From my understanding the capital gains tax is based on how long you held a security. If it is less than a certain period of time, you will get taxed at a higher rate. If you take a loss, you can carry over your losses and reduce them from your income. So when you do your taxes, you'll need to know the date bought and date sold along with starting and ending prices.

And for what to read, look at the sticky at the top of the forum.

Yes, you have to record every transaction.

Short Term capital gains are taxed at the full tax rate of all income you made. Short term is less then a year.

Lets say for example I have a 100% loss on an Options trade. Do I need try to sell it on the market and incur the $100 or whatever the commission is in order to recognize the loss? Or can I just let the options expire and apply the loss to future earnings?

What about people who buy and sell every day all day. how do they manage their taxes?

Shouldnt I just be able to write down, gains/losses for the stocks I have?

Whether you make one trade, or 100 trades per day, you have to record when you bought and sold and at what price you got in an out. You don't have to sit there and manually do it every time you make a transaction since your broker should keep track in an order history. After the day is over or after the trade is settled, you can go back and update your records.

It's better to do it regularly as doing it at the end of the year is a pain in the dick.

I don't do options so I do not know. My guess is its no different - expiring or selling it in either case you'll have incured a capital loss since it was never exercised in your favor.

If a person was looking to park 50K to 100K, and had no problem with it being tied up for up to 6 months, what is the best GIC or T-bill type option for a Canadian.

Currenty with BMO and using Investorline for stock trading.

It seems the GIC rates are awful, and I'm wondering if I might do better with a particular mutual fund.

I'm just looking for a little interest on the funds I'm not using for buying and/or shorting the stocks I have been playing with for the last 6 months.

does anyone know, or know a way to predict if this graph will keep heading down or will it come back up?

http://www.x-rates.com/d/GBP/USD/graph120.html

basically i want to cash out at stars but the exchange rate is worse its been this year (i'm in UK so my currency is GBP), should i wait?

How does trading the indices work?
I never really understood how people can be trading indices.

Given that the price of an index is made up of the values of the underlying stocks (i.e. the 100 stocks inside the FTSE 100), I can't see how one can carry out technical analysis on a chart of a the index.

I can see how the FTSE movements can be traded using a fundamental analysis
(i.e. effects of macroeconomic factors),
but I don't see how technical analysis woud work.

For example, just on a very simple example, if you short the FTSE100 futures thinking that it's going to fall, based on your chart reading of the FTSE100 price chart,
wouldn't this "fall" only happen if investors as a whole generally want to sell each and every one of the FTSE 100 shares?

I can see how technical analysis would work on individual stocks as people will trade based on it's price,
but I don't see how you can trade on the index expecting that people will trade the each individual stocks according to your expectations of the index movement...

I hope that makes sense..

A futures contract is just an agreement to deliver something on a certain date. Its not a dynamic tracking instrument, you're just trading a piece of paper that entitles you to the underlying on a particular day.

Technical trading works because you're assessing the supply/demand through price. Speculators and hedgers are entering/exiting the market, all of which are watching price to make decisions. Thats why it works.

Also it works because the prices of the stocks that comprise the index will generally be moving in the same way so that there is a net directional movement.

Would this be suggesting that macroeconomic factors which affect the market as a whole would have greater emphasis on the price of an individual stock than it's sector/company specific factors?

I have a feeling i'm overcomplicating something that might seem so obvious..

On the 4h chart EUR/USD is pretty much neutral. Because it is bullish on the Daily chart, I think 1.4148 is the price level to go long above (Buy EUR/USD) with an initial target of 1.4330 and if that price breaks above that level you can assume that the bullish trend is still intact so keep your long positions or open new ones.

The short scenario is triggered very strong below 1.3800. One could place a Sell order below this level, a breakout is almost sure below it. Initial targets are 1.3700 (where you can move your stop loss to breakeven) followed quickly by 1.3610 (a fibonacci confluence).

This is my simple analysis. I am trading for a living for 8 years now, profitably, so I know what I am saying. I see forex is avoided but in my experience it's much more profitable and stable then the stock market.

any opinions on SKF - good/bad buy?

After looking at SKF chart, I will give you a standard reply: the trend is down and there is absolutely no indication / technical analysis signal that the trend is changing right now. So buying is definitely not a smart option right now unless you have inside information lol

ty. i had a friend buy in and told me i should, but my read is similar to yours.

Stocks follow the index, not vice versa.

whoooah paradox head****

I was also confused by this at first. It's starting to make some sense now

For example, concepts such as "trends tend to persist" would carry across from stocks to indices. Again, that brings us back to the possible fractal nature of price movement, suggesting that some technical tools may work.

I've got a couple of questions about this investment vehicle.

http://www.cpsnotes.com/index.php

After skimming the prospectus (it's on the website), I don't plan to invest in it since there is no way for me to quantify the risk involved. Here are the questions that I have:

1. How bad exactly is this investment?
2. Can someone give me an idea of exactly how much risk is involved. The best thing would be if you could give me an example of another investment vehicle that has a similar amount of associated risk.
3. Is there a more common name by which this sort of thing goes by other than "Renewable Unsecured Subordinated Notes".
4. If anyone has had experience actually investing in this type of vehicle, I'd love to hear about it.
5. After looking over the prospectus, I think I understand how this works, but if someone could explain exactly how this investment vehicle works in simple terms, I'd appreciate it.

Thanks is advance for any replies to my questions.

Just reading over the first page, what I understand is that they are trying to raise $100mil in short to medium term bonds. Basically what happens is that you invest an amount of money in which length of time maturity, where the money then sits there and accumulates interest over the period of your maturity. However, after the maturity, it then gets rolled over again into a bond of the same maturity unless you ask them to repay you within 15 days after the first maturity. If something happens other than your death or disability and you need that money, you can ask them to repay the bond, but they can pretty much say no and not give it back to you unless you want to pay some penalties.

I think the riskiness of these bonds comes in the fact that they are "Unsecured Subordinated" Bonds meaning they are not backed by any collateral and they are "subordinate" meaning you would receive any proceeds after other senior bond holders. Also if you read the risk factors, I think they pretty much sum up the problems. One thing that sticks out to me the most is that there is not a current market for these bonds and the management can basically say no to request to sell the bonds.

Overall it sounds like these bonds are below average. I wouldn't say they are junk bonds, but I think the risk is pretty high.

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/High-yield_debt

You NEVER go into the market for such a short term. Just buy a GIC.

Is there a site (or sites) that will aggregate data on the number of unique shareholders in a given stock?

Meaning, for example GE has 20b shares outstanding - how many share holders are there? 2m? 50m? etc. I know that the big holders are going to be mutual funds and brokerages and not individual investors - but those companies (I would assume) are legally obligated to give out the information about how many people own the stocks within them.

Sometimes in annual reports they will say how many shareholders there are. It's usually like Item 6 or whatever the line item is about their share price.