vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
The issue only arises when the investments grow in size.  A small amount won't trigger the higher tax rates. If the amount is large enough, then consider using either: Insurance products that are 'segregated', or RRSPs in your own name after your business pays you wages, or Gifting to other family members.
So in those definitions normally buying a lottery ticket would indeed not be an investment, but if we take for example Vadim's operation example If you have $1000 and need $2000 by next week or else you can't have an operation and you will die (and you can't find anyone to give you a loan). Your optimal strategy is to gamble your $1000, at the best odds you can get, with a possible outcome of $2000. So even if you only have a 1/3 chance of winning and getting that operation, it's still the right bet if you can't find a better one. this can suddenly change the perception and turn 'gambling' into 'high-risk investing'."
On reading couple of articles & some research over internet, I got to know about diversified investment where one should invest 70% in equity related & rest 30% in debt related funds Yes that is about right. Although the recommendation keeps varying a bit. However your first investment should not aim for diversification. Putting small amounts in multiple mutual funds may create paper work and tracking issues. My suggestion would be to start with an Index EFT or Large cap. Then move to balanced funds and mid caps etc.  On this site we don't advise on specific funds. You can refer to moneycontrol.com or economictimes or quite a few other personal finance advisory sites to understand the top funds in the segments and decide on funds accordingly. PS: Rather than buying paper, buy it electronic, better you can now buy it as Demat. If you already have an Demat account it would be best to buy through it.
All mutual funds disclose their investments, funds are large cap only or midcsp etc. So it depends on what funds you choose.
No, if you are taking a loss solely and purely to reduce the tax you have to pay, then it is not a good strategy, in fact it is a very bad strategy, no matter what country you are in. No investment choice should be made solely due to your tax consequeses. If you are paying tax that means you made a profit, if you made a loss just to save some tax then you are loosing money. The whole point of investing is to make money not lose it.
"Typically investing in only two securities is not a good idea when trying to spread risk. Even though you are in the VTI which is spread out over a large amount of securites it should in theory reduce portfolio beta to zero, or in this case as close to it as possible. The VTI however has a beta of 1.03 as of close today in New York. This means that the VTI moves roughly in exact tandem as ""the market"" usually benched against the S&P 500, so this means that the VTI is slightly more volatile than that index. In theory beta can be 0, this would be akin to investing in T-bills which are 'assumed' to be the risk free rate. So in theory it is possible to reduce the risk in your portfolio and apply a more capital protective model. I hope this helps you a bit."
"TL;DR; There is no silver bullet. You have to decide how much to invest and when on your own. Averaging down definition: DEFINITION of 'Average Down' The process of buying additional shares in a company at lower prices than you originally purchased. This brings the average price you've paid for all your shares down. BREAKING DOWN 'Average Down' Sometimes this is a good strategy, other times it's better to sell off a beaten down stock rather than buying more shares. So let us tackle your questions: At what percentage drop of the stock price should I buy more shares. (Ex: should I wait for the price to fall by 5% or 10% to buy more.) It depends on the behaviour of the security and the issuer. Is it near its historical minimum? How healthy is the issuer? There is no set percentage. You can maximize your gains or your losses if the security does not rebound. Investopedia: The strategy is often favored by investors who have a long-term investment horizon and a contrarian approach to investing. A contrarian approach refers to a style of investing that is against, or contrary, to the prevailing investment trend. (...) On the other side of the coin are the investors and traders who generally have shorter-term investment horizons and view a stock decline as a portent of things to come. These investors are also likely to espouse trading in the direction of the prevailing trend, rather than against it. They may view buying into a stock decline as akin to trying to ""catch a falling knife."" Your second question: How many additional shares should I buy. (Ex: Initially I bought 10 shares, should I buy 5,10 or 20.) That depends on your portfolio allocation before and after averaging down and your investor profile (risk apettite). Take care when putting more money on a falling security, if your portfolio allocation shifts too much. That may expose you to risks you shouldn't be taking. You are assuming a risk for example, if the market bears down like 2008: Averaging down or doubling up works well when the stock eventually rebounds because it has the effect of magnifying gains, but if the stock continues to decline, losses are also magnified.
"This is a very interesting question.  Unfortunately, in the way you wrote the question the answer is no.  Essentially, you would be asking someone to give you a ~20% return for your cash on something that is almost guaranteed when holding your cash only gets them a <1% return.  Would anyone take the other side of that deal? Interestingly though, you can to some extent hedge surprises in health care costs.  For instance, investing in the healthcare industry as David Rice suggests is a partial hedge.  The prices of those industry stocks already has future expected cost increases included. However, if costs were to jump even higher than expected you would gain some of the added cost you would pay in healthcare back. Not that I recommend this strategy, as you lose diversification, but this is a valid and reasonable reason to slightly overweight american healthcare companies for someone in your situation.   Note that the Wiki article you mention talks about hedging surprises as well.  ""If at planting time the farmer sells a number of wheat futures contracts equivalent to his anticipated crop size, he effectively locks in the price of wheat at that time.""  Thinking that way you may actually be able to buy health insurance now for two or three years in the future essentially locking in expected price increases today.  Probably not the answer you were looking for, but the best analogy for what financial hedging truly does."
Yes, there are some real dangers in having your money locked into an investment. Those dangers are well worth thinking about and planning for. Where you are going off the rails is acting like those are the only dangers to your money, and perhaps having an exaggerated idea of the size of the dangers. It is an excellent idea to keep an emergency fund with a few months living expenses in a readily accessible savings or checking account. However, a standard retail savings account is always going to pay less in interest then you are loosing through inflation. We're living in a low-inflation period, but it's still continuously eating away at the value of your savings. It makes sense to accept the danger of inflation for your emergency fund, but probably not for your retirement savings. To reduce the hazards of inflation, you need to find an investment that has some chance of paying more than the inflation rate. This is inevitably going to mean locking up your money for some period of time or accepting some other type of risk. There is no guaranteed safe path in the world. You can only do your best to understand the risks you are running. As an example, you could put your savings in a CD rather than a vanilla savings account. A CD these days won't pay much in interest, but it will be more than a savings account. However, you have to commit to a term for the CD. If you take your money out early you will have to pay a penalty. How much of a penalty? In the worse case it could be in the neighborhood of 4% of the amount you withdraw. So, yeah if you deposit $10,000 in a 5-year CD and end up needing it all back the very next day, you could end up paying the bank $400. If you withdraw money from a 401k before you are 59 1/2, you will pay a 10% penalty, and you will have to have income tax withheld on the amount you withdraw. On the other hand, if your employer matches 100% of your 401k contributions, you could be throwing away 50% of your possible retirement savings because of your fear of the possibility of a 10% loss! In addition 401k plans do have some exceptions to the early withdrawal penalty. There are provisions for medical emergencies and home purchases for example.
I believe you can invest in Vanguard STAR with only $1000 (VGSTX)
As others have noted, you can do better than a checking or savings account. If you're going to invest emergency money, the vehicle you put it into should be: Liquid - Wherever you put it, you should be able to quickly cash it out. Highly liquid exchange traded products are good for this.   Low volatility/drawdowns - If you need at least 6 months of your paycheck to cover you in the event of an emergency, you don't want to park it in a portfolio that can potentially lose 30% value. Insured - Your investments should have SIPC coverage (protection against losses resulting from failure on part of broker). Moderate/Steady Growth - If the emergency fund doesn't grow, you'll need to continually pump money into it. My 'steady growth' portfolio is majorly allocated to fixed income. Within that, a major portion is allocated to high yielding instruments. Over the past 10 years, it's seen at least a 7% annualized return.
I don't think there exists a guaranteed 5% investment vehicle. You have to decide how much risk you're willing to take. Splitting your $200k between CD's and stocks (or whatever higher yield investment vehicle you've found) is a way to get a higher rate without risking it all. For example if you've got a CD at 3%, and let's say best case is 10% average annual return on stocks, after 10 years here are potential results using various splits from 100% CD to 100% stock:   The best case based on 10% average stock return and 3% CD return is the Total line for each split, the worst-case would be the CD amount only. Reality could be almost anywhere, but not below the CD amount.
There will quickly come a time when buying to rebalance is impractical. Consider, you save 10%, and at some point, you have 5x your income saved. (you earn $50K and have accumulated $250K). A simple allocation, 50/50, so $125K stock, $125K bonds. Now, in a year the market is up much over 4%, your $5K deposit will not be enough to balance. Earlier on, the method may work just fine, later on, not so much. Edit - The above is an example, to show that there will come a time when deposits are not enough to rebalance. The above single year produces a 52/48 split, and the rebalance deposits more than 2 years. If the market continues to rise a reasonable amount, 2 years later you are even more out of balance, perhaps 56/44.  I chose reasonable numbers as a starting point, just 5X income saved, and a 10% annual deposit. In the end, you can waive off any divergence from your target. That's your choice.
The iron-clad rule of investing is that risk and return are directly related. It is impossible to get a higher return than you are getting without putting principal at risk. Your emergency fund should be in cash, preferably in government insured cash (like a savings account). The best you could probably do is laddered 3-month CDs. That way, you could cash them out, one per month, as they mature.
I encourage using it as a buffer.  After h.s. I had a thousand or so dollars saved up in my savings account.  After college it was maybe 5 thousand and it's remained roughly like that ever since. I figure any modest emergency or spending splurge may cost, at most, a couple thousand bucks.  I'm talking about a new couch, a car accident, hospital bill, vacation to wherever, etc.  It's nice to have an idea of a buffer.  Financial advisors say to have a buffer of about 3 months of salary.  This is in case of unemployment and such.  It was smart for me. I wouldn't try to spend money to make money at this point.  It's not enough money to try to see a significant gain unless you're lucky.  I tried Sharebuilder a while ago with $200 to see what stocks were like.  They gave you several free trades to see how you liked it.  At first I was shuffling stuff a little too much and once the fees start kicking in it's 7 bucks here, 7 bucks there- eventually I realized you have to invest enough to offset the transfer fees and the fact that you have your money tied up in something going up and down all the time.  But yeah.  Start with a buffer and scale it up as your lifestyle changes.  Anything beyond your buffer is spending money, investing money, fun money.
I was asking myself the exact same thing.  And i have come to the conclusion that most of your money should be invested, In index etfs and maybe some bond etfs too.  If Inflation is about 2% and the interest you make in a savings account is less than 1%.  Your actually loosing money in a savings account.  Keep a few thousand bucks in your savings account and the majority invested and working for you.
You can actually hold cash in your account as long as the manager has reason to believe it is awaiting investment. As for your question, some near cash equivalents are: It's difficult to go into more detail about which investments are eligible due to the variety of risk characteristics, but you can certainly find investment opportunities in the assets mentioned above. A good money manager can advise you better since he'll have an idea of their risk characteristics as well as tax status.
By not timing the market and being a passive investor, the best time to invest is the moment you have extra money (usually when wages are received). The market trends up.  $10 fee on $2000 represents 0.5% transaction cost, which is borderline prohibitive.  I would suggest running simulations, but I suspect that 1 month is the best because average historical monthly total return is more than 0.5%.
Best thing to do is convert your money into something that will retain value. Currency is a symbol of wealth, and can be significantly devalued with inflation. Something such as Gold or Silver might not allow you to see huge benefit, but its perhaps the safest bet (gold in particular, as silver is more volatile), as mentioned above, yes you do pay a little above spot price and receive a little below spot when and if you sell, but current projections for both gold and silver suggest that you won't lose money at least. Safe bet. Suggesting it is a bad idea at this time is just silly, and goes against the majority of advisers out there.
There are quite a few options. Suggest you put a mix of things and begin investing into Mutual Funds.
"First off, I would label this as speculation, not investing.  There are many variables that you don't seem to be considering, and putting down such a small amount opens you to a wide variety of risks.  Not having an ""emergency fund"" for the rental increases that risk greatly.  (I assume that you would not have an emergency fund based upon ""The basic idea is to save up a 20% down payment on a property and take out a mortgage"".) This type of speculation lent a hand in the housing bubble. Is your home paid off?  If not you can reduce your personal risk (by owning your home), and have a pretty safe investment in real estate.  Mission accomplished. My hope for you would be that you are also putting money in the market.  Historically it has performed quite well while always having its share of ""chicken littles""."
No, inaction is not always the rational choice in your scenario. To give an extreme example as proof: Let's say that you have $1,000. The expected value of inaction is $0 - you will end up with the same amount (minus inflation, but we can ignore that for this exercise). If your only other option is an investment which has a 75% chance of losing all of your money, and a 25% chance of doubling your money, then your expected value is ((75% * -$1,000)+ (25% * $1,000)) = -$500. In that case your best option is obviously inaction. However, let's say that you have a 75% chance of losing all of your money, but a 25% chance of making $1,000,000 on your investment. In that case, the expected value of investing is ((75% * -$1,000)+ (25% * $1,000,000)) = $249,250. This means that the rational thing is to make the investment. Basically, the 25% chance of making $1M is worth the 75% chance of losing everything.
"The only general rule is ""If you would buy the stock at its current price, hold and possibly buy. If you wouldn't, sell and buy something you believe in more strongly."" Note that this rule applies no matter what the stock is doing. And that it leaves out the hard work of evaluating the stock and making those decisions. If you don't know how to do that evaluation to your own satisfaction, you probably shouldn't be buying individual stocks. Which is why I stick with index funds."
"As of right now it looks like you can't issue an ETF at least because the underlying ""commodity"" isn't regulated. (See Winkelvoss ETF). I suspect you would run into this problem with any 1940 act fund (mutual fund), but it's more a situation of ""not approved"" rather than illegal, so an MLP hedge fund structure would probably be fine.  And some googling finds Iterative Instinct Management's Storj SPV."
Not at all, the *worst case scenario* is that an employer simply doesn't care that you have your CFA. If you have the time and think you can actually accomplish it and it'll make you more of a powerful candidate, it would be worth getting it.
"Old question I know, but I have some thoughts to share. Your title and question say two different things.  ""Better off"" should mean maximizing your ex-ante utility.  Most of your question seems to describe maximizing your expected return, as do the simulation exercises here.  Those are two different things because risk is implicitly ignored by what you call ""the pure mathematical answer.""  The expected return on your investments needs to exceed the cost of your debt because interest you pay is risk-free while your investments are risky. To solve this problem, consider the portfolio problem where paying down debt is the risk-free asset and consider the set of optimal solutions.  You will get a capital allocation line between the solution where you put everything into paying down debt and the optimal/tangent portfolio from the set of risky assets.   In order to determine where on that line someone is, you must know their utility function and risk parameters.  You also must know the parameters of the investable universe, which we don't."
Im thinking the same thing. It's better he find out from me than when they call him. I'm just afraid of something crazy happens and this offer is rescinded or falls through, that I'll be stuck there again, with my boss knowing I'm trying to leave.
But as a worker, could I go out with the intention of not being represented by the union and once hired, negotiate my own contract and not pay the agency fee? Could an employer refuse employment to an employee who wishes to negotiate outside of the union contract?
The question is not whether CFA charterholders are better investment managers but rather whether starting (or having completed) your CFA will land you a better job. It's been my experience that it does, which is why so many people pursue it
Yes you are. Trickling down only works when there are enough jobs. All those receptionist that are being displaced by graduates or PA's will try to find a new job.  But the economy isn't very good so career options are limited and the chance of improving your career are slim.  So these receptionists apply to cleaning positions or McDonald.  Cleaning companies might think hey here is someone who has proven to be reliable and being able to communicate with clients. They hire the receptionists. Where do the cleaners go? Not enough jobs = not enough jobs. When you have a comfortable middle class career switching might be an option but for the working class it is almost impossible in a bad economy.
Hell no. You're better off networking/job searching or even doing a part time internship. Pick up the phone and cold call homie. The CFA will never seal the deal for you unless a firm is choosing between 2 identical candidates.  Plus you don't even know if it'll be relevant to your job. The CFA is something you do while you're a senior or once you get a job, not after you graduate and looking for a job.
Anyone can get laid off. But, as a contractor, they could tell you not to come in tomorrow, and you'd be done. Salaried employees are usually given notice, severance pay, etc.) if I were you, I would take the salaried position. Investing is important, but so is eliminating this debt emergency. If you take the salaried position, one of your new benefits will be a retirement program. You can take advantage of that, especially if the company is kicking in some money. (This actually is ""free money."") But in my opinion, if you treat the debt as an emergency and commit to eliminating it as fast as possible, you should minimize your investing at this point, if it helps you get out of debt faster. After you get out of debt, investing should be one of your major goals. Now, while you are young and have few commitments, is the best time to learn to live on a budget and eliminate your debt. This will set you up for success in the future."
Kiva is normally directed towards poorer countries and entrepeneurs - but local variations exist. UPDATE: Google-backed 'LendingClub.com is far more appropriate to this situation than Kiva. Same general idea, but that's the vendor. Find freelance, contract, or light employment. Your concern about employment is justified - you don't want to be in a position where you are unable to travel to an interview because Starbucks or McDonalds will fire you if you don't show up for a shift. (Then again, do you really care if McDonald's lets you go?) As such, you need to find income that is less bound by schedule. Freelance work, in particular, will give you that freedom - assuming you have a skill you can trade. Likewise, short term contract work is equally flexible - usually. Finally, it may be easiest just to get temporary pickup work in a service capacity. In any event, doing something will be better than doing nothing. Who knows, you might want to be a manager / owner of a McDonalds some day. Wouldn't hurt to say, ""I started at the bottom."""
She will have no problem finding a job elsewhere if Zynga goes sour. Their engineers are very talented because they pay high and they are very selective. People in the industry know that. Whether the company makes money or not only affects her bonus. In the mean time, enjoy the big salary and the benefits.
I would go with option B. That is safer, as it would leave you with more options, in case of an unexpected job loss or an emergency.