Hey guys,

I am in general want to start learning about investing. I work in and study accounting, so I have some idea of how the money works, but every time I start reading these forums - even "I have X amount of money - where should I invest" - I have almost no clue of what people are talking about. All the abbreviations, all the terms, all the instruments just sound alien to me. I read few books on markets (mostly novel types ) and derivatives, but thats about it.

I know there is a thread on what to read and I can go there and pick up more books. But I am not sure if that's a right way. What would you recommend to the real market noob on where to learn for starting material at investments (any kind - securities/commodities/Real Estate etc)?

I remember I wanted to buy some RIM shares where I was dead sure they will go up, which they did< but never pulled the trigger. The reason is - I have no idea on how to actually buy a share. Pretty embarrassing for someone who understands corporate accounting, I know. If you ask me what is a mutual fund - I will probably fail to answer.

There are good how to guides on wsj.com. Investing is a long term activity. Start with funding your retirement plan and set aside a small percentage if you want to dabble in individual stocks. There's a lot of variance in picking stocks so try to take advantage of company matching contributions and set yourself up for compound interest

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I was like this not too long ago, this is what you need:

http://www.financialtradingschool.co...neral-trading/

The videos are completely free and is organized into a course curriculum teaching you how to trade in the financial markets for a complete noobie. If you don't know how to actually buy a share, this is for you.

Also there are sites like tradimo.com which is similar.

Not sure if this is the right place to ask this, but what the hell. I have been working for the last 7+ years on political campaigns and for political advocacy organizations. The skills and experience (management, training, data driven analysis, strategic planning, marketing) all feel like they should translate to non-political work, but I seem to have no shot at making the transition. I am looking for suggestions or thoughts on how to make that happen effectively.

Nowhere else to put this except here..

I've never seen anything like MNKD's price this morning. A coordinated 'bear raid' (idk what else to call it lol) with the trigger being a crappy 300 word Motley Fool article. A two minute window with 3 million shares sold when the average daily volume is only 6 million lol. More MNKD shares traded so far this morning than FB and AAPL combined!

Can someone explain why we only use the current portion of long term debt + long term debt when calculating debt to equity ratios? Why wouldn't we divide total debt (including short term liabilities) into total equity?

Sorry for the noob question, but I don't get it. Is it because short term liabilities are assumed to be taken care of in the income statement by being subtracted as an income, interest, or cost of doing business expense? Thanks.

Get a Vanguard account. How did you become "dead sure"? I just get low-cost index funds and invest passively, like the Bogleheads http://www.bogleheads.org/wiki/Main_Page philosophy

MBA jumps out at me as the traditional way to make a career transition, but depending on how you feel about doing one, it may be better used as a last resort since it'll of course take a while (2 years) and cost a lot.

Best literature recommendations for trading. To be more specific trading options.

I'm trying to get my feet wet.

Would it make sense for a company to switch exchanges (ie from NYSE to NASDAQ) if they were to be bought out by a company in that destination exchange? Would that transition make the transaction smoother? less fees involved? It would make maybe be worth doing if the purchasing company were paying with their own shares.

Thoughts? The company I'm wondering about is MGI. Recently hired a bank to facilitate sale of itself, and also switched from NYSE to NASDAQ. Thought those two events may be related..

Debt to equity has a few variations and one of the formulas is the one you mention, total debt /equity. Total debt usually is less than total liabilities because of current liabilities such as taxes, accounts payable and accrued expenses.

You can find the ratios on Google finance or similar sites

Hi,

I'm curious about a situation a good friend of mine is in.


He works for a small IT company IT (they do web design). The company (in practice that means the boss, him, and a colleague - the rest of his colleagues aren't involved in this idea) recently got interested in making custom apps for businesses.

The boss is gonna start and fund a new entity/company. My friend and the other colleague will be the two main employees.

According to my friend,
- boss is really happy with him/them. they are the best employees
- the boss will invest around 100k
- his friend and him are close, they will either both join or no one joins
- apart from the cash, boss will bring his connections. he will be very viable in getting clients, would be very hard/impossible to get them without him, esp at first
- my friend and his friend will spent say 60hr/week on this company, boss more like 10hr/week
- he thinks that if he and his friend say no, boss will probably not go through with the idea (because it wouldn't be easy to find people he wants to do it with)
- boss already said they'll get equity

so the question is: how much equity should my friend ask for (don't forget his friend gets the same amount of equity to avoid confusing answers)? what is realistic here?

what are some good brokers that accept skrill/moneybookers ? I want to buy stocks, so not for trading purposes. Also do brokers report to IRS above a certain amount?

I have been a long time reader of this forum and it seems to be going a bit downhill. I am sure it is due to the fact of what is allowed to be posted on here.

Can we please ban all conspiracy threads or posts? It makes the forum really really REALLY suck. It would be nice if this forum were purely about business, finance, and investing. Instead we seem to have posts on conspiracies, which then turns people to get into a debate back and forth in an attempt to prove they are 'right'. Can we please ban anything political or theroies on silver manipulation etc?

prob should ask in a new thread or sign up for quora and ask there for a better answer

Hello guys,


Where can I learn the absolute very basics about the stock market, and how similar is it to poker?



Thanks

Have some cash. I don't really want to be an "active" investor and the size of my portfolio doesn't really merit burning a lot money on fees or spending time on research, not to mention I don't think I can really diversify with such a small portfolio.

I have fairly high risk tolerance because I'm young(ish) and have a solid, stable white collar job. I'm not able to save a lot each month due to massive student loan payments.

So I'm trying to decide between:
A. Pay down private student loans which are at 2.5%. I believe the rate is fixed. I can check if it matters.
B. Put the money in an index fund. Probably DIA (Dow Jones Industrial)
C. Some other index fund? Anything look good right now?

i would pay down "massive" student loans for peace of mind. at 2.5% you could argue for using this as "leverage" and investing what you owe for a likely higher long-term roi, but i prefer to keep things simple and just eliminate debt. a more complete analysis would consider whether you are deducting the loan interest on your taxes and how much this is worth to you.

when you do have enough money to invest, open a roth and buy a target retirement fund. why buy just the dow jones when you can buy thousands of us and international stocks *and* bonds that your portfolio should have *and* it's all in one fund?

"anything look good right now" is a wrong and dangerous question.

Can only deduct $2.5k in interest per year. So doesn't factor in here.

So the Roth would be in a managed fund and just let it sit for 30 years?

Other reason not to pay down debt would be to keep it as a down payment for a house. Probably not buying the house for 2-3 years.

vanguard's TR fund, at least, is not a "managed fund" in any meaningful sense.

a downpayment for a house in 2-3 years needs to be entirely separate from your long-term investment portfolio.

i think that not paying down debt now so you can add a huge pile of more debt in 2-3 years is not a great plan.

What's wrong with piles of debt? Especially if at 2.5% fixed. A mortgage seems like good debt too. Am I wrong here?

I'm not going to have an investment portfolio and a house and student loans (1100/month). Once the loans are gone in 6 years I can have the other two.

So I guess this kind of comes down to how much more than 2.5% I can make investing and if I want to remain liquid for a future house purchase. Owning a house seems like a good investment to me given tax credits and that I have to pay 2/3 of a mortgage in rent every month without building any equity.

All that said, I'll probably just pay down the loans and recoup the money through lower payments unless I figure out I can somehow make significantly more than 2.5% as a fairly passive investor.

debt has pros and cons, but you're an unknown in the newbie thread so my default advice is "get out of debt". we can have a more nuanced conversation if you provide more details.

it's good that you are prioritizing your goals and avoiding being stretched too thin.

do some homework on the merits of renting vs buying; it's not as simple as what you've laid out so far. renting is a great deal in many cases.

home ownership comes down to a lot of personal factors, but i urge you to think about starting your retirment savings first. you can only create so much tax-advantaged space per year, more time for compound interest to work its magic, etc.

Regarding loans at 2.5%, I'd strongly recommend you cap out either a Roth _first_, then whatever else you have you can put against your loans.

If you don't know where to invest it, put the Roth money into a Vanguard Target Retirement fund. The expected return on that is SIGNIFICANTLY more than 2.5% and you only get one shot per year to contribute to tax sheltered accounts. Don't miss that opportunity if you can afford it.

Thanks. I think I"m gonna put $5k in a Roth and the rest on the loans.

One other retirement questions, I have a Thrift Saving Plan (TSP) because I used to work for the government. Should I bother rolling it over? The TSP charges almost nothing in fees, but there are only four choices of funds (Bonds, Large Cap, Small Cap, International).

i don't know much about TSP but it's supposedly pretty sweet. i'd leave that money alone unless it's a tiny amount and more trouble than it's worth.

I received a credit card offer with a 0% intro APR for 18 months and I am considering using it to pay off my unsubsidized student loans ($13,500), which carry a 6.8% interest rate. I am concerned about a stipulation in the small print that says that balance transfers have a 3% fee associated with them; is "balance transfer" well defined, do we know if paying off a student loan is considered a balance transfer?

In addition to that question, is there a good reason for not doing this? I know that one advantage of keeping things as they are is, if for some reason I can't pay the amount I intend on paying towards the card over the next 18 months, the interest will be 13.99%-18% on the outstanding balance; that's to say, if I run into problems it is 2-3 times as financially crippling on the card as it is with things how they stand. If I had to guess, I think I save myself a $2,000 in interest plus any opportunity costs by making this move.

Edit: Looks like I save about $1,500.

Edit 2: Actually, I save a lot less than that. If I pay off the loan over 18mo at 6.8% I pay about $750 in interest. So, in effect, it looks like I only save $750 in interest. Doesn't seem like enough upside given the downside.