you may wish to look
up "Covered/Uncovered Interest Rate Parity", "Real Interest
Parity", "Purachsing Power Parity". There are lots of studies
over how well these hold and deviate in the short and long runs.
You can also look at the BigMac and Latte Indexes for the cases
of involving the price of good [as opposed to interest rates,
the price of money].
\_ What happened to the oky,thx?
\_ http://www.oanda.com/convert/fxhistory
This is telling me that US dollar to Australian exchange rate was
1.6 in 2003 to 1.3 in 2005. That, and the fact that they get a
much better interest rate than us, makes me wonder why I'm keeping
any money in US bank. I guess you can argue FDIC or some excuse.
\- Hello, For a bt of theoretical perspective, you may wish to look
up "Covered/Uncovered Interest Rate Parity", "Real Interest
Parity", "Purachsing Power Parity". There are lots of studies
over how well these hold and deviate in the short and long runs.
You can also look at the BigMac and Latte Indexes for the cases
of involving the price of good [as opposed to interest rates,
the price of money].
\_ What happened to the oky,thx?
\_ Hello, BTW, you cant blindly look at these kinds of
historical graphs or cross country comparisons. For
example, there may be some sudden discontinuitites
due to external events like say Regulation Q changes.
Especialyl for countries with more controlled mkts
you may need more info about that country, e.g. for
certain kinds of accounts, senior citizens in India
are given slightly higher interest rates.
\- BTW, people interested in cross-border issues
may want to read about the "Tobin Tax" debate
as well. ok tnx.
\_ I thought ING's interest rate has more to do with how the central
banks of the various countries are setting their interest rates.
Inflation rate would influence the central banks' decisions
but it's likely just one of many factors. I don't know about
other countries, but Australia's economy is just plain hot,
mainly due to the China led commodities boom, so you get cool
exchange rate appreciation plus nice interest yield. But yes,
historical charts on inflation and exchange rates would be
nice.
\_ I think the summary is that US economy is fucked and will continue
to be fucked for a while and that keeping your money in US currency
is just dumb dumb dumb. Yes I hate America.
\_ No no no. We **know** you hate America. We asked you why.
\_ Why is the Afghan to US exchange rate completely flat? Ditto with
the Iraq Dinar to US dollar. What does this say, that Iraq/Afghan
dollar are exactly the same as US dollar?
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=1&from=USD&to=AFA
http://finance.yahoo.com/currency/convert?amt=1&from=USD&to=IQD
\_ You mean like how the Chinese Yuan is pegged to the dollar
along with the Argentine peso? Egads, it's a conspiracy!
\_ Many currencies are pegged to the dollar. -tom
\_ Afghanistan and Iraq are like the 51st and 52nd States in
the U.S., of course the exchange rate is the same. DUHHHH.
http://politicalhumor.about.com/library/images/blbushiraqidinar2.htm -/ |
| 2005/3/1-3 [Recreation/Humor, Finance/Investment] UID:36474 Activity:high |
3/1 Why do people say 'rate of speed?' -- ilyas
\_ Speed is d(distance)/dt. Rate of speed is a specific, determinant
value. It's legalese. It has to be that accurate.
\_ Ok, 'rate' is used to mean 'measure,' rather than
'rate of change.' That makes sense. That's unfortunately
ambiguous though, and it always sounded jarring to me. -- ilyas
\_ it's funny and redundant because speed already means
rate of change of position to you. distiniguish it from
rate of inflation, rate of decline, etc. and realize
some yokels said rate of speed instead of rate of movement.
not any more silly than "ATM machine" etc.
\_ What's wrong with the term "rate of speed"? Ever heard of
dv/dt?
\_ It has more syllables. If you want a serious answer, that's probably\
the real reason. Same with "nukular"--some people just like to add
\_ People don't use it to mean dv/dt. -- ilyas
\_ People don't use it to mean dv/dt. Also, you know, I don't
mean your regular people off the street. I mean 'professional
news people.' Kind of depressing, really. -- ilyas
\_ "It made the Kessel Run in less than 12 parsecs"
\_ If it's dv/dt, it would be "rate of change of speed".
\_ It has more syllables. If you want a serious answer, that's probably
the real reason. Same with "nukular"--some people just like to add
syllables.
\_ That's horrible. They should really utilize a shorter word.
\_ +1 funny.
\_ the same reason that people believe in organized religion:
because they don't use their brains.
\_ hey, lookey, a dictionary uses the exact phrase!
http://www.bartleby.com/61/13/R0051300.html
\_ amazing
\_ People who nitpick on minute things like typo, grammar, and
what not have above average IQ, but not much higher.
\_ You don't get out very much, do you? Perhaps you should, like,
give your everquest a break and like, meet some real people.
\_ I believe the word you're looking for is "prig."
\_ But this is neither a typo nor a grammar problem.
\_ Because most people are kind of confused about the
difference between movement, speed and accelaration.
\_ hey I got a great idea, how about sharing an MP3 of your voice.
Let's see if we can improve your loud, annoying non-native accent.
That and maybe proper grooming will definitely help you get more
chicks.
\_ Because language works and evolves in ways that my not be
completely "logical". Think about expressions like "cheap at
half the price", or words like "orthogonal", which gets used
metaphorically, or "finite" which some people use to mean
greater than zero. For that matter, think about things like
the negation in Russian "ja nikogda ne...". However, amazingly
enough, we still manager to seem to be able to understand
each other.
\_ But "rate of speed" is logical. It's legalese. One could argue
that their speed was the distance traveled over the time it took.
If they were going 100 mph, then got caught in bumper-to-bumper,
they could say they weren't "speeding" because they averaged
40mph. Rate of speed pins it down. |
| 2005/2/26-28 [Recreation/Music, Finance/Investment] UID:36439 Activity:moderate |
2/26 Looking for the loudest, most obnoxious heavy bass music that can
penetrate walls so that I can blast back at my neighber. And yes I
hate renting and living in the apartment but I have no choice because
I'm a poor student, so please spare me the "renting is dumb" shit. Thx.
\_ I recommend Indian music.
\_ My aunt used to live in the ghetto where she was surrounded by
ultra-powerful stereos blasting rap all the time. Her retaliation
was opera. She had volume, but it's really the choice of music
that makes it retaliation more than the volume.
\_ There can be no winners in a war of the stereos. Have you tried
talking to them?
\_ I don't know about that. I once played bagpipe music at full
volume in my dorm room and then left the room. |
| 2005/2/22-23 [Finance/Investment] UID:36365 Activity:nil |
2/22 Has anyone used freetrade? It's run by ameritrade but
looks pretty sketchy.
This seems to explain some of the sketchiness -- but it's an old
article:
http://dir.salon.com/tech/feature/2000/05/18/ameritrade/index.html
\_ It's basic no-frills trading. Don't expect anything other than
free trades.
\_ I looked into it a few weeks ago - researched it pretty
thoroughly on the http://fool.com discussion boards, and it seems legit
and used by quite a few people, for what it's worth - no
complaints that I saw except some really old posts that worried
about their business model. |
| 2005/2/16-17 [Politics/Domestic/President/Reagan, Finance/Investment] UID:36204 Activity:kinda low |
2/16 Is Alan Greenspan a Democrat or a Republican? Who/When appoints such
a man and how long does he get to say when to raise/lower interest
rate?
\_ Alan Greenspan used to be best buddies with Ayn Rand in a previous
life. I am unclear on his current political status. Possibly
'sold out.' -- ilyas
'too old and sold out to care.' -- ilyas
\_ isn't Bill Gates a big fan of Ayn? What is it about rich people
and their idol Ayn?
\_ Ayn's philosophy is that rich people are rich because they
earned it (even if they inherited it), and they deserve to
keep it. Of course rich people like her.
\_ No, the philosophy, as I recall, was that if you earn
money, you deserve it (note "earn" in the the meritocratic
sense.) And are not wealthy, and don't work for money,
you do not deserve it. -John
\_ what does Ayn think about Monarchy? Does she like it when
the rich aristocrats keep what they have and work to keep
it that way?
\_ who knows? she died. - danh
\_ ARISTOCRACY, n. Government by the best men. (In this
sense the word is obsolete; so is that kind of
government.) Fellows that wear downy hats and clean
shirts -- guilty of education and suspected of bank
accounts. (From the Devil's Dictionary) -- ilyas
\_ Greenspan was appointed to the board of the Federal Reserve
by Reagan in '87. The President designates which member of
the board is the Chairman and all presidents since and
including Reagan have designated Greenspan as the Chairman.
An appointment to the board last 14 yrs, I believe that the
Chairman holds the position for 4 yrs, but I'm not sure.
Greenspan was (and probably still is) a Republican.
For more info see:
http://www.federalreserve.gov/bios/greenspan.htm
BTW, you could have figured out all this for yourself by
typing 'Alan Greenspan' into Google. |
| 2005/2/3-4 [Finance/Investment] UID:36049 Activity:insanely high |
2/3 Do you put money in savings accounts, money markets or CDs?
\_ 99% checking, 1% cash.
\_ All of the above?
\_ how do you divide your money?
\_ stocks, mutual funds
\_ don't you have an emergency cash reserve?
\_ yes, it's called the wife
\_ But she has to compete with yermom on the streets
\_ For savings accounts, I really like ING. You won't find better
interest rates. Then I put some in CDs, and the rest in the market.
About a third evenly all around.
\_ i-bonds! http://csua.org/u/ay9 (treasury.gov)
\_ There is no point to CDs right now with rates so low. A savings
account and a money market are roughly the same in most
aspects, but the MM returns more. I only bother with a MM and
put very little in a savings tied to my checking. Most goes
into mutual funds of varying sorts (including MM-like types).
\_ Bleh, mutual funds are near worthless. Might as well just buy
QQQ on your own or just get the stock index fund.
\_ QQQ is an exchange traded mutual fund. Same idea as the
mutual fund with expense ratios and all.
\_ Thanks for the advice, Peter Lynch! If you really want
to know, I have an international fund, an index fund,
a bond fund, and a government bond fund and I am very
happy with them. You can feel free to put all of your
savings into GOOG.
\_ I don't really give a shit about what funds you personally
have. The point was that mutual funds in general are
worthless and the only funds you should invest in are
index funds such as QQQ. Just an FYI to people who
might be reading this and deciding on what they should
invest in.
The bottom line is: If you have the time buy bluechip
stocks and hold them.
If you don't have the time buy an index fund.
All other funds are worthless because they consistently
UNDERPERFORM the broad range bluechip market. In other
words, you're paying someone to do worse than simply
buying the index.
Frequent trading is worthless.
Owning stock in one single company may be worth something,
but you might also lose your shirt.
\_ Your point is idiotic. How will you get exposure to
the bond market without a bond fund? Buying
the NAQDAQ, Russell, Wilshire, or whatever index
is smart. That's why I bought it. It's also:
1. A mutual fund, 2. Only part of a portfolio.
Your statement that mutual funds in general are
worthless is retarded, especially when you advocate
buying an index fund.
\_ Try actually reading the statements, moron.
Mutual funds ARE worthless, because the ONLY funds
that consistently perform as well as the market
are INDEX funds, duhhhh! If that's the case all
you have to do is just buy the index, that means
buying and holding the bluechip stock individually.
It's not hard, it doesn't take a fucking Math
PhD to do this, and with Ameritrade it's cheap.
All you need is either a paper with stock prices
in it (i.e. Wall Street Journal people!) or
look it up on the web (again, not fucking hard
to do people!)
If you know absolutely NOTHING about buying stock
for $5 a trade and are afraid to manage your
portfolio or are too fucking lazy and want to pay
someone to do BASICALLY 20 HOURS OF WORK A YEAR
that's fine, go buy QQQ or Magellan or whatever
index fund you want. Capiche? Capiche, now stfu
and go comment on something you know about.
\_ You are a fucking retard!!! How will you get
exposure to the international market or to
bonds or to government-backed securities
without a mutual fund?! Your statement is
narrowly applied to the universe of US
equities. You use a lot of foul language, but
it doesn't conceal your stupidity. Mutual
funds are an easy way to get broad exposure
to different markets and as such are very
useful. You *can* buy T-bills and individual
stocks and perhaps even ADRs for every region
in the world, but mutuals make it cheap and
easy.
\_ I'm too ignorant about finance to tell which
of you two knows more about the subject, but
you're both very entertaining. Thank you.
\_ I would just like to point out that if
you had invested any money in QQQ from 2000-
2003 or so you got burned! Not that mutual
funds performed that much better ...
\_ You are an idiot.
\_ Bought QQQ at $100, eh?
\_ Sure. I DCA into the NASDAQ and
have since the early-mid 1990s. I
don't worry about a 3-4-10 year
period and neither should you.
\_ to both of you: please make a distinction between
actively traded mutual funds, and index funds.
Also, there are index funds which track different indices
such as bonds or international or sectors.
Foul language is also not necessary.
There are those who support the idea of using index funds
only.
\_ Often an index fund is a good buy. Many actively
managed funds do not beat their benchmarks. There is
no debate about that. The problem is when you are
trying to track 'microcap companies in a particular
nation' or similar. Indices do not exist for all
situations. A mutual fund can identify those
companies which are excluded from the index (or which
make up a miniscule % of the index) and purchase
shares. Sometimes individual investors cannot even do
that because of foreign regulations. If you decide to
weight heavily in small sectors like that then mutual
funds are great. Whether this is wise or not depends
on tolerance for risk, but one can certainly see
where individual equities or bonds might not be a fit
and no index (or only a poor approximation) exists.
\_ I don't keep a reserve. It is all in stocks and bonds. My
wife keeps a 2 month reserve though and she puts it a
savings account. I think she is being overly conservative.
\_ Are you nuts? I've got an 8-month cash reserve.
\_ This is all moot w/o knowing how much you make and
how much you spend. It's easy to save 8 months of
burger flipper salary. It's more difficult to save
8 months of MD salary. Expenses come into play, too.
\_ 8 months of my current lifestyle EXPENSES.
\_ Of course, but saving 8 months of
burger flipper expenses is pretty
easy. For most people, as income
rises so do expenses. If you live
with a roommate in a studio
apartment and ride bike to work then
you can have 8 months worth of
expenses saved easily. If you have
a mortgage and a car and such it is
much more difficult. Thus this x
month penis size comparison is lame.
\_ It's said that liars tend to assume
other people are lying. I guess
burger flippers make a similar
mistake.
\_ I think the point here is that
if your expenses are $120,000
per year (say) then keeping 8
months as a reserve is $80,000.
That's a lot of money to invest
in low risk investments "in
case of emergency." One can do
something better with that money
than a cash reserve. If it
comes to $8,000 it's quite
different.
\_ $8,000 to someone earning
$12,000 a year is a lot more
than $80,000 to someone earning
$120,000 a year. -tom
\_ Expenses, not earnings.
\_ "saving 8 months of burger
flipper expenses is pretty
easy." That may be true
for a fat sysadmin, but
it's not true for a
burger flipper. -tom
\_ I think you missed
the point. Saving
8 months of burger
flipper *expenses*
is easy on a fat
sysadmin *salary*.
Most people here
are in the latter salary
category, but expenses
are a choice.
\_ 8 months of expenses as single (no
SO) vs single (w/SO) vs married vs
married (w/children) are very
different.
\_ Perhaps I am nuts, I don't know. My job feels
pretty secure, we could live on either one of
our's salary and I have enough in stocks and bonds
equal to about 3 years salary, so even if the
market takes a dive, I can live for a long time
on that. I prefer more risk than you.
on that. Maybe I prefer more risk than you.
\_ I second that. Besides, if I get laid off,
company gives like 10.5 weeks of salary.
That's good enough for 5 months of expenses.
Add to that unemployment insurance, and I
can last 6-7 months. Also, if you are
invested in a diversified portfolio, with
ETFs, mutual funds, long, short bond funds,
etc., it's not that volatile, so there's
always something one can sell without too
much of a bad effect. Then there's
always family, if worse come to worse.
I don't buy the 8 months emergency cash
advice, unless you are rich and it
represents just a small portion of
your liquid assets. But in that case
why worry? I think the idea is to have
an emergency reserve of liquid assets as
opposed to an emergency reserve of plain
cash, and to not have any credit card
debt, or be living month to month due to
too expensive a lifestyle.
\_ Just because many mutual fund managers suck doesn't
mean there aren't good ones. I believe active management
still makes a difference if the fund manager is good.
And like one of the above posters have pointed out,
if you are interested in certain markets (eg. eastern
europe / russia / china / emerging asia, bonds, or even
Japan), you often have to buy a mutual fund. |
| 2005/2/1-2 [Finance/Investment] UID:36017 Activity:high 66%like:36367 |
2/1 What do you think of your job/career?
\_ http://www.phdcomics.com/comics/archive.php?comicid=531
\_ Pretty cool, I like it a lot. I just wish it was located
someplace where I could afford a home nearby. -jrleek
\_ what do you do? What company?
\_ If you live with roommates for a decade and put aside
10% of your salary, you will eventually be able to
afford a house. To get a single family home, you will
probably need a wife/SO to join you. I know this is
a big hurdle, but if you really want it, you can do
this.
\_ It was fun for a while, but kind of boring now. I get
paid so much, it is going to be hard to change careers now.
\_ Sad as it is, we need to be laid off once in a while to
come back to 'normal' productivity, haha.
\_ Awesome. I think I'm going places, and doing indy consulting lets
me do cool new projects pretty frequently. I try to maintain a
good network of people whom I genuinely like, so I can primarily
work with guys I get along with. The occasional insecurity and
downtime can be pretty nerve-wracking though. Career-wise, I have
an idea where I want to be in ~5-10 years, but I'm mainly waiting
to see how things develop. -John
\_ I go through periods of liking it at various levels. The main
problem is that fundamentally I don't want to be cooped up in
an office every day. I'd rather be travelling the world writing
stuff with a laptop or whatever like the fucking yuppies in
cafes. Well actually I'd only want to do that for a year or two.
So basically I second the notion that affordability of a nice
home is a major dent in my happiness.
\_ Or a nice woman to fuck when you go home, haha.
\_ Well that's a related subject. The job vs. personal life
conflict. Most tech jobs have a lot of time pressures. And
now job security is becoming an issue in tech, which means
more competition and therefore more time pressure. And more
competition means if you don't shine enough (or own your own
business) you won't get to work on the interesting problems.
I want more daily free time and 6 weeks of vacation every year
which doesn't fit the standard tech grunt profile.
\_ Hey, you just described my job. For subtle reasons that would
take too long to detail on the motd I could kind of do with a
traditional office environment for a bit. Maybe we should
trade. Email me to discuss details. -dans
\_ As a homeowner, I can say that I am satisfied but that it
presents a whole new class of problems. A panacea it is
not.
\_ I'm a coder. I really like coding, but what I don't like
is all the politics you have to start dealing w/ as you
move up in the ranks. Also I've started to become a little
wary of the fact that there is almost no job security in
coding, which is why I'm going to law school right now.
\_ what was your GPA/LSAT and where do you attend?
\_ I would send this to my wife (who IS in her 7th year as a PhD
candidate, ABD) but I think she might poison me if I did.
\_ Read through the archives. There's a lot about the thesis-writing
spouse. I'm 5th year, and that comic is part of what keeps
me (almost) sane. |
| 2005/1/29-30 [Recreation/Activities, Finance/Investment, Computer/SW/Languages/Misc] UID:35972 Activity:high |
1/29 I see people with all kindsa crazy prompts and colors in their
terminal that change when they log into different systems and
such. Is there some easy primer to get a running start on those
sorts of things?
\_ http://www.google.com/search?q=zsh+prompt
\_ Use PS1="$ " ; export PS1 as god and Steve intended. |
| 2005/1/27-28 [Finance/Investment] UID:35931 Activity:high |
1/22 Is the movement of the market a random walk? I planned to read
the book that says yes, but googled a more recent book that says no.
So which one is right and which/where I should start reading?
\_ What is random? -- ilyas
\_ What, are you playing jeopardy or something?
\_ Are you op?
\_ The answer was:
The type of men that Yermom would pick off the street.
\_ Yes. You're probably talking about A Random Walk Down Wall Street
by Burton G. Malkiel. If that's not the book you were planning to
read, it should be. What it really describes is something called
The Efficient Markets Theory which can be summed up as the current
price of a stock or security incorporates all presently available
information. Consequently, you cannot reliable predict prices and
beat the market by somehow properly timing when you buy and sell.
-dans
\- Still a classic:
Boredcast Message from 'peterm': Wed Jan 8 17:37:16 1997
You also recommended "A random walk down wall street" ...
\_ what calendar are you using? 1/22?
\_ Holy shit. 8 years ago! --PeterM
\_ Yeah I was referring to that book, but I also googled a more
recent book titled A not so random walk down wall street, from
PUP. I wonder if that means the old theory has been debunked -op
\_ The Efficient Markets Theory is undercut by all the
recent insider trading scandals. |
| 2005/1/25-26 [Finance/Banking, Finance/Investment] UID:35892 Activity:very high |
1/25 Let me ask a stupid question, how will the deficit be paid? How
will the huge deficit really impact our lives in the future?
Where is the money coming from currently? Are we borrowing
from foreign governments? Are we printing money like crazy?
How does it work?
\_ um.. *deficits* dont get paid. *debt* does. deficit is the rate
at which you accumulate debt. Petty semantics.
\_ http://news.ft.com/cms/s/bd52ee06-6dad-11d9-ae0d-00000e2511c8.html
In 2003, the most recent year with full international
statistics, central banks financed 83 per cent of the
US current account deficit, with Asian central banks
accounting for 86 per cent of flows.
\_ The dollar right now is a lot like .com stocks in 1999 ... As long
as there is a consensus that the dollar holds true value, it will
remain more or less propped up. If enough central banks decide to
get out of the dollar, it will collapse, taking the world economy
with it. The universal desire to not have that happen is colliding
with our desire to borrow indefinitely.
\_ Son, that's been the case since we left the gold standard.
\_ This is true for any floating currency. However, in the
past there were structural reasons for the value of the
dollar ... Now it's mainly our military keeping it afloat.
\_ let me ask another stupid question, from which countries do we
borrow money from?
\_ Mostly Japan, Europe, China & Middle East (Saudi Arabia)
That's one reason why freepers are funny ... They preach
"fuck the rest of the world" yet don't realize how their
lifestyles are being subsidies by the entire planet.
lifestyles are being subsidized by the entire planet.
\_ haha silly liberal you are. freepers believe that by
bombing the rest of the world into oblivion all debts
will be gone.
\_ I read that most of it is held by Americans, but the
largest amount of debt held by foreigners is held by
England. Maybe we'll become a colony again.
\_ I just checked and most of it is owned by Japan
and China. England is third. Japan owns FAR more
of it than anyone else. -pp
\_ Um, I thought the debt was financed by treasury bonds.
That is, people buy the bonds and collect interest--we
don't go out and borrow from other countries.
\_ Foreign entities also buy those securities.
Roughly half of the $7 trillion debt is owned by the
Fed and federal trust funds. Of the other half
that is privately held, foreigners own about half
of that. More disconcerting is that almost all of
the recent debt was purchased by foreigners and
so the ratio is getting worse.
\_ But we buy the products from foreign countries and
give them dollars for it. Since there is a $60
billion a month trade deficit and dollars are
basically IOUs, how is that not borrowing from
foreign countries?
\_ The day is coming when we will be called and at that
point this country will be in a world of hurt. If we
manage to survive this, the result will be spectacular.
The nature and scope of central gov in this country
will be severely curtailed for decades and we will
finally get Jefferson's "wise and frugal gov" that
would provide a common judiciary and military but
little else.
\_ What's the easiest way to diversify one's cash savings denomination?
\_ Buy gold. Dig hole. Insert gold. Cover up.
\_ Buy metal detector. Buy shovel. Head over to your house.
\_ Buy metal detector. Buy shovel. Head over to
your house.
\_ The "don't tell anyone you've buried gold at spot
X" was implied.
\_ 2nd the motion... check out "GLD" gold ETF
this will protect against a deep drop in the dollar..
\_ http://everbank.com
\_ Oh, and one possible answer to "how will the deficit be paid"
might be "the conservative Christians running the country believe
the Rapture will arrive before that day comes".
\_ Up until now, we have been able to roll it over each year,
but soon it will start to become a drag on our economy. If
the Bush deficits continue at 4-6% of GDP for another 4 years,
the cost of financing the deficit will put a drag of -1%/yr
to GDP growth. At some point, we go the way of England.
Check out The Economist article at /tmp/ausman/dollar
\_ That was a good article, thx. |
| 2004/12/23 [Finance/Investment] UID:35413 Activity:nil |
12/23 Not too late to join the herd out of the dollar:
http://csua.org/u/ahm (LA Times) |
| 2004/12/12-13 [Finance/Investment, Reference/RealEstate] UID:35255 Activity:nil |
12/12 Oh so sorry bubble boy. You will not get the house of your
dreams for next to nothing after the bubble pops:
http://csua.org/u/aan
\_ You're missing the point dickhead. I and pretty much all bitter
renters from the bay area who post to the motd can afford a *nice*
home outside the bay area now, 10 years ago, and ten years from now.
Maybe the bay area kool aid will never wear off, and housing in
the Bay Area will always be totally disjointed from reality. But
think on this: when you talk to homeowners *outside* the Bay Area
about the benefits of homeownership, they don't get all defensive
and assume you're starting a fight. Why do you think you people
are different? Could it be because you know deep down that
regardless of what your koolaid bretheren who control the *local*
housing market say, that you got screwed?
\_ Wow thank you! I've been looking for a commentator who tells
me I _should_ buy in this market! Now I have one!
\_ Did you actually read the article? |
| 2004/12/6 [Finance/Investment] UID:35183 Activity:moderate |
12/6 From the "They'll never learn" department. Dow 36,000 returns!
http://www.techcentralstation.com/120504A.html
\_ I'm not sure what you're saying. Are you saying that over a 17
year period stock value won't increase?
\_ Hmm, at 8% a year for 15 years it would be about 33,000. So,
what's the problem?
\_ The problem is that this dude thinks the fair value for the
Dow right now is 36,000. |
| 2004/11/29 [Politics/Domestic/911, Finance/Investment] UID:35107 Activity:nil |
11/29 Hello petro-euro, goodbye petro-dollar: http://www.csua.org/u/a4w \_ who wrote that article, a publicist for Dreamworks? i'm sorry I can't take someone who writes about the burning girders of the wtc and the dollar seriously. \_ Aside from a hit to American prestige, I dont' see how this changes anything. Exchange and interest rates are determined by the flow of goods and money, not the currencies they are denominated in. \_ Less reasons for other countries to prop up the dollar \_ If they were propping up the dollar to keep oil cheaper, they were making oil more expensive when priced in their native currency. I don't buy it. |
| 2004/11/26 [Finance/Investment] UID:35081 Activity:nil |
11/26 http://business.bostonherald.com/businessNews/view.bg?articleid=55356 Bushinomics in action. |
| 2004/11/23 [Finance/Investment] UID:35029 Activity:nil |
11/22 Germany, Japan or the US Stock market?
http://csua.org/u/a2x |
| 2004/11/22-23 [Recreation/Celebrity, Computer/SW/Apps/Media, Finance/Investment] UID:35026 Activity:high |
11/22 I posted this last week but no one responded (thinking it was
a HW problem) so I'll ask again: given a group of several
values, is there a way to evaluate or determine if the variability
between those numbers are significant or not? And if so, what
statistical test should be used? Thanks.
\_ Where did the numbers come from? Is there an underlying
stochastic (or otherwise) process you can describe? -- ilyas
\_ No it's not stochastic. Does it matter, though? Can't
you just take the numbers at face value?
\_ I don't know what 'variability' means. If it's a
normal distribution from which the numbers come,
you can estimate the variance, and that's one
notion of 'variability.' If the process is not
stochastic, and has no stochastic interpretation,
why are you interested in 'variability'? -- ilyas
\_ OK, so I have a series of about 10 numbers.
I want to know if they really are the "same"
or not. Let's say I had 3.0, 2.9, and 3.1,
I want to determine whether they are actually
centering around one central value (in this
contrived example, 3). Is it enough to calculate
the percent change from one number to the next
and note that it's low, or is there a more
objective statistical test I can use?
\_ If you want to quantify how much variation there
is in your numbers, there are lots of ways: some
common ones are range, sample standard deviation,
population standard deviation, and average
deviation. You have to pick an appropriate
measure and an appropriate cutoff point for
"the same" based on what the numbers mean.
Just looking at your numbers above in isolation,
you can't say they're the same at all -- say you
were measuring the speed of light in different
media, in units of 10^8 m/s. If you got 3.0 for
some and 2.9 for others it would conclusively
show that the media were different, and if you
got 3.1 it would be earth-shattering. --mconst
\_ Well the series of values were taken
from a biological source, where there
actually is some baseline value (in
theory).
\_ It's called an average...
\_ You can't make something from nothing. You
need to make assumptions about the numbers
(if you don't know how you got them), or think
about how the numbers are created. -- ilyas
\_ I think the problem is that you're looking for
a one size fits all solution to a humongous class
of problems for which none exists. Why don't
you just put the data in /csua/tmp and let us
mess around with it?
\_ Any series of numbers can be the "same" for some
arbitrary distribution.
\_ GIVE US THE GODDAMN DATA! And tell us the context. The whole
context. Saying "it's a bunch of numbers" does not constitute
giving the context, and saying you want to "determine the
variablility" doesn't really tell us what you want to know.
\_ You need a statistics education. The motd cannot help. |
| 2004/11/22 [Computer/SW/Languages/Web, Finance/Investment] UID:35006 Activity:low |
11/21 Has anyone tried opening a bank account in say, Canada or
Switzerland? How's the interest rate there and how accessible
are they online? The second question is, is there a FREE site
that is like <DEAD>etrade.com<DEAD> where they show you the exchange rate
chart, trend, etc for the past few years? Thanks.
\_ Do not open a European bank account for the interest rate. I
recommend the Liechtensteinische Landesbank (<DEAD>www.llb.li)--they're<DEAD>
pretty nice and professional. Just dump your cash into some long-
term bonds there if you care about interest (I assume that's not
your primary worry, or you wouldn't be asking this question.) As
for exchange rates, check http://oanda.com. -John |
| 2004/11/15 [Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq, Finance/Investment] UID:34900 Activity:nil |
11/15 The administration continues it war on poor people:
http://www.cnn.com/2004/TECH/science/11/12/epa.pesticidestudy.ap/index.html
\_ Huh?
\_ Can't get a job? Need to pay the rent? Just poison your
kids and get a thousand bucks and a camera to document your
child's suffering!
\_ Did you read the article? That's why they're delaying
the study. |
| 2004/11/10-11 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:34809 Activity:moderate |
11/10 Here is a problem for you google employees to solve: Yahoo Finance
is a big big part of yahoo's revenues. It's missing something that
so far nobody has found a way to solve. Keeping track of options
pricing and displaying historical charts on options pricing. The
reason is that each stock has hundreds of calls/puts. Nobody has
yet figure out a way to store all that data and display it even
after expiration. I'd like to see such a feature on google
finance. It's a complex data archiving problem. Anybody want to
guess the storage required to store the daily option prices for all
stocks for the latest 10 years? And have it available for quick
retrieval?
\_ do your own job
\_ I'll guess: a few dozen gigs at most. Make dupes across a bunch
of different systems for fast retrieval. And: YOU'RE FIRED!
\_ I could see it coming to several hundred megs a day, which would
be maybe 100GB/year, but that's still chump change.
\_ several hundred megs a day? to store a bunch of easily
compressed numbers? c'mon.... I felt I was being rather
conservative saying the whole thing would take ~40 gigs.
but yes whatever the real total would be in disk space, the
total cost is effectively zero for anyone with a real use
for the data.
\_ not only has this problem been solved, it has been solved by just about
every large financial house. maybe you should come up with another
theory to explain why it's not on your favorite free consumer portal.
have you thought about the relative population sizes of option-savvy
traders vs the population of equity traders? --aaron
\_ not only has this problem been solved, it has been solved by just
about every large financial house. maybe you should come up with
another theory to explain why it's not on your favorite free
consumer portal. have you thought about the relative population
sizes of option-savvy traders vs the population of equity
traders? --aaron
\_ For next question, we'll ask why GOOG doesn't have a free level 2
NASDAQ feed...
\_ they haven't gotten past the level 1 boss yet. |
| 2004/11/6-7 [Finance/Investment] UID:34717 Activity:very high |
11/5 Whoa! Google had a high of 201.60. It's now at 169.35 and down 1.05
from there in afterhours trading. Did one of the founders rape an
underage nun on national TV? What's going on?
\_ Immature companies' stock price is subject to significant
fluctuation. -tom
\_ You have an amazing grasp of the obvious.
\_ Ask a stupid question... -!tom |
| 2004/11/4-5 [Politics/Domestic/California, Finance/Investment] UID:34685 Activity:very high |
11/04 Holy Jeebus. The CDN dollar hit $0.83 today.
\_ where's a good site to see exchange rates plotted as a function of
time?
\_ http://finance.yahoo.com/currency?u
\_ Move your assets into something non-US dollar denominated. I did
so two years ago and have doubled the S&P gain each year. The
dollar is in for a mighty drop soon.
\_ What has it been doing other than dropping?! Soon, indeed.
\_ You ain't seen nothing yet.
\_ What is the timeframe for an Argentina-style currency
crisis? Would it take 5 to 10 years or could it happen
more quickly?
\_ Why do you think it will drop more? It's dropped a lot already
in the last three months. -ignoramus
\_ Short answer: The Economist says so.
Long answer: huge and unsustainable budget deficit,
ditto with the trade deficit, an administration that
refuses to admit that this is a problem and in fact
intends to borrow even more, a Japan and China growing
weary of financing it, a real competing currency
(The Euro) for the world to put its capital into.
\_ How did the dollar do when confronted with
Reaganomics? The dollar is falling because the US
wants it to fall. It makes it easier to pay back the
$$$ we borrowed. We'll prop it up when we're ready.
\_ nah, it's the chinese and japanese who've been
propping it up, and they are the only ones who
can continue to prop it up. Dollar falling
ain't bad, makes our products more competitive.
US dollar once went down to 1.4 Singapore dollar,
then bounce back up to 1.84 Singapore dollar
during the gogo internet years, now it is at
1.67. I think it will fall back to 1.4 or lower
in the next year or two.
\_ Products more competitive? Hello, McFly. We're
running a HUGE trade deficit, which the dollar's
fall has done nothing to help. Currency crisis
here we come, although I happen to think it won't
really hit hard until W is out of office.
\_ Don't forget the international dollar glut and Russia
moving to Euros for intl. oil payments. -John
\_ One way to bet that the dollar will fall is to buy
an international short term bond fund like BEGBX
(some international bond fund are hedged to eliminate
exchange rate changes vs the dollar, but not this
fund). |
| 2004/10/27-28 [Finance/Investment] UID:34389 Activity:moderate |
10/27 Russia mulling switch to Euros for oil:
http://www.rense.com/general58/opil.htm
Just in case people still believe world opinion doesn't matter and we
can do whatever we want, this could torpedo the US economy ...
\_ Russia? Please post figures for how big the Russian economy is
vs. the US, the EU, Japan, and Zambia. Their economy is itty
bitty. I'd be more upset if, say, Australia converted to the Euro.
They have a real economy, a real legal system, they're not as
risk for revolution or coup every day of the week, and a very
major trading partner.
\_ So since the German Mark, the British Pound, the Russia Ruble,
and the Italian Lira aren't used for oil figures, their economies
must be torpedoed?
\_ Boy, thanks for that fascinating analysis. Do you actually
understand that the Euro and Dollar are much different from
these other currencies?
\_ The Lira and the Mark are not even in use anymore.
\_ Yen. Whatever. Point remains.
\_ No, it really doesn't matter one whit. The currency trade
is in the order of a trillion dollars a day. Dollars and Euro
are both so liquid, this will have no effect, unless there is
a psychological one.
a psychological one. \- your brain has been
classified as: small.
\_ Um, yes it does. Oil is a hugely important commodity, if
the major oil producers start trading that in Euros, and
the dollar continues to suck while the Euro holds strong,
the dollar could stop being the world's default currency.
Once *that* happens our free ride in terms of borrowing
money forever is over.
\_ isn't that a good thing? wouldn't that force us to
start balancing budgets and stop having a huge portion
of our taxes go to paying interest?
\_ In the long-term it's a good thing, but in the short
term it's a world of pain.
\-The motd is to small for a an(other) econ lecture
\-The motd is too small for a an(other) econ lecture
but if you want to learn about the advantage of
controlling the "key currency", you should read
about "seignorage". The amount of "literal
eurodollars" [actual dollar bills] held are sort
of a free loan [as in we dont have to pay interest
to the person holding the dollar] to the US.
I think this is like half a trillion dollars.
Based on your belief about interest rates you can
calculate what the value of not having to pay
interest on that is. In smaller terms, it is also
much more convenient when you travel to be able
to directly convert from from dollar ... somebody
going from thailand to columbia has to convert
through the dollar. Upshot: in terms of the US
economy of 10trillion, this isnt a huge deal,
but to say there is no effect is just a priori
wrong ... it's going to have an effect in the
10tens of billions of dollars at least. There are
some other [possibly positive] effects based on
tighter control of the money supply and less need
to sterilize currency flows, but that and effect
on exchange rates are too complicated to get into
[you have to agree on a theory of demand for
the dollar and some beliefs on equillibrum ten-
dencies for your exchange rate regime] ... and i'm
not even sure what to say about this off the
top of my head. --psb
\_ That is why "unless there is a psychological one."
The actual amount of Russian Dollar/Euro trade is
infinitesimal, but if everyone in the world followed
Russias lead, then there would be an effect. Even
if they did, the effect would be small, unless it
happened suddenly. |
| 2004/10/22 [Finance/Investment] UID:34285 Activity:high |
10/22 So who was talking about shorting Google stock? Hahahaha.
\_ Idiotic momentum buying and tulips. There's no "there" there.
This is not the "new economy". Most people had re-learned the
lesson of the "greater fool theory" by 2001.
\_ nweaver, we're really sorry you decided to stay poor. -tom
\_ What's your net worth, tom?
\_ Well, a stock's always going to be worth what people think it's
worth, new economy or not. -John
\_ Yes, if enough people think that. Until they decide to
take their profit. First one out is the least of fools.
It's all downhill from there.
\_ After the first one gets out, the price drops exactly
because people think it's worth less than before. So the
above statement still holds.
above statement still holds. (Well, if you want to look
more closely, you'll have to distinguish between the
bid/ask/last-executed prices, where the "stock price" is
only the last-executed price.)
\_ Last time I was thinking PMCS was worth $20 but other
people think it's worth like $9. Crap! |
| 2004/10/14-16 [Transportation/Car, Finance/Investment] UID:34130 Activity:moderate |
10/14 I'm having bad experiences with this dealer that has been
servicing my car lately (poor labor quality, lousy parts, etc)
What are some ways I can get the word out that this isn't a good
dealer to bring one's car to?
\_ Why do you care? The market will figure it out. File with the
BBB if you really care.
\_ Because they're very incompetent, and when it comes to
big dealers like that, the market does NOT figure it out.
People see the big name and are drawn to it. And I've
already filed with the BBB.
\_ So write the automaker, tell them this dealer is a
threat to their good brand name.
\_ The market does not figure it out. BMW San Francisco sells
shitloads of cars, but I know people that work in their
maintainence department. Bad shit going on there, especially
involving falsification of repair records. Apparently it has
been going on for years, and no consequences have ever come of
it.
\_ What make of car?
\_ Can you tell us the dealer name? If I have the same make, I'll
know not to take my car there...
\_ the Long Beach Jeep dealer.
\_ Consumer Reports?
\_ Unless it's a national chain it might be below their radar.
\_ Write the corporate offices and complain. Post on Yahoo stock
message boards. These kind of things get attention.
\_ I base all my investment decisions on advice from Yahoo stock
message boards, and now I'm rich, rich I tell you!
\_ Does anyone remember a TV commercial about someone seeing an
advice on some message board telling him to buy VBNM stock,
which turns out it's just a fat person sitting on those keys
while laughing at the desk?
\_ Laugh all you want chowderhead, but I posted a complaint
I had with a car repair job from Midas on the stock bulletin
board and had an offer to fix it for free.
Corporate investor relations do monitor these things.
Don't believe me? Here is the URL:
http://csua.org/u/9i1 |
| 2004/10/7-8 [Finance/Investment] UID:33973 Activity:moderate |
10/7 Dear Russians, is Soros a common Russian last name? Is it shortened
from Soroski or Sorogorodov? Sorokova?
\_ It doesn't sound Russian, and BTW, George Soros was originally
from Hungary.
\_ Soros is a typical Hungarian name. Compare: Erdos. -- ilyas
\_ Soros is one of those International Jewish Banker names.
\_ Uh oh. Does Bush have the Infinity Trident?
\_ http://csua.org/u/9dn No, but the Germans do.
\_ Those fools! They'll wake the Kraken!
\_ Isn't it just like the Scientists to think that you
can use the Infinity Trident to anaesthetize?
\_ http://www.reason.com/links/links120803.shtml
\_ It sounds Greek to me, as does George. Many -os names are Greek.
\_ It's also a palindrome. |
| 2004/10/1-2 [Finance/Investment] UID:33884 Activity:nil |
10/1 Why does the stock market react the way it does to changes in
interest rates?
\_ When interest rates go up, it makes interest-bearing investments
more attractive, which takes money our of stocks. Plus, it makes it
more expensive for comsumers to borrow, which reduces spending, and
it makes it more expensive for companies to borrow, which reduces
*their* spending on expansion, among other things.
\_ Plus it makes paying off your variable-rate mortgage or credit
card bills more attractive than investing in stocks. |
| 2004/9/28-29 [Computer/HW, Finance/Investment] UID:33813 Activity:moderate |
9/28 I remember last week or so someone was talking about how IT gets
no respect. I was too busy working at the time to get involved
in the discussion, but I wanted to chime in now with the observation\
that it really depends on where you work. If you work at the NYSE,
yeah you get loads of money, but no respect. If you work at Amazon,
you are regarded pretty highly. I think it is obvious why. Desktop
support never gets respect, but let the mail server go down and
see the sparks fly! And the animosity goes both ways. Where do
you think the phrase "bean counter" and PSB come from?
\_ PSB? I only know PHB ...
\_ I know both tom and psb...
\_ what's PSB?
\_ !psb
\_ Ooops, I meant PHB.
\_ http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/PHB
\_ FYI that wasn't a typo, some monkey came along and changed it |
| 2004/9/27 [Reference/Tax, Finance/Investment] UID:33770 Activity:kinda low |
9/27 Gates has been an extremely generous philanthropist, giving away
$28.3 billion over the years.
http://www.forbes.com/forbes400/2004/09/27/cx_mn_rl04_0927toptenintro.html?partner=yahoo&referrer=
So does that include all the free MS OS he donated? Can he claim
to have donated $100 for each free XP given to schools?
\_ that's an impressive figure. Even more so when you realize that
he can lose 30% of his fortune and not even notice. In my mind
though, the better man is the poorer man who gives away money
he could actually use.
\_ Are you trying to get biblical on our asses?
\- i think bill gates is a pigdog for most things, but i think
he has spent some of his charitable $ in a good way [like finding
work on vaccines for which there is no mkt incentive, like malaria].
it's also sort of cool that he has said "fuck you" to the philan-
thopy racket run by women with expensive hairdos out of coctail
parties. apparently they took a fair amount of criticism because
they didnt hire a "professional" to run it but instead turned it
over to big bill [parent of evil bill]. --psb
\_ The article failed to realize that had he not given away $28b, he
wouldn't be worth $28b more, because he would have to pay tax on it.
\_ No, he'd be the full $28B richer, just not liquid. Do you
think his current net worth reflects the massive tax hit
he'd take if he sold all his MSFT? No, it's calculated by
addingu p the value of all his shares. Otherwise to
calculate rich people's net worth you'd have to track all
the purchase prices of their assets and estimate the tax
liability if liquidated.
\_ Oh, I see. |
| 2004/9/18-19 [Finance/Investment] UID:33619 Activity:nil |
9/18 Feeling tired? Can't get along w/ you co-workers? If you
lived in Sweden you could take a sick day:
http://tinyurl.com/6q965 (forbes.com)
\_ I live in the US and I call in sick when I am feeling cranky
or hungover. At least two or three times a year. It is probably
better than coming in and snarling at my co-workers. |
| 2004/9/14 [Reference/Tax, Finance/Investment] UID:33517 Activity:very high |
9/14 For people working for UC: Is the 457(b) a complete no brainer
investment like the 401k/403b, i.e. everybody should max it out,
or is it more nuanced? [I am a Bay Area renter without a mortgage
or any debt, so this would not cause a cash flow problem ... and
I would like to reduce my tax liability.]
\_ My financial advisor told me to max out both 403b and 457b. So if
you have the cash, do it.
\_ Max out? That's $26,000 a year!
\_ It's not a complete no-brainer; there is a $45/year fee, and you
can't get at the money while you still work for UC (though that's
less restrictive than the 403b). If you're going to use it, it
probably makes sense to put a significant amount of money into it,
just to reduce the fee on a percentage basis. -tom
\_ Plus, at least for 2004, you can only go into the uc-managed funds,
which definitely have limitations. Yes, you immediately profit
(from the taxes you don't have to pay now), but to get into the
fidelity funds you need to wait until at least July 2005.
\_ If your salary is over $100k, the tax savings more than
offsets the management fee, right? Only being able to choose
from UC managed funds does not seem like a significant limitation
to me. Especially siince your comparable 403b can be moved.
I dont understand the "Max out?" comment. -op |
| 2004/9/3 [Politics/Domestic/Election, Finance/Investment] UID:33326 Activity:high |
9/3 U.S. economy added 144,000 jobs in August. June and July job numbers
revised modestly upwards. http://csua.org/u/8wr
\_ interest rate hike coming soon???
\_ In the hopes of crashing the housing market?
\_ "While the new jobless rate was the lowest since October 2001, the
drop in the unemployment rate in August came as people left the
work force for any number of reasons."
So the jobless rate is low because some people got jobs and some
people stopped reporting that they were looking for jobs?
\_ Yeah, but hasn't it always been how these numbers are calculated?
\_ Demographics. A lot of women in a large demographic are of
common marriage age. They're not reporting because they're not
looking and never will.
\_ I love that. They just left the work force. They're now eating
rocks and sleeping in parks--and they're not looking for jobs.
\_ Married women don't eat rocks and sleep in parks. Maybe your
wife would be forced to, but not most others. Nice way to
ignore previous posts while making a non-point.
\_ Its a good thing they reported that huge poverty number back in
August, in a backwater office somewhere with no reporters around.
\_ Which is why everyone knows about it and Kerry used it in a
speech. Riiiiiight. You know that pverty number includes all
people, not just citizens. So ever fresh over the border illegal
who isn't qualified to be your maid counts as being in poverty.
\_ ...and note we are 1.7 million jobs short of where we were projected
to be last February...besides, this number will most likely be
revised significantly downward just as all the other job reports
have been.
\_ Odd to say this when the job report just revised June and July
numbers upward. URL that says job numbers tend to revise more
down than up?
\_ BASTARD! Stop bringing facts to the motd! NO FREE SPEECH FOR
FASCISTS!
\_ The economy needs 150,000 new jobs a month just to keep even,
so this is actually pretty bad news. Don't look for the press
to spin it that way, though.
\_ Yeah, the BushCo controller media is at it again. Once we take
control of the press, we'll be able to show the people the true
way and the people will rise up and crush their overlords and
the country shall be a socialist utopia and we shall all be
equals, comrade! We shall appoint Chris Mathews as the Minister
of Truth and Propaganda.
\_ Nice attempt to change the topic. It just makes you look
foolish and frankly, a bit nutso.
\_ It's exactly on topic, sorry. The above brought in a bit
about the press. I responded to that. Tough shit. |
| 2004/9/1-2 [Finance/Investment] UID:33279 Activity:high |
9/1 Finance question: How do 'after-hours' trades work? Is someone running
a secondary market? Is that legal? Why not leave the market open 24/7
since computers actually execute the trades?
\_ People who know how markets work don't read motd.
\_ I bought 5,000 shares of Pepsi last year on advice from the wall.
That's where it's at, baby! |
| 2004/8/24-25 [Transportation/Car, Finance/Investment] UID:33110 Activity:high |
8/24 Springboarding off the quarters thread below. Where do you get
rolls of quarters quick and easy? Lines are too long at my bank
and all the supermarkets have gone to the auto-change-dispenser
things. Right now I go through the BART ticket machines, but
lugging back that many loose quarters is a pain.
\_ Go to a casino, by the slot machines. They'll give you all the
quarters you want.
\_ If you ask supermarket customer service, they will usually sell
a roll to you.
\_ Sorry, I forgot to mention, this usually comes up later in the
evening, after the customer service counters close.
\_ Plan ahead: buy two rolls of quarters the next time you're
at the supermarket during the day and store them in a safe
place. Then, when you need to do laundry, or play quarters,
or put the rolls in a sock so's you can bean someone, you'll
have them handy.
\_ If I were ever able to go grocery shopping before 11pm...
\_ Who are you, Nicolas Cage in _Leaving Las Vegas_? Hell,
even vampires can get to a supermarket before 11pm.
\_ You apparently have no idea how entertaining
supermarkets can be in the off hours. High st
Super K-mart in Alameda was choice around 3am - all
the kids making late night baking soda runs.
\_ Or donut shops after midnight.
\_ What does one due with baking soda at 3 am?
\_ If you don't know, you probably shouldn't know.
\_ You can use it to convert cocaine into a
smokeable form. I'm assuming that's what the
pp is refering to.
\_ So let's see... you want quarters, and the poster below wants to
get rid of quarters? ...
\_ a reliable source of quarters is the issue. for me, my wife's
bank is reliable, and short lines (BofA). Also, in a pinch,
a car wash (go to 24hr one, when no lines) and use their
change machine.
\_ ps: go on sat mornings. always short lines.
\_ Every day I put my change in a change bowl at the end of the day.
When I need change, I take some out. This has worked pretty well
for me.
\_ I've been doing that for years and now I have 3 large buckets
full of random change. |
| 2004/8/23 [Finance/Investment] UID:33084 Activity:nil |
8/23 http://www.hussmanfunds.com/wmc/wmc040823.htm Google valued at $24. \_ Dow 36,000! Dow 1,000! Get a realistic caption. -tom \_ The caption is realistic. Hussman thinks it is worth $24 according to his valuation strategy. |
| 2004/8/20-21 [Finance/Investment] UID:33052 Activity:insanely high |
8/20 Hahaha ... Soros, "willing to put [his] money where [his] mouth is"
http://www.newsmax.com/archives/articles/2004/2/1/132047.shtml
I feel like I'm becoming a freeper! -liberal
\_ What's wrong with Soros destroying the US economy? As long as it
gets Dubya out of office, I'm all for it.
\_ ...on John Kerry's wang?
\_ It's funny how Soros was widely praised in the media by both
liberals and conservatives after he crushed SE asian financial
systems, ruining and most probably shortening millions of lives.
\-praised? i thought he was attacked when he and other currency
traders took advantage of public claims of the bank of england
and some other central banks to defend a given exchange rate
[in europe]?
\_ The idea that $7B could destabalize the American currency markets
\_ The idea that $7B could destabilize the American currency markets
is laughable. Daily movement on the currency markets is upwards
of $1T.
\_ Money used at the right time in the right way can make things
happen. It isn't about the daily movement. It is about the
movement at one particular moment in time to create a bandwagon
effect for the rest of the traders who are forced to follow. If
it gets Bush out of office, I'm all for it. Destroying the
US economy is a small price to pay.
\_ Sorry righty troll, not a good enough impersonation of
a Bush hater. Try again. |
| 2004/8/16 [Politics/Domestic/California, Politics/Foreign/MiddleEast/Iraq, Finance/Investment] UID:32934 Activity:nil |
8/16 Yermom: discuss
\_ Yo mama so dumb she thinks posting the same troll every day for
weeks on end will actually change someones vote.
\_ Yo mama smells so bad, Saddam tried to drop her on the Kurds! |
| 2004/8/9 [Finance/Investment] UID:32777 Activity:moderate |
8/9 My goofle fu is weak. What is the stock ticker symbol for the
Mitchell Brothers O'Farrell theatre in SF? Yes, they had one.
\_ you mean google, and they didn't. but you might be thinking
of Boy's Toys. |
| 2004/8/3-4 [Finance/Investment] UID:32671 Activity:very high |
8/3 Ok. I've got $60K to invest for a year. What do the motd stock
gurus recommend? The last set of picks actually did well!
\_ No guru, but I was thinking of putting about 10K into QQQ,
perhaps during the end of Aug or even as late as mid Oct.
QQQ is down to 32.50 during intraday, and traditionally
markets go up after the Nov. election. The 52 low is 29.50,
and it's coming off of a high of 39. What do you guys think?
\_ Addendum: That number could actually grow to a few hundred K
depending on how things work out. Doubling my investment gets
me a new Porsche! Thanks motd!
\_ G00G D00D! Seriously though, you should spread out your
investments over a few mutual funds and maybe one or two
stock and an index fund (or something similar like QQQ).
\_ real or fake money?
\_ wait until after November in case terrorists blow something
up
\_ ICGE earnings just coming out, should double
\_ WTF are all of you thinking? This man's ill gotten gains must
be returned to all of us, where it belongs. If he has more money
left over in a single year to just play with or buy a porsche(!!!)
then he has too much money. He should donate it to a worthy cause
like buying tickets for the poor to see F9/11 or just send it back
to the government so they can more efficiently spend it.
\_ I always wondered: do people who post this stuff think
they're clever/funny or what? Is it troll bait? I don't
see the point in this sort of post.
\_ Milltek Cat+ assembly, Bailey DV-30 diverter valve, a good
air filter, a new ECU, a Forge intercooler, and some nice new 18"
rims & SP-9000s. I guarantee satisfaction and a great return on
your investment. (I'll give you a ride.) -John
\_ No! He should pay NO TAXES!!! He needs to buy LOTS OF GUNS to
protect his STUFF from the MEN WITH GUNS!!
\_ Depending on your risk level, maybe ultra short term bonds.
QQQ is too high variance for one year.
\_ WAG.
\_ NGEN after it calms down.
\_ SCOX all the way! There's nowhere to go but up!
\_ sCOX all the way! There's nowhere to go but up!
\_ if you've got a strong stomach, taiwan. tsm, asx, spil, auo.
but don't blame me if there's a war. i also like india,
eastern europe, japan, malaysia and nxg (gold / copper).
a relatively conservative choice is dvy - it's an etf consisting
of a bunch of high dividend paying blue chip companies. I would
buy dvy rather than short term bonds. |
| 2004/7/29 [Politics/Domestic/President/Clinton, Finance/Investment] UID:32565 Activity:very high |
7/29 Jobless claims up, consumer spending down. Wages drop 9.2% from
2000 to 2002. First time since 1953 that wages have dropped.
\_ What does "wages" mean? Average? Cumulative?
\_ Sorry, wrong word. overall income:
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/29/business/29tax.html?adxnnl=1&adxnnlx=1091124617-0REdJYzdft5vWcq6Zdx2PQ
\_ It appears income rose for all people making under $200k and fell
\_ Where do you get this?
\_ Click on the chart to the right on that page
(and my bad, $1-$25k went down 1.4%); actually
the right column there is a better metric, which
says income per taxpayer went down for $100K and
up but not for $0-100K.
for people with larger incomes, which makes total sense given the
large stock gains in 2000.
\_ No, actually the opposite has happened, at least with take
home pay.
\_ The bubble created in the Clinton era had bursted before he left
office in 2001.
\_ don't forget the Twin Towers also bursted.
\_ and we know that's dubya's fault because he sent the jews
there to blow them up so he could invade iraq to get the
free oil for halliburton.
\_ You make Michael Moore look like an intellectual.
\_ That's what they want you to think. The whole "attack"
took place in a soundstage in Japan, where they used to
make the Godzilla films.
\_ It's 2004 now, son.
\_ but perhaps they only have data up to tax year 2002, daddy?
\_ probably but so what? why are old numbers from the worst
part of the recession being hashed around now in the middle
of an election? suspicious.
\_ It must be the Vast Left-Wing Conspiracy.
\_ It's true, the IRS is run by liberals who hate America. |
| 2004/7/21 [Finance/Investment, Industry/Startup] UID:32395 Activity:very high |
7/20 M$ pay $$$$ special divident
http://www.nytimes.com/2004/07/21/technology/21gates.html?hp
Can someone explain why this makes financial sense to M$?
Why don't they buy back some stocks with that money? Isn't this
like cash down the drain, not that they are short on cash.
\_ Why does any company pay a dividend? Why does any company go
public?
\_ Well, a company goes public to raise cash. When it had more
than enough, it should purchase the stock back. It's not
that they have never paid any divident. They are not a dot
com after all.
\_ in the end, the value of a stock is the dividend or promise of
future dividends. sometimes, profit making companies don't
pay dividends because the company feels that the cash is
better invested for growth (and the hope of a bigger dividend
payout in the future). microsoft has too much cash, more than
it knows how to use, so it just pay it out to shareholders.
makes sense to me.
it knows how to use, so it just pays it out to shareholders.
makes sense to me. a stock that will never pay any dividend
is like a bond that will never pay any interest; it's value
would be zero and nobody will want to buy it.
\_ I disagree. It could still be worth something on the basis that
eventually they will get bought our or will liquidate their
operations. Both are essentially a single large delayed
dividend. Now if you say the company will never pay a dividend
and is planning on going bankrupt...
\_ It could still be worth something, but the idea is that
the profits get returned to the investors. Somewhere
along the line people forgot this fundamental of
incorporating a business.
\_ Well all that really matters is that you can find someone
to pay more for your shares. In a growing company with no
dividend, that's not a problem.
\_ This is the key for "growth" stocks. M$ has kept this
attitude for a long time. Now that it has "stablized"
it either starts paying dividends or it starts losing
value as an investment (as noted above, a zero interest
bond).
\_ Not really. Say you incorporate your business and
it is doing very well. You're making lots of money,
but not paying it out to the stockholders. Would
you sell for merely $1 more than the value of the
stock (assets) if you're generating a massive cash
flow? The bottom price for a stock is the assets of
a company, but *profit* is what you really want. A
huge company and no money for the investor (you)
does you no good.
\_ well, like you said, they are like a "single large delayed
dividend". in other words, you don't disagree.
\_ The cash reserves are causing M$ problems. Internal protests when
M$ tried to cut benefits, investors upset by "no dividends" stance,
and antitrust supporters all point to the huge cash reserves as
evidence of M$ stinginess and power. For business, money in the
bank is not being used on investment or R&D. Buybacks and dividends
are programs to keep stock prices stable and reward investors.
M$ is implementing both. It's a different mindset than the paranoid
one that M$ has been selling where any moment now, they might
collapse and need that money to defend themselves. |
| 2004/7/13 [Finance/Investment, Computer/SW] UID:32245 Activity:low |
7/12 dear csua finance expert, can I buy foreign securities without
ADR? Most local brokerage firm here(HK) disallow US persons to
open account, is it bec. they don't want to file to IRS
themselves? |
| 2004/7/8-9 [Finance/Investment] UID:32191 Activity:insanely high |
7/8 Kind of hard to find good places to invest money these days.
Where do y'all put your money?
\_ I like the California Golden State Tobacco backed bonds, paying about
7.5% tax free. I still think Japan has a ways to go, so I have
about 10% of my portfolio in EWJ. Calpine is overleveraged, hence
the CCC bond rating, but I have a bit in 2008 8.5% Calpine bonds,
trading at 67c/dollar so paying 21%/yr total if they don't go
bankrupt and probably about even if they do. The rest is sitting
in WFC and ETFs that are up so I don't want to sell and pay taxes
and I am mostly happy with them.
\_ 1. build moneybin 2. buy gold 3. swim in the gold 4. profit!
http://www.reuters.com/newsArticle.jhtml?type=businessNews&storyID=5621189
\_ Under my matress and some more under my pillow because you don't
want to invest everything in the same place. Diversify your
portfolio like me and you can't go wrong!
\_ this joke would have been much more effective if about
half as long
\_ Timing, son. Sheesh. The first reply was 4 times longer but
there's only so much to be said about a pillow. Next time,
I'll just throw a pie and say, "NYARK! NYARK!" 3 stooges
style for you.
\_ FOAD. -!pp
\_ NYARK! NYARK! *slaps pie in your face*
Wow! You're right! Your idea of funny is uhm.... yeah!
\_ WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! WOOP! WOOP!
\_ Exactly. Thanks.
\_ $200k equity in a $400k house, $100k equity in a $460k house, $200k
in 401(k), $30k in one pharmacy stock. $30k in money market and
checking acct. This is my wife and I combined.
\_ Awful lot in the one stock. I'd suggest diversifing. But you seem
to be doing fine, so what do I know.
\_ Yeah, I know it's too much in one stock. But I'm just too
lazy to "re-balance" or "re-distribute" or whatever the pros
call it.
\_ Just call your broker and say "Move $X-thousand from
DrugCo into an S&P500 index fund."
\_ What is your 401k money in? |
| 2004/6/29-30 [Finance/Investment] UID:31055 Activity:nil |
6/28 "Change Your Organization Diary"
http://www.c2.com/cgi/wiki?ChangeYourOrganizationDiary |
| 2004/6/25-26 [Finance/Investment] UID:31011 Activity:high |
6/25 What is a commmon ratio between wholesale and normal retail
prices? I assume it exists as economic forces would equilize
widely unequal margins.
\_ totally depends on the type of goods and their cost
\_ Margin - cost ratio should be relatively uniform or people
all flock to trade the ones with higher profit.
\_ uh, no. -tom
\_ You poor idealistic fool.
\_ You say what I learned in Econ 1 is wrong?
\_ No, I say you don't understand what they were telling
you in Econ 1. Wholesale vs. retail price is only
one of many factors in determining profit margin. -tom
\_ I think >5% for new cars, 1-2% for groceries.
\_ I think you are thinking of net not gross.
\_ If you don't move a lot of volume, you ned a higher markup to cover
\_ If you don't move a lot of volume, you need a higher markup to cover
your overhead (think jewelery). If you move a lot of product
(milk in grocery stores) or your product is very expensive (cars)
than you can cover overhead with a smaller margin.
\_ Is there a place to look up actual stat. for different classes
of product?
\_ My mom is in retail (women's clothing) and she normally doubles the
wholesale cost. She gives her employees 30% off, which is what she
considers her break-even point.
\- hello since i am stuck in my office for 45 min ...
the econ1 is view roughly "in competitive markets rents or
surplus profits cannot be extracted". this means the return
on capital is about the same. in other words, what a company
selling plums or highend stereos makes on a $1m of investment
isnt going to be too different [as well as the returns at
different stages of the pipeline ... assuming each stage is
competitive]. how ever costs != wholesale cost. obviously
in the case of safeway, s significant portion of the safeway
price of a tomato is going to be what they are paying their
supplier. in the case of diamond, there is the advertising,
in the case of highend stereos, you have to invest more in
salesmen than you do if you are selling tomatos. naturally
this is wildly simplified and it's not immediately obvious
when a mkt is competitive. in fact you may go backwards and
look to see if excess profits appear to be present somewhere
as a sign of mkt power ... although i dont know too much about
econometrics in terms of what can be observed cheeply/accurately
and with fair preceision. so it may be reasonable to ask what
the w'sale/retail markup is in some domain [although what that
domain is isnt clear ... mcdonald probably has larger margins
on coke and fries than 99cent double cheeseburgers] but that
is not a "globallly conserved property" ... also it is unclear
over what large domain you would expect equillibriation ...
states, nations, world, local markets etc. microecon is the
basics for this question but then you can do into econometrics
or IO. IO is pretty interesting. |
| 2004/6/17-18 [Finance/CC, Finance/Investment] UID:30875 Activity:very high |
6/17 What's the catch with balance transfer offers? I got one that sounds
really good, 1.99% for the life of the balance with no transfer fee.
Is there any reason not to do this?
\_ Ok, no, all this stuff below is wrong. I checked and the way most
of these work is they require you to a) take out more money that
card every month (some minimum which will vary), and b) any money
you pay off goes towards the lower interest rate money first, the
higher rate you're paying on money from (a) is going to be at
22% or something like that. So, over time you are quickly moving
your money from 1.9% to 22% and paying on a larger 22% base every
month until eventually you have nothing at the lower rate and
everything at the 22% rate. READ and UNDERSTAND the contract
before you do anything. I've yet to see one where you can win. If
you want to do the math, you can get ahead for a short period of
time and then pay off the whole thing when the scales tip against
you but you'll have to get the math right and be really anal about
dealing with this account.
\_ Look, you are just wrong. I am doing this right now with
my AmEx Blue Card and have been doing it for almost a year.
I am pretty sure that the only "good" offers are made to
current customers with good credit ratings, though. -bb
\_ Ok, so what are the terms of your deal? They don't require
a minimum transaction per time period and they let you pay
off the higher rate first?
\_ I just have to pay off the "minimum balance" every
month. I guess that is not defined, so they could
bump that up if they get sick of me having cheap
money. There is no requirement to use the card,
so I don't.
\_ They're usually coupled with a clause where the low rate goes
away if you ever miss or are late with a payment. And of course
they still get to ream you on fees if you ever are late too.
\_ Yes. However, if you are never late then this is not an
issue. Go ahead and do it. Your current agreement has the
same clauses, anyway.
\_ Also, if you make any new charges, I imagine payments will be
credited toward the transferred balance first; so you get nailed
for the full 10-22% APR on new charges until you pay off the
transfer.
\_ No catch, really. I am doing this on a $10k balance. I actually
got six months interest free to start out. Just make sure you
don't miss any payments or use the card for anything else.
[ non-compliant motd entry deleted ]
|_ why do you hate america?
\_ Why do you hate tabs?
\_ They are depending on the laziness and stupidity of the masses.
If you're smart and anal about it, you won't get screwed. READ and
UNDERSTAND the fine print.
\_ if people were smart, they wouldn't have credit card debt in the
first place.
\_ this is not a failure of intelligence. --psb
\_ right. if you're smart (and have luck in the market)
you can make money using cash advances from credit cards.
the above low rate balance xfers make this possible.
\_ what i meant by "this is not a failure of
intelligence" is not that you should use
the money smartly but that everyone knows
paying cc interest rates is insane ... but
some people are undisciplined. it's like
saying "smoking is dumb". --psb
\_ I knew a guy who did that during the boom. He got
completely wiped out. I guess he wasn't smart enough.
I know another guy from many years earlier when every
knucklehead was investing in gold and silver. He
bought silver at around $28 or so. It has never been
that high since. He didn't do it on his credit cards.
I met another guy last year who came in to do vendor
tech support. He was once at a company that went public
and his options were worth about $5m. Someone at the
company told him he wasn't allowed to sell them unless
the company wanted them. He didn't check with anyone
else outside the company and lost his entire $5m of
options (which is why he was doing onsite tech support).
I've never done any of those things but there sure are a
lot of stupid people out there....
\_Yes, Virginia, there really are stupid people...
\_ Borrow $10k at guaranteed lifetime 1.9%. Invest
in 10 yr (or 5 yr) government bonds paying 4.7%.
Make $280/yr on the arbitrage. Why is this stupid? -bb
\_ That won't work. The bonds don't pay out on a
monthly basis, and your CC company will want
monthly payments.
\_ Sure it works, you think of it as buying a
$10k 10 yr bond with $100/mo payments. But
the interest from the bond makes a couple
of payments a year for you. You have to have
the spare cash lying around to be able to make
the montly payment until the interest from
the bond pays, admittedly. -bondboy
\_ Put $10,000 into bonds of $100. Every 6 months
cash out 1 bond and use that money to pay the
interest for the next 6 months. Bonds only
accrue interest every 6 months which is why
you want a bond-size that covers 6 months of
your interest.
\_ Wow, you are even crazier than me! Did
you actually buy 100 bonds, or is this
just theoretical? -bondboy
\_ Theoretical, but what's wrong with 100
bonds?
\_ Transaction costs and just the
sheer hassle of buying and keeping
track of 100 bonds. If there was
enough money involved, it would
be worth it, but not for $100 bonds,
imnsho. -bondboy
\_ Bonds are all written down at the
same time and placed in a
safe-deposit box. Every 6 months
you go to your bank to get and cash
out a bond. Every month you write
a check to the CC company.
\- you know when you figure out
how much you are making per
hour of work, you have to
take off the tax on the extra
income. --psb
There are no taxes on gov't bonds. Well no, Fed _/
taxes, at least. I see the appeal of not having
to "float" the credit card payment, though. If
I get bored enough at work today, I will try
to work out the difference. I guess if you
buy the bonds directly from the Treasury,
this might work. It still ends up being
a lot of work. Just doing it all online,
buying the bonds via E*Trade, etc, is
pretty simple. -bb
\_ how can i learn to be a finance nerd like you guys?
-moron with all assets in checking account
\_ Is this a serious question? My g/f thinks I
should go back and get a CPA, since I
obviously enjoy this stuff more than my
job as a sysadmin. -bb
\_ yes, it's a serious question.
\_ Read The Economist, Smartmoney and
The WSJ. Smartmoney U (from their
front door) is a great way to get
started on learning things like
what bond curves mean. -bb
Start here:
http://www.smartmoney.com/thebasics/?nav=DropTabs
\_ Bonds are the safe option, but there are better investments to make.
Anyway, it is easy to carry a CC balance and a 1.x% is makes sense to
do so. Buy a car with it instead of an auto loan. Do home repairs
instead of an equity loan. You may wonder why anyone would carry
a CC balance, but the reality is that most people will never be debt-free.
The key is cash flow. I'd gladly put millions of $$$ on my CC if I had
that kind of limit and start a business, buy real estate, or whatever.
The "debt is bad" mantra is for foolish Midwestern housewives who read
Motley Fool and who spend 12 hours clipping coupons to save $5. Take
whatever the bank will give you, because most of us will not save that
kind of money (hundreds of thousands of $$$) easily and it can lead to
opportunity. Obviously using the CC money for vacations and stereo
equipment is stupid, but having a balance in itself is not. I know lots
of people who started businesses on their CC. Think bigger than *bonds*
Jesus! Those Midwestern wives would be excited about $280/year, though.
\_ Yeah, maybe someday I will be in a position to start my own business
or do something like that. But in the meantime, I am having fun and
making money, while learning how to make this stuff work. -bb
\_ At least you realized that assets - liabilities is more important
than being debt-free. I don't care if I have $10 billion in debt
if I have $100 billion in assets. Debt-free is just as idiotic
as debt-laden. |
| 2004/6/6-7 [Finance/Shopping, Finance/Investment] UID:30638 Activity:insanely high |
6/5 70% tax unfair? My landlord inherited 21 tall rise buildings from
his dad in Westwood. He does nothing except collecting $ and hiring
other managers to take care of shit for him. There are plenty of
apartments in Westwood but they're all overpriced because of the
few elites who decide to artificially inflate the price. 70% tax
unfair for the superwealthy people? My ass. The rich is getting
richer and the poor is getting poorer, and that is a fact from
having unrestrained capitalism.
\_ Uhm, excuse me, sorry to interrupt your frothing, what what business
is it of yours that he is the ceo and owner of his own little real
estate empire? What the hell have *you* done to deserve a lower
rent or free access to this guy's or anyone else's wealth? The rich
are no richer than they ever were. The poor are better off now in
this country than they ever were in any country at any point in
history. If you don't want to make this guy even richer, then go
invest in owning something, stop paying rent which was always a
loser's game and take care of your own shit. How many apartments
have you or some other trashy renter destroyed because 'hey, it's
only a rental, fuck the landlord anyway, eh'? I'll bet you've left
at least one apartment in much worse shape than you got it and then
you bitched over every penny they took from your deposit to cover
the damages. Hey, I know, let's have super strict rent control. It
has worked soooo well in SF and Berkeley to make housing affordable
and available to the little people. Not.
\_ That's quite the rant. Are you saying that markets are perfect
and that they never need adjustment? That we should allow
the establishment of family fortunes that perpetuate a con-
centration of economic power into the hands of an ever-
wealthier elite?
\_ The Founders of this nation were in favor of *not*
allowing family fortunes to be broken up. They believed
that passing family wealth to a single child was better
than splitting it among them and destroying through
division. Modern families have been ignoring their
advice and splitting their wealth, thus in a few short
generations destroying it so I'm not at all concerned
about your Communism 120B Professor's propaganda about
"the establishment of family fortunes taht perpetuate a
concentration of economic power in the hands of an ever-
wealthier elite" because reality shows this to be
opposite to what you believe. Nice way to ignore just
about everything I said, btw. If you're just here to
be the new commie-troll, then congrats on your one
success. If you actually believe this crap, then you
can respond with more than phrases from the Little Red
book and one line, no content blowoffs that the people
responding to you are just ranting. I was talking about
rent control and the land lord/renter relationship and
all I got back was mindless off-topic propaganda. The
least you could do is provide on-topic mindless
propaganda if you want your troll to survive more than
the next hour this time or 30 seconds next time.
\_ IMHO(I'm not the guy above) the rental problem is
partly the fault of assholes who do not participate
in the market and so destroy it for everyone else.
By this I mean perspective tenants with too much money
and too little brains who don't bother to respond to
price at all and break the rationality of the market.
Just because someone can afford 2500/mo rent doesn't
mean an apartment is really *worth* that, and they
should keep shopping and spend the money they save on
something else. I do not propose any governement
based solution to this, but I believe that smashing
the Real Estate cartel would go a long way towards
fixing the problem. Again, I'm not proposing a
government solution, just proposing that individuals
refuse to use realtors' services when there is
*any* alternative, and that people use the Internet
as much as possible to replace them. This is already
happening. I guess the one government based solution
I might propose would be adding a course in the public
schools that teaches about home ownership and home
buying. It's fine to learn that stuff from your
parents if they happen to be responsible and own a home
but for the rest of us, learning in the real world
is a pain.
\_ advice #1, take your anti-depressant pill.
advice #2, get your facts straight:
http://www.cals.ncsu.edu/agcomm/writing/newsrls/3-31-04a.htm
http://money.cnn.com/2003/06/26/pf/taxes/wealth
http://www3.sympatico.ca/truegrowth/richgetricher.html
\_ *LAUGH* Read your own links. I stopped at the first after
it agreed with me about half way down page 1. And here's the
key phrase from *your* link,
"Why such relatively fast income gains for the rich? In a
word: education, one of the biggest income determinants.
Workers with more education simply earn more."
Which tells us that the only thing holding people back is
their own unwillingness to get a better education. Education
in this country is free or nearly so for the poor. There's
\_ Only if you're smart. Dumbasses like Bush have family
money, so they can go to increasingly expensive schools.
However, bright, but not genius, poor kids are getting
priced out. And there are a lot of other disadvantages
to being born poor, such as crappy public schools which
neither prepare you for nor steer you toward good 4-year
degree programs.
no excuse to not have at least a 4 year degree, yet if you
keep digging deeper, you'll find (no big shock) that the bulk
of the poorest of the poor didn't graduate highschool. Is
that the fault of the rich? I'm sure you'll make some
argument to that effect.
\_ So... you just want his money, because he has more than you?
Got it.
\_ Actually, what this guy is saying, is that since this rich
guy already has all these assets, he has an advantage in
sqeezing more money out of the rest of us. It's like M$,
market dominance leads to the ability to force people to pay
what you want them to pay. Taxation seems like a reasonable
way to me to keep wealth from turning into hereditary
aristocracies dominating all wealth in the US.
\_ bingo. there's clearly a point at which wealth goes beyond
wealth. Billionaire empires would grow faster than the
general economy and more and more power gets concentrated
into the hands of a few. There's no injustice in putting
huge taxes on inheritances and incomes that are beyond the
pale. These are huge sums at just the tiniest top fraction
of people.
\_ So, I ask again, at what point do you put that 100% tax
rate? How much is too much? How much are we 'allowed' to
own in your little communist utopia?
\_ What 100%? I merely defend the principle of progressive
income tax, inheritance taxes, etc. Call it whatever
you want, I don't give a shit.
\_ We already have all that. Now what? It obviously
isn't having the desired effect for you. When the
tax rates were even higher the rich were still, you
know, rich. The only way to make the highly driven
and educated *not* be rich is a 100% tax. All that
will do is drive them to another country with a
realistic tax rate that allows them to be rewarded
for being smarter than the rest of us.
\_ So it's either black or white with you? Either we're
free market capitalists or we're pinko commies? Way to
use your noodle, dude.
\_ I answer this above. When the tax rates were higher
than now the rich were still rich. If you want them
to not be rich the only way is to have a 100% rate.
So, yes, I'm not only 'using my noodle' but I have
correctly applied it to the communist point and
spent the 2 seconds thought required to figure out
the necessary tax rate to achieve the desired effect.
\_ well, no, but I really think I could have better use of money
than him. For example I could have bought 3 hybrid cars instead
of his stupid Hummer.
\_ Not true; the tax credit for rich Hummer owners is far more
lucrative than anything you'll get in your battery rocket.
\_ I really don't understand how this tax shelter still survives.
\_ I really think I could have better use of money than you.
Gimme all your money!
\_ I'll be glad to! Just forward your bank account information
to my business partner in Nigeria and I'll hook you up.
\_ They are priced fairly. If they were not, then they would go
unrented.
\_ ah, and if by raising the Bay Bridge toll to $10 and you
still get just as many bridge payers, then it is still
priced fairly? Some things are called inelastic supply and
and demand, my little cricket.
\_ Yes because there are other options to cross the bridge.
There is bart, car pooling, going around, or getting a
job that doesn't require bridge crossing. If the bridge
toll went to $10 and the same number of people continued
to cross it then yes it is still priced fairly. If
bridge use declines, as expected, but only slightly while
BART use goes up then yes it is still priced fairly.
\_ Housing isn't one of them. Move from Westwood and
rents will be cheaper. My gf lived in Westwood
because she liked it better than Mar Vista or Palms.
She paid more for the privilege. She could've lived
somewhere else cheaper.
\_ There is inelastic supply and elastic supply.
Over the long term, traffic patterns will definately change.
I already cringe the few times I have to cross the GGB.
I'd never go across it if they raised it to $10. -rollee
\_ You would cross it at $50 if there was something
worth more than $50 to you at the other end.
\_ Also if one or a few landlords own most of the land in an
area, monopoly or oligopoly effects prevent fair prices.
\_ This is not true in Westwood. If you think it is
overpriced then move to Santa Monica, Bel Air, Brentwood,
WeHo, Inglewood, or wherever you think rents are fair.
\_ Santa Monica is very very very expensive.
Bel Air is mostly houses owned by the rich, and they
hate students. Brentwood rarely rents out to students.
Marina Del Ray rent is like NYC rent. Actually, Westwood
is pretty cheap compared to these places I mentioned. Now,
Inglewood, that's a much more affordable place.
\_ Brentwood's not expensive if you know where to look.
Same with Santa Monica. -- ilyas
\_ Isn't Santa Monica still under rent control? --rollee
\_ Don't know. Santa Monica is like "Berkeley South"
in most respects. -- ilyas
Do you have a car? Have you driven to Santa Monica, say, -/
near the beach? Have you shopped around? Rent there is
$100-$200 more than Westwood for studios and 1 bdrms.
If SM were indeed cheaper, there would be more students
living there, but the fact of the matter is that SM
residents are mostly young fresh grad, 20-30 something. A
better parallel is that SM is more like Emeryville.
\_ So what you're saying is the Westwood rents are still quite
fair since they're cheaper than anything else around.
Thanks for clarifying.
\_ As an aside, one good argument I've heard for high taxes is that
money corrupts the democratic process. So keeping people from
amassing large amounts of wealth is important to provide each
person an equal voice. You may argue that the solution to the
problem of money in government could be solved by anti-corruption
laws, but history seems to show otherwise. For example, look at
all the corporations contributing hundreds of thousands of
dollars to throw parties for politicians at the convention in
Boston. I think Kennedey has a party with a price tag > $100K
paid for by companies with bills pending before his committee.
\_ There will always be enough money around to corrupt politics.
You can't fight human nature with tax laws. Having a super high
tax for the purpose of avoid political corruption by sucking the
life out of people seems silly to me. It's as if you're saying
most rich people do nothing with their wealth but buy politicians
which oh nevermind, it's just silly.
\_ I respectfully disagree. The few elites know how to allocate
wealth better than the poor. I'd rather have the rich people
control money so that they can contribute to the Ghetty Museum,
Metropolitan Opera, Gates Hall, Rockefeller Funding, Carneghie
Scholarships, and things. If you had allocated the same amount
of money to the poor, they'd squander it on alcohol, plasma TV
and football fields.
\_ yeah, but who'd build the plasma TV's, the football fields,
and the distillerys?
\_ You're all a bunch of fucking communists. Go find a time
machine and move to the Soviet Union.
\_ Haven't you guys followed the stock market and financial news?
Haven't you seen news about Enron, Worldcom, Tyco, LTCM bailout,
Stern's market timing, etc.? You don't think those are just
the tip of the iceberg? Wake up! They are raping your arse,
and you are saying "thank you! it's lovely! do it again!"
And the idiots above are saying, "Hey! don't worry, some day
you can get rich too and join us in screwing little people."
\_ It's the great American hesitation: wait, if I make it hard for
rich people to screw the little guy, then how will I screw the
little guy when I win the lottery? Keep them hoping, and
they'll do their best to stay out of trouble and maintain the
status quo. |
| 2004/6/4 [Finance/Banking, Finance/Investment] UID:30604 Activity:very high |
6/4 I'm not sure I can handle 4 more years of this sort of mishandling
of the economy:
http://quote.bloomberg.com/apps/news?pid=71000001&refer=home&sid=a_I6S1CQ9YE8
http://news.myway.com/top/article/id/44113|top|06-04-2004::08:45|reuters.html
\_ Does anyone know if they succeeded in recategorizing burger flipping
jobs as manufacturing?
\_ Do you have anything that says these aren't real jobs? No, you
don't. You're just a hater and wish the whole country would
take a huge dive solely for the purpose of getting your guy in
office. You put your party above the country and you suck.
\_ Wow. Would you compare a $5.50/hr job at McDs favorably with
a $35k/yr+benefits manufacturing job? If you can honestly
say yes, you're an idiot. Also, reread what I asked. This
was an actual proposal from BLS. I asked if it had gone
through. Cut it with the knee-jerking.
\_ Do you have a single thing that says the new jobs are
$5.5/hr jobs? The rest is a red herring.
\_ Did I say I did? I asked a question which was directly
related, and you proceeded to spew. One of the main
points in the report were that manufacturing gains were
strong. If that proposal became policy, this could
have a direct impact to the discussion, but as you don't
have an answer to my question, stick a cork in it.
\_ More McJobs! Greater rich-poor gap! Quick, pretend Iraq didn't
happen!
\_ McJobs? You have something that says these aren't real jobs or
you're just mouthing off like the partisan hack that you are?
\_ Yeah, let's get those jobs based on nothing that we had 5 years
ago.
\_ We need a strong president who will keep the economy and
job market from changing!
\_ More stable unjobs!
\_ Economic policies take years to have any effect. The economy for the
past few years has been fueled by debt, especially with mortgage refinancing
being a major factor in freeing up money. I personally don't blame
Bush for the crummy economy and I think it's disingenous to do so.
But I think it's naive to assume it was his handling that
helped or that his current policy won't be destabilizing in the future.
Also note that the government has expanded since 9/11 and government
expansion tends to help the economy.
--jeffwong
\_ Economic policies take years to have any effect. The economy for
the past few years has been fueled by debt, especially with
mortgage refinancing being a major factor in freeing up money. I
personally don't blame Bush for the crummy economy and I think it's
disingenous to do so. But I think it's naive to assume it was his
handling that helped or that his current policy won't be
destabilizing in the future. Also note that the government has
expanded since 9/11 and government expansion tends to help the
economy. --jeffwong [formatd]
\_ Oh, come on! Don't bring reality into this. We all know that
President have little to do with the economic ups and downs of
their term in office but we need this so we can say how Clinton
was great and Bush sucks. |
| 2004/5/4 [Politics/Domestic/Election, Finance/Investment] UID:30001 Activity:high 88%like:29992 |
5/4 Economy up, Kerry doomed:
http://tinyurl.com/2jloj (sfgate.com)
\_ Yeah, but Bush is a corrupt asshole. I'd vote for an inanimate
carbon rod over Bush.
\_ Did you actually get to SEE the rod?
\_ In rod we trust.
\_ Is that why Bush's numbers keep dropping?
\_ No, that's the effect of the Communist Media.
\_ http://www.forbes.com/markets/newswire/2004/05/04/rtr1358052.html
\_ Wow, the economy is picking up after hundreds of billions of
dollars of stimulus and 2 wars. But we're turning into a nation
of burger flippers/Walmart employees and rich CEOs with no one in
between. |
| 2004/4/30-5/1 [Finance/Investment] UID:13500 Activity:high |
4/30 Other than making the current shareholders rich, why is Google
making an IPO? What will they do with the money so raised to
make money?
\_ The "other" is a bigdeal. The original investors want liquidity,
as do many of the employees.
\_ Money allows them to take more risks (inovation) than they can
now. It also, if they use it correctly, minimializes the impact
of a bad economy or a business downturn against their core
company.
\_ I haven't really been reading up on this since I'm too
poor to buy any stocks, but how are they going to go
public and take more risks?
\_ They have to do public reporting now so they might as well get the
benefits of being public. |
| 2004/4/30-5/1 [Finance/Investment] UID:13493 Activity:high |
4/30 Is Google stock for sale yet? What's the ticker symbol?
\_ Try reading one of the bazillion articles on the Net. SJ Merc has
at least four in the paper today.
\_ You have no business investing in anything risky. Go buy a CD.
\_ No. |
| 2004/4/13 [Finance/Investment] UID:13167 Activity:high |
4/13 You know things are bad when Mr. Greenspan start acting like
a mortgage saleman asking americans to go for ARM intead
of FIXED.
\_ Care to elaborate for us non-economists?
\_ This guy's referring to an article that was motd'd recently.
In that article, they point out
that Greenspan knows that the whole recovery is being fueled
by consumer debt spending, which is fueled by consumers taking
equity out of their house. But most everyone's refinanced
already to fixed--and so the recovery is jeapordized. If
Greenspan can get the consumer to refinance again--to an ARM,
they'll have more money to spend. And they will--Americans
being the dumb "must have what I want NOW" fools that we are.
\_ So if you switched to an ARM, you'd have lower mortgage
payments in the short term, so more spending money, but then
you get screwed in a year or two when interest rates go back
up. Is that it?
\_ Yes.
\_ The main thing is why greenspan feels the need to get
involve with this, which is really weird. shows
that he is not confident in the recovery at all.
\_ Fed Chairman's job is not to feel confident about
anything or to project his own confidence to the
country. His job is to try to keep the economy in
a good shape.
\_ yea, but encouraging people to go for another
refinance from fixed to arm makes him look
desperate, and make things look dire. Is
the economy really that bad? |
| 2004/4/11-12 [Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Investment] UID:13135 Activity:nil |
4/11 Housing Bubble about to burst?
http://www.washingtonmonthly.com/features/2004/0404.wallace-wells.html
\_ I can hardly see how it wouldn't burst, sometime. I had the
same kind a quesy feeling in the 2 years preceeding the
dor-crash. Everyone says that housing prices never crash, they
just stagnate, but... what, are they gonna stagnate for the
next 30 years? That's just a protracted crash.
\_ The market crashed about 15 years ago. It didn't stay down
very long. If it falls then I am going to buy a second home.
Don't let Chicken Little keep you from your goals. I know
people who have bought high and low both - and in all cases
they came out way, way ahead in the long term. In a place
like CA this will always be the case.
\_ Crash? No. It's called an economic cycle but overall in the mid
and long term no one has ever lost money on real estate. |
| 2004/3/18-19 [Finance/Investment] UID:12747 Activity:moderate |
3/18 I flipped open my WSJ today and there are two articles on the
front page, one saying that commodity prices are shooting
through the roof, the other saying that asian countries may
be slowly diverting their trade surplus investment from US
treasuries to their own economies. Does that mean inflation
is coming and interest rates will be rising?
\_ I dunno. If you do, you could be the next Soros. But I think
it is a pretty safe bet that interest rates will be rising
sooner or later.
\_ It's not enought just to know that inflation is coming.
You also need to know how to make money off that.
\_ If you think bond interest rates will rise, you could
short bonds. If you're wrong, you're screwed, of course.
If you think there will be inflation, buy some stable
commodity's futures on margin.
\_ Soros is a scumbag.
\_ Mmmm.. unsolicited insult. Go motd.
\_ unsolicited? since when are insults ever solicited?
you are a fucking idiot. you managed to solicit an
insult with your incredible stupidity.
\_ I will explain. You tossed a pointless statement
into a discussion with nothing to tie it in. Do
you like being ineffective? Or do you just like to
rant? Maybe Tourette's?
\_ fuck you! -motd
\_ Done. -yermom
\_ just because he tossed millions to http://moveon.org to create
negative ads about President Bush...
\_ no because he made billions destroying economies.
\_ what soros did to se asia economies was fantastic.
force those economies to become more transparent
and less corrupt. - se asian
\_ hahaha yes how ethical of him to grab a few
billion along the way. im sure he did it for the
children.
\_ nothing unethical about it. if it's un-
ethical, then all traders and the whole
free market system is unethical.
\_ someone is going to do it
\_ the biggest US treasury bond holders are Japan and China. If they
stop buying US assets, the US will run out of money. The only
way to seduce (for lack of better word) investment back in US
would be to raise the interest rate, but this would come at the
cost of the domestic economy, and everyone who has to pay off their
loan either in mortgage or credit card. It really comes down to
whether foreigners continue to "lend" to us. (Of course, this
excludes the political and military chips we have which no one
else in this world has).
\_ raising interest rates will have *zero* effect on current
mortgage holders or most CC holders who have locked in rates.
so you think japan is going to do what? invest in their own
zero rate bonds? go to the EU? China is going to do the same?
very nutty.... i love the motd. some of the most pompus are
the least informed but don't let that stop you.
the least informed but don't let that stop you.
\_ Most CC holders have locked in rates???
\_ yea but I have noticed that in the past, people have been
getting 30 or 15 year fixed but these few years, it
seems that everyone I asked has been getting 5-year
ARM so they may very well get hit if interest rate goes
up. As for Japan and China, they may use the money to
bail out their debt-laden banks, which is one way
to invest in their local economies.
\_ anyone who gets an ARM when fixed interest rates are
\_ the problem is if things turn bad, it's going
to hurt the whole economy.
below 6% is a fucking moron who gets what he deserves.
\_ do you understand that an ARM doesn't instantly go up?
a 5 year arm is rate locked for (guess what?) 5 years.
after that the rate is allowed to rise a small amount
every year until it hits a maximum amount which is not
allowed to be too far above current rates. people getting
5 year arms are either selling in the next 5-7 years, are
putting the money saved back into the loan which will
dramatically reduce the total cost over term or are
blazingly stupid. As for J/C, their banks should *not*
be saved. Especially in Japan, there is a direct link
between their multiple attempts to waste money trying to
save their inefficient and poorly run banks and their
current dismal economy which has been in the dumps for
more than 10 years.
\_ there are many ways to "save" the banks. even
if you do it the right way (like in the US S&L
bailout), it requires money, money potentially
diverted from US treasuries purchases. As for
5 year ARMS, many people are already a few years
into it, and the interest rate can go up by
like 2.5% at the 5 year juncture which is a 50%
jump if the rate is originally 5%. Many
people are stretching thin on mortages, buying
bigger houses than they should, thinking
that housing price will increase and they can
just sell and make a profit after 5 years.
We saw plenty of "blazingly stupid" behavior
during the internet bubble, so I am not
surprised at all.
\_ if they're a few years into an ARM, they can get
\_ ARMs were not very popular, but are getting
more popular. http://www.dqnews.com
a fixed-rate mortgage at probably the same rate
they're already paying, so they should refinance.
Do you have any documentation of the idea that
there's a huge glut of stupid ARM holders? -tom
\_ ARMs were not very popular, but are getting
more popular. http://www.dqnews.com |
| 2004/3/12 [Finance/Investment] UID:29867 Activity:nil 75%like:12636 |
3/12 What's the best/cheapest online breakfast these days?
\_ freetrade offers 20 free tacos per month.
\_ I use scottrade, which is cost effective if you don't trade often.
But if you trade more than twice and less than seven times a month,
I have a co-worker who started using sharebuilder for a flat monthly
fee.
\_ OByermom
\_ I've been using Ameritrade for some time. I don't know if they
are the cheapest but I've never had problems with them and they
provide an acct exec for people with more that $50k so that you
have someone to talk to if there are any issues with your acct.
\_ I use both scottrade and ameritrade (datek was bought out).
advantages of scottrade:
* lower commission for market trades
* low key branch offices where you can deal with real people
if the need arises (mine have 3 persons there), and you can
call them instead of some anonymous call center.
advantages of ameritrade:
* lower commission for limit trades
* shorting works (shorting at scottrade always results in
a message saying "please call your branch office",
and sometimes they can't get the shares I want even
when I call them.
* extended hours trading |
| 2004/3/12-13 [Finance/Investment] UID:12644 Activity:nil |
3/12 Ugh! Why is the online broker thread deleted?! Stop being a
selfish self-important asshole!
Recommendation on online brokers -
\_ I use both scottrade and ameritrade (datek was bought out).
advantages of scottrade:
* lower commission for market trades
* low key branch offices where you can deal with real people
if the need arises (mine have 3 persons there), and you can
call them instead of some anonymous call center.
advantages of ameritrade:
* lower commission for limit trades
* shorting works (shorting at scottrade always results in
a message saying "please call your branch office",
and sometimes they can't get the shares I want even
when I call them.
* extended hours trading |
| 2004/3/12 [Finance/Investment] UID:12636 Activity:nil 75%like:29867 |
3/12 What's the best/cheapest online brokerage these days?
\_ freetrade offers 20 free trades per month.
\_ I use scottrade, which is cost effective if you don't trade often.
But if you trade more than twice and less than seven times a month,
I have a co-worker who started using sharebuilder for a flat monthly
fee.
\_ OByermom
\_ I've been using Ameritrade for some time. I don't know if they
are the cheapest but I've never had problems with them and they
provide an acct exec for people with more that $50k so that you
have someone to talk to if there are any issues with your acct. |
| 2004/2/26 [Finance/Investment] UID:29833 Activity:very high |
2/26 motd stock tip of the day: AUO
taiwan LCD panel maker
\_ Great. The motd is now the new vehicle for anonymous pump-and-
dump.
\_ I am still holding onto my EMRG and hoping that it goes back
\_ Its on the NASDAQ. Go post there if you care.
to where I bought it. I was just kidding about mortgaging the
house though. I only bought 100 shares. |
| 2004/2/26 [Finance/Investment] UID:12417 Activity:high |
02/26 Just curious: How many people on the motd day trade? If so, what
tools, brokers, etc do you use?
\_ ameritrade, level2 quotes and streamer
\_ I get all my tips from the shoeshine boy on the corner. We're
beating the market by 15%!!
\_ Sounds like you should run for Senate instead.
\_ The shoeshine boy is supporting my run. We have a true
gressroots moving starting for the next election cycle. I'm
going to run against Feinstein when her current term ends.
\_ hey, it's Not Even Remotely Funny Anonymous MOTD Comic!
\_ If my average stock hold time is about 3 months, am I an
investor or a trader?
\_ That's speculation, unless you're just really indecicive.
\_ it's more like I find a stock that's cheap and is ready
to wait a year for it to go up, but it goes up fast
really soon, and becomes fully valued, so I dump it.
\_ Bingo. You just described speculation.
\_ really? cool, now I know I am a speculator.
but even for an investor, why would you want
to hold when a stock that was cheap has
become expensive, and is likely to fall back
or stay flat for a long while? to save some
taxes?
\_ The idea is that it will still do well over the long
term and/or pays a good dividend. Long-term
investors don't buy stocks withoug good long-term
prospects. It sounds like you're looking for good
short-term growth without looking at long-term.
\_ Depends, I would say. If you just run tight stops, then
you aren't really a "speculator" you are just an investor
with a low risk tolerance. If your average holding time
is 3 months, but half the stocks in your portfolio have
have been there 2+ yrs, I would call that an investor.
But I guess you might not. Certainly not a "day trader,"
I hope we can both agree.
with a low risk tolerance. You just might churn through
a lot of stocks until you find the ones with a low enough
beta for you. |
| 2004/2/19 [Finance/Banking, Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Investment] UID:29825 Activity:kinda low |
2/19 So I invested my life savings and took out a second mortgage
on my house to buy EMRG, just like the motd told me to. Now
my broker says he is doing something called a "margin
call" and my wife wants a divorce. What should I do?
\_ When there's something strange
In your neighborhood
Who ya gunna call?
\_ that post for EMRG was when it was at $1.60, now it's
at $2.80? learn to take profits.. or never get in after the
runs
\_ You, sir, are an asshat. |
| 2004/2/18-24 [Finance/Investment, Finance/Shopping] UID:12295 Activity:nil |
2/18 Immediate position open for Sr. Systems Engineer (sysadmin)
at http://Walmart.com. If you meet the criteria, please e-mail me.
We've been getting weak resumes from our less-than-technical
recruiter. /csua/pub/jobs/walmart.com -- Marco
\_ Walmart? I'd rather be a janitor at MSFT.
\_ MSFT is far more evil than Walmart.
\_ awww...all that sysadmin talk's gone???
\_ maybe people should start a new thread when they think of some
cool entertaining flame war related to a job post. That will
be less likely to be censored and won't provide a disincentive
for alums to post jobs.
\_ jealousy.
\_ all that salary talk probably made it harder to find a
schmuc^H^H^H^H^H^Hqualified candidate.
\_ Do you know the general pay range for this? 60-80, 80-100, 100+?
\_ Our rates are very competitive. Conservatively, I expect a
qualified candidate would easily clear $80K. -- Marco
\_ How about employee discounts at Wal-Mart stores?
\_ More importantly, how about stock options?
\_ Is this really considered competitive for a senior person?
It looks average, or even a bit below, to me.
\_ It's quite low. Senior Sysadmins should clear 100k at any
company. Mid level people make into the 90s. 80k is
certainly not competitive. A few weeks ago I turned down
110k and another company I'm currently talking with will
be offering me 110k plus other benefits that will make it
worth it to give up my current 120k. At 80k I wouldn't
even consider applying or telling my friends about it if
they were senior level. Then again, so few sysadmins
survive more than 3-5 years that anyone who hits the 5 year
mark is considered senior even though they're only just
becoming useful at that point. It's a strange world we
live in. I've always wondered what happened to the ones
who didn't survive. I suppose they become developers?
--15+ years SA
\_ These numbers are too high for anywhere outside of
Silicon Valley. Also, 15+ yrs. is a huge amount of
experience and would increase your salary over most.
http://sageweb.sage.org/jobs/salary_survey
\_ If you need five years to become a good sysadmin
then you must be pretty dumb. Sysadmin is a support
function, if you design your netopology correctly
your day-to-day is basically just monitoring and
replacing defects. Once a month or so you'll need
to add in more storage or add in a couple more
machines. Again, if you designed your netop correctly
this is a piece of cake. Backups are relatively
easy nowadays with the right RAID. I mean seriously,
I sysadmin EDA software, which is a bitch, and it
didn't take me five years to "become useful."
\_ Sorry, you are just wrong. There are some things
you can only learn by working on a wide variety
of systems. Also, all the senior level jobs
include at least some management.
require at least some management.
-SA with 10 yrs exp
\_ I sense a dick-waving contest coming on...
\_ "They've got bigger dicks? BOMB THEM!" --GC
\_ Someone has to fix the cash registers.
\_ He said "conservatively" and "easily"
\_ Marco, thank you for posting this. No one should ever be
attacked for posting a job on the motd. I never understood
the suicidal "I'm too good for your stinking job!" attitude
so many motd idiots have towards alums posting jobs. This is
part of what is called "networking", you clods. It's *the* best
way to find a new or better job.
\_ I'm talking about a very well paying job doing real
systems work at one of the world's largest ecommerce
operations. If all of the stuff below disturbs you, by
all means, do not send me your resume. If you want a
good job; please let me know. -- Marco
\_ Some people have ethical problems with Walmart.
Some are just fucking with you, and some might want
the job.
\_ That's because sysadmins charge more than $6.80/hr.
\_ in the grand scheme of things when you consider which
companies stand to totally destroy the lower middle class
and lower class income brackets, Walmart is completely satanic
and threatens to lower the quality of life of millions
Americans directly and indirectly. You can say that that's
just the effect of the free market, and I would happen
to agree with you, but it does not make it suck less.
This brings up the question of if I were completely down
on my luck and I was offered a job with something that
I consider Evil(tm), such as Walmart/Microsoft/Halliburton/
Archer Daniels Richland or whatever that ethanol leech
behomoth corporation is named, if I would take it. I'm not
sure.
\_ If you are talking about Walmart squeezing out smaller
companies and offering the newly unemployed low-wage,
non-unionized jobs with few/no health benefits -- you have
a point, but please be more specific next time.
\_ Not that we don't appreciate the job posting, but which is more evil
Walmart or Microsoft?
\_ Is that a joke? I'd say that Microsoft is Evil, they way I might
say an American politician is evil, even though even the worst
American politician is better than Kim Jung Il, and even the
worst software company is better than Walmart.
\_ They're evil for different reasons. Plus as a sysadmin you'd
be more directly helping MS be evil.
\_ There are people who will argue whether the flames are blue or
green, when the point is that their arse is on fire.
\_ Walmart isn't Evil. They can't be evil. They sell Linux
and Linux isn't Evil is it?
\_ They sell Windows too.
\_ Walmart significantly increased the standard of living of the
(under)employed. According to
http://www.heritage.org/Research/Welfare/bg1713.cfm
the "poor" enjoys a lot of amenities in life. In fact they
would be considered middle class or even upper class in coutries
that you are so worried about taking our jobs away. What makes
this possible is the low prices introduced by stores like Walmart.
I don't have any love for walmart, but during the time I was
employed, I got everything from walmart and it kept my expense
down and finance afloat. Most of the people who trashes walmart
are those too rich to know the need of the low income Americans.
\_ that is interesting and i value your opinion, but could
you find more evidence of this not coming from an incredibly
right wing think tank like the Heritage Foundation? I happen
to be from one of those little towns that Wal-Mart has
indirectly completely devestated. You can probably
say "that's because of cheap labor available from China,
quit whining." and once again I agree but it still sucks.
I think there is a direct temporary short term benefit,
like as you said when you're poor it's pretty awesome and
convenient to be able to go to walmart and clothe yourself
almost completely for under $30, but in the long term
the presence of a walmart directly depresses or destroys
the possibility of any local retail jobs that have any
chance of offering a liveable wage. Maybe everyone in
America needs to retrain immediately for jobs in the
New Economy. I have not read of any evidence that
the current or even past presidential administrations
actively care or are offering any leadership in this area.
\_ Bush's job training program is "be a Halliburton
contractor in the front lines in Iraq so when you
get shot and killed we can NOT REPORT it because
you were a civilian non existent contractor but
since you don't go in the 'troops killed' column,
we don't have to tell anyone and the american
public doesn't and won't care.
[reformatted - formatd]
\_ Bosnia, Somalia, Haiti, etc weren't exactly great job
creation plans. People die in war zones, shit happens.
They get hazard pay.
Also to endlessly argue that the very poor in this country
are much better off than say arsenic poisoned homeless
dudes in Bangladesh or entire generations of people who
live in garbage dumps in Manila and never see solid land
is a circular argument, it's not going to win me over.
\_ Whatever you think of its source and author, you should
consider its facts and arguments in their own rights.
The data that article cites comes from US govt reports.
See the article and its references. And let me just quote
"The average poor American has more living space than the
average individual living in Paris, London, Vienna, Athens,
and other cities throughout Europe. (These comparisons are
to the average citizens in foreign countries, not to those
classified as poor.)"
\_ Living space != standard of living. If it did, we'd be
sending food and blankets to the Japanese.
\_ It's part of the whole picture. And the average
japanese are miserable in that regard.
\_ does living space automatically equate to a higher
standard of living? Mongolian steppe herders
probably have spaces the size of Delaware all to
themselves.
\_ see above, and your comparison is not valid. You know
how much tent space per person they have?
\_ I don't think living density in this country is going to
approach japanese or european or southeast asian or
chinese levels any time soon unless we suddenly run
out of oil, we have pretty hard to overcome urban
sprawl problems, that ironically walmart has
exploited very successfully.
\_ Japan: 127,214,499 ppl in 374,744 sq km.
USA: 290,342,554 ppl in 9,158,960 sq km
Or roughly half as many people in 1/24th the space.
The US will never achieve this level of pop density.
\_ does the above include (or exclude?) areas
of the US you're not going to live in, like
national parks or volcanoes or the sides
of mountains or Houston?
\_ Of course, as well as huge chunks of Hokkaido
and numerous inhospitable rocks in dispute with
Russia.
\_ None may enter the sacred forests of Hokkaido,
reknowned for their countless soap factories.
\_ So why support a company that makes billions by rapidly
furthering us towards a great equalization of global poor people
by lowering the standard of living of poor people in the US to
India's poor? Is that how globalization is supposed to work?
Great! Actually no one is really saying how much they
love Walmart, and I bet they just pave over all the poor
people at Marco's work and he has little concept of it and
is probably a nice guy. I know a couple of people who work
at Chevron-Texaco and they had absolutely NO IDEA why people
would keep 'blocking the main road to campus' or protesting
or giving them mean looks when they went to work in San Ramon.
I mean, come on, they have college degrees from UCB but
they choose to be really stupid. I answer their evite
party invites with NO BLOOD FOR OIL!!!!!!!!!!!!!!!
\_ Well, Walmart sells cheap stuff.
\_ Now you see many of the so called "liberals" are haters.
\_ what is this "so called" stuff? I AM a liberal
and damn fucking proud of it, ok not proud enough
to sign my name today, check back later. I notice
none of today's posters are sufficiently walmart
loving or frothing at the mouth, what happened to
free market guy? or free republic guy? on vacation?
\_ And what about Chicom troll? You'd think cct would have
a (painfully incoherent) opinion about all of this.
\_ Has it occurred to you that Marco's giving a
"conservative estimate," such that he sets an
appropriate expectation, and such that he isn't
brokering a salary negotiation? I'm pretty sure
http://Walmart.com will pay market for you superstars out
there. --chris
\_ I said "average" or "below". |
| 2004/2/18 [Finance/Investment] UID:12294 Activity:high |
2/18 Hey, ICGE guy! Where's the movement?
\_ Last Trade: 0.39
Trade Time: 2:57PM ET
Change: Down 0.01 (2.50%)
Day's Range: 0.39 - 0.4
52wk Range: 0.26 - 0.96
Volume: 31,576,090
Avg Vol (3m): 39,417,181
So nothing happened at all. -- !icge guy
\_ earnings announcement is premarket Thursday |
| 2004/2/17 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:29811 Activity:high |
2/17 stock tip: ICGE to be debt free before bell thursday.
get in tomorrow.. at .43.. will be at .80 by thursday
\_ Insider information?
\_ no.. but 7 insider buys today
\_ It must be a pump-and-dump stock
\_ This guy is trying to cash-in his stock options.
\_ I get spam pumping this stock all the time. Why am I
seeing this pump and dump crap on the motd? |
| 2004/2/3-4 [Finance/Investment] UID:12095 Activity:nil |
2/3 Random economics question: So the dollar keeps getting hammered.
Eventually, as I recall dimly from Econ 1 ages ago, this can cause
Real Bad Stuff to happen. When does this bad stuff kick in, and how?
And what is it?
\_ It depends on how fast it declines. If it happens fast then you
get things like a run on the banks and then we're all fucked. If
it happens slowly enough then you get a shift from imports to
exports, some jobs move around, good for some, bad for others.
\_ This is a big question and the answer is not universally
agreed upon. But some of it is already kicking in, in the
higher prices for oil and other imported goods. If it leads
to asset flight, the effects would be much stronger: falling
stock markets, raised interest rates and falling real
estate prices. Right now, the Japanese govt is propping
up the US dollar to the tune of $90B/mo, yes that is
$1T/yr at the current rate. Who knows how long this
can last.
\_ I thought it was China.
\_ http://business-times.asia1.com.sg/story/0,4567,106947,00.html
This article says 7T Yen last month, or about $65B.
China is also buying up US bonds, dunno how much.
\_ if oil is going up how come my gas prices are going down?
\_ You sure about that?
link:csua.org/u/5tu
(LA Times)
\_ Yes. I don't pay the LA Times to tell me what my gas
prices are. I see my CC statement every month and the
numbers posted all over Bay Area gas stations. |
| 2004/1/20 [Reference/Tax, Finance/Investment] UID:11848 Activity:very high |
1/20 What do you liberals think of the following: a big chunk of the state
budget is in pension funds for gov't employees. How about we stop
new enrollment in these state run funds for new govt employees and
offer 401K plan instead? Also give incentives for current employees
to convert to 401K. The idea is to scale back govt run programs.
Empower each individual to think about his/her own retirement and let
them manage their own retirement money instead of asking the govt
to take care of this. We can grandfather the program and keep
everything the same for current employees to keep them happy. But the
new teachers or prison guards or other civil service workers will
only have 401K instead. "Ask not what your country can do for you,
but what you can do for your country."
\_ Out of curiousity, can anyone speak to the tax incentives for a
business for setting up a pension fund versus a matching 401k?
Or give me a pointer for where I might read up on this. I've
been curious about the widespread disappearance of pensions.
-scotsmaan
\_ Imagine it was this: "A big chunk of the company budget is in the
pension plan. How about we stop offering a pension and in stead
offer them a 401K. Also encourage everyone in the pension to convert
to a 401K. The idea is to get the pension plan off the books."
I guess I don't know how I feel about this. What kind of
'encouragement' will you give current and former employees to switch?
The fact that the state, as an employer runs a pension for its
employees doesn't really seem overly socialist, just standard
business practice.
\_ Imagine? Those of us with jobs don't have to imagine. What
universe do you work in where people still get pensions? Most of
us don't even get 401k matching. And more importantly, how do I
get a ticket to your universe?? Why should government employees
get special benefits the working stiffs don't? Imagine that.
The obvious method of conversion is offering 401k matching. It
is what the rest of us get (if we're lucky). Pensions are not
standard business practice anymore. Not for a long time.
\_ that's because "standard business practice" is "fuck the
employees"
The fact that the state, as an employer
\_ Get a better job. My mom's company has both a pension and
a 401(k) (which they match 6%). My gf's company has both
a pension and a 403(b) (but no matching). Neither work
for the government in any way, shape, or form.
\_ Many govt. employees (like myself) are paid much less than
private sector salaries, live in constant fear of being laid
off due to the current fiscal crises, never get bonuses or
stock options, and do not get raises when there's a deficit.
It's quite a trade-off.
\- you dont have a 403b? i dont think the working
conditions at say the port of oakland is the same
at say lbl or ucb. --psb
\_ You think people out here don't have the same fears? Our
fears are much much much greater than yours. There have
been *millions* of jobs lost in the last few years alone
in industry. How many government jobs in the same time?
Industry jobs can even go poof during good times. And
I've yet to receive a single penny of bonuses, an option
worth more than the paper it was on, and it's been a long
time since anyone has seen a raise. You get raises in
good times, eh? Most of us only get raises by quitting
and finding a new job. I've done government work. You
basically don't. I have very little sympathy.
\_ If you're looking for ways to solve the current budget crisis, how
about demanding the billions owed to us by the energy industry?
\_ It's in court. |
| 2004/1/9 [Finance/Investment] UID:11723 Activity:nil |
1/9 Ultra leftist Warren Buffet hates America:
http://www.pbs.org/wsw/news/fortunearticle_20031026_03.html |
| 2004/1/7-8 [Industry/Startup, Finance/Investment] UID:11707 Activity:nil |
1/7 thanks guy who recommened EMRG at .60 (now at 3.90) and ICGE!
\_ Damn, I never got that notice. Be louder next time!
\_ $1.7 million in cash, lost $2 million in the quarter ended 9/30
on revenues of $254K. My advice is to take your profit, fast. -tom
\_ I heard on wall that pepsi was the place to invest my life
savings.
\_ no, you didn't. -tom
\_ sure I did. It was at about 48.5 at the time. CNNfn
says it's now at 46.44, down .50 since opening. I'll bet
the wall logs say who came up with this winner.... heh.
\_ I think PEP is a fine company to own. It's certainly
not "the place to invest your life savings." If your
time horizon on stock performance is 2 weeks, it's not
a stock for you. -tom
\_ and now look at SCOX! 1.09 a year ago and now 17! |
| 2003/12/27 [Finance/Investment] UID:11597 Activity:high |
12/26 If the economy is so bad, how come NASDAQ has gone from 1300 to
nearly 2000 in less than 1 year?
\_ Little do you know that you're still losing money. The USD
has gone down against every other major currency.
\_ LOL I'm not going to denominate my NASDAQ earnings in
Euro.
\_ Lots of markets around the globe beat NASDAQ handily,
partly due to the sinking dollar, and they still seem
more reasonably valued than the NASDAQ. Your loss
my gain. Hopefully the dollar's decline is gradual and
under control, without any panic setting in. Otherwise,
the NASDAQ may crash like in 1987.
\_ Bullshit. Name the foreign markets you're investing in.
\_ Japan, India, China and satellites, Eastern Europe
and Russia. US was a good investment back in
Oct02 and Mar03, but less so now, but I still
have some US stocks. Feel free to compare charts
of Nasdaq vs MJFOX (Japan fund), IFN (India fund),
EUROX (Eastern Europe / Russia fund),
MAPTX (Asia Pacific ex Japan fund), TGLDX (gold
and precious metals fund) or BHP (commodity proxy).
\_ I didn't ask you to look at http://cnnfn.com and find
indexes that have done better. I want to know what
you're invested in. You are *not* invested in 6
different foreign markets including gold funds since
10/2.
\_ I have all of the above. And no,
I didn't have all of them since 10/2. I was
more heavily weighted in US before the middle of
\_ Why not? I have all of the above. And no,
this year (Nasdaq had better valuation
then and did relatively better first half of
this year compared to many of the above funds,
etc., but relatively worse in the past few
months). Again check the charts.
\_ This is another investor who pulled most of my
money out of the US 18 months ago. My money
is in EWG (Germany), EWZ (Brazil), ETINX (E*Trade
International Fund), HMC (Honda), QQQ (Nasdaq 100),
STZ (Australian Beer Maker), TTF (Thai Fund), EWH
(Hong Kong), EWH (Singapore), EWJ (Japan) and ASL
(South African Gold producer). All have beaten the
S&P 500. My 401k is 50% OARIX. And yes, I pulled
my money out because of the Administration's
have some US stocks.
I didn't have them since 10/2. I was more
heavily weighted in US before the middle of
this year (Nasdaq had better valuation
then and did relatively better compared
to many of the above funds, etc., but
relatively worse in the past few months).
policies.
\_ Cause stocks were cheap back in Oct02 and Mar03, and there
were few other places to put your money. Also, because the
stock market is good at predicting the future, and it likes
Bush Jr's stimulation plan, at least in the short term. But
the guy above is right about US dollar's decline. It may
lead to inflation soon. There is already a hidden inflation
in terms of high housing, metals and commodity prices.
Inflation in prices of everyday good may follow soon.
\_ Here's why you don't get your economic advice from the motd.
The dollar's decline and every other economic indicator is
pointing to DEflation, *not* INflation. Sheesh. Inflation has
never been lower in your young life. If it rises a few points
it will still be lower than it has been in many years.
\_ Nah, dollar decline implies foreign goods and commodities
become more expensive implies inflation. Other factors
such as productivity gains, cwappy economy, china are
mitigating the effects of inflation so far, but it is not
due to the declining dollar. Inflation is not a good
thing, but it is bearable in a booming economy. What you
\_ It seems that in addition to econ 101, you need
logic 101.
\_ This only works if US consumers respond to the
increased price of foreign goods and therefore
buy less. This has not worked in the auto market,
I am not sure it will in other markets either.
don't want is a cwappy economy combined with inflation.
You need to retake economic 101.
don't want is a cwappy economy combined with inflation.
You need to retake econ 101.
\_ No, no, no, a declining dollar makes our goods and services
cheaper for foreigners to buy and increases exports so it
is cheaper to hire American workers which makes more money
flow through our economy instead of our welfare system and
brings foreign investment here as well which has the same
effect. You need to retake econ P.
\_ It seems that in addition to econ 101, you need
logic 101.
\_ This only works if US consumers respond to the
increased price of foreign goods and therefore
buy less. This has not worked in the auto market,
I am not sure it will in other markets either.
\_ Here is my question, as I am worried. We (USA) is relying on
foreign money for financing our account (trade) deficit as well
as budget deficit. If the dollar continue to tank, that means
at some point, these foreign governments will stop buying
dollar (there is no point to buy a current which is constantly
decline in value, as it means losing money). Once they doing that
we will be forced to raise long term interest rate to attract
more foreign influx of currencies. That would kill off the
economic recovery which my job is depend upon.
This sounds like a dooms day scenario, I am pretty sure I am
wrong. But, where is the fault my logic?
they've learned Engrish, and deserve the rewards they get.
\_ Sorry, sir, but your grammar is flawed. No job for you.
\_ The flaw in your logic is fundamental. You have taken the time
to learn something about economics, and presumably computer
science at this great institution, but never bothered to learn
how tense and number are used in the English language. Of these
three skills: economics, technical computer skills, and
English language communication skills, which do you think is
most likely to help you keep your job? Or get a new job?
or build a business that creates new jobs in America?
My contempt for you is not xenophobia. There vast numbers of
people who somehow manage to operate profesionally in a language
that is not their native language. Those people work harder and
are more people oriented than those who choose to give up once
they've learned Engrish, and deserve the rewards they get.
\_ Sorry, sir, but your grammar is flawed. No job for you.
\_ "There vast numbers of" stuck right out. The flaw in your
grammar is fundamental. (hah!)
\_ Ok, now here is someone with a clue even if he doesn't know it
unlike Mr. "the sky is falling" Inflation Monger above. Yes,
this is a very real thing to be concerned with. One possibility
is that as the European economies continue to slide and crash
and ours continues to pull out of it, the USD will look like a
huge bargain. Then you'll see the Euro crash and the dollar
rise. Then the worry is that if it rises too fast our exports
will suffer and there'll be even more reason to outsource to
the third world.
\_ That's my hope too, but why would foreigners want the
dollar? Stocks are already fully valued, treasuries
pay a pittance. There are better investments elsewhere.
US dollars in asian governments' hands, the stake
Big budget and trade deficits don't help. High
government (federal and state), corporate and personal
US dollars in asian government hands, the stake
debt levels don't help either. Neither does the
out-sourcing trend and unemployment. On the plus side
it is in many of the foreign goverments' interest to
let the dollar slide gradually and not in a panic, so
they continue to buy some dollar, and pray that the
falling dollar will improve US competitiveness and
then its economy. This presents an opportunity
to make some profit off the falling dollar, or at
least not let it hit you on the head.
- inflation monger
\_ certain things such as political stability and military
might seem to be undervalued. US currencies are still
the universal standard in times of crisis.
\_ You are right, but that's about the only thing it
has going for it. Don't exploit a good thing
too much. Besides with like 2 trillion worth of
US dollars in asian governments' hands, the stake
and risk is very high for them. And in times
of crisis, there is always gold, and euro is
now a reasonable alternative.
\_ Except that the EU is the last gasp of the dead
European empires of the past. They're only trying to
regain lost glory. There was a time when almost all
of them had more powerful economies than the US. Now
it takes all of them together to get into that scale
and they're still not making it. Europe will
continue it's slow decline into obscurity until it
one day becomes nothing more than history book
material for American grad students. They're dying
\_ That's my hope too, but why would foreigners want the
dollar? Stocks are already fully valued, treasuries
pay a pittance.
and risk is very high for them. And in times
of crisis, there is always gold, and euro is
now a reasonable alternative.
European empires of the past. They're only trying to
regain lost glory. There was a time when almost all
of them had more powerful economies than the US. Now
it takes all of them together to get into that scale
and they're still not making it. Europe will
continue it's slow decline into obscurity until it
one day becomes nothing more than history book
material for American grad students. They're dying
and they know it. That's hardly a good long term
investment. It's ok for now because what you're
doing is riding up the curve a bit as they improve
effeciency but that's just a blip up on the long
and painful trend downwards.
and they know it. That's hardly a good long term
investment. It's ok for now because what you're
doing is riding up the curve a bit as they improve
effeciency but that's just a blip up on the long
and painful trend downwards.
\_ This is not true. Look at the comparative
performance of any European economy vs.
the US since WWII. Look at GDP/capita
vs. the US in Germany, Norway, Luxemborg, Italy
over the last 20 years. Look at productivity
per hour worked vs the US today. EU has been
long outstripping the US in gains per worker
and continues to do so. The US has gained in
total population, masking this gain, but all
that means is that the US is increasingly a
source of cheap labor.
\_ Heh. It's easy to outstrip US since WWII if
you were starting from a FLAMING WRECK that
was Europe back then. "Fastest growing" is
a crock of an indicator.
\_ I think demographics are working in the
favor of the US in the long run though,
so I agree with you there. The US is
in almost as bad a shape though. I think
it is smart to invest in the economies
that are still going to be growing in
50 years. |
| 2003/12/16 [Finance/Investment] UID:11470 Activity:nil |
12/15 http://money.cnn.com/2003/12/15/technology/jobs/index.htm?cnn=yes \_ so what? why post this link? |
| 2003/12/14-15 [Finance/Banking, Finance/Investment] UID:11453 Activity:low |
12/14 What's the general uptake on the economy in California right now?
Central/Western Europe was complete shit (nothing at all going on),
and increasingly so until about this summer, then sometime in
September/October things just started picking up (projects, jobs,
etc.) It was far more so than the usual fall/spring budgeting cycle,
but rather, as if people just sort of collectively decided to be
sick and tired of doom and gloom--how about the US? -John
\_ Nothing like it here. I still have a number of friends either
out of work or temp'ing it. There's a few more job notices, but
employers seem to be enjoying their scarcity.
\_ seconded.
\_ I know people hiring. Give me their names. -ausman
\_ How bout other areas in the US? It still seems that MS is hiring
quite a bit.
\_ Things are much better than 18 months ago. It will never be like
1999 again.
\_ never? that's bullshit. the boomtime mentality is hardcoded
into the human brain. once people decide it's boomtime, all
history is forgotten and everyone thinks they're going to get
rich. you think the late '90s were the first boom or the
first bubble economy? do you really think it'll be the last?
\_ So my pedantic friend: when do you think the tech economy
is going to "recover" to its 1999 state? That is what the
original question was about.
\_ Fine. I am sure there will be another Tulip Mania or
Internet Bubble again in human history. We will not
be around though.
\_ You're an idiot.
\_ Nice comeback. Did you take rhetoric?
\_ We'll be around, except the next boom will be something
else, either quantum, biotech, nanotech, or something
totally different. don't forget all the nontech booms that
we'll also see.
\_ biotech has already gone through several boom-bust
cycles. regions that depend on natural resources
like mining go thruogh boom bust cycles all the time.
I think my "you're an idiot" comment pretty much
sums up the above post. it's just another one of those
fucking idiots who thinks the entire world starts
and stops with the software industry in the Bay area.
a bumper sticker from my home state (alaska) states
"please god, give us another boom, and this time we
promise not to piss it away."
\_ Sure there are little boomlets all over the world
all the time, but they are not the same as an
economic wide bubble, the way the US stock market
in 1929 or 1999 was. If you think the Dot Com boom
was something that was confined to the Bay Area,
then you are the provinicial fool, my friend.
\_ Japan in the late 80s is at least as big as
the recent US bubble.
\_ i have a quantum pc i can sell you. it's in this
little box, but if you open the box, it breaks.
\_ I recommend John K. Galbraith's A Short History of
Financial Euphoria. Though not his best book, it's a
short, thoroughly entertaining read.
\_ Galbraith is the best author I've never read.
\_ Yea, some would argue there is a big housing bubble right now,
so I guess there is a big boom in housing related jobs. Lots
of people I know recently went into real estate, housing
appraisal, mortgage, etc. There is also a big boom in China,
and some say a big gold and commodity boom coming up soon.
\_ Some would argue therefore it is true? Nonsense.
\_ You are right, a bubble is never a bubble until it bursts.
\_ You revealed the code! Howard Dean is posting on the motd!
\_ http://realtytimes.com/rtcpages/20031208_homevalues.htm
The housing market is doing what it should be doing. It is
cool in the recently hot areas, including SF Bay Area. |
| 2003/12/7 [Finance/Investment, Computer/HW/Drives] UID:11343 Activity:nil 50%like:29695 |
12/6 Can a modern hard disk operate reliably in a garage with the temperature
change that happens when you open the garage door? Like 50 -> 30 deg F.
\_ shouldn't be a problem, i presumed. The internal temperature of
harddrive shouldn't change that drastically. |
| 2003/11/10-11 [Politics/Domestic/911, Finance/Investment] UID:11009 Activity:high |
11/10 American Consumerism: Let us honor the veterans during veteran's
day. let us celebrate by shopping for clothes!
\_ Or better yet, shop for some American Gold Eagle gold coins
from the US mint: http://www.goldinfo.net/gvs.html
\_ Every other important day has been turned into a lame shopping
event. Why not VDay, too? |
| 2003/11/4-5 [Finance/Investment] UID:10938 Activity:nil |
11/4 Serious question for a change. My wife and I are looking at home
births. That is, giving birth at home with the help of midwives and
NO doctors present. The old fashion way I suppose. I'm curious if
any sodans were born this way or gave birth this way. Thanks.
\_ lila was born in a tent. YMMV.
\_ url?
\_ ya whatever, the next thing yer gonna say is her dad was
an alcoholic and her mom was a hooker in some Hick state?
\_ I know several couples who have done the home birthing method,
but I have no personal experience with it (obviously).
Their children were not born with big dents in their
head from someone using tongs to remove them from the
birth canal. Plus the next night you can dump the kiddie
pool of water and afterbirth into the storm drain! - danh
\_ throw it away? them's good eatin'. mmm, afterbirth. -Mama Lion
\_ why would you want to do this? Save hospital costs? Or because
it would be nice to be "old-fashioned"?
\_ If you're doing this because of some wish to be "natural" and/or
"wholistic," then you're an idiot. Any idea why the expected
lifespan of humans continue to increase? Well, the ability of
doctors to save babies' lives, and prevent any harm to birthing
mothers has something to do with it. Don't shun science.
\_ Most women also don't consider the lack of access to an epidural
a good thing either.
\_ doesn't the decision for an epidural have to be made before
the whole process anyway? (e.g. you can't change your mind and
decide on it when in labor already?) I recall seeing some
web pages on "water births" a while back, that might be worth
looking into...
\_ I don't like getting into a shouting match on the motd. But if
you're really interested in the subject read "Reclaiming our health"
by John Robbins and "Spontaneous Healing" by Andrew Weil. It's
a complicated issue. Don't expect to glean a few lines and go
run around attacking other people's position with it. That's
teenage behavior. -OP
\_ glean a few lines? I don't think this word means what you think
it means.
\_ Immaturity? On the motd? I'm shocked.
\_ If you're the kind of person who doesn't keep a spare
tire in the trunk, doesn't make backups of their important
files, runs with scissors, and isn't afraid of heights,
\_ Don't make fun of poor Weird Al
then I guess you'd feel comfortable home birthing too. -ax
\_ Do you also intend to not vaccinate your children?
\_ Fuck you.
\_ Come on, what did you expect from the motd, a rational
discussion without personal attacks? Pshaw. Here's one
vote for just turning the motd off completely. Its boring. |
| 2003/10/30 [Finance/Investment] UID:29598 Activity:very high |
10/29 when you chip, do you:
1) use the same swing but change club to change distance
or
2) use the same club (P/S) but change the swing to change distance
Poll:
1: .
2:
\_ Another poll. Who thinks motd polls about golf are:
Dumb:
Pathetic: .
Both: ...
\_ i felt the guy in Falling Down had the right idea about golf
and golfers.
\_ when I chip I put yermom over the arm of the couch and take her
ass just the way she likes it. how about you? how you do take
yermom's ass?
\_ Whenever possible I chip with my 7 iron with alot of run - this
gives me much more accuracy.
Elevated shots or where an abrupt stop is required use a
wedge. -freeper guy (10 handicap)
wedge. Perhaps you meant pitch rather than chip?
-freeper guy (10 handicap)
\_ golfers deserve no sympathy, ever.
\_ why am i not suprised you are a golfer? could you please
do the world a favor and sterilize yourself? thanks.
\_ hate speech from the left? Who would of thought.
\_ I know what you're thinking. Did he fire six shots
or only five? Well, to tell you the truth, in all this
excitement, I've kinda lost track myself. But being
as this is a .44 Magnum, the most powerful handgun in
the world, and would blow your head clean off, you've
got to ask yourself one question: Do I feel lucky?
Well, do ya punk?
\_ Clint Eastwood plays golf too.
\_ so do 90% of the presidents of US. By the
way the old George Bush really kicked Clinton's
ass in one of the games even though Clinton
said he really really wanted to win. |
| 2003/10/30 [Finance, Finance/Investment] UID:10862 Activity:nil |
10/29 Here it is. Bush in '04. No one cares about anything but the economy:
http://apnews.myway.com/article/20031030/D7UGHGD02.html
\_ Yeah, no one cares about blatant lying, coverups, or botched
invasions. No one cares about America's debt. No one cares about
the rape of the environment or the erosion of our civil liberties.
Not if they can buy more Playstation 2! *sigh* How's Canada these
days?
\_ Nope, they don't, actually. If they cared about any of
those things Clinton wouldn't have been elected the first time.
The economy is the most important thing to voters and to many
voters the only important thing. You're naive and childish if
you think it's about playstations. It's about being able to
raise one's children better than one was raised. Welcome to
the adult world.
\_ so if the nations parks and wild lands have been destroyed
and we're in a constant state of war with the rest of the world
with increased child asthma rates from pollution and
the inability to live safely in our homes without being
randomly detained without trial how exactly do we provide
a better life for our children? Also, if you see how wrong
things are going in this country and turn away becuase
you don't believe you can change it it doesn't make you
mature it makes you a coward.
\_ You know air pollution levels have been dropping
steadily since the 70's. Even under *gasp* republicans.
And I don't think most Americans mind that we're in a
constant state of war with people who have been attacking
us over the last 10-20 years.
\_ Fine, so we dissagree. My point is that the motivation
for poeple caring about these issues is that poeple
want to make this country a better place for their
children than it was for them. You claimed that
all people care about is the economy because that's
what matters for the quality of life of their children.
When I refute you, you come back with "oh yeah? well
the Republicans are better on these issues anyway."
I believe that some of the republican leadership
is right on about the environment, actually. I just
think that the average republican on the street
(like you) is a loudmouthed selfish jerk who votes
based entirely on their projected income tax
burden and doesn't care about society at large
or the long term future of this nation.
Your comments bear that stereotype out to a tee.
\_ And fuck you!
\_ If you're such an adult, how come you can't be bothered to
use motdedit like the rest of us?
\_ *laugh* That's the best you can do? Golly, it's gotta be
Gore in 04 now with *that* great zinger! Ouch!
\_ Hey you know what? Fuck you too!
\_ You are right... MOVE THERE THEN.
\_ Guess what? Fuck you!
\_ The economy? The economy has a good chance of crapping up
next year. |
| 2003/10/30 [Reference/RealEstate, Finance/Investment] UID:10855 Activity:low |
10/29 John Templeton predicts that housing prices will fall by 90%
http://moneycentral.msn.com/content/P52744.asp
\_ probably not mentioned: the bay area exception
\_ When there is a big one, it will fall to 1/10 the value.
\_ If it does then I'm buying all I can afford, baby!
\_ see also the threat of greater inflation as our economy tanks.
I'm looking forward to my loan suddenly be worth 10 times
what I owe on it.
\_ As bearish as I am about housing prices, I find that hard
to believe.
\_ Actual quote: "After home prices go down to one-tenth
of the highest price homeowners paid, then buy."
The meaning is slightly different.
\_ In my area houses just went over 600k recently. If you
wait until they hit 60k before you buy I hope you really like
paying rent because you'll be paying it for the rest of your
life. Homeless motd kids, keep up the housing price drop
fantasy. I was hoping the same thing a few years ago when
houses here were going for 350k. I bought in at 430k and
no, virginia, there's no end in sight. It's very simple.
More people keep coming in than there is available housing.
The author needs to take econ 1 at some place better than
hayward.
\_ yea, that's what they once said in HK too. No, I don't
think the price will drop to 1/10, but you are the one
fantasizing if you think housing prices always go up.
\_ In the long term, they do.
\_ Son, God is always making more people, He isn't making
anymore land. And yes, historically, housing prices
have always gone up. Real estate is one of the best
long term investments you can make. The only way you
can lose is buying swamp land. Prove me wrong. History
is on my side.
\_ The stock market is also a good "long term" investment
and consistently beat real estate "long term".
That doesn't mean you should buy stocks in March 2000.
Yea, God made like 100 million people in Java, and
is making plenty more everyday, so why don't you go
invest in Java real estate?
\_ Hey good shot as changing the subject. Let me
refresh your memory. The topic was real estate
in the US. This is a growing nation and getting
richer everyday. Here's the econ 1a part: with
more and more consumers who are wealthier each
day than the one before and a housing supply that
doesn't grow as fast, the housing market will
continue to climb until those conditions change.
Java? That was a nice try but ultimately feeble.
Housing prices will continue to climb over the
long haul and unlike the stock market, you can
live in your house after a crash. Housing values
can't go to zero, unlike your portfolio.
\_ Wealthier? Did you even read the article? It
mentioned the increasing debt of Americans
as one of the principle causes of the
predicted crash. That means negative wealth,
if you need a translation.
\_ Housing prices in the Bay Area have been
growing much faster than wealth, income and
population. Much "wealth" was destructed
in the tech crash. Income has gone
down slightly while unemployment has risen.
Only thing sustaining the housing prices
is the low interest rate, which can't
go any lower. You can live in your
house after a crash? Not if you lose
your job. Not only will you not be able
to live in your house, you will still
be responsible for the mortgage which
would be more than what you can get
selling the house. Bankruptcy would
be the only choice left.
\_ If you lose your job the only place you
will live is your mom's basement,
anyway. --dim
\_ I think you would rather live in
your mom's basement without debt than
with a shitload of debt, and debt
collectors going after your arse
day in and day out. |
| 2003/10/27-28 [Finance/Investment] UID:10824 Activity:high |
10/27 http://www.everbank.com/main.asp?affid=eb This is pretty neat. $10k to open a FDIC insured world currency deposit account. Buy say Australian dollars which has 3.9% interest rate and is also likely to rise against US$ (Australia is a nation of miners, and China is sucking away supplies of all kind of basic materials). \_ shut up, cmlee. \_ You can also buy renmibi, if you are into that sort of thing. \_ Damn it where were you a year and a half ago when i was asking about buying foreign currencies. I could have made like 25%. umm, i mean "thanks, good link." \_ Buying gold or gold stocks is pretty much a proxy for the same thing. \_ It plays on similar trends, but I think the Australian dollar would have more upside and less volatility. Look at the chart for the past year, for example, more volatility for gold: http://csua.org/u/4ti \_ You want to get into arbitrage? Why not just write me a check for your entire net worth? At least I'll put your money to good use. \_ I don't see what's so dangerous about buying some foreign currency. Nobody's trying to be a professional trader who currency. Nobody's trying to be a professional trader that trades everyday. Some of us have family, properties and assets overseas and we are forced to think about exchange rates in any case. Also, holding your money in US dollars is just as much a gamble as holding it in another currency. You are forced to "place a bet" no matter what. \_ Because most of your goods and services go up and down with your local currency. Exchange rates can change much faster relative to your local buying power, thus keeping all your money in the same currency as the country you live in is always safer for the average person than buying currency from somewhere else that you're not watching everyday. \_ You are right, but not all of us plan to be here always, and some of us want to buy property, invest, support family, etc. in other countries. It's also a good way to diversify (No one is suggesting that you use your entire nest egg to buy Australian dollars). Also, currency market is less than a free market and very much influenced by government fiscal policies, and because of that, it's long term trend is more predictable, and currently, the trend for the dollar is down, in my opinion. \_ you plan to live in some other country? what for? \_ Why not? We didn't become leader of the world \_ Anyone know why the 3-month, 6-mo., and 9-mo. Australian CD's have the same Interest Rate(3.88%), yet have differing APY's? The 3mo: 3.93%, 6mo: 3.91%, 9mo: 3.89% Is it b/c the 3mo. compounds every 3mo, whereas the 9mo. only every 9mo? -nivra \_ you plan to live in some other country? what for? by staying at home. |
| 11/23 |