vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
I sell gas to gas stations. Your profit isn't much in gas, it's in the convenience store. So if you're going to do it, focus on your store. Here in the Midwest we have a brand of stations called Quicktrip - everyone loves these gas stations and will go out of their way if they need gas. Because they're very clean and the workers are friendly.  Don't build a branded station. Right now branded gas is cheaper than wholesale in a lot of markets, but that's not usually typical. It's better to have options and not be locked into a BP station where you can only buy their gas no matter the price. Additives are BS - it's a commodity.   Operating capital will be fairly high.  Roughly 7500/gal per truck at say 3.00 cents/gal is about $22,500. In a high traffic area you could be pulling 1 truck per day to keep supply full (this is an assumption based on what we sell to customers). Do some math and that's quite a bit of operating capital, can you finance that? We set credit limits on our customers, but they're not high (think 50-100k for small stations, which is only a couple truck loads).  I don't think it's a terrible business to be in - but I would almost rather own the trucks hauling gas to your station and charging on the gallon. Or on the supply side of the equation where gas is more profitable.
If I sell a covered call, on stock I own 100%, there is no risk of a margin call. The stock goes to zero, I'm still not ask to send in more money. But, if bought on margin, margin rules apply.  A naked put would require you to be able to buy the stock if put to you. As the price of the stock drops, you still need to be able to buy it at the put strike price.  Mark to market is just an expression describing how your positions are considered each day.
How can I calculate my currency risk exposure?  You own securities that are priced in dollars, so your currency risk is the amount (all else being equal) that your portfolio drops if the dollar depreciates relative to the Euro between now and the time that you plan to cash out your investments. Not all stocks, though, have a high correlation relative to the dollar.  Many US companies (e.g. Apple) do a lot of business in foreign countries and do not necessarily move in line with the Dollar.  Calculate the correlation (using Excel or other statistical programs) between the returns of your portfolio and the change in FX rate between the Dollar and Euro to see how well your portfolio correlated with that FX rate.  That would tell you how much risk you need to mitigate. how can I hedge against it?  There are various Currency ETFs that will track the USD/EUR exchange rate, so one option could be to buy some of those to offset your currency risk calculated above.  Note that ETFs do have fees associated with them, although they should be fairly small (one I looked at had a 0.4% fee, which isn't terrible but isn't nothing). Also note that there are ETFs that employ currency risk mitigation internally - including one on the Nasdaq 100 .   Note that this is NOT a recommendation for this ETF - just letting you know about alternative products that MIGHT meet your needs.
"I was a millennial ""stuck"" in New York. I was in law school when the crash happened. I wanted to practice in smaller cities like CLT or ATL but immediately after the crash there were very few jobs, while New York started doing deals again by about late 2009. So I had to go to NY.   You end up getting ""stuck"" because of the barriers to move. For me it was the bar. But there are others like markets that recovered more slowly, experience requirements set by employers, the fact that there are simply more jobs in large urban markets. Most of my law school class started in SF, NY, Chi, and LA. Now we're on our 2nd firm or city in CLT, ATL, HOU, MIA, etc."
Worst-case, without babysitting that's less than 5% of your gross income, but possibly more than 10% of your take-home depending on UK effective income tax rates (your marginal rate is 40% according to the HMRC, unless you find a way to deduct about £30k of your income). That's just the traditional American date night, which is just one possible interest. Playing organized sports is more or less expensive depending on the sport. Soccer (sorry, football) just needs a well-kept field, two goals and and a ball. Golf, while not really needing much more when you say it that way, can cost thousands of dollars or pounds a month to play with the best equipment at the best courses. Hockey requires head-to-toe padding/armor, skates, sticks, and ice time. American football typically isn't an amateur sport for adults and has virtually no audience in Europe, but in the right places in the U.S., beginning in just a couple years you'd be kitting your son out head-to-toe not dissimilar to hockey (minus sticks) and at a similar cost, and would keep that up at least halfway through high school. I've played them all at varying amateur levels, and with the possible exception of soccer they all get expensive when you really get interested in them. How much do you eat, and of what?. My family of three's monthly grocery budget is about $300-$400 (£190-£260) depending on what we buy and how we buy it. Americans have big refrigerators (often more than one; there's three in my house of varying sizes), we buy in bulk as needed every week to two weeks, we refrigerate or freeze a lot of what we buy, and we eat and drink a lot of high-fructose corn-syrup-based crap that's excise-taxed into non-existence in most other countries. I don't have real-world experience living and grocery-shopping in Europe, but I do know that most shopping is done more often, in smaller quantities, and for more real food.
&gt; They have created a system with healthcare where we pay up to three times more per capita than any other western country.   Yes, and it really sucks, but you kinda have to buy health care ... you can skip it and hope to not get sick, but sooner or later you will.   You don't need to buy entertainment though. And if you do buy it, you can always vote with your money. Stop going to movie theaters, stop buying or even renting DVDs ... stick to one cable provider or Netflix on demand or something and it will hurt them.  &gt; an additional tax refund   A tax refund is just a tax refund, if you don't give them your money there will be nothing to tax anyway.  &gt; taxes to storage media.  Yes, some countries do that, and I think it's OK in principle ... the problem is that I doubt that we can find a fair way to distribute that revenue. It's still peanuts though, especially today when we don't really buy that much media anymore. When is the last time you bought a blank optical disc? It's been years for me!   But anyway I doubt that such a measure would stand a chance of passing in the US. It would be quite absurd to fund the MAFIAA with tax money while you don't even fund public healthcare.  I'm not sure what you mean in the edit, it doesn't make much sense.
I've had a few buy ins at 2-400, done nothing until it came in the news. I sold a few coins 800 before it hit 1000 the first time, I sold 20 coins at 1600 this last time (and then saw it keep going...) I planed on buying back in after it crashed but it's been holding tight so.  The actual markets seem like insane bubbles with endless new ICOs. I've thus stayed away from them.
@Tim - in this case, a futures contract isn't like an options contract. It's simply a method of entering into an agreement for delivery at a future date.  While the speculators appear to have taken over, there are practical examples of use of the futures market.  I am a gold miner and I see that my cost is $1200/oz given my quality of ore. I see the price of gold at $1600 and instead of worrying that if it goes too low, I run at a loss, I take advantage and sell contracts to match my production for the next year (or as long as the contracts go, I forget how far out gold futures are).  Of course I give up the higher price if gold goes higher, but this scenarion isn't speculation, it's a business decision.  The bread maker, on the other hand, might buy wheat futures to guarantee his prices for the next year.
"I think this gets at why some of us are becoming concerned about the volume (or more importantly the portion) of HFT in capital markets these days. You have algos trading based on ""technical trends"" which are increasingly just the behavior of other algos. Rinse and repeat. At a certain point it just becomes a feedback loop.  Now, I agree that there's no reason to be scared of HFT simply because its new or fast, which is what I think threatens a lot of people. But the problem is that the economic and social utility of markets arises from their being information aggregation engines. If it gets to the point where most of the price action is driven by algos which are trading solely based on a few minutes of technical data, no new information is being contributed to the price discovery process.   Now, it may be that a certain amount of ""meta-information"" can be discovered from pattern analysis of short term technical history. But it seems to me this information is more limited in both quality and quantity compared to the information inputs of thoughtful humans acting on a reasoned analysis of economic and other world events."
HSBC exchange spread between HKD and USD was 483 bps (1 bps is 0.0001) on their 24 hours exchange network a few weeks ago when I checked. It is very high for a pair of linked currencies which has very little fluctuation. One should expect less than 5 bps or even 1 bps. I did my currency conversion at a US brokerage which can take HKD currency and then I was able to pick the time/rate and amount I like to make the conversion. Basically, the currency pair runs within a tight band and you just need to buy USD with HKD at the time when it is near the edge of the band to your advantage. There is usually no fee on currency conversion. They make money through the spread. HSBC premier allows you to wire free among countries. I forget whether they offer tighter spread or not.  Rob was right on about the cost of transferring money overseas. The majority of the cost is in the conversion, not the wiring.
You're trying to mitigate the risk of having your investments wiped out by fraud committed by your broker by using margin loans to buy stock secured by other, non-cash assets in your account. The solution that you are proposing does not make any sense at all. You mitigate a very low probability/high impact risk by doing something that comes with a high probability/medium impact risk.  In addition to interest costs, holding stocks on margin subjects you to the very real risk of being forced to sell assets at inopportune times to meet margin calls. Given the volatility that the markets are experiencing in 2011, there is a high risk that some irrational decision in Greece could wipe you out. If I were worried about this, I would: If you have enough money that SIPC protection limits are an issue, you desperately need a financial adviser. Do not implement any strategy involving margin loans until you talk to a qualified adviser.
An increased pool of workers demanding the same quality of life we have, fair labor and wage laws throughout the world (which is how they'd get that), would result in a global middle class, with countries like China, India, etc. no longer desperately outcompeting US workers for cost of production, which means it will be commercially viable to have production occurring in the US again on a large scale. Plus, more people with more money means greater demand for goods. What needs to happen is reigning in the artificial deflation of the value of labor...whether that will happen or not, I'm not particularly optimistic.
"The U.S. requires money transfer services to be licensed under 31 USC 5330 in addition to any applicable laws at the state level. According to multiple sources online, including the thread referenced by MD-Tech's answer, OkPay either cannot or will not get a license, so they are out. I dug on this a bit more because I thought it was interesting, and OkPay has other issues with U.S. and other regulators related to its interaction with Bitcoins, which themselves are a hot potato for regulation right now and may explain the licensing problem. It seems to also be facing regulatory pressure in other countries, by the way, so it's not strictly a problem they face in the U.S. Just for whatever reason, the problem is greater here. Some interesting summary points: With mounting pressure on online money exchanges from US regulators, payments processor OKPay has announced that it is suspending processing for all Bitcoin exchanges, including industry leader Mt. Gox. ... Earlier this month, the US Department of Homeland Security seized Mt. Gox's account with mobile payment processor Dwolla, on allegations that the account was in violation of US Code 18 USC § 1960 by operating an ""unlicensed money transmitting business."" Just where the Bitcoin market falls under US law is unclear, because the legality of Bitcoin transactions has yet to be tried in court and law enforcement has refused to comment on ongoing investigations, such as the Dwolla case. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/29/okpay_suspends_bitcoin_processing/ In March, the US Treasury said any firms dealing in the virtual currency would be considered ""money services businesses"" just like any other, which means they must hand over transaction information to the government and work to prevent money laundering. http://www.theregister.co.uk/2013/05/15/mt_gox_us_court/ In the UK, it apparently has also had trouble with banking partners (quoting a OkPay official regarding changing bank providers): The UK bank that we used before did not make a final decision on whether to handle transactions in favour of crypto-currencies or not.
Hi We are looking to connect with UK medical technology companies and other relevant people who could help us complete a project we are currently working on. We are currently representatives of a consortium of Drs based in the Middle East and Iran. With the lifting of international sanctions by the 5+1 group of nations and JCPOA in early 2016, on Iran, has resulted in our clients being very interested in purchasing and becoming official distributors off medical equipment from the UK. I have had some lengthy discussions with this team in Dubai and Tehran, and I'm told the the domestic Persian market has a very deep sense of of affiliation with German, Italian and French companies, whom have been involved more in the Persian Gulf region than Britain since 2012. One key point I did however notice is the demand and respect that British Tech commands. This has encouraged our team to take on this project to help these guys access the products they require. They are interested in buying from UK manufacturing and reselling it as official distributors to the domestic Persian markets 80million population. They are also very interested in collaborating with and acquiring the licences to UK medical technologies, which they would like to then buy the rights too or licence/franchise for their locality and they have the capacity to invest in manufacturing this product in the Middle East, working in conjunction with the UK companies. An example of how this has worked in the past is the French car manufacturer working in collaboration with Iranian Engineering company to produce and manufacture Peugeot Pars car. Which looks very much like a peugeot 405 but is infact designed and developed specifically for the local market and is also manufactured locally. This is a huge success and we feel we can imitate its success in our plan too. I have been in discussions with a number of sources where I could possibly complete this project through. I have come to know from my research globally within this sector that there are approx 3500 medical technology companies registered in the UK. All specialising in various fields. I was wondering is there a database anywhere which I can't access to see whom and where these companies are exactly in the UK. I have until now established that between 70-80% of companies worldwide in MED Tech field are based in or affiliated with either the USA or Israel, with the majority of the remaining 20% of companies being European or Japanese.
Beyond that, in general, the US can't refine the oil it produces. Fracking played a huge role in expanding production, but most of this is producing natural gas. The big kicker for US production was the anticipation of being able to sell US oil and gas to other countries. So, even if you wanted, it's damn hard to find US made gas.
&gt;If we are looking to offset risk in location A where we are not able to buy forward with location W, and they are the same commodity is this even a common practice in risk management?  Let me prephase this by saying I don't do work directly in this area, but sometimes I analyze what's happening in less liquid markets compared to more liquid markets in various commodities to get a better sense of the supply and demand dynamics of the market.   It's normal - but just looking at the ratios - it looks like the spread is quite volatile - it looks like the price at location W went from trading at 130% of location A to 170% of the price at location A. (I also don't use R so I don't know which time period was the start and which was the end)  What moved in one direction can definitely reverse. If you don't know what is driving this movement in the spread then adding the hedge could be riskier than not having any hedge on. And there are scenarios where the price of the commodity you want to buy at location A is going to rise towards the price at liquid location W and if you are unable to buy it and store it then there isn't much you can do to hedge your company's exposure.
Part 1 Quite a few [or rather most] countries allow USD account. So there is no conversion. Just to illustrare; In India its allowed to have a USD account. The funds can be transfered as USD and withdrawn as USD, the interest is in USD. There no conversion at any point in time. Typically the rates for CD on USD account was Central Bank regulated rate of 5%, recently this was deregulated, and some banks offer around 7% interest. Why is the rate high on USD in India? - There is a trade deficit which means India gets less USD and has to pay More USD to buy stuff [Oil and other essential items]. - The balance is typically borrowed say from IMF or other countries etc. - Allowing Banks to offer high interest rate is one way to attract more USD into the country in short term. [because somepoint in time they may take back the USD out of India] So why isn't everyone jumping and making USD investiments in India? - The Non-Residents who eventually plan to come back have invested in USD in India. - There is a risk of regulation changes, ie if the Central Bank / Country comes up pressure for Forex Reserves, they may make it difficut to take back the USD. IE they may impose charges / taxes or force conversion on such accounts. - The KYC norms make it difficult for Indian Bank to attract US citizens [except Non Resident Indians] - Certain countries would have explicit regulations to prevent Other Nationals from investing in such products as they may lead to volatility [ie all of them suddenly pull out the funds] - There would be no insurance to foreign nationals. Part 2 The FDIC insurance is not the reason for lower rates. Most countires have similar insurance for Bank deposits for account holdes. The reason for lower interst rate is all the Goverments [China etc] park the excess funds in US Treasuries because; 1. It is safe 2. It is required for any international purchase 3. It is very liquid. Now if the US Fed started giving higher interest rates to tresaury bonds say 5%, it essentially paying more to other countries ...
"I don't know about that, how would anyone ever get loans? Of course I might just be limited to ""in the box"" thinking of the idea that we even need loans to facilitate the economy. I think maybe 90% reserves 10% lending or some other mix other than right now its currently law (in the US) that banks hold only 10% of the money in accounts as reserve while they can lend out 90%. I don't think it was ever intended to keep eroding like it has to the point where its 1:9 savings:loaned ."
I think another problem is that even when information does come out, it is not presented in a way that most people can understand.  Many Kardashians followers don't know what a hedge fund is, what impact their management has on the markets, what different products exist on what markets, how all of this impacts the economy and the price of a 3d TV to see Kim's boobs in life size - or the price of food that is unaffordable to the down and out guy who's going to break into their middle class homes to steal their 3d TV.
US currency doesn't expire, it is always legal tender.  I can see some trouble if you tried to spend a $10,000 bill (you'd be foolish to do so, since they are worth considerably more). Maybe some stores raise eyebrows at old-style $100's (many stores don't take $100 bills at all), but you could swap them for new style at a bank if having trouble with a particular store. Old-series currency can be an issue when trying to exchange US bills in other countries, just because it doesn't expire here, doesn't mean you can't run into issues elsewhere. Other countries have different policies, for example, over the last year the UK phased in a new five pound note, and as of last month (5/5/2017) the old fiver is no longer considered legal tender (can still swap out old fivers at the bank for now at least).  Edit: I mistook which currency you took where, and focused on US currency instead of Canadian, but it looks like it's the same story there.
It’s like you don’t listen to what I say, and instead listen to a narrative in your head that you are thinkzing I’m saying.  If you look back, what, two posts from me ago, I specifically say I don’t want either of those options.  Take back control?  How is giving control to the market taking my back control?  There is no control there at all!  If I say, “Okay kids, your parents are corrupt.  You can policevyourself now.” that isn’t taking back control!  That’s giving up all pretense of control!  If Obama and Bush picked and chose their rules, then we have a bigger problem, because that means we have an anarchist nation.  But Trump is following the same abuses of power!  WTF are we doing in Niger?  Why are we attacking Iran? Why isn’t Trump pushing for more accountability, and instead wants more Market Freedom?  This is hipocracy!
I actually read that a lot of times, that isn’t necessarily true. In some of these third world countries, the issue is less that the money is wasted but that there isn’t enough to make the kinds of optimal investments that were thinking of.   For example, someone might understand intellectually that they need to buy a water buffalo to scale up their farm but saving up the money to do so would mean that they wouldn’t be able to feed their kids for two years. They’re not “bad with money”, they just flat out don’t have enough to go beyond subsistence.   I think that’s the target market for these types of programs. They won’t work for everyone, people who are actually irresponsible will screw up no matter how much money and coaching you give them. But this could be a game changer for people who are good with the money they do have and just need a boost.
well, maybe consider that english isn’t my first language and a message from a former customer in any form pointing out why ones competitor is make huge leaps should make them think.    edit: I just read it again, it was also auto corrected into a bunch of garbage. thanks for pointing that out captain grammar nazi.
One problem with that idea: companies don’t set out to cure a particular disease. They try various ideas to see what does what and sometimes hit on something. That sort of aimless wandering often helps in other areas and isn’t reproduced in the x-prize scenario.
By definition, a monopoly cannot have three separate participants. Don’t misunderstand: there may be work to be done here. I’m saying let’s at least get the words right or nobody is going to listen who isn’t already convinced.