vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
I would say that the answer is yes.  Investors may move on purchasing a stock as a result of news that a stock is set to pay out their dividend.   It would be interesting to analyze the trend based on a company's dividend payouts over 10 or so years to see what/how this impacts the market value of a given company.
It would be very unusual (and very erroneous) to have a company's stock be included in the Long Term Investments on the balance sheet.  It would cause divergent feedback loops which would create unrepresentative financial documents and stock prices.  That's how your question would be interpreted if true.  This is not the case. Stock prices are never mentioned on the financial documents.  The stock price you hear being reported is information provided by parties who are not reporting as part of the company.  The financial documents are provided by the company.  They will be audited internally and externally to make sure that they can be presented to the market. Stock prices are quoted and arbitrated by brokers at the stock exchange or equivalent service.  They are negotiated and the latest sale tells you what it has sold for.  What price this has been reported never works its way onto the financial document. So what use are stock prices are for those within the company?  The stock price is very useful for guessing how much money they can raise by issuing stock or buying back stock.  Raising money is important for expansion of the company or to procure money for when avenues of debt are not optimal; buying back stock is important if major shareholders want more control of the company.
This is not right. Inferring the employee stock pool’s takeaway is not as easy as just taking a fraction of the purchase price. As an example, that wouldn’t account for any preferred returns of other ownership classes, among other things.   All considered though, it’s reasonable to assume that the employee stock pool will get some premium. Best of luck.
Depends on your contract, cash or shares delivered? If shares, then you get 5     BIG shares. Theres no longer any options. If you sell instantly, theoretically you will net the $10 difference + profit above strike. If cash, same thing just that you get cash $50 less strike.  Applies to cash and stock deals Options are binary, never pro-rated. if converted, basically you end up with BIG shares.
What can happen is that you start with small amounts of money, do well, and then, thinking that you are good at this, put in larger amounts of money. You will eventually lose. If you put in money that you need for something else, you have a problem. If you are trying this out for education and entertainment purposes, that is great. But when it starts to get serious, make sure that you are aware of the risks. Educate yourself and be smart. Here is what I would suggest: If you want to try this short-term day-trading type investing, and you understand that the money can easily be lost, I would balance that with investing in a more traditional way: Set aside an amount each month to put in a low-expense index mutual fund. Doing this will have several benefits for you: As for your specific questions about stock trading with small amounts: Yes, you can trade with small amounts; however, every time you trade, you will be paying a commission. Even with a discount broker, if you are trading frequently, the commissions you will be paying will be very significant at the dollar amounts you are talking about. The only way I can see around this would be to try the Robinhood app, which allows you to trade without paying sales commission. I have no experience with that app.
"I have heard that investing more money into an investment which has gone down is generally a bad idea*. ""Throwing good money after bad"" so to speak. This is over simplified statement to explain the concept. What is essentially says is; Say I hold stocks of XYZ; 100 units worth say USD 1000. This has lost me x% [say 50%]. The general tendency is to buy 100 more units in anticipation / hope that the price will go up. This is incorrect.  However on case to case basis, this maybe the right decisions. On a periodic basis [or whenever you want to invest more money]; say you have USD 1000 and did not have the stock of XYZ, will you buy this at current price and outlook of the company. If the answer is Yes, hold the stock [or buy more], if the answer is no sell the stock at current market price and take the loss. The same applies when the price has appreciated. If you have USD 1000; given the current price and future outlook, will you buy the specific stock. If yes, hold the stock [or buy more], if answer is no sell the stock and book profit. Off-course I have not overlaid the various other considerations when buying stocks like diversification, risk profiles of individual stocks / segments, tax implications etc that are also essential even if you decide to buy or sell specific stock."
With the Employee Stock Purchase Plan stock, if you sell it in less than 18 months from exercise, the discount you bought it at (normally 15%) becomes taxable income and included in your W-2.
The economic effect of a CFD from your point of view is very close to the effect of owning the stock. If the stock goes up, you make money. If it goes down you lose money. If it pays a dividend, you get that dividend. You'll typically pay commission for buying and selling the CFDs in a similar way to the commission on stock purchases, though one of the advertised advantages of CFDs is that the commission will be lower. They also often have tax advantages, for example in the UK you don't have to pay stamp duty on CFDs. In theory you are exposed to credit risk on the CFD issuer, which you aren't with the real stocks: if the issuer goes bankrupt, you may lose any money you have invested regardless of how well the stock has performed. It's certainly similar to a bet, but not much more so than investing directly in the stock. In practice the issuer of the CFDs is likely to hedge its own exposure by actually buying the underlying stocks directly, but they can aggregate across lots of contracts and they would tolerate some unhedged exposure to the stock, so they can cut down on the transaction fees. You also won't get the same voting rights as the underlying stock would grant you.
"As far as I know, the answer to this is generally ""no.""  The closest thing would be to identify the stock transfer company representing the company that you want to hold and buy through them. (I have held this way, but I don't know if it's available on all stocks.)  This eliminates the broker, but there's still a ""middle man"" in the transfer company. Note this section from the Stock transfer agent Wikipedia article: A public company usually only designates one company to transfer its stock. Stock transfer agents also run annual meetings as inspector of elections, proxy voting, and special meetings of shareholders. They are considered the official keeper of the corporate shareholder records. The decision to have a single transfer company is a practical one, ensuring that there is one entity responsible for recording this data - Hence even if you could buy stock ""directly"" from the company that you want to own, it would likely still get routed through the transfer company for recording."
"The recommendation is not to make the investment. In general, a company does not have to sell their shares to you or allow you to become an investor, because, as you have stated, it is a private company not quoted on the stock market.   If everyone were trustworthy, you could buy the tools for $11000 -- so that you own the tools -- and sign a lease of the tools to the company whereby they pay you $X/month.  The lease should be reviewed by a lawyer before it is signed, and perhaps give the buyer the right to demand back the tools at any time.  However, even this arrangement is very risky, because the ""company"" could simply steal or damage the tools and disappear.   It is not an investment that I would make, because it sounds too good to be true.  $2800/mo steady cash flow for $11,000 invested.  No, I don't think so.   The following information may also be useful, either to you, or future readers: If you still want to make this investment, then you should know that: The offering for sale of shares by companies located in the USA is subject to a wild array of complex laws.  This is true in many other countries as well.  These laws,  called securities laws or regulations,  can require certain disclosures, require that investors have a high net worth so that they can afford to lose the money or conduct their own investigations and legal actions, or require that the investors know the company founders personally, and can prohibit or limit resale by the buyer/investor.  Promoters who say you can still invest and are ignoring or disobeying the securities laws are being at least negligent, but more likely are dishonest and probably criminal.  Even if you trust in the investment, can you trust negligent managers to do a good job executing that investment? What about dishonest managers?  What about criminals and thieves?"
I think the simple answer to your question is: Yes, when you sell, that drives down the price. But it's not like you sell, and THEN the price goes down. The price goes down when you sell. You get the lower price.  Others have discussed the mechanics of this, but I think the relevant point for your question is that when you offer shares for sale, buyers now have more choices of where to buy from. If without you, there were 10 people willing to sell for $100 and 10 people willing to buy for $100, then there will be 10 sales at $100. But if you now offer to sell, there are 11 people selling for $100 and 10 people buying for $100. The buyers have a choice, and for a seller to get them to pick him, he has to drop his price a little. In real life, the market is stable when one of those sellers drops his price enough that an 11th buyer decides that he now wants to buy at the lower price, or until one of the other 10 buyers decides that the price has gone too low and he's no longer interested in selling. If the next day you bought the stock back, you are now returning the market to where it was before you sold. Assuming that everything else in the market was unchanged, you would have to pay the same price to buy the stock back that you got when you sold it. Your net profit would be zero. Actually you'd have a loss because you'd have to pay the broker's commission on both transactions. Of course in real life the chances that everything else in the market is unchanged are very small. So if you're a typical small-fry kind of person like me, someone who might be buying and selling a few hundred or a few thousand dollars worth of a company that is worth hundreds of millions, other factors in the market will totally swamp the effect of your little transaction. So when you went to buy back the next day, you might find that the price had gone down, you can buy your shares back for less than you sold them, and pocket the difference. Or the price might have gone up and you take a loss.
There's a lot of hype about HFT. It involves computers doing things that people don't really understand and making a bunch of rich guys a bunch of money, and there was a crisis and so we hate rich wall street guys this year, and so it's a hot-button issue. Meh. There's some reason for concern about the safety of the markets, but I think there's also a lot more of people trying to sell you a newspaper. Remember that while HFT may mean there are a lot of trades, the buying and the selling add up to the same thing. Meanwhile, people who buy stock to hold on to it for significant periods of time will still affect the quantity of stock out there on the market, applying pressure to the price, buying and selling at the prices that they think the security is worth.  As a result, it's unlikely that high-frequency trading moves the stock price very far from the price that the rest of the market would determine for very long; if it did, the lower-frequency traders could take advantage of it, buying if it's too low and selling if it's too high. How long do you plan to hold a stock? If you're trying to do day-trading, you might have some trouble; these people are competing with you to do the same thing, and have significant resources at their disposal. If you're holding onto your stock for years on end (like you probably should be doing with most stock) then a trivial premium or discount on the price probably isn't going to be a big deal for you.
You should always always enroll in an espp if there is no lockup period and you can finance the contributions at a non-onerous rate. You should also always always sell it right away regardless of your feelings for the company.  If you feel you must hold company stock to be a good employee buy some in your 401k which has additional advantages for company stock.  (Gains treated as gains and not income on distribution.) If you can't contribute at first, do as much as you can and use your results from the previous offering period to finance a greater contribution the next period.  I slowly went from 4% to 10% over 6 offering periods at my plan. The actual apr on a 15% discount plan is ~90% if you are able to sell right when the shares are priced.  (Usually not the case, but the risk is small, there usually is a day or two administrative lockup (getting the shares into your account)) even for ESPP's that have no official lockup period. see here for details on the calculation. http://blog.adamnash.com/2006/11/22/your-employee-stock-purchase-plan-espp-is-worth-a-lot-more-than-15/ Just a note  For your reference I worked for Motorola for 10 years.  A stock that fell pretty dramatically over those 10 years and I always made money on the ESPP and more than once doubled my money. One additional note....Be aware of tax treatment on espp.  Specifically be aware that plans generally withhold income tax on gains over the purchase price automatically.  I didn't realize this for a couple of years and double taxed myself on those gains.  Fortunately I found out my error in time to refile and get the money back, but it was a headache.
In an open corporation scenario a stock holder may well be found liable. It's a very narrow and uncommon bunch of scenarios but it's well worth sharing. See the paragraph on open corporations in the following document: http://nationalparalegal.edu/public_documents/courseware_asp_files/businessLaw/RightsOfShareholders/LiabilityOfShareholders.asp
Is the parent company's common stock public?   If not, then there will be absolutely no pressure from everyone liquidating at the same time. If so, consider the average daily volume of transactions in the parent company's stock.  Is it much greater than the volume your 10k co-workers will have to liquidate?   If so, I wouldn't expect much of an impact from all liquidating at once. Any other situation, you are probably right to be a bit worried about simultaneous liquidation.   If this was my case, I'd probably submit a limit sell order so as to try and pick out a high for the timing of my liquidation, and lower my limit vs fair value as it got closer to the expiration of your ability to hold the parent company stock.
The deal is expected to close sometime in Q4. The fluctuation though the day is just noise. The price will reflect a discount to the full takeover value, reflecting the risk of the deal falling through.  Cashless exercise is a good idea if you don't wish to own any QVC shares.
I assume you are talking about a publicly traded company listed on a major stock exchange and the buyer resides in the US. (Private companies and non-US locations can change the rules really a lot.) The short answer is no, because the company does not own the stock, various investors do. Each investor has to make an individual decision to sell or not sell. But there are complications. If an entity buys more than about 10% of the company they have to file a declaration with the SEC. The limit can be higher if they file an assertion that they are buying it solely for investment and are not seeking control of the company. If they are seeking control of the company then more paperwork must be filed and if they want to buy the whole company they may be required to make a tender offer where they offer to buy any and all shares at a specific price. If the company being bought is a financial institution, then the buyer may have to declare as a bank holding company and more regulations apply. The company can advise shareholders not to take the tender offer, but they cannot forbid it. So the short answer is, below 10% and for investment purposes only, it is cash and carry: Whoever has the cash gets to carry the stock away. Above that various regulations and declarations apply, but the company still does not have the power prevent the purchase in most circumstances.
At the end of the day, a share of stock is the right to a share of the company's equity. People own equity in companies because companies generate money that it returns back to its owners. That's what a company does. That's what an owner does. If you own shares of a company, you're an owner. And if your company does not return more money back to you YoY, then why are you invested in them? Ultimately, you're riding a capital gains wave that will eventually subside once market irrationality succumbs to rationality. And it always does because the real value always catches up to the fake value that is caused by pumping and dumping stocks."
This situation sounds better than most, the company it seems likely to be profitable in the future.  As such it is a good candidate to have a successful IPO.   With that your stock options are likely to be worth something.  How much of that is your share is likely to be very small.  The workers that have been their since the beginning, the venture capitalist, and the founders will make the majority of profits from an IPO or sale.  Since you and others hired at a similar time as you are assuming almost no risk it is fair that your share of the take is small.   Despite being 1/130 employees expect your share of the profits to be much smaller than .77%.  How about we go with .01%?   Lets also assume that they go public in 2.5 years and that revenues during that time continue to increase by about 25M/year.  Profit margins remains the same.  So revenues to 112M, profits to 22.5M. Typically the goal for business is to pay no more than 5 times profits, that could be supplanted by other factors, but let's assume that figure.  So about 112M from the IPO.  So .01% of that is about 11K.  That feels about right. Keep in mind there would be underwriting fees, and also I would discount that figure for things that could go wrong.  I'd be at about 5K. That would be my expected value figure, 5K.  I'd also understand that there is a very small likelihood that I receive that amount.  The value received is more likely to be zero, or enough to buy a Ferarri. There might also be some value in getting to know these people.  If this fails will their next venture be a success. In my own life, I went to work for a company that looked great on paper that just turned out to be a bust.  Great concept, horrible management, and within a couple of years of being hired, the company went bust.  I worked like a dog for nothing.
I'm not sure it is the best idea, but you can buy only 4 stocks generally.  As you alluded to, you should take notice of the fees.  Also note that many stocks trade at significantly lower prices than Apple's per shares, so you might want to factor that into your decision.  You could probably get a better feel for transactions if you bought say 50 shares of a $30 stock; then it might be easier to see what it's like to sell some, etc. Note that specific trading sites might have various limits in place that would pose as barriers to this sort of behavior though.
"You own a fractional share of the company, maybe you should care enough to at least read the proxy statements which explain the pro and con position for each of the issues you are voting on. That doesn't seem like too much to ask. On the other hand, if you are saying that the people who get paid to be knowledgeable about that stuff should just go make the decisions without troubling you with the details, then choose the option to go with their recommendations, which are always clearly indicated on the voting form. However, if you do this, it might make sense to at least do some investigation of who you are voting onto that board. I guess, as mpenrow said, you could just abstain, but I'm not sure how that is any different than just trashing the form. As for the idea that proxy votes are tainted somehow, the one missing piece of that conspiracy is what those people have to gain. Are you implying that your broker who has an interest in you making money off your investments and liking them would fraudulently cast proxy votes for you in a way that would harm the company and your return? Why exactly would they do this? I find your stance on the whole thing a bit confusing though. You seem to have some strong opinions on corporate Governance, but at the same time aren't willing to invest any effort in the one place you have any control over the situation. I'm just sayin.... Update Per the following information from the SEC Website, it looks like the meaning of a proxy vote can vary depending on the mechanics of the specific issue you are voting on. My emphasis added. What do ""for,"" ""against,"" ""abstain""and ""withhold"" mean on the proxy card or voter instruction form? Depending on what you are voting on, the proxy card or voting instruction form gives you a choice of voting ""for,"" ""against,"" or ""abstain,"" or ""for"" or ""withhold."" Here is an explanation of the differences: Election of directors: Generally, company bylaws or other corporate documents establish how directors are elected. There are two main types of ways to elect directors: plurality vote and majority vote.
The short answer to your question is yes.  Company performance affects stock price only through investors' views. But note that selling for higher and lower prices when the company is doing well or poorly is not an arbitrary choice.  A stock is a claim on the future cash flows of the firm, which ultimately come from its future profits.  If the company is doing well, investors will likely expect that there will large cash flows (dividends) in the future and be willing to pay more to hold it (or require more to sell it).   The price of a stock is equal what people think the future dividends are worth.  If market participants started behaving irrationally, like not reacting to changes in the expected future cash flows, then arbitrageurs would make a ton of money trading against them until the situation was rectified.
Preferred stock is traded on the market, so you can just buy it like any other. The symbol for a preferred stock is the ticker symbol followed by a dash and a letter for each class of preferred stock. Examples: Generally speaking, you should buy Preferred stock with the intention of holding onto it for at least a  couple of years. Often preferred shares are lightly traded and have wide spreads that made it difficult to make money in the short term.