Aggregated share count information is often incorrect wrt to total diluted share count. Diluted shares outstanding does include insider & treasury shares.

I'd love to do it if I had the data needed!

I would have bet a) before b), but am leaning towards b) being better now

The problem with using P/E like this is you don't know how low it can go or how high it can go and to me it is almost a property of the markets it will go to more extreme values than what you think.
Buying < 20 and selling > 20 means you would be buying at the start of a bear market and selling as the bull starts..Basically, all the down side risk without the upside and just hoping that the bear doesn't go to deep for too long..not to mention no way you sit out during a real bull market. You wouldn't and shouldn't both mentally and financially. Buying winter hats at a bargain in the summer is easy, knowing what season it even is..that is the hard part.

I'm looking for a stat on the current USD money supply.. Is this M3 or is that a little different? Also is there any data showing how much new money the fed put into circulation, say last year? Thanks

http://www.shadowstats.com/alternate_data

Don't let the name 'shadowstats' fool you. John Williams is highly respected and regarded. M3 is no longer officially reported by the government (for obvious reasons) so thats why shadowstats exists.

I have a question about ETFs and holding foreign currencies.

Take two scenarios:

Scenario 1- I convert $x into a foreign currency, which I then use to buy an ETF. For example, let's say an S&P 500 indexed fund.

Scenario 2- I buy the same ETF denominated in my own currency.

Over time my currency goes down, and the foreign currency goes up.

Would Scenario 1 have performed better? Or would the respective ETFs have priced the currency changes in such that the two scenarios are equal in value?

use M2.

M3 is the dumbest conceivable measure of money supply ever invented.

Can somebody explain the difference between the terms "investment" and "investment vehicle"?

investment = stock, bond, etc.

investment vehicle = name for a typically complex fancy schmancy means of investing your money in a way that will confuse and amaze you and sound great on paper but then possibly blow up in your face.

a) i put my money in this investment in this company named "google"...it's doing great!

b) i put my money in this flagship investment vehicle following IKB CAM's expansion into asset backed securities: GS MBS-E-002480599...i don't know what this is or how it works but i've been assured it will earn me money!

Why is M3 dumb? And M2 doesn't seem to contain the entire money supply.

Or to put it a different way, is there any sense in getting exposure to other currencies if the currency is just going to be invested into an ETF? I want to possibly hedge some of my exchange rate risk since all my assets are currently in either CAD and USD. Is investing in a European ETF denominated in Euros effectively any different than one denominated in USD?


Edit: Nevermind, I found the answer.

M2 contains all the important factors by far.

search "dcifrths M3 notional" and i'm sure tons will come up. i've explained this many many times in the forum.

i think it's also silly to consider solely money supply as an indicator of inflation. it's really M2*Velocity that determines inflation. a declining money supply can happen simultaneously with inflation (not likely) if velocity is increasing.

i always see that some financial institution raised or lowered their price target for some stock, but they never say when the stock is supposed to reach that target. say goldmansachs raises their price target on aapl to 400. is it understood that this means they expect it to be at 400 a year from now? or 400 is what they think it should be now, and if it gets there in 8 months or 35 months theyll sell? no understand.

It means they want business from the company, i.e. they want to help sell its bonds and future stock offerings.

Or they want business from you, they want your large brokerage account.

Otherwise it means nothing. It means some jr. financial analyst who works there but isn't good enough to run a real investment fund wrote a voluminous report on the company. He doesn't know, and GS doesn't know, when or if the stock will ever trade at that number.

It's vague and pretty meaningless. You would do well to never rely on a price target from a sell-side report. Conflicts of interest, peer effects, research quality, job security bias, blah blah. Just take a look at the % of sell-ratings that exist. While it is slightly higher now, here are some numbers from 2000:
http://articles.latimes.com/2000/aug...iness/fi-11879

1.7% of the companies tracked were rated as as "Sell." Does that accurately portray the landscape of businesses?

As an aside, lol "Hold" ratings.

I've never posted in this forum before but thought this might be a good place to ask for advice on some background reading for a job interview. I've currently got an offer for a fairly decent job that starts in mid January.

I've interviewed once that was mainly competency questions and done some standard online tests that I passed and am down to the final interview. The interview is about 3 weeks away and I am free until then. The job title and description is:

Does anyone have any idea on what stuff I need to read up on or any examples of questions that might come up? I heard about the job through a contact my supervisor had who she sent the CV to and he passed it on to the hiring manager. The interviews I've currently been having are less involved in actual business matters and more reliant on technical skills so I am at a bit of a loss where to start.

Well, you need to work on behavioral questions for why you can be a good trader. Poker experience? risk mngt, emotional control, loss limits, et cetera

Everything else is stated in their list.

Read about global markets. Singapore, China, et cetera. Look for a book on global markets maybe, macro investing

Be able to talk about how you can work well under supervision and learn from senior management? Risk analysis, talk about poker but also start brushing up on risk management in finance. Sharpe, ATR, Loss Limits, and a bunch of other subjects

Quant indicators, I don't even know what this means, but maybe look into fundamental analysis of these pharma companies, talking about forecasting growth and such? If economic, there are plenty of books on economic indicators and their meaning in Finance. Obviously know every code word they used like the back of your hand.

Get an opinion of the market going forward. It doesn't have to be right, just be able to back it up with factual evidence and why you believe it to be going in that direction(since they seem to care about this). Don't act like you know it, be cautious and mention you don't have their resources or experience, but that you have gathered facts to have a decent view.


That's a small list for 3 weeks, but could be some things they ask. Then again, it could be purely fit.

I have a couple of questions I couldn't get answered satisfactorily with a few google/forum searches. I hope I've come to the right place.

I wish to apply a strategy to an index. i.e. begin with an initial spread of shares in, say, S&P500 and reshuffle shares between companies on 15th of every month according to some set of rules on a group of indicators.

1. The company fundamentals I require each month include *forward and trailing figures for*: sales, E/S, return on equity, net assets per share, cf per share, net dividend, debt. Can anyone recommend any sites which offer this data for a reasonable price? I've found AmiBroker referenced on a few sites. Any alternative software suggestions? (or testimonials for Ami?) Yahoo finance doesn't seem to cover these indicators either.

2. I realise transfer costs are going to be non-negligible. How would I quickly and easily (and cheaply) actually make these monthly share changes? Are there a number of systems online for this?

This is rebalancing to the extreme. It is unnecessary. The short term changes that can occur may likely be immaterial and lead to unnecessary changes in asset allocation where you may actually significantly under perform the index itself due to expenses and simply missing out on gains had you not rebalanced so frequently.

+1 here

I have back-tested the strategy over a large sample of data taking transaction costs into account, I am not looking to discuss the feasibility of the approach here. I would appreciate help about the practical implementation, which I have absolutely no idea about atm

Well things like ROE and ROA, FCF, revenue, income and debt are only released in SEC filings every 3 months unless something of significant material impact has happened. The only thing you can figure out, that changes, every month is PE ratios - because the share price changes.

Hmm thanks for the input nuclear.
I'm not convinced there's no way to obtain this data though. I've seen research papers which have operated on month-to-month finance data for hundreds of companies. I am aware universities and other institutions can be granted special access to data but this tends to be data that is available to everyone, just only universities get it for free...

I bought a stock at 41.64 yesterday. I would like to auto sell automatically when it hits 44. Is there some term I need to look for on my trading site? I thought it was a LIMIT but that didn't do what I expected it to.

Trade trigger (at least thats an option, and what its called, on TD Ameritrade)