they (the house) will lend you money (margin) in day trading



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Im trying to log my investments better and im looking at my Vanguard act right now.

How come all my purchases of a fund plus any dividends is still slightly less than the Total Cost in the cost basis summary? I've only checked 2 so far but I would expect those totals to be identical? Whether or not they gained/lost value over time shouldnt affect this either Id think

edit: it appears to be accurate if i only made one purchase of a fund but if I add to the same fund another time then the numbers are off


edit2: to be clear i am just trying to jot down in google spreadsheet all my investment prices at time of purchase. so since total cost includes dividends reinvested its probably best not to include this since it wasnt the price from the get go right?

Is it a healthy approach to choosing stocks for long-term buy-and-hold investment to think that essentially, in order to even really significantly prefer one stock to another, you must believe your analysis is superior to that of the market? That if you don't really consider yourself to be above the market, then you can just assume that as far as you can tell, each stock has equal expected return? Because the stock is already priced according to the analysis of the market, and if you don't expect your analysis to be better than that of the market, then you might as well just trust the analysis of the market above that of your own, meaning each stock is as good as opportunity as the next? Oh, I mean of course you can still select based on how risk-averse you are and differentiate between stocks that have higher potential for profit but also higher potential for loss, and stocks have lower potential for both profit and loss, but assuming the same kind of risk-reward magnitude?

Is it then reasonable, given that I do not believe that I could analyse better than the market before at least a couple of years of getting into it, to right now just pick stocks pretty much randomly, without even bothering to waste my time on making any sort of research, given that this research cannot lead to conclusions better than those reached by the market? Is it reasonable to only start dedicating time and effort for analysis if I have a clear explanation why analysis done by me beats the analysis done by market?

Or is this silly?

To answer the first set of questions: I guess you can think of it this way but someone more knowledgeable than me can probably give a good answer.

To answer the second set of questions: I would research passive investing and dollar cost averaging if I were you. Here's a useful link about passive investing: http://archives1.twoplustwo.com/show...0&fpart=1&vc=1. The first book I would read if I were you is The Intelligent Investor. Things should become clearer after you read it imo.

Oh, the problem is by the way that at least for now I don't have access to any index fund without significant extra costs, only stocks from Baltic states (Estonia, Latvia, Lithuania) are with minimal transaction costs. Otherwise yeah, I would just put it in some index and forget about it. But AFAIK I would have to be playing with pretty big sums for the foreign transaction costs to diminish enough to be worth it.

So I'm seeing the anger against fixed-index annuities in the other thread, and I am starting to wonder if my understanding of that investment vehicle is correct.

My understanding is that a fixed index annuity simply caps the return of the market. So if the cap is 5%, and the market returns 7%, then the underwriter reaps the reward of 2%. If the market returns 4%, it all goes to the investor.

Is my understanding wrong?

I max out my SEP IRA every year filling as a poker player owning my own business. Can I still contributed $5k to a ROTH IRA or is it a choice between one or the other. I did not hit the SEP cap of $49k or whatever it is.

You get the index, nothing more.

If you invested $10,000 into the Vanguard 500 Index 10 years ago, it is worth $13,933.32 today.

If you put the $10k into an S&P 500 indexed annuity it is only worth $11,627.93.

Whats the difference? The dividend.

Extend that out to 20 years - $51,616.19 for VFINX and $35,109.62 for the index annuity. The stock market would have to lose 81% of its value for the index annuity to pay off - but then a crash like that likely means the insurance company ain't going to be able to pay up either...

What kind of return can be expected per year as an active investor? Example: Start with $20,000 this year investing in companies on the NASDAQ?

Too broad to answer? I think i asked somewhere else and they said 11%, surely unless you're investing large amounts of money it would be extremely difficult to say start with $50,000 this year and turn it into a million without it taking a lifetime?

Average stock market return is 10.3%. Start with 50k add no extra money and in 30 years you would have $946,750

wow I see, my assumptions were clearly wrong, so starting with $50k and adding in a good some every year, if someone worked hard it, theres no reason why they couldn't achieve an amount like 100m?

Btw what's the average return for a simple fund that just trades on the NASDAQ or something like that?

Um, No, an indexed annuity is not like buying the index w/o the dividends.

This article explains how they work pretty well.

http://www.fundadvice.com/articles/i...a-ripoff-.html

At the core thats exactly what they are though - but there are different ways to cornhole people after that fact. I think giving up the dividend, which has accounted for a large portion of the gains of the stock market, is sufficient enough to know you're getting screwed.

I'm seriously considering Purchasing a call option on tepco stock. I'm completely unable to find a quote on this kind of option. Where should I go to begin researching this bet? JT:9501 is the stock symbol.

You can only contribute to a roth if you have earned income. Not sure if you do or not, but poker wouldn't count. Well done on the SEP tho.

Surely the relevant time-frame is since mtg interest became tax-advantaged.

Also, Shiller admits making up prices for the early days when there is very little data. He hired some students and had them read the RE notices of newspapers but that only gets you like 5% of the way there - they made up the rest.

False, Roth IRAs are subject to Congressional risk in an obvious way that standard IRAs are not.

that's an interesting point, how is that exactly? if anything, it would seem to me that traditional IRAs are more subject to congressional risk insofar as they can hike taxes sky-high in the future to meet entitlement claims, whereas a roth lets you lock in today's tax rates. what am i missing?

Just a random thought as I'm pretty hungover right now - I wonder if the WSOP would let players buy/sell options in the main event? Like I could sell a WSOPME seat put and get someon'e buy in and be liable to the risk of them going deep and me having to pay them their winnings. I'd take Eric Lindgren every year.

i see quite a bit of stuff on here about penny stocks being scams, are these generally listed as pink sheets?

Would you consider some of the companies listed here as penny stocks that could be scams?

http://uk.finance.yahoo.com/q?s=^FTAI

not exactly same thing but similar fading: pinnacle has a line for Lindgren to cash WSOPME +596/-850 yes/no.

I'll take a stab and say that the risk of the Roth is that in the future they might legislate some sort of additional tax on withdrawals of Roth money, since the tax base will shrink once we have a million retirees not paying a nickel in taxes.

Our govt loves to borrow money, which is basically what they are doing with the Roth. Borrowing our taxes now & perhaps deciding to take more in the future.

ebay question

bit of an ebay donk, i just sold a item for $500 and got 10% charge in fees, is that standard? ($50 charge for a listing, i was expecting like $5 fees tops! lol)

if so, 1.)dam, must be hard to make money on ebay and 2.) ebay must be raking it in big time

yeah the final value fee can be quite high. it's good to be a network business:

http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Network_effect

I have my IRA with Etrade and most of my initial investments will be low cost Vanguard funds. Am I missing out big by not having my IRA with Vangaurd if I'll be using majority their stuff? As I understand it, I'll just be missing out on free transaction costs correct? Anything else?