vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"Real-time equity (or any other market) data is not available for free anywhere in the US.  It is always delayed by 10-15 minutes. On the other hand, online brokers who target the ""day trader"" (Interactive Brokers, TD Ameritrade, etc.) offer much closer to real-time data AND feature all the tools/alerts/charts/etc. you could ever possibly dream of.  I bet the type of alert you're asking for is available with just a couple of clicks on one of these brokers' platforms. Of course, accounts with these online brokers are not free; you must pay for these sophisticated tools and fast market access.  Another down side is that the data feeds sent to you by even the most sophisticated online broker are still delayed by tens of seconds compared to the data feeds used by big banks and professional investors.  Not to mention that the investment arm of the broker you use will be making its own trades based on the data feeds before relaying them on to you. So this begs the question: why do you need real-time information?  Are you trying to ""day trade"" -- i.e. profit from minute-to-minute fluctuations in the stock market?  (I can't in good conscience recommend that, but best of luck to you.)  If on the other hand you don't truly need ""real-time"" data for your application, then I support @ChrisDegnen's approach -- use public data feeds and write your own software.  You probably will not find any free tools for the sort of alerting you're looking for because most folks who want these types of alerts also need faster feeds and are therefore already using an online broker's tools."
"OneTwoTrade is a binary option seller, and they are officially licensed by the Malta Gaming Authority. They are not in any way licensed or regulated as an investment, because they don't do actual investing. Is your money safe? If you mean will they take your money and run off with it, then no they probably won't just take your deposit and refuse to return any money to you for nothing - that would be a terrible way to make money for the long-term. If you mean ""will I lose my money?"" - oh yeah, you probably will! Binary options - outside of special sophisticate financial applications - are for people who think day trading has too little risk, or who would prefer online poker with a thin veneer of ""it's an investment!"" In the words of Forbes, Don't Gamble On Binary Options: If people want to gamble, that’s their choice. But let’s not confuse that with investing. Binary options are a crapshoot, pure and simple. These kinds of businesses run like a casino - there's a built-in house advantage, you are playing odds (which are against you), and the fundamental product is trying to bet on short-term volatility in financial markets. This is often ridiculously short-terms, measured in minutes. It's often called ""all or nothing options"", because if you bet wrong you lose almost everything - they give you a little bit of the money you bet back (so you will bet again, preferably with more of your own money). If you bet correctly you get a pay-out, just like in craps or roulette. If you are looking to gamble online, this is one method to do it. But this isn't investing, you are as mathematically likely to lose your money and/or become addicted as any other form of money-based gambling, and absolutely treat it the same way you would a casino: decide how much money you are willing to spend on the adventure before you start, and expect you'll likely not get much or any of that money back. However, I will moralize on this point - I really hate being lied to.
"The settlement date for any trade is the date on which the seller gets the buyer's money and the buyer gets the seller's product. In US equities markets the settlement date is (almost universally) three trading days after the trade date. This settlement period gives the exchanges, the clearing houses, and the brokers time to figure out how many shares and how many dollars need to actually be moved around in order to give everyone what they're owed (and then to actually do all that moving around). So, ""settling"" a short trade is the same thing as settling any other trade. It has nothing to do with ""closing"" (or covering) the seller's short position. Q: Is this referring to when a short is initiated, or closed? A: Initiated. If you initiate a short position by selling borrowed shares on day 1, then settlement occurs on day 4. (Regardless of whether your short position is still open or has been closed.) Q: All open shorts which are still open by the settlement date have to be reported by the due date. A: Not exactly. The requirement is that all short positions evaluated based on their settlement dates (rather than their trade dates) still open on the deadline have to be reported by the due date. You sell short 100 AAPL on day 1. You then cover that short by buying 100 AAPL on day 2. As far as the clearing houses and brokers are concerned, however, you don't even get into the short position until your sell settles at the end of day 4, and you finally get out of your short position (in their eyes) when your buy settles at the end of day 5. So imagine the following scenarios: The NASDAQ deadline happens to be the end of day 2. Since your (FINRA member) broker has been told to report based on settlement date, it would report no open position for you in AAPL even though you executed a trade to sell on day 1. The NASDAQ deadline happens to be the end of day 3. Your sell still has not settled, so there's still no open position to report for you. The NASDAQ deadline happens to be the end of day 4.
I have been looking into CMEs trading tool. I might just play around with futures on it. You make a good point on that though. I am reading Hull's book on options, futures and derivatives, and so far so good. Only thing I would want to test is options on futures, which is missing :( .
I have managed two IRA accounts; one I inherited from my wife's 401K and my own's 457B. I managed actively my wife's 401 at Tradestation which doesn't restrict on Options except level 5 as naked puts and calls. I moved half of my 457B funds to TDAmeritrade, the only broker authorized by my employer, to open a Self Directed account. However, my 457 plan disallows me from using a Cash-secured Puts, only Covered Calls. For those who does not know investing, I resent the contention that participants to these IRAs should not be messing around with their IRA funds. For years, I left my 401k/457B funds with my current fund custodian, Great West Financial. I checked it's current values once or twice a year. These last years, the market dived in the last 2 quarters of 2015 and another dive early January and February of 2016. I lost a total of $40K leaving my portfolio with my current custodian choosing all 30 products they offer, 90% of them are ETFs and the rest are bonds. If you don't know investing, better leave it with the pros - right? But no one can predict the future of the market. Even the pros are at the mercy of the market. So, I you know how to invest and choose your stocks, I don't think your plan administrator has to limit you on how you manage your funds. For example, if you are not allowed to place a Cash-Secured Puts and you just Buy the stocks or EFT at market or even limit order, you buy the securities at their market value. If you sell a Cash-secured puts against the stocks/ETF you are interested in buying, you will receive a credit in fraction of a dollar in a specific time frame. In average, your cost to owning a stock/ETF is lesser if you buy it at market or even a limit order. Most of the participants of the IRA funds rely too much on their portfolio manager because they don't know how to manage. If you try to educate yourself at a minimum, you will have a good understanding of how your IRA funds are tied up to the market.
Absolutely. An IRA works just like any other brokerage account except that there are constraints on contributions and withdrawals. You can invest in just about anything you'd like. Because the title of your question is slightly ambiguous I'll add this for clarity. You can't directly add stocks to an IRA account. You can only fund it with cash. However, you can buy any stock you want with the cash you transferred into the account. If you want to move a stock into an IRA account from another account you will need to cash it out first, transfer the cash, then re-buy the stock.
You can buy stocks in the IRA, similarly to your regular investment account. Generally, when you open an account with a retail provider like TDAmeritrade, all the options available for you on that account are allowable. Keep in mind that you cannot just deposit money to IRA. There's a limit on how much you can deposit a year ($5500 as of 2015, $6500 for those 50 or older), and there's also a limit on top of that - the amount you deposit into an IRA cannot be more than your total earned income (i.e. income from work). In addition, there are limits on how much of your contribution you can deduct (depending on your income and whether you/your spouse have an employer-sponsored retirement plan).
First of all an IRA is a type of account that says nothing about how your money is invested. It seems like you are trying to compare an IRA with a market ETF  (like Vanguard Total Market Admiral VTSAX), but the reality is that you can have both. Depending on your IRA some of the investment options may be limited, but you will probably be able to find some version of a passive fund following an index you are interested in. The IRA account is tax advantaged, but you may invest the money in your IRA in an ETF.  As for how often a non-IRA account is taxed and how much, that depends on how often you sell. If you park your money in an ETF and do not sell, the IRS will not claim any taxes from it. The taxable event happens when you sell. But if you gain $1000 in a year and a day and you decide to sell, you will owe $150 (assuming 15% capital gains tax), bringing your earnings down to $850. If your investments go poorly and you lose money, there will be no capital gains tax to pay.
Indeed, there's no short term/long term issue trading inside the IRA, and in fact, no reporting. If you have a large IRA balance and trade 100 (for example) times per year, there's no reporting at all.  As you note, long term gains outside the IRA are treated favorably in the tax code (as of now, 2012) but that's subject to change. Also to consider, The worst thing I did was to buy Apple in my IRA. A huge gain that will be taxed as ordinary income when I withdraw it. Had this been in my regular account, I could sell and pay the long term cap gain rate this year.  Last, there's no concept of Wash sale in one's IRA, as there's no taking a loss for shares sold below cost. (To clarify, trading solely within an IRA won't trigger wash sale rules. A realized loss in a taxable account, combined with a purchase inside an IRA can trigger the wash sale rule if the stock is purchased inside the IRA 30 days before or after the sale at a loss. Thank you, Dilip, for the comment.) Aside from the warnings of trading too much or running afoul of frequency restrictions, your observation is correct.
Yes. Of course, you still need to take into the account the trade costs (fees paid to the broker), these are not going anywhere. Basically what it means is that you don't have to worry about long/short holding period within the IRA, they're all the same. It doesn't mean that long term trading is better or worse to have outside the scope of IRA, it just means that the concept doesn't exist inside.
If you sell a Cash-secured puts against the stocks/ETF you are interested in buying, you will receive a credit in fraction of a dollar in a specific time frame. In average, your cost to owning a stock/ETF is lesser if you buy it at market or even a limit order. Most of the participants of the IRA funds rely too much on their portfolio manager because they don't know how to manage. If you try to educate yourself at a minimum, you will have a good understanding of how your IRA funds are tied up to the market. If you know how to trade in bear market compared to bull market, then you are good at managing your investments. When I started contributing to my employer's deferred comp account (457B) as a public employee, I have no idea of how my portfolio works. Year after year as I looked at my investment, I was happy because it continued to grow. Without scrutinizing how much it grew yearly, and my regular payroll contribution, I am happy even it only grew 2% per year. And at this age that I am ready to retire at 60, I started taking investment classes and attended pre-retirement seminars. Then I knew that it was not totally a good decision to leave your retirement funds in the hands of the portfolio manager since they don't really care if it tanked out on some years as long at overall it grew to a meager 1%-4% because they managers are pretty conservative on picking the equities they invest. You can generalize that maybe 90% of IRA investors don't know about investing and have poor decision making actions which securities/ETF to buy and hold. For those who would like to remain as one, that is fine. But for those who spent time and money to study and know how to invest, I don't think the plan manager can limit the participants ability to manage their own portfolio especially if the funds have no matching from the employer like mine. All I can say to all who have IRA or any retirement accounts, educate yourself early because if you leave it all to your portfolio managers, you lost a lot. Don't believe much in what those commercial fund managers also show in their presentation just to move your funds for them to manage. Be proactive.
Worse yet, if you let the money accumulate but you are the one calling the shots ""Buy 100 shares of APPL today"" instead of letting the brokerage execute the order when there is enough money, you are likely to be timing the market instead of doing DCA. So, are brokerages useless in retirement fund accounts? No, they can be useful but they are not suitable for DCA strategies involving buying stocks. Stick to mutual funds for DCA. Do people use it across the board on all stock investments? As indicated above, using DCA to buy individual stocks is not the best idea, regardless of whether it is done inside a retirement plan or outside. DCA outside a retirement plan works best if you not trust yourself to stick with the strategy (""Ooops, I forgot to mail the check yesterday; oh, well, I will do it next week"") but rather, arrange for your mutual fund company to take the money out of your checking account each week/month/quarter etc, and invest it in whatever fund(s) you have chosen. Most companies have such programs under names such as Automatic Investment Program (AIP) etc. Why not have your bank send the money to the mutual fund company instead? Well, that works too, but my bank charges me for sending the money whereas my mutual fund company does AIP for free. But YMMV. Dollar-cost averaging generally means investing a fixed amount of money on a periodic basis. An alternative strategy, if one has decided that owning 1200 shares of FlyByKnight Co is a good investment to have, is to buy round lots of 100 shares of FBKCO each month. The amount of money invested each month varies, but at the end of the year, the average cost of the 1200 shares is the average of the prices on the 12 days on which the investments were made. Of course, by the end of the year, you might not think FBKCO is worth holding any more. This technique worked best in the ""good old days"" when blue-chip stocks paid what was for all practical purposes a guaranteed dividend each year, and people bought these stocks with the intention of passing them on to their widows and children."
Nice idea. When I started my IRAs, I considered this as well, and the answer from the broker was that this was not permitted. And, aside from transfers from other IRAs or retirement accounts, you can't 'deposit' shares to the IRA, only cash.
A broker does not have to allow the full trading suite the regulations permit.  From brokersXpress: Do you allow equity and index options trading in brokersXpress IRAs?     Yes, we allow trading of equity and index options in IRAs based on the trading level assigned to an investor. Trading in IRAs includes call buying, put buying, cash-secured put writing, spreads, and covered calls.  I understand OptionsXpress.com offers the same level of trading. Disclosure - I have a Schwab account and am limited in what's permitted just as your broker does. The trade you want is no more risky that a limit (buy) order, only someone is paying you to extend that order for a fixed time. The real answer is to ask the broker. If you really want that level of trading, you might want to change to one that permits it.
"Sure. For starters, you can put it in a savings account. Don't laugh, they used to pay noticeable interest. You know, back in the olden days.  You could buy an I-bond from Treasury Direct. They're a government savings bond that pays a specified amount of interest (currently 0%, I believe), plus the amount of the inflation rate (something like 3.5% currently, I believe). You don't get paid the money -- the I-bond grows in value till you sell it. You can open a discount brokerage account, and buy 1 or more shares of stock in a company you like. Discount brokerages generally have a minimum of $500 or so, but will waive that if you set the account up as an IRA. Scot Trade, for instance. (An IRA, in case you didn't know, is a type of account that's tax free but you can't touch it till you turn 59 1/2. It's meant to help you save for retirement.) Incidentally, watch out of ""small account"" fees that some brokerages might charge you. Generally they're annual or monthly charges they'd charge you to cover their costs on your account -- since they're certainly not going to make it in commissions. That IRA at Scot Trade is no-fee. Speaking of commissions, those will be a big chunk of that $100. It'll be like $7-$10 to buy that stock -- a pretty big bite. However, many of these discount brokerages also offer some mutual funds for no commission. Those mutual funds, in turn, have minimums too, but once again if your account's an IRA many will waive the minimum or set it low -- like $100."
Anytime you invest in stocks, you do that inside an investment account - such as the type you might open at ETrade, Vanguard, Fidelity or Charles Schwab.   Once you have the account and fund it, you can tell the system to invest some/all of your money in  When you open your investment account, their first question will be whether this is a cash account, traditional IRA, or Roth IRA.  The broker must report this to the IRS because the tax treatment is very different.
"As other people have indicated, traditional IRAs are tax deductable for a particular year. Please note, though, that traditional IRAs are tax deferred (not tax-free) accounts, meaning that you'll have to pay taxes on any money you take out later regardless of why you're making the withdrawal. (A lot of people mistakenly call them tax free, which they're not). There is no such thing as a ""tax-free"" retirement account. Really, in terms of Roth vs. Traditional IRAs, it's ""pay now or pay later."" With the exception of special circumstances like this, I recommend investing exclusively in Roth IRAs for money that you expect to grow much (or that you expect to produce substantial income over time). Just to add a few thoughts on what to actually invest in once you open your IRA, I strongly agree with the advice that you invest mostly in low-cost mutual funds or index funds. The advantage of an open-ended mutual fund is that it's easier to purchase them in odd increments and you may be able to avoid at least some purchase fees, whereas with an ETF you have to buy in multiples of that day's asking price. For example, if you were investing $500 and the ETF costs $200 per share, you could only purchase 2 shares, leaving $100 uninvested (minus whatever fee your broker charged for the purchase). The advantage of an ETF is that it's easy to buy or sell quickly. Usually, when you add money to a mutual fund, it'll take a few days for it to hit your account, and when you want to sell it'll similarly take a few days for you to get your money; when I buy an ETF the transaction can occur almost instantly. The fees can also be lower (if the ETF is just a passive index fund). Also, there's a risk with open-ended mutual funds that if too many people pull money out at once the managers could be forced to sell stocks at an unfavorable price."
I'd say yes, and hope that my anecdotal evidence serves as proof. My IRA is not a margin account. It can't be.  I attempt to create a covered call, buying a stock at say $20, and selling a call for $4, for net $16 cost. The account only had $1610 at the time, and the trades go through just fine. Yes, I needed to enter as a limit order, at the same time, a single order with the $16 debit limit.  If this is not enough proof, I'd be curious - why not? The option proceeds must clear, of course, which it does.
"You seem to have it right.  Unless you have a big position, having MLP shares in your IRA will not cause you any tax hassles.  Your IRA will get a Schedule K from the MPL (which may be mailed to you), but you won't need to do anything with that unless you're over the UBI limit.  Last I checked, that was $1000, and you probably won't exceed that. UBI in principle needs to be evaluated every year, so it's not necessarily a ""one-time"" event.  If your IRA does go over the UBI limit, your IRA (not you) needs to file a return.  In that case, contact your custodian and tell them about the Schedule K that you got. See also my answer here: Tax consequences of commodity ETF The question is about commodity ETFs in IRAs, but the part of my answer about UBI applies equally well."
A 401-K is something you get through an employer. I recommend getting a self-directed IRA.  You can open an IRA with Scottrade with $500 The money you put into an IRA is tax deferred, meaning that you do not have to pay taxes on profits. It may also lower your tax liability.  Scottrade has a feature to automatically reinvest any dividends from the securities you own. This feature allows you to avoid commissions on those automatic purchases.  Don't try to time the market. Pick a good ETF (exchange traded fund) that pays dividends. It will give you diversification.  Avoid the urge to buy and sell constantly. This only gives commissions to the broker.
There is no typical return for an IRA. Understand that an IRA is not an investment type, it is just an account that gets special tax treatment by the Federal Government. The money in the IRA could be invested in almost anything including Gold, Stocks, Bonds, Cash, CDs, etc. So the question as phrased isn't exactly meaningful. It is kind of like asking what is the typical price of things if I use $10 bills. As for a 10.6% annualized return on your portfolio. That's not a bad return. At that rate you will double your investment (with compounding) every 7.2 years. Again, however, some context is needed. You can really only evaluate investment returns with your risk profile in mind. If you are invested in super safe investments like CDs, that is an absolutely incredible return. You compare it to several indexes, which is a good way to do it if you are investing in the types of investments tracked by those indexes.