I've spent the last 10 years as an engineer/physicist. I have a B.S. in applied physics. I no longer want to work in science/engineering.

I'm currently enrolled in an MBA program. What should my emphasis be?

My goals are to:
1) Work no more than 50 hours in a week
2) Make a lot of money

Some other things that would be nice (but not required):
have flexible or quasi-flexible hours
be able to live anywhere (i.e. not tied to NYC or something)

Thoughts?

Josh

Technology and development.

I've been looking on forums like forexfactory about forex trading. They seem to be finding 2-5% per month a reasonable (good, but doable) return. They dont explicitly mention the volatility, but I assume it isnt very big, else its a bit hard to make the assumption of 2-5% per month. I have the assumption that trades on a 10k budget work the same as on a 1million budget. So if one could make 2-5% with 10k, they could do it with 1million? (Because its not like 1million is any big amount compared to the industry, so you're a price taker).

I dont get it. 1.02^12 = 26.8% average return per year. If they have a system and they have a significant sample size to conclude that they are indeed making 2-5% per month on average, why dont they live as kings yet?
The only real issue I could see is that they dont have enough capital yet, but if their claims are indeed backed up by evidence I assume alot of people are willing to stake them?

Or are these forums alot like poker players? As in, pretty delusional?

This is very likely.

Are they talking about a compounded 2-5% per month?

Or are they saying they have $100k and turn 2-5% on that same $100k over and over? Its their working capital and the $2000-$5000/month is their income on that $100k?

https://personal.vanguard.com/us/fun...FundIntExt=INT

http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=VBMFX

Vanguard makes it looks like VBMFX has risen steadily over the last 10 years w/little variance. Yahoo Finance makes it look like its gone from 9.5 to 10.7 over the last 10 years w/lots of variance. Why are these graphs SO different? What am i missing?

The vanguard graph is over 10 years, the yahoo graph is over 4?

Also, the yahoo graph only shows share price, which stays relatively constant in this fund because dividends are a massive part of your returns whereas the vanguard graph shows growth of the money including dividens.

Does anyone use the Williams%R? I know what it is supposed to represent, but if anyone could tell more about how they practically use it that would be nice.

Looked, couldn't find an answer for this:

I am currently in grad school and get paid a small amount to teach some classes, etc. My wife is a stay at home mom. I make the overwhelming amount of our income playing poker.

Are we screwed on getting a first time home loan/mortgage, or is there any way I can use tax documents from the past few years to show I'm a consistent winner and to get that to count as "other income" on a loan?

Thanks,

Pete

I'm looking for some help finding a better stock screener.
The one I use most, and really like is finviz.
The problem I'm having is when I do a search for SMA20 crosses above SMA50, I get about 800 results.
I'd like a screener where I can specify the interval, SMA20 crosses above SMA50 set at 30 min increments in the last 30 days.
Something like that,
anyone know of any?

I used this script once with some success:

http://code.activestate.com/recipes/...nload-from-in/

This was a while ago though - not sure if it still works.

Hi guys,

quick question. I imagine that it's been asked before somewhere on the board, but thought this would be quicker as someone probably have a good/simple answer.

I want to do a bit of investing, ie. buy a good stock if/when I find one. I wont put much of my networth (I'm thinking $3k-$4k) into it, just thought it would be fun to gamble a bit. I'm not looking to trade per se, just have some fun with it and see if I can sniff out a good deal and invest in it.

I live in Denmark so my bank wont allow me to trade on the NYSE. This makes me want to get an online broker. Which one is safe and would suit my needs?

Thanks in advance.

Hi

I have been really interested in this kind of investment, business and finance stuff. Recently I've registered for a share trading simulation on an Australian website ASX. Basically I'm trying to turn 50, 000 fake money into a profit. So far my strategy is to put all my money on major retailer Woolworths but the website doesn't let me put more than 25% of my portfolio on one company.

So how do I get good at this share trading?

Sorry very generic question but I'm very clueless.

Anyone more familiar with "Equal-weight" indices know where one could find - if possible - back-tested comparisons between EWI and market cap that date farther back than 1990?

According to S&P EWIs have outperformed both domestically and internationally by a pretty large margin.

Assuming an efficient market, what factors would explain outperformance during that 1990-2010 time period?

When shorting stock, does it matter if the company goes bust? or would we gain from that?

Yippie Yi Yeaahhh!!! You just entered the top 1%.

Thats the ideal situation. If the stock goes to zero you don't have to cover your short position (ie buy the stock) and you get all of the profit from when you first "sold" the stock.

Think of it in the reverse - you got the shares when they were $0 and the company was bought out for cash when they were worth $10k.

Thanks Nuclear.

Can you use conventional foreign exchange modeling tools (i.e. market based forecasting, etc) on the euro? Is the euro an ordinary, conventional currency?

Its not a basket of currencies like an SDR they keep talking about to replace the USD, so yes, I would say it is.

Anyone around here use fundamental analysis often?

I'm not really going to trust many people's advice or anything, but am hoping to learn about what I should look into when analyzing a company fundamentally. I obviously don't think EPS or any of the completely common ones are the only way to go, so looking for some ideas on other things to look into.

These Schwab ETFs appear to have better expense ratios than even vanguard. Is there some hidden secret scam I should be aware of before I move my investments there?

Be aware that it appears these Schwab ETFs are (very) thinly traded resulting in a high bid/ask spread. Consider that in the formula if you are deciding to dump an equivalent Vanguard fund.

Meaning, you might be paying a premium that outweighs the expense ratio savings. Some of them are literally .01% different - thats pretty pointless to consider. Only the International Smallcap and US Large Cap have enough of a difference to make it potentially worthwhile.

what determines what stocks show up on the crawl on the bottom of the screen on cnbc?

Equal weight indices based on the FTSE RAFI only have data back around 10 years. You can probably find simulated backtesting going back further but you may have to dig for it.