vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
Unless you're an active trader, 30 trades per month is a number you'll probably never hit, so you might as well take advantage of the offer while you have it. But don't trade more than you normally would. Discount brokerages make money on the arbitrage between the bid and ask prices on the exchanges (legal as long as you get a price that was available on the open market - they disclose this in the fine print in your account paperwork). So they want you to trade as often as they can get you to. As you say, it's really just a mind game. There is always a cost to doing business with a bank or brokerage. They charge you fees for services and they make money on your deposits while you're not using them. So while it looks like they're paying you interest, which they are, they're not paying you all the interest they've earned using your money. So there's the cost. It was only when interest rates dropped so low that they were starting to feel it, that they started rolling out more overt fees for services. If you'll notice, the conditions that cause the fees to be waived in your account all lead to increased deposits or transactions, either directly or indirectly. If your main concern is the efficiency of your investments, which by your description appear to be rather modest, you should consider dollar-cost averaging (DCA) into a mutual fund (of which there are plenty of high quality no-load/no-fee options around), or into a stock if your brokerage offers a lower-fee DCA program for stocks (where you can often buy partial shares).
This answer fills in some of the details you are unsure about, since I'm further along than you. I bought the ESPP shares in 2012.  I didn't sell immediately, but in 2015, so I qualify for the long-term capital gains rate. Here's how it was reported: The 15% discount was reported on a W2 as  it was also mentioned twice in the info box (not all of my W2's come with one of these) but also  This showed the sale trade, with my cost basis as the discounted price of $5000. And for interests sake, I also got the following in 2012: WARNING! This means that just going ahead and entering the numbers means you will be taxed twice! once as income and once as capital gains. I only noticed this was happening because I no longer worked for the company, so this W2 only had this one item on it. This is another example of the US tax system baffling me with its blend of obsessive compulsive need for documentation coupled with inexplicably missing information that's critical to sensible accounting. The 1099 documents must (says the IRS since 2015) show the basis value as the award price (your discounted price).   So reading the form 8949: Note: If you checked Box D above but the basis reported to the IRS was   incorrect, enter in column (e) the basis as reported to the IRS, and   enter an adjustment in column (g) to correct the basis. We discover the number is incorrect and must adjust.  The actual value you need to adjust it by may be reported on your 1099, but also may not (I have examples of both). I calculated the required adjustment by looking at the W2, as detailed above. I gleaned this information from the following documents provided by my stock management company (you should the tax resources section of your provider):
For point two.. The norm for buying stock is to just register online with a major broker: Fidelity, Schwab,TD Ameritrade...etc, send them money to fund your purchase, make the stock purchase in your account, and then have a little faith. You could probably get them to physically transfer the stock certificates from them to you, but it is not the norm at all. I would plan on a fee being involved also. The 10$ is for one trade... regardless of if you buy one share or many. So you wouldn't buy 1 share of a five dollar stock as your cost would be absurd. You might buy a hundred shares.
Not sure how this has got this far with no obvious discussion about the huge tax advantages of share buy backs vs dividend paying.  Companies face a very simple choice with excess capital - pay to shareholders in the form of a taxable dividend, invest in future growth where they expect to make more than $1 for every $1 invested, or buy back the equivalent amount of stock on the market, thus concentrating the value of each share the equivalent amount with no tax issues. Of these, dividends are often by far the worst choice. Virtually all sane shareholders would just rather the company put the capital to work or concentrate the value of their shares by taking many off the market rather than paying a taxable dividend.
Vesting As you may know a stock option is the right to acquire a given amount of stock at a given price.  Actually acquiring the stock is referred to as exercising the option.  Your company is offering you options over 200,000 shares but not all of those options can be exercised immediately. Initially you will only be able to acquire 25,000 shares; the other 175,000 have conditions attached, the condition in this case presumably being that you are still employed by the company at the specified time in the future.  When the conditions attached to a stock option are satisfied that option is said to have vested - this simply means that the holder of the option can now exercise that option at any time they choose and thereby acquire the relevant shares. Dividends Arguably the primary purpose of most private companies is to make money for their owners (i.e. the shareholders) by selling goods and/or services at a profit.  How does that money actually get to the shareholders?  There are a few possible ways of which paying a dividend is one.  Periodically (potentially annually but possibly more or less frequently or irregularly) the management of a company may look at how it is doing and decide that it can afford to pay so many cents per share as a dividend.  Every shareholder would then receive that number of cents multiplied by the number of shares held. So for example in 4 years or so, after all your stock options have vested and assuming you have exercised them you will own 200,000 shares in your company.  If the board declares a dividend of 10 cents per share you would receive $20,000.  Depending on where you are and your exact circumstances you may or may not have to pay tax on this. Those are the basic concepts - as you might expect there are all kinds of variations and complications that can occur, but that's hopefully enough to get you started.
These are cheaper because you only pay for the order if it is executed successfully; if you never need it, it's free (or very cheap; some brokers will charge a token service fee to maintain a stop or stop limit). However, if the price drops very quickly or you specify too narrow a band, the stock can drop through that band too quickly to execute the sell order and you end up with a severely depreciated stock and an unexercised order. This can happen if the company whose stock you own buys another company; VERY quickly, both stocks will adjust, the buying company will often plummet inside a few seconds after news of the merger is announced, based on the steep drop in working capital and/or the infusion of a large amount of new stock in the buying company to cover the equity of the purchased company. You end up with devalued stock and a worthless option (but one company buying another is not usually reason to sell; if the purchase is a good idea, their stock will recover). Another option which may be useful to you is a swaption; this basically amounts to buying a put option on one financial instrument and a call on another, rolled into one option contract specifying a swap. This allows you to pick something you think would rise if your stock fell and exchange your stock for it at your option. For example, say the stock on which you buy this swaption is an airline stock, and you contract the option to swap for oil. If oil surges, the airline's stock will tank sharply, and you win both ways (avoiding loss and realizing a gain). You'd also win if either half of this option realized a gain over the option price; oil could surge or the airline could tank and you could win. You could even do this ""naked"" since its your option; if the airline's stock tanks, you buy it at the crashed price to exercise the option and then do so. The downside is a higher option cost; the seller will be no fool, so if your position appears to be likely, anyone who'd bet against you by selling you this option will want a pretty high return."
"In the case of an ""initial public offering"", the brokers underwriting the share issue will look at the current earnings being generated by the company and compare these to those of other competitor companies already listed in the stock market.  For example, if a new telephone company is undertaking an initial public offering, then the share price of those telephone companies which are already traded on the stock market will serve as a reference for how much investors will be willing to pay for the new company's shares.  If investors are willing to pay 15 times earnings for telecom shares, then this will be the benchmark used in determining the new share price. In addition, comparative growth prospects will be taken into account.  Finally, the underwriter will want to see a successful sale, so they will tend to ""slightly under price"" the new shares in order to make them attractive. None of this is an exact science and we often see shares trading at a large premium to the initial offer price during the first few days of trading.  More often that not, prices then settle down to something closer to the offer price.  The initial price spike is usually the result of high demand for the shares by investors who believe that past examples of a price spike will repeat with this initial public offering.  There will also usually be high demand for the new shares from funds that specialise in shares of the type being issued. In the case of a ""rights issue"", where an existing publicly traded company wishes to raise capital by issuing new shares, the company will price the new shares at a significant discount to the current market price.  The new shares will be initially offered to existing shares holders and the discounted price is intended to encourage the existing shareholders to exercise their ""rights"" since the new shares may have the effect of diluting the value of their shares.  Any shares which are not purchased by existing share holder will then be offered for sale in the market."
There are several ways to protect against (or even profit from) a market correction. Hedge funds do this by hedging, that is, buying a stock that they think is strong and selling short a paired stock that is weak. If you hold, say, a strong retail company in your portfolio, you might sell short an equal weight of a weak retail company. These are like buying insurance on your portfolio. If you own 300 shares of XYZ, currently trading at $68, you buy puts at a level at a strike price that lets you sleep at night. For example, you might buy 3 XYZ 6-month puts with a strike price of $60. A disadvantage is that the puts are wasting assets, that is, their time premium (which you paid for at the outset) becomes zero at expiration. (This is why it is like insurance. You wouldn't complain that your insurance premium was lost when you purchase insurance on your house and the house doesn't burn down, would you? Of course not. The purpose of the insurance is to protect your investment.) Note that as these puts are married, they only protect your portfolio. Instead of profiting from a correction, you would merely protect your portfolio during a correction. (No small feat!) If your portfolio is similar to the market, you can buy S&P index puts. If your market reflects a lot of technology, you can buy technology sector puts. Say you have a portfolio of $80K that reflects the market. You could buy out-of-the-market puts (again reflecting your tolerance for loss). Any losses in your portfolio after the puts go in-the-money would be (more or less) offset by gains in the puts. An advantage is that the bid/ask spread is smaller for the S&P. You would pay less for the protection. Also, the S&P puts are cash settled (meaning you get money put in your account on the business day after expiration day). A disadvantage is that the puts do not linearly go up as the market drops. (Delta hedging is a big deal in and of itself.) Another disadvantage is that they are wasting assets (see the Married puts section, previous).
If a company doesn't take out loans to buy back the shares, is it still a bad move? I don't necessarily see the problem with companies retiring shares.  If the shares of say Apple have a P/E ratio of 10 and the price to book value max of 1. Wouldn't it be a smart move by the company and the share holders assuming the projected net revenue will hold for at least ten years if not increase.   I guess I don't know the true practice of buying back shares but at its core (could be more corrupt), I just don't see it as inherently bad.
83(b) election requires you to pay the current taxes on the discount value. If the discount value is 0 - the taxes are also 0. Question arises - why would someone pay FMV for restricted stocks? That doesn't make sense. I would argue, as a devil's advocate, that the FMV is not really fair market value, since the restriction must have reduced the price you were willing to pay for the stocks. Otherwise why would you buy the stocks at full price - with strings attached that could easily cost you the whole amount you paid?
One of my university professors suggested doing this systematically to get access to shareholder meetings where there is typically a nice dinner involved. As long as the stock price + commission is less than the price of a nice restaurant it's actually not a bad idea.
1st question: If I bought 1 percent share of company X, but   unfortunately it closed down because of some reason as it was 1   million in debt. Since I had 1 percent of it shares, does it mean I   also have to pay the 1 percent of it's debt? Stock holders are not liable for anything more than their current holdings.  In cases of Ch11 bankruptcy stock holders usually get nothing.  In Ch7 the holdings will be severely hit but one may get 10% of pre-bk prices.  I would strongly recommend against investing in bankrupt companies.  A seasoned trader can make plenty off short term trades. The payoff structure is usually: 2nd question: Is there an age requirements to enter the stock market?   I am 15 years old this year. Yes it is generally 18, but some firms offer a joint option that your parents can open.
In my opinion, the average investor should not be buying individual stocks. One reason why is that the average investor is not capable of reading financial statements and evaluating whether a stock is overpriced or underpriced. As such, they're often tempted to make buy/sell decisions based solely on the current value of a stock as compared to the price at which they bought it. The real reasons to buy (or sell) a stock is the expectation of future growth of the company (or continued profit and expected dividends). If you aren't able to analyze a company's financial statements and business plan, then you really aren't in a position to evaluate that company's stock price. So instead of asking whether to sell based on a recent drop in stock price, you should be investigating why the stock price is falling, and deciding whether those reasons indicate a trend that you expect to continue.  If you buy and sell stocks based solely on recent trends in the stock price, you probably will end up buying stocks that have recently risen and selling stocks that have recently fallen. In that case, you are buying high and selling low, which is a recipe for poor financial outcomes.
"Someone who buys a stock is fundamentally buying a share of all future dividends, plus the future liquidation value of the company in the event that it is liquidated.  While some investors may buy stocks in the hope that they will be able to find other people willing to pay more for the stock than they did, that's a zero sum game.  The only way investors can make money in the aggregate is if either stocks pay dividends or if the money paid for company assets at liquidation exceeds total net price for which the company sold shares. One advantage of dividends from a market-rationality perspective is that dividend payments are easy to evaluate than company value.  Ideally, the share price of a company should match the present per-share cash value of all future dividends and liquidation, but it's generally impossible to know in advance what that value will be.  Stock prices may sometimes rise because of factors which increase the expected per-share cash value of future dividends and liquidations. In a sane market, rising prices on an item will reduce people's eagerness to buy and increase people's eagerness to sell.  Unfortunately, in a marketplace where steady price appreciation is expected the feedback mechanisms responsible for stability get reversed.  Rapidly rising prices act as a red flag to buyers--unfortunately, bulls don't see red flags as signal to stop, but rather as a signal to charge ahead. For a variety of reasons including the disparate treatment of dividends and capital gains, it's often not practical for a company to try to stabilize stock prices through dividends and stock sales.  Nonetheless, dividends are in a sense far more ""real"" than stock price appreciation, since paying dividends generally requires that companies actually have sources of revenues and profits.  By contrast, it's possible for stock prices to go through the roof for companies which have relatively few assets of value and no real expectation of becoming profitable businesses, simply because investors see rising stock prices as a ""buy"" signal independent of any real worth."
First, it depends on your broker.  Full service firms will tear you a new one, discount brokers may charge ~nothing.  You'll have to check with your broker on assignment fees. Theoretically, this is the case of the opposite of my answer in this question: Are underlying assets supposed to be sold/bought immediately after being bought/sold in call/put option? Your trading strategy/reasoning for your covered call notwithstanding, in your case, as an option writer covering in the money calls, you want to hold and pray that your option expires worthless.  As I said in the other answer, there is always a theoretical premium of option price + exercise price to underlying prices, no matter how slight, right up until expiration, so on that basis, it doesn't pay to close out the option. However, there's a reality that I didn't mention in the other answer: if it's a deep in the money option, you can actually put a bid < stock price - exercise price - trade fee and hope for the best since the market makers rarely bid above stock price - exercise price for illiquid options, but it's unlikely that you'll beat the market makers + hft.  They're systems are too fast. I know the philly exchange allows you to put in implied volatility orders, but they're expensive, and I couldn't tell you if a broker/exchange allows for dynamic orders with the equation I specified above, but it may be worth a shot to check out; however, it's unlikely that such a low order would ever be filled since you'll at best be lined up with the market makers, and it would require a big player dumping all its' holdings at once to get to your order. If you're doing a traditional, true-blue covered call, there's absolutely nothing wrong being assigned except for the tax implications.  When your counterparty calls away your underlyings, it is a sell for tax purposes. If you're not covering with the underlying but with a more complex spread, things could get hairy for you real quick if someone were to exercise on you, but that's always a risk.  If your broker is extremely strict, they may close the rest of your spread for you at the offer.  In illiquid markets, that would be a huge percentage loss considering the wide bid/ask spreads.
I feel dividends are better for shareholders. The idea behind buy backs is that future profits are split between fewer shares, thereby increasing the value (not necessarily price -- that's a market function) of the remaining shares. This presupposes that the company then retires the shares it repurchases. But quite often buybacks simply offset dilution from stock option compensation programs. In my opinion, some stock option compensation is acceptable, but overuse of this becomes a form of wealth transfer -- from the shareholder to management. The opposite of shareholder friendly! But let's assume the shares are being retired. That's good, but at what cost? The company must use cashflow (cash) to pay for the shares. The buyback is only a positive for shareholders if the shares are undervalued. Managers can be very astute in their own sphere: running their business. Estimating a reasonable range of intrinsic value for their shares is a difficult, and very subjective task, requiring many assumptions about future revenue and margins. A few managers, like Warren Buffett, are very competent capital allocators. But most managers aren't that good in this area. And being so close to the company, they're often overly optimistic. So they end up overpaying. If a company's shares are worth, say, $30, it's not unreasonable to assume they may trade all around that number, maybe as low as $15, and as high as $50. This is overly simplistic, but assuming the value doesn't change -- that the company is in steady-state mode, then the $30 point, the intrinsic value estimate, will act as a magnet for the market price. Eventually it regresses toward the value point. Well, if management doesn't understand this, they could easily pay $50 for the repurchased stock (heck, companies routinely just continue buying stock, with no apparent regard for the price they're paying). This is one of the quickest ways to vaporize shareholder capital (overpaying for dubious acquisitions is another). Dividends, on the other hand, require no estimates. They can't mask other activities, other agendas.
You bought the stock at some point in the past. You must have had a reason for this purchase. Has the recent change in price changed the reason you bought the stock? You must assume your losses are sunk costs. No matter what action you take, you can not recover your losses. Do not attempt to hold the stock in the hopes of regaining value, or sell it to stop losses. Instead approach this event as if this very day, you were given shares of the company's stock at their current market value for free as a gift. In this hypothetical situation, would you hold the shares, or sell them? Use that to judge your options. Not everyone, myself included, can handle the mental stress of watching share prices change. You can always consider trading index funds instead, which are much less volatile but will provide consistent, albeit, boring returns. This may or may not be you, but it's an option. Finally, do not keep money in the market you are not prepared to lose. It seems obvious, but if you lost 40% today, you could lose 100% tomorrow.