Mad4it,

I'm basically in the same boat as you, but a few months further in.

When starting out, spread betting is almost certainly the way to go. Spread betting companies get a pretty bad reputation on here, but the situation is somewhat different in the UK - due to the gambling/trading tax laws (e.g. no tax Vs 0.5% stamp duty on shares (which is sickening)), it is in everyones interest to have a spread betting division which is then at least partially hedged. Even high street banks have spread betting divisions. I have had no problems at all.

Later on, its probably worth moving onto DMA CFDs (which again are trivial to short), but you probably need £50k+ to make it worthwhile. Until then it is probably cheaper/easier to just pay the spread.

Thats my plan anyhow.

Your ideas sound fundamentally reasonable to me, but obviously you want to be looking at technical criteria also e.g. go with a trend.

Also it can be difficult and/or expensive to short the more obscure companies, so sometimes its possibly better to work the other way round - e.g. build a list of companies with a nice downtrend, and then filter them for fundamentals/mental scenarios.

Also, dont ignore the long side of the market, even at times like these - for various reasons its easier to make money going long (your going with the very-long term trend, better risk-reward ratio, slower/less volatile trends etc).

You pay Australian Capital Gains Tax on the sale. Your profit is counted as income in the USA. To see if you have to pay cumulatively I'd contact an accountant, but you'll probably only have to pay income tax in America at an amount - CGT.

(Yes, of course I'll verify whatever I read here.)

So I'd be double taxed then, according to what any reasonable person would mean by being double taxed?

That is, if my capital gain in Australia is G, and my income in America is I, would I pay a capital gains tax C in Australia, and then pay income tax in America on I+(G-C) (or worse still on I+G)? This would be being double taxed.

Or are you saying that I'd figure my income tax in America on I+(G-C) (or maybe on I+G), and then the American IRS would subtract C from that (i.e. give a foreign tax credit in the amount C. This would not be being double taxed.

Edit: So maybe this is a question about taking a foreign tax credit in the USA. If you are a USA taxpayer, (so the USA taxes you on all income from anywhere in the world) but you have to pay some tax to another country, and just can't get out of paying it, then

1) does the USA always reduce your overall tax bill by the amount of the foreign tax (i.e. you get a `foreign tax credit') at least assuming there is some kind of tax treaty which should be the case, and

2) what if the tax credit is (much) bigger than your tax liability.


Actually C would be somewhat bigger than my American income tax, so I'd also have to see how that works. It would not help me if I couldn't carry it forward over a few years.

You've made like 10 or 20 posts about this transaction in Australia. If it's this important to you I suggest you ask professionals about this subject.

LOL, do you monitor this forum to see when everyone reaches their quota of questions?

No, but your questions about this piece of land have been in about every topic and in at least one topic start. Specific tax and forex questions can't be answered by BFI, how much people here like to think tho. As said before: specific 'complicated' tax questions worth a few k you should ask a tax professional about. You'll only going to get mixed or half true answers here.

how do institutions like hedge funds generally go about obtaining huge amounts of leverage for their trades? afaik hedge funds have a prime broker, say goldman sachs. will they usually have a standing amount of margin they can use, like someone would have in a personal brokerage account? or do they have to obtain financing separately for each trade which requires huge leverage, by pitching the idea first? i'm wondering about instances where a trade isn't necessarily that risky, but requires like 100-1 to make it worthwhile (maybe some time of arbitrage).

Wow, are you specifically singling out me and my questions for your mini-lecture or do you do this to everyone? It's just bizarre what you're doing. Some people give some useful information, which I can take with a grain of salt, and I can double check later. I appreciate their answers.

Unfortunately your posts are absolutely useless.

They have several ways to finance things. They'll get leverage from the brokerage but they'll most likely have also credit lines and the like.

Sure, my posts are useless. But I've seen questions about the same land several times, in different topics. That's annoying imo.

I had several different questions on several different topics.

What do people think the USD vs CAD will do in the next month? It's up >15% in 2 months and I'm choosing to not withdraw my nut this month because of the huge exchange hit. The CAD is around .90 now...thoughts?

thylacine -
Depending your situation, I'm guessing you have had the RE over one year so you get a 50% CGT discount

So 100k captial gain- 100k X 50% = 50k

You are then taxed on that 50k as taxable income in Australia probably at the non resident tax rate because you are considered a USA resident for tax purposes.

Tax rates 2008-09 - NR- on 50k
http://calculators.ato.gov.au/scripts/axos/AXOS.asp
Tax payable: $14,700.00 to the ATO

You will get a forgein tax credit and as you have eluded CGT is typically lower in the USA so you usually won't have to pay anything, if there is a difference you then pay the difference over there to the IRS.

poe

im withdrawing and keeping it in USD for now. maybe invest in the market when time is right and wont have to pay conversion fees.

Thanks for the info!

I'm sitting here reading a 10k and going over the risk factors and come across this one:

Can someone explain "acts of God?"

wikipedia/google yo

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

That's interesting. Thanks.

I'm surprised you haven't heard of it before, it seems to get around in pop culture usually with jokes.

I don't think you understood..."monthly nut" is what I take out each month from poker profits to pay for bills/living...it's my income.



But, I balked and made the w/d with the dollar at 0.90...so gross!

This isn't a brag or beat or whatever, but I'm like going through an emotional up and down with this decision.

Back in late October, early November I bought PCR at around 17.52. I read the AR and really liked the company based on what they did as far as construction in Las Vegas and sports stadiums. As of today I am up roughly 20%.

Recently, however, I briefly started looking at their competitors and I'm not really sure what makes PCR stand out above the rest other than PCR calls themselves the leaders in hospitality and gaming construction along with one of the higher revenues in the industry. The construction industry is highly competitive given that they compete on contracts.

Given that brief research, I've thought it would probably be a good idea to sell out of that position and start looking around for better value investments. PCR may just be a growth play anyways, I don't know. My problem is, I'm looking at it and it's up today and I just can't make myself pull the sell trigger on it. Any suggestions or advice to take away those feelings?

Yeah, try not to let your emotions sway the decision. Look at the numbers and decide, as it seems you already have.

no i understood that. when i withdrawl now, i dont exchange it into canadian.
thinking it could be more useful in the future if i leave it in usd.

but hey, we could expext 0.70 forever.

...then you didn't understand that what I withdraw MUST go into canadian...or else I can't pay bills with it!

this website lists after hours trading activity. I am copy and pasting some data from yesterday's after hours trading of XOM:

http://www.nasdaq.com/aspxcontent/Ex...&mkttype=after

17:14 $ 68.20 100
17:12 $ 68.20 100
17:12 $ 68.20 100
17:08 $ 68.20 200
17:04 $ 68.20 100
17:04 $ 68.20 400
16:55 $ 69.982 10,500
16:54 $ 68.20 100
16:54 $ 68.20 1,000
16:54 $ 68.20 100
16:42 $ 68.30 387,597
16:41 $ 68.30 27,719
16:39 $ 68.18 280

so wtf is up with the bolded line. Possibly some kind of error in reporting trades, or did some guy just get owned badly when he put in a market order to buy 10.5k shares of XOM ?

If it's the later, do any of you guys attempt to be a market maker in the after hours/premarket to catch stuff like this?

I'm starting to worry about the fact that when I look at my graph in HEM it's really easy to visualize all sorts of classic technical signals.