Yeah good point about tracking the holders intra day

ty

Is it practical to buy call options for a long time horizon? say buying April 2010 or April 2011 strikes.
I haven't looked into this real close, but I know you'll lose value due to time decay.
Also, specifically right now, so much of the price of the option will be due to the implied volatility. So even if the price goes up on the stock, you'd have a very difficult time making money on it because implied volatility is unlikely to stay this high.
Is this correct, in general?

what is some good free software/tools i should download?

Don't know if it's OK to put this here, but I figured a new thread would be a waste. I recently (a month ago) closed my personal savings and threw it into Scottrade (yeah, I'm a virgin newb, so what?) to play around with stocks a bit.

I've ordered a few books based on recommendations by posters in BFI that I assume to have good to great knowledge of the stock market (Safe Strategies for financial freedom, Tharp; Tech. Analysis of financial markets, Murphy; Trading in the Zone, Douglas and Trading Day by Day, Goslin).

I've had no training or formal experience with the market, and as such, there are a few questions that I would hope to get some advice on....

1. Is the book value important, and why does it seem to vary from resource to resource? I realize debt, depreciation, etc. can/will affect the book value, but is it at all important to analyzing stock purchases and where can you find reliable BVs?

2. Is the S&P Fair Market Calculation reliable as to the current value of a stock with regards to buying that particular stock (when one is available, that is)?

3. Any easy to understand books/websites out there on technical analysis? I've just started reading about it on ST, and it seems somewhat daunting.

Thanks in advance for any help here.....

'Mez

I currently rent a 2bd/2ba, 850sqft apartment in the San Francisco Bay Area for $X. I have lived there for 22 months. My lease expires in July and I should receive notification of my new rent within the next two weeks. My apartment model is currently listed on our complex's website as renting for 0.75X.

1. What do you think my rent will be? Is there any chance it will go down? My complex is run by Equity Residential.

Obviously, if I'm asked to pay >=X, I will be unhappy about paying so much more over what is offered to new tenants. I don't want to move, but I don't want to get screwed over, either. Moving will cost about 0.5X in terms of work missed and the cost of hiring movers (which I need for my 120gal fish tank, which is just too heavy for my friends and I to move ourselves). Finding another apartment is complicated by the fact that I have two 60lb dogs. There are not many apartments here that allow dogs over 25lbs. Lastly, I really like my current location. It is close to nice places to walk the dogs, freeway access is incredibly easy, I love to relax in the spa, and the management has always been courteous and responsive. At the same time, I don't want to be paying X or 1.1X when new tenants are signing leases for 0.75X and X/1.1X could get me a bigger, nicer place.

2. If you were me, how much more would your new rent have to be than the rent offered to new tenants for it to be worth it for you to move?

3. If my new rent is >=X, what bargaining points can I use to negotiate for a lower rate? So far I have:
- Rate listed on website is 0.75X
- I've always paid my rent in full and on time
- No complaints ever lodged against me
- I've never lodged complaints against anyone
- My apartment did not have new carpet when I moved in and is now two stages behind the open apartments in the complex in terms of carpet replacement
- I care for and clean my apartment
- I always pick up after my dogs
... anything else?

4. With a big parent company like Equity Residential, do I even have a chance of negotiating a lower rate?

Thanks,
D.

dlgilbert,

WSJ recently posted a form letter some have successfully used to reduce their rent, it might be helpful.

Wow, that's perfect. Thank you!

Hopefully I won't have to use it...

My friends and I are interested in investing in RE in a couple of years from now, maybe 2-3 years, so in the meantime we would like to soak up as much information on the topic as humanly possible.

We are all in University going for a bachelors of commerce with differing majors; I'm in accounting. We've all taken intro to finance type courses that you have to take with the bachelors and we are looking into finding a more specific finance course as an elective that may help us.

In the meantime, I'm looking for some books to read that would teach us anything of value on this subject. If anyone can recommend any books based on the information I provided it would be greatly appreciated. If you need to know anything else just let me know.

(I used the search function already and found numerous books but I couldn't make up my mind on the 2-3 that would be best for my situation so i thought if I gave slightly more information about what I'm looking for and my knowledge on the subject I can get a better recommendation.)

Thanks

Read the Spex RE thread. And let all your friends read it too. When I say read it I mean read ALL the posts. If you still have questions about REI you can post them there.

Linky: http://forumserver.twoplustwo.com/30...vesting-99351/

Really, read that thread.

Hey guys,

I am trying to get back into trading and would like some suggestions on the best course of action to take as far as progressing myself back into options trading. I graduated with a degree in finance and I am very familiar with all the terms and use of derivatives. However, I haven't done this in a while.
I am looking for someone to bounce ideas off of and have general discussions on these issues.

I bought CTIC at .40 last week. After my 200% gain i don’t want to let my head get to big.

Thanks

Yep, that thread is awesome. I read it 3 weeks ago in a few sittings but I'll probably reread it again tonight since it doesn't look like I have all that much to do.

Any book recommendations?

Thank you

I frequently cash out usd to gbp and despite my best efforts seem to pick the worst times to do so. I've tried looking at various sites to get a better feel for it but I seem to get lost quite quickly as I have absolutely zero knowledge of finance.

Resistance level, Support level, Trend Index, these things all mean nothing to me, they sound important/relevant but frankly I have no clue. Are there any books or articles out there that will give me a better feel for this or does it take a proper education to follow currency trends to any worthwhile extent?

You're never going to know, because if you did you'd start trading currencies instead of playing poker. accept that everyone gets screwed by currencies, including businesses and regular wage earners. Just pull out a 5 year chart and try and withdraw when its on the low side.

So I was arguing with my friend in December that the idea of a stimulus package was probably ******ed because by the time even 1/3 of the money got into the economy, things would have rebounded anyway. Amirite to think that it may be coming true? Obv we haven't recovered and that job losses are still happening...but the economy may be close to starting to recover and there hasn't been nearly 1/3 of funds put to use yet (nor will they in the next 6 months).

Thing is, businesses can use the stimulus package as backing for its future forecasts, so maybe a power company can say "ok, this project will cost a billion over 5 years, lets start hiring 20% more people now to prepare and invest in 200 million dollars worth of products from steel maker X". Stimulus gets the cog turning again, sort to speak. Although the physical money may take time to trickle in, the confidence and assumptions take very little time, which is probably even more important in the short term (compare using a giant money switch like interest rates in 2002 where throw money faster doesn't necessarily mean better).

Fair enough...I can see how that's true. Still, the problem I see is that in terms of getting jobs hired will take too long vs other methods. So, although projects may get approved and SOME jobs hired immediately, I think it's still true that there are far more effective ways to help out the unemployed given how slow stimulus generates jobs.

I don't think even Obama would argue the stimulus package is a swiss army knife of economic problem solving.

The biggest issue with big stimulus packages as I see it is they usually induce a lot of speculative infrastructure building, which can be great if it works out, but you could throw 200 billion into clean energy and get nothing economical out of it. So you have this economy which is re-aligning towards the stimulus package, and then its ideas turn out to be a bust, what do you do?

While that's true, I don't think it applies to your example. It's very hard to see how proven technologies (even though they are improving year over year) is going to be a waste wrt green tech. This seems like the best opportunity these sorts of projects are going to have to get off the ground...in boom times people don't really want to change, but when things are bad they're willing to give new things a go. So, I'm glad for the stimulus for him to push through his green energy plan (which he wanted to do anyway).

Don't get me wrong, I'm all for rolling the dice, but lets not pretend we aren't rolling the dice here.

God doesn't play w/ dice...but the president sure does! Come on 7!

What are good sites to paper trade?

What?

has there ever been a study showing on average how often bonds of each grade default?

because with online savings accounts rates dropping, i was thinking of taking some of the money i'm keeping liquid for an emergency and putting it into bonds, but i don't really know much about the history of large companies defaulting on their bonds, and the relationships between AAA vs. AA vs. A

thanks

Clearly durka thinks mccain is president http://www.nytimes.com/2008/09/28/us...ambling&st=cse

...you're all for rolling the dice.

A famous Einstein quote about how to interpret quantum phenomena is that "God doesn't play dice w/ the universe" (he was a hardliner about a fully deterministic universe)...so I made a reference to that quote and combined it w/ yours suggesting that Obama does play dice w/ the country.