vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"I realize that ""a million dollars"" is   a completely arbitrary figure, but   it's one people fixate on. Perhaps   folks just meant it's getting easier   because inflation has made it a far   less lofty sum than when the word   ""millionaire"" was coined. Your point is correct - it' relatively easier as the 1 million dollar nowadays is no where as valuable as compared in the old days after the inflation adjustment. However the way to achieve that is easier said than done: The most possible way is to run your own business (assuming you will make profit). For most of the people running a job to earn a living - the job income is the biggest factor. Being extremely frugal wouldn't help much if you don't maximize your income potential. Earning a million dollar through investment? How much capitals are you able to invest in? 5k? 50k? 500k? I see no way to earn 1 million with 5k from investment, I wouldn't call it easy. This again depends on your income. With better income of course you could dedicate a larger portion to investment, without exposing too much risk and having to affect your way of life. (3) Invest some part of your income   over a long period of time and let the   stock market do the work I'd say this is more geared towards beating the inflation and earn a few extra bucks instead of getting very rich (this is being very relative).  Just a word of cautions, the mindset of investment being the shortcut to wealth is very dangerous and often leads to speculative behavior."
Many CEOs I have heard of earn a lot more than 200k. In fact a lot earn more than 1M and then get bonuses as well. Many wealthy people increase there wealth by investing in property, the stock market, businesses and other assets that will produce them good capital growth. Oh yeh, and luck usually has very little to do with their success.
"Disregarding the particular example and focusing on the actual questions: YES, definitely, the whole concept of ""pump and dump scheme"" refers to the many cases when this was intentionally done; Everything has a limit, but the limit can be quite high, especially if starting from a low value (a penny stock) and if the stock is low volume, then inflating ten or hundred times over a real value may be possible; and any value might be infinitely times overvalued for a company that turns out to have a value of zero. Yes, unless it's done very blatantly, you should expect that the ""inflator"" has much more experience in hiding the signs of inflation than the skill of average investor to notice them."
Robert Kiyosaki repeatedly stressed that starting your own business is risk free and the easiest way to get rich, yet he's never done it - and has actually failed in business 3 times. He won't release his real estate investment history or his stock market investments.   After failing many times he had no money until he joined network marketing groups to sell these books, he has made his money from his courses and books and has probably lost money from actual investments - I say this because most of his property investments were bought when market prices were very high. He's also stated that he essentially speculates on stock prices, when his broker phones him with the idea that a stock is about to go up he will shift lots of money into those stocks.  If you'd like to read more, this exposes everything about him: [http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html#bothsides](http://www.johntreed.com/Kiyosaki.html#bothsides)  [Wall street journal article about him and Donald Trump.](http://online.wsj.com/article/SB116052181216688592.html?mod=money_page_left_hs)  [Another video about 'get rich quick real estate gurus' ](http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=wx2KMUvqRIM&amp;feature=player_embedded)  This is turning into a cult following with people spending thousands on credit cards to go to these courses and receive this poor advice, please watch this BBC documentary to see the way people are acting about this 'get rich quick real estate' scheme: [BBC Iplayer link](http://www.bbc.co.uk/iplayer/episode/b017xgn6/Money_Who_Wants_to_be_a_Millionaire/)
It isn't the first initiative (see link below) and maybe this one will stick around.  Time will be a good test.   Here is an article on it.... http://www.investopedia.com/articles/active-trading/020515/how-robinhood-makes-money.asp  They plan to make money off unused balances - so they hope to get the masses signed up using the 0$ fees.  Also, no type of advanced trading, just limit and market orders.   Think of it this way - even if someone puts in 100$ and buys a stock at 88$...that 12$ sits there.  Multiply that by say....200,000 accounts and then do a basic 3% return on that.   Also, they plan for margin accounts in the future.   Time will tell....  sort of like I use Acorn right now (but it charges a fee to invest - a slightly higher than normal one). I signed up for fun and am just letting it ride.
"Yes, there is a lot they are leaving out, and I would be extremely skeptical of them because of the ""reasons"" they give for being able to charge $0 commissions. Their reasons are that they don't have physical locations and high overhead costs, the reality is that they are burning venture capital on exchange fees until they actually start charging everyone they suckered into opening accounts. They also get paid by exchanges when users provide liquidity. These are called trade rebates in the maker-taker model. They will start offering margin accounts and charging interest. They are [likely] selling trade data to high frequency trading firms that then fill your stock trades at worse prices (Robinhood users are notorious for complaining about the fills). They may well be able to keep commissions low, as that has been a race to the bottom for a long time. But if they were doing their users any actual favors, then they would be also paying users the rebates that exchanges pay them for liquidity. Robinhood isn't doing anything unique as all brokers do what I mentioned along with charging commissions, and it is actually amazing their sales pitch ""$0 commissions because we are just a mobile app lol"" was enough for their customers. They are just being disingenuous."
"Some history: In the US, this is very tightly controlled and regulated. Although stock market securities insider trading is a relatively new crime around the world (20-30 year old), the United States  is exceptional for offering the longest sentences for it, although it is still far more lucrative than and carries lower sentences than something like petty larceny. The perception of illegal insider trading has changed in the US over the years, although it is based on much older fraud statutes the regulators and the courts have only really developed modern case law against insider trading in the past 20-30 years. The US relies on its vast network of registered broker-dealers to detect and report abnormal trading activity and the regulator (SEC) can quickly obtain emergency court orders from rent-a-judges (Administrative Law Judges) to freeze trader's assets to prevent them from withdrawing, or quickly enacting sanctions. So this reality helps deter trading on material inside information. So for someone that needs to get an information advantage on the market, it is [simply] necessary for them to rationalize how this information could be inferred from public sources.  Similarly there is a thin line between non-public information and public information, the ""lab experiment"" example would be material insider information, but the fact that there will be litigation over a company's key patents may be ""public"" as soon as the lawyer submits the complaint to the court system. It is also worth noting that there are A LOT of financial products trading in the capital markets, and illegal insider trading laws only applies to trading of shares of a company. So if a major holder in gold is about to liquidate all their holdings, being short gold futures is not subject to civil and criminal sanctions. Hope this helps. The above examples should help you understand what kind of information is material inside information and what kind is not, and how it is relevant to trading decisions."
"If they could really do this, do you really think they would be wasting their time offering this course? You are being lied to. (Or more accurately: It's certainly possible to gamble and get lucky, but those gambles are  more likely to result in your rapidly  losing your money than in your rapidly gaining value.) It is possible to make money in the market. But ""market rate of return"" has historically averaged around  8%. That won't make you rich by itself, but it's better return than you can get from banks... at higher risk, please note. There are places in the market where, by accepting more risk of losing your money, you can improve on that 8%. For me the risk and effort are too much for the potential additional gains, but de gustibus."
Charles ponzi invented the Ponzi scheme (also known as the pyramid scheme) in the 1910 area before ww1 I believe. He got a bunch of people to invest in postage stamps and get other people to invest as they promised a huge return. Charles kept the money for himself and when people started wanting their money back it all came tumbling down. There is a movie on Netflix about how Charles got caught and the man who caught him.  This is different than the Direct Selling industry (also known as multi level or network marketing) which is a legal multi billion dollar industry with brands like Mary Kay and Amway. There are three parameters that make a company an illegal pyramid: 1) only money is distributed. There are no products or services being rendered. 2) you can never make more money than the person who sponsored you into business. 3) you get money from the registration part of signing people up.  Personally I am part of the fastest growing and most successful organization that utilizes this model. It is an organization called World Wide Dreambuilders, a mentorship and training organization that teaches people how to make a profitable business that distributes Amway products in a legal way with high integrity.   Honestly 80% of the industry is people trying to hype up and sign up their friends and family and it's pretty lame. I can only speak for the Seattle area but my sponsor is making over $150k a year and has a strong organization with over 100 people in it. He built this business part time and is about to walk away from his day job in September and its freaking rad. Hope all this answers your question.
Those claims caused the biggest bull market in history and it will take some time for the widespread belief in such claims to diminish. We are in the process of seeing that happen today. The good news is that, once there is a consensus that Buy-and-Hold can never work, we will likely have the greatest period of economic growth in U.S. history. The power of academic research has been used to support Buy-and-Hold for decades now because of the widespread belief that the market is efficient. Turn that around and investors will possess a stronger belief in the need to practice long-term market timing than they have ever possessed before. In that sort of environment, both bull markets and bear markets become logical impossibilities. Emotional extremes in one direction beget emotional extremes in the other direction. The stock market has been more emotional in the past 16 years than it has ever been in any earlier time (this is evidenced by the wild P/E10 numbers that have applied for that entire time-period). Now that we are seeing the losses that follow from investing in highly emotional ways, we may see rational strategies becoming exceptionally popular for an exceptionally long period of time. I certainly hope so! The comment above that this will not work for individual stocks is correct. This works only for those investing in indexes. The academic research shows that there has never yet in 140 years of data been a time when Valuation-Informed Indexing has not provided far higher long-term returns at greatly diminished risk. But VII is not a strategy designed for stock pickers. There is no reason to believe that it would work for stock pickers. Thanks much for giving this new investing strategy some thought and consideration and for inviting comments that help investors to understand both points of view about it. Rob
"Yeah. I went to a free seminar which was really just a roundabout sales pitch for their expensive seminars. They promised big secrets etc. Yet when I asked the guy what his portfolio consisted of, ""Some property and some stocks"" was his reply.    ""So how did you get them and choose them?"" I asked.   ""We cover that in our other seminars which you can sign up for.""  yeah and pay tons for. Obviously he was there to drum up sales for nebulous and vague seminars on ""Wealth Building."" for a thousand bucks. I'd rather just buy a thousand bucks on investment books. Least I know ill be getting worthwhile knowledge out of that.   Tl;Dr felt like a scientologist sales pitch. Lots of show and money spent. Probably bullshit aliens at the end."
Fly-by-night scams, by definition, won't be around very long -- and usually that means under a few months. Any company with a significant online interface will have to have been around long enough to develop that client interface, their backend databases, and the interface with the markets and their clearing house. The two brokerages you mentioned have been around for 7+ years, so that lends strength to the supposition of a strong business model. That said, there could well be a new company that offers services or prices that fit your investment need, and in that case definitely look into their registrations and third-party reviews. Finally, note that the smaller, independent brokerages will probably have stiffer margin rules. If you're playing a complex, novel, and/or high-risk strategy that can't handle the volatility of a market crash, even a short excursion such as the 2010 flash crash, stiff margin rules might have consequences that a novice investor would rather pretend didn't exist."
While the dissemination of information may be relatively efficient, the interpretation of that information is quite variable. It is not easy to put a number to most events. (By ""put a number"" I mean determine the impact to the balance sheet.) It is a complicated system, with many inputs and many actors, which have varying goals. While there may be an effective, Zen-like approach to investing, the markets cannot actually be simplified to ""buy low, sell high"" in practice. Or, more specific to your question ""buy and hold"" is a simple idea, that is not necessarily easy to implement. Prompted by JoeTaxpayer's comment, I went searching for one of my favorite quotes regarding the markets: ""Markets can remain irrational a lot longer than you and I can remain solvent."" -- John Maynard Keynes And, I came across this one, which I think applies quite well to this question: ""The long run is a misleading guide to current affairs. In the long run we are all dead."" -- John Maynard Keynes"
"Do I make money in the stock market from other people losing money? Not normally.* The stock market as a whole, on average, increases in value over time. So if we make the claim that the market is a zero-sum game, and you only make money if other people lose money, that idea is not sustainable. There aren't that many people that would keep investing in something only to continue to lose money to the ""winners."" The stock market, and the companies inside it, grow in value as the economy grows. And the economy grows as workers add value with their work. Here's an analogy: I can buy a tree seed for very little and plant it in the ground. If I do nothing more, it probably won't grow, and it will be worth nothing. However, by taking the time to water it, fertilize it, weed it, prune it, and harvest it, I can sell the produce for much more than I purchased that seed for. No one lost money when I sell it; I increased the value by adding my effort. If I sell that tree to a sawmill, they can cut the tree into usable lumber, and sell that lumber at a profit. They added their efforts and increased the value. A carpenter can increase the value even further by making something useful (a door, for example). A retail store can make that door more useful by transporting it to a location with a buyer, and a builder can make it even more useful by installing it on a house. No one lost any money in any of these transactions. They bought something valuable, and made it more valuable by adding their effort. Companies in the stock market grow in value the same way. A company will grow in value as its employees produce things. An investor provides capital that the company uses to be able to produce things**, and as the company grows, it increases in value. As the population increases and more workers and customers are born, and as more useful things are invented, the economy will continue to grow as a whole. * Certainly, it is possible, even common, to profit from someone else's loss. People lose money in the stock market all the time. But it doesn't have to be this way.
There is such a thing as a buy-write, which is buying a stock and writing a (covered) call simultaneously. But as far as I know brokers charge two commissions, one stock trade and one options trade so you're not going to save on commissions.
"Think about it this way: prop desks wouldn't exist if trading didn't work.     Part of trading is adapting.  That includes algos, manipulation, housing crashes, etc.  On a practical side, you have to find a way to make money or else you won't last long.  I have heard that it takes longer for new traders to be protifable, but that's second/third hand.   Personally, my first few years were tough, but I still think it's better to try to achieve something and fail than to be content in mediocrity.  Despite wanting to quit a couple times and thinking, ""I should be doing better"", I stuck through it and it's worked out pretty well."
Not exactly nonfiction, but [Reminiscences of a Stock Operator](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Reminiscences_of_a_Stock_Operator) is a can't-skip portrait of the very early days of Wall Street (early 20th century). It's a narrative memoir, not a work of analysis, which makes it an easy read.   If you're looking for something more analytical and recent (but not too recent), the can't-skip recommendation I would make is Burton Malkiel's [A Random Walk Down Wall Street](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/A_Random_Walk_Down_Wall_Street).   If you're looking for something more in the biographical range, I'd look for a biography of the man who's had the most influence on the theory of portfolio construction, [Harry Markowitz](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Harry_Markowitz). I don't have any titles to recommend here, although [this brief biography](http://www.nobelprize.org/nobel_prizes/economic-sciences/laureates/1990/markowitz-bio.html) might help you decide how to proceed.
"This simulation game uses actual historical S&P 500 data to test whether you can ""time the market."" You start with $10,000 invested, and it plays back 10 years of index values, in which time you can choose to sell (once), and if you do sell you can subsequently buy (once). Then you find out how you did relative to just holding what you started with.  If you play it enough times, you might eventually beat it once. I never did."
This is a scam. There is no soldier, no money ... This is a story to gain sympathy and make one part with Bank account and other details so that the scammer can make away with your money.
Yes, but only in a relatively short term. False news or speculations can definitely change the stock price, sometimes even significantly. However, the stock price will eventually (in the long-term) correct itself and head to the right direction.
"Once upon a time I ran my own micro hedge fund for a very short time.  I can't recall the term commonly used in the industry for such info, but a few individuals, including the prime brokerage firm's founder, offered information of questionable character.  I refused to trade on any of it, not only because of the borderline illegality, but also because I didn't trust any of it... seemed to be more rumor mill type nonsense than anything else.  Moreover, if they already have that info, then it's already up/down... so it then goes the reverse direction as they take profits.  As is commonly said even in normal investor circles: ""buy the rumor, sell the news."""
Various companies have hired quants to write algorithms to buy and sell stocks. Each of these has unique criteria that determine when it should buy/sell. Most have some AI component that allows it to tweak parameters and learn. The point is the more people try this kind of fake news tactic the better the algorithms get at responding or not responding to it. Keep in mind though that 1) the AIs learn at different rates 2) if an AI notices a boost in trading volume due to a story it determines is fake, the correct move is to buy and then sell before other AIs catch on.
Nope, think what a nightmare that would be, a bunch of shares would be issued and then sold to tonnes of people, who might sell various partial numbers of them to others, who might buy them and others from 20 others all as part of one order though multiple fills... It would be nuts, and if one were to issue a certificate with the IDs of shares that were carried through such a process the likelihood is the fragmentation would be so great that 100K shares would have consist of almost as many fragments! Imagine a share certificate with 70K IDs/ranges? Yikes!
There are about 250 trading days in a year. There are also about 1,900 stocks listed on the NYSE.  What you're asking for would require about 6.2M rows of data. Depending on the number of attributes you're likely looking at a couple GB of data.  You're only getting that much information through an API or an FTP.
That makes sense.  So it's sort of a thoughtless process on a short time scale, but if you add up all that noise over time you could (potentially) end up with a more meaningful position than if you had valued and bet on each stock individually.  And I could see how these things could spread along a chain to unrelated stocks as well...
"This was an article meant for mass consumption, written by a Yale law professor and an individual who has a PhD in economics (in addition to his practical, on the job experience managing the Yale endowment).  I'm having a hard time believing that it was ""poorly argued.""  As for proof, that's the sort of thing you find in financial and economic journals (for example, [The Effect of Maker-Taker Fees on Investor Order Choice and Execution Quality in U.S. Stock Markets](http://people.stern.nyu.edu/jhasbrou/SternMicroMtg/SternMicroMtg2015/Papers/MakerTakerODonoghue.pdf)).    One of the direct takeaways from the above paper states:  *""I find that total trading cost to investors increases, when the taker fee and maker rebate increase, even if the net fee is held fixed. The total trading cost represents the net-of-fees bid-ask spread and the brokerage commission to an investor wanting to buy and then sell the same stock.""*  I'm not here to argue for the paper.  I'm really here to tell you that these guys have far more of a clue than you realize.  ~~A dash of humility on your part may be in order, given the fact that you've already admitted to the reality that you aren't sure of any of this yourself.~~  *Edit*:  Thought I was responding to a different thread."
I don't understand what your contention with Katsuyama is exactly. Are you saying that Lewis' Flash Boys was a work of fiction?  Electronic trading is more efficient, cheaper, democratic, etc than paper orders, for sure. But many HFT firms have built billion dollar enterprises by scalping ordinary investors, fractions of pennies at a time, without adding anything of value. The former truth does not invalidate the latter one.