I am not sure i should ask here or start a thread. I am thinking about going into day trading and I've tried to find out what taxes I'd have to pay. My understanding is you pay short term capital gain tax, is this correct? And also, since I am a EU citizen, what EU countries have the lowest taxes in this case? I know most of the normal capital gain taxes in the EU from wiki but ot much on the short term tax. Thanks.

I currently have 2 bank accounts, one with the small local bank that my dad uses so we can transfer money easily between us, and another with BoA that handles all my income from both my job and my tenants. While preparing my taxes this year I came to the conclusion that I need to get my stuff together and separate my work income from my real estate income.

I'm thinking of opening a third account with a discount broker and shifting all my job income to that account. I'm looking at Fidelity and Schwab in particular. I'm leaning towards Fidelity because I live in Boston so any issues that could arise would be easier to handle, and I've heard their customer service is excellent. I'm also somewhat interested in Fidelity's free ETF trades. Does anyone have any others I should consider/reasons why Fidelityt would be a mistake?

As requested...

I want to backtest Futures data. I went to the Tradestation site and looks like you have to at least sign up for an account in order to use their backtesting software for 4 months. But does that mean I have to fund the account, or I can just open one and use the backtest software before depositing money?

Also, any other cheap/free backtesting software out there? I did a search here and kept seeing Tradestation recommended so not sure if there's a good alternative out there.

for a roth ira you can only put away 5k per year. You must have at least 5k in income to put away 5k.

For traditional ira I believe you can put away 20% of annual income pre tax or 16.5k which ever is less.

I have $5k to invest
I live in Detroit, Michigan
I can do extremely high risk (illegal even)
Make the connections guys.

I keep recommending this but it's still a great business: drugs.

Any thoughts on microfinance? I've been sort of at a loss for how to supplement (maybe replace?) poker (other ideas welcome) and I'm really liking the combo of finance + helping the less fortunate.

Looking into doing this in Kenya for a few months next year. Nothing set yet but I've made initial contact and they said they could use the help. Any suggestions on what to study in preparation? Probably at least review accounting

My question is this, I have never invested in my life on anything. I have always wanted to though. I just do not even begin to know where to start. I have thought about going up to smith and barney, or stanley morgan. Maybe even edwards, though I have always been to scared because I think they will just give me bad advice and scoop me out of money.

I am wondering guys where I should start, I Want to invest in something that say twenty years down the road I can just pull out and live nicely. I Have so many questions guys but I guess you can get the jist of the idea of how lost I am. I am not going to ramble on with all them Just please tell me where I should begin, and with how much money. What is the safe bets in investing with good returns, and what are the sucker bets so to say.

Thanks in advance guys

I recently realized, that I don't understand derivatives as well as I thought I did. I understand what options are, and the difference between calls/puts. I also think I understand securitization.

What I'm confused about, is what is a derivatives more broadly? And how is it traded? People talk about a derivative as being related to an underlying asset, but I'm still confused where the derivative gets it value in some cases. For example, it makes total sense why someone would pay money for a stock/bond, since they receive cash flows. But if I create a derivative based off the S&P 500 or some bond index, how is it priced? The other day, my friend was saying how the creation of the ABX index, allowed people to trade mortgage backed securities. But I'm confused about how you actually create a derivative that allows people to trade, when they don't actually own mortgage backed securities.

I need to figure out average stock prices based on short sell / buy history. I'm too lazy.

Ill ship $10 on stars to the first one who can help. Instructions below
(google docs)

http://spreadsheets.google.com/ccc?k...TRU5qeWc&hl=en

(Hope nobody minds if I cross-post this from the sticky)

Hey guys. Just opened up a brokerage account at Charles Schwab planning to buy some stock in Toyota sometime within the next 30 days. Thought I'd make a post in this here sticky before I done so.

PLEASE INCLUDE:
Country you live in: USA
Income: Doesn't matter in my case I don't think.
Risk Tolerance: In terms of swings, big, in terms of initial investment, small.
Timeframe for investment: At least a decade.
Debt: None.

Sorry if some of those questions didn't make any sense to me but I'm new to investing.

As a first-time investor I'm starting with $3,000. To me this is a small cautious number.

Hoping for some advice on what to do with that $3,000, along with general opinions on Charles Schwab brokerage.

I'd also like to read about investing and finance, but it's hard to find books that aren't pushing specific ideas on how to make money. I'm more interested in a neutral book about how the system works and what everything is. If there's any reading material like that I'd be interested.

Sticky threads at the top, read it all, go from there.

Really pointless to crosspost this.

what do u think of this site?

http://www.indexfunds.com/learn.php

it seems they're selling a book, but that's about it.

I think the markets may very well tank in the next 1-2 years. I would like to invest some money on the short side of something like the S&P (maybe buying puts on the SPY?) or the Dow. I also think Goldman Sachs will fall steeply in the next 12-18 months.

I've never bought or sold an option in my life. I know how they work, if the stock goes down below the strike price you make money on a put. But I'm confused at the price. For example a put option on SPY with a $60 strike, dated Dec '11 costs $1.17. What does that mean? How much would I make if it tanks in the next 3 months to below $60?

Say I want to invest $2k, doesn't each put equal 100 shares or something? If the market tanks and SPY drops to, say, $75 next month, this put will be worth more money obviously, and I could sell it and take my profits right? Are there high transaction costs associated with this type of trade that make it unworthy of my $2k investment?

What sites offer option accounts? I know there is Google and everything but what sites do YOU recommend for a beginner such as me, looking for low fees and not really worried about do it yourself tools since I'll just make my own picks most of the time.

Also how would I go about shorting currencies?

And let's say I want to invest in sugar or oil for something like a 2 year time frame. Are there any ways to buy futures that go that far out? I only found ones that expire in the next few months...

The 5k is a combined IRA limit.

http://www.irs.gov/retirement/partic...188232,00.html

Bucco IMO if you dont know that stuff you really shouldnt be trying to speculate.

YO WATS DA NAME OF DAT YOUNG JEWISH HOTSHOT INVESTOR THAT PLAYED PING PONG AND HAD A SHOW ON DA TV? I WAZ FOLLOWING HIS ASS FOR A BIT, WONDER IF HE HIT HIS GOAL

Timothy Sykes?

I think the best place to start is books more academic in nature. For example, pick up an intro textbook on finance and accounting (and maybe stats). After you go through those, you'll have a better foundation and can move on to something more applicable, like the CFA materials, or something along those lines.

I have a friend who is thinking of cashing out his 401k early.

Leaving aside whether or not this is a good idea (I know why it is not a good idea):

Are there any better/worse options for how he does this?

Or does he just cash out, pay his penalty, pay his taxes, and move on with his life?

dont know whether is the right thread for this question, if not, please redirect me.

I am a poker player living in Europe,therefore my default banking account currency is EUR. I would like to keep a portion of my roll into the bank and not online. The problem is, I mainly play in poker rooms with $ as the main currency. So every time I move money from online to bank account and back I lose money due to exchange.

I've created a USD account in my bank, and transfered just to test $100 using bank transfer method, and I've received only $94 in my account. I did a quick research and I've found out that somewhere in the process the $ are converted to EUR and then back to $ . So again, Im losing money due to exchange.

Any ideas?

I own some shares of Vanguard European ETF (NYSE:VGK) that I want to sell to pay taxes. Is the dividend paid to whoever owns the shares on the day the dividend is paid or is there some sort of pro-rata system? How can I find out when the dividend will be paid?

Thanks.

Yup, thanks. I was following him a bit in '08 when he was trying to go from $10k to $2m again. He was at 15k then, and is at 160k now. #1 on Covestor... pretty interesting