vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
you should invest in a range of stock market indexes. Ex : Dow jones, S&P500, Nasdaq and keep it there until you are ready to retire. I'm invested half in SLYV and SLYG (S&P600 small cap value and S&P600 small cap growth; Respectively). It brings on average between 8-13% a year (since 1971). This is not investment advice. Talk to your broker before doing this.
"Company Distribution is attempting to show a histogram of how many companies fall within a given range so you can visualize the number of companies that meet a certain parameter.  For example if you move the ""Market Cap"" sliders so the minimum slider is just before the large rise in the distribution and move the maximum slider so it is just after the fall off in distribution, you can see that most companies have a market cap between ~5700 and ~141B."
&gt; So what’s the problem? When investors put their money in an index like the S&amp;P 500, they believe that they are just investing in “the market”, broadly. But now, these for-profit indices have made an active decision to exclude certain stocks on the basis of their voting structures.   The author doesn't seem to understand the difference between the companies creating the passive funds that track the indices and the companies creating the indices that are being tracked. Indices have always been subject to somewhat arbitrary rules for what is being included and how its value is calculated. So this article is completely missing the point.
An ironic one is hoe Microsoft became to large in the first place. Gates bought DOS and then improved on the technology, while making it more accessible. This is what led to the huge market share difference between Microsoft and Apple prior to the ipod/iPhone era
Willis Group Holdings Set to Join the S&P 500; Fossil Group to Join S&P MidCap 400; Adeptus Health to Join S&P SmallCap 600 notes in part for the S & P case: Willis Group Holdings plc (NYSE:WSH) will replace Fossil Group Inc. (NASD:FOSL) in the S&P 500, and Fossil Group will replace Towers Watson & Co. (NASD:TW) in the S&P MidCap 400 after the close of trading on Monday, January 4. Willis Group is merging with Towers Watson in a deal expected to be completed on or about that date pending final conditions. Post merger, Willis Group Holdings will change its name to Willis Towers Watson plc and trade under the ticker symbol “WLTW”. Fossil has a market capitalization that is more representative of the midcap market space. As of Jan. 8, Fossil is about $1.44B in market cap and Willis is $21.02B for those wondering. Apple with a market cap of $540.58B is 3.26% of the index making the entire index worth approximately $16,582.21B, so Fossil is worth .00868% of the overall index for those wanting some numbers here. Thus, if a company acquires another and becomes bigger than there can be replacements made in those indices that have an artificial number of small members. Alternatively, a member may be removed for lack of representation where it is just so small compared to other companies that may be a better fit as some indices could be viewed as actively managed in a sense. In contrast, there are indices like those from Russell, known for the Russell 2000 small-cap index: Q: Why don't you reconstitute the indexes more often than once a year? A: Maintaining representative indexes must be weighed against the costs associated with making frequent changes to index constituents (namely, buying and selling stocks). The Russell Indexes are annually reconstituted because our research has shown that this strikes a reasonable balance between accuracy and cost. We originally reconstituted our indexes quarterly, then semi-annually, but found these options to be suboptimal. Our extensive research demonstrates that annual reconstitution accurately represents the capitalization segments and minimizes the turnover required to reflect the segments as they change.
Most people I talk with don't even know the difference on a simple level between the Dow, S&amp;P, Russell, Nasdaq, etc.  I tell my friends and family that they know more than they realize. I help them use their knowledge and what they see when they want to invest. Or if they prefer not to, just buy index funds.
Your quote from the CBO is talking about a actual subsidy. As stated, there was a cash value difference between what the Treasury purchased troubled assets from banks at and what the market value of those securities were.   This (the point mentioned in the article) is not an actual subsidy.  As a counter argument to your first paragraph, look at Lehman Brothers and Bear Stearns.
The Creation/Redemption mechanism is how shares of an ETF are created or redeemed as needed and thus is where there can be differences in what the value of the holdings can be versus the trading price. If the ETF is thinly traded, then the difference could be big as more volume would be where the mechanism could kick in as generally there are blocks required so the mechanism usually created or redeemed in lots of 50,000 shares I believe. From the link where AP=Authorized Participant: With ETFs, APs do most of the buying and selling. When APs sense   demand for additional shares of an ETF—which manifests itself when the   ETF share price trades at a premium to its NAV—they go into the market   and create new shares. When the APs sense demand from investors   looking to redeem—which manifests itself when the ETF share price   trades at a discount—they process redemptions. So, suppose the NAV of the ETF is $20/share and the trading price is $30/share. The AP can buy the underlying securities for $20/share in a bulk order that equates to 50,000 shares of the ETF and exchange the underlying shares for new shares in the ETF. Then the AP can turn around and sell those new ETF shares for $30/share and pocket the gain. If you switch the prices around, the AP would then take the ETF shares and exchange them for the underlying securities in the same way and make a profit on the difference. SEC also notes this same process.
Dow Jones is a meaningless index that is only ever referenced in the media. It’s fundamentally flawed because the index constituents are weighted by share price, which is nonsensical (ie a $100 stock has a bigger impact on the index than a $50 stock) as opposed to the S&amp;P500 which is market cap weighted (a $100 billion company has a bigger impact than a $50 billion company). People in the investment industry focus on the S&amp;P index and pay zero attention to the Dow.
Yes. Just like the supposed IT/programmer shortage in the 90s.  A fabrication propagated by vested interests to stimulate a policy response that artificially drives up sectoral labor supply to drive down wages to reduce labor cost.  Well worn trick.  There is a difference between a shortage and simply not wanting to pay what people and their skills cost at the market rate and so impinging on government to influence the market in one's favor. Classic rent seeking, aka normal and expected behavior for profit maximizing actors.
I suspect that the times you are referring to are those times when there is relatively low volumes of foreign exchange trading.  Lower volumes of trading make it possible for large orders to have a disproportionate effect on the market price.  This implies that the times to avoid will be the times with the lowest relative volumes.  This will occur on the cusp between the New York market winding down and the Asia/Tokyo market revving up. This will be in the hours preceding Tokyo's opening at 06:00 Tokyo time, so the time to avoid is about 04:00-06:00 Tokyo time, or about 20:00-22:00 GMT (if I've worked out the time difference correctly). Foreign exchange is a 24 hour, global market.  Although each of the three main trading centres - London, New York, Asia - will operate 24 hours a day, they will maintain only a skeleton staff outside of normal working hours.  The time difference between London and New York is only 5 hours, so there is no period of time when both centres are operating with a skeleton staff.  The time difference between London and Tokyo is 8 hours, so again there is no period of time when both centres are operating with a skeleton staff.  The time difference between New York and Tokyo is 13 hours.  This does include a period where both centres are operating with a skeleton staff, as well as London operating on a skeleton staff.  Thus, in the couple of hours immediately preceding Tokyo's opening for the regular trading day there is minimal coverage in each of the three main trading centres.  As mentioned above, this is the time when large orders can have a disproportionate effect on fx rates and so this is the time to avoid.
Here is some good advice, read your UCO prospectus. It seems to hold 20% of it's value ($600MM out of $3B) via 13800 of the Apr 21st 2015 contracts. (expiring in 30 days) Those will be rolled very quickly into the May contracts at a significant loss of NAV. (based on current oil futures chains) Meaning if crude oil stays exactly the same price, you'd still lose 1% (5% spread loss * .20% the percentage of NAV based off futures contracts) on the roll each month. Their other $2.4Billion is held in swaptions or cash, unsure how to rate that exposure. All I know is those 13,800 contracts are in contango danger during roll week for the next few months (IMO). I wonder if there is a website that tracks inflows and outflows to see if they match up with before and after the roll periods. http://www.proshares.com/funds/uco_daily_holdings.html How Oil ETFs Work Many oil ETFs invest in oil futures contracts. An oil futures contract is a commitment to buy a given amount of crude oil at a given price on a particular date in the future. Since the purpose of oil ETFs is only to serve as an investment vehicle to track the price of oil, the creators of the fund have no interest in stockpiling actual oil. Therefore, oil ETFs such as USO periodically “roll over” their futures contracts by selling the contracts that are approaching expiration and buying contracts that expire farther into the future. The Contango Problem While this process of continually rolling over futures contracts may seem like a great way to track the price of crude oil, there’s a practical problem with the method: contango. The rollover method would work perfectly if oil funds could sell their expiring contracts for the exact same price that they pay for the futures contracts they buy each month. However, in reality, it’s often true that oil futures contracts get more expensive the farther their expiration date is in the future. That means that every time the oil ETFs roll over their contracts, they lose the difference in value between the contracts they sell and the contracts they buy.
"Yes, a diversified portfolio can generate greater returns than the S&P 500 by going OUTSIDE it. For instance, small stocks (on average) generate higher returns than the ""large caps"" found in the S&P 500. So if you own a diversified portfolio of stocks, some of which are smaller (in market cap) than the typical S&P 500 stock, you have a chance to outperform. You might also outperform by owning other asset classes than stocks such as gold, real estate, and timber (among others) at appropriate times. (You may also be able to get the relevant exposure by owning gold and timber stocks and REITS.) This was a lesson that David Swensen of the Yale endowment taught us."
"Typically you diversify a portfolio to reduce risk. The S&P 500 is a collection of large-cap stocks; a diversified portfolio today probably contains a mix of large cap, small cap, bonds,  international equity and cash. Right now, if you have a bond component, that part of your portfolio isn't performing as well. The idea of diversification is that you ""smooth out"" the ups and downs of the market and come out ahead in most situations. If you don't have a bond or cash component in your portfolio, you may have picked (or had someone pick for you) lousy funds.  Without more detail, that's about all that can be said. EDIT: You provided more detail, so I want to add a little to my answer. Basically, you're in a fund that has high fees (1.58% annually) and performance that trails the mid-cap index. The S&P 500 is a large-cap index (large cap == large company), so a direct comparison is not necessarily meaningful. Since you seem to be new at this, I'd recommend starting out with the Vanguard Total Stock Market Index Fund (VTSMX) or ETF (VTI). This is a nice option because it represents the entire stock market and is cheap... it's a good way to get started without knowing alot. If your broker charges a transaction fee to purchase Vanguard funds and you don't want to change brokers or pay ETF commissions, look for or ask about transaction-fee free ""broad market"" indexes. The expense ratio should be below 0.50% per year and optimally under 0.20%. If you're not having luck finding investment options, swtich to a discount broker like TD Ameritrade, Schwab, ScottTrade or Fidelity (in no particular order)"
"Very interesting. I'm actually glad you mentioned term structure models, because that's something I'm interested in. But I don't think the distinction you draw between ""equilibrium"" and ""arbitrage free"" models makes sense with Black-Scholes.  My understanding was that the discrepancy between equilibrium and arbitrage-free term structure models arises because term structure models lack market completeness. In other words, when the market is incomplete (as it is with interest rates), you'll have a continuum of bond prices that are compatible with no arbitrage, and the exact price will depend on the market price for risk.   However, in Black-Scholes, the market price for risk term basically falls out of the equation because of market completeness. Or in other words, since we have market completeness, there's a *unique* martingale measure that gives the price for the option. So when you have market completeness, there should be no difference between an equilibrium and a no-arbitrage model - they're one and the same."
"After the passage of the Emergency Economic Stabilization Act of 2008 and the implementation of the Troubled Asset Relief Program, the creation of an entirely new Office of Financial Stability in the treasury, the Term Asset-Backed Securities Loan Facility, the Public-Private Investment Program and the Legacy Loans and Legacy Securities Program, the Supervisory Capital Assessment Program, and the Housing and Economic Recovery Act of 2008,  I find it remarkable that anyone can seriously think that the US government is not signalling, if not actually doing, *everything* it can short of nationalization to not allow a systemically important bank to collapse.  This is to say nothing about the coining of an entirely new institution, the ""Too Big To Fail"" bank or ""Systemically Important Financial Institution"" (SIFI).  BTW and FYI, [here](http://www.scribd.com/doc/10940608/0116TARP) is the CBO:  &gt;This is the first of CBO’s statutory reports on the TARP’s transactions. Through December 31, 2008, those transactions totaled $247 billion. [...][The] CBO estimates that the **subsidy cost** of those transactions (broadly speaking, the difference between what the Treasury paid for the investments or lent to the firms and the market value of those transactions) amounts to **$64 billion**."
"Rebalancing a portfolio helps you reduce risk, sell high, and buy low. I'll use international stocks and large cap US stocks.  They both have ups and downs, and they don't always track with each other (international might be up while large cap US stocks are down and vice-versa) If you started with 50% international and 50% large cap stocks and 1 year later you have 75% international and 25% large cap stocks that means that international stocks are doing (relatively) well to large cap stocks.    Comparing only those two categories, large cap stocks are ""on sale"" relative to international stocks.   Now move so you have 50% in each category and you've realized some of the gains from your international investment (sell high) and added to your large cap stocks (buy low). The reason to rebalance is to lower risk.   You are spreading your investments across multiple categories to manage risk.   If you don't rebalance, you could end up with 95% in one category and 5% in another which means 95% of your portfolio is tied to the performance of a single asset category. I try to rebalance every 12 months and usually get it done by every 18 months.  I like being a hands-off long term investor and this has proven often enough to beat the S&P500."
"Your bank's fund is not an index fund.  From your link: To provide a balanced portfolio of primarily Canadian securities that produce income and capital appreciation by investing primarily in Canadian money market instruments, debt securities and common and preferred shares. This is a very broad actively managed fund.  Compare this to the investment objective listed for Vanguard's VOO: Invests in stocks in the S&P 500 Index, representing 500 of the largest U.S. companies. There are loads of market indices with varying formulas that are supposed to track the performance of a market or market segment that they intend to track.  The Russel 2000, The Wilshire 1000, The S&P 500, the Dow Industrial Average, there is even the SSGA Gender Diversity Index.  Some body comes up with a market index.  An ""Index Fund"" is simply a Mutual Fund or Exchange Traded Fund (ETF) that uses a market index formula to make it's investment decisions enabling an investor to track the performance of the index without having to buy and sell the constituent securities on their own.  These ""index funds"" are able to charge lower fees because they spend $0 on research, and only make investment decisions in order to track the holdings of the index. I think 1.2% is too high, but I'm coming from the US investing world it might not be that high compared to Canadian offerings.  Additionally, comparing this fund's expense ratio to the Vanguard 500 or Total Market index fund is nonsensical. Similarly, comparing the investment returns is nonsensical because one tracks the S&P 500 and one does not, nor does it seek to (as an example the #5 largest holding of the CIBC fund is a Government of Canada 2045 3.5% bond). Everyone should diversify their holdings and adjust their investment allocations as they age.  As you age you should be reallocating away from highly volatile common stock and in to assets classes that are historically more stable/less volatile like national government debt and high grade corporate/local government debt.  This fund is already diversified in to some debt instruments, depending on your age and other asset allocations this might not be the best place to put your money regardless of the fees. Personally, I handle my own asset allocations and I'm split between Large, Mid and Small cap low-fee index funds, and the lowest cost high grade debt funds available to me."
If you have patience and are willing to let compound interest work for you, and trust that most market swings regress to the mean in the long run, it quietly builds your savings while not driving you crazy worrying about it. If all you are looking for is better return than the banks, and you have a reasonable amount of time before you need to pull the funds out, it's one of the more reliably predictable risk/reward trade-off points. You may want to refine this by biasing the mix of what you're holding. The simplest adjustment is how much you keep in each of several major investment categories. Large cap stocks, small cap stocks, bonds, and real estate (in the form of REITs) each have different baseline risk/return curves, and move in different ways in response to news, so maintaining a selected ratio between these buckets and adding the resulting curves together is one simple way to make fairly predictable adjustments to the width (and centerline) of the total bell curve. If you think you can do better than this, go for it. But index funds have been outperforming professionally managed funds (after the management fees are accounted for), and unless you are interested in spending a lot of time researching and playing with your money the odds of your doing much better aren't great unless you're willing to risk doing much worse. For me, boring is good. I want my savings to work for me rather than the other way around, and I don't consider the market at all interesting as a game. Others will feel differently.
"They don't, actually. Though in some time frames S&P 500 growth out performs S&P 500, it often lags. This is because ""growth"" doesn't refer to what happens to your account, but rather the type of stock in the index -- roughly speaking, it's the half of the S&P with the best earnings growth.  That would be great, except it's not looking for is to see if that growth is worth buying. A stock with a 20% growth rate is a great buy at a P/E of 15, but a terrible buy at P/E/ 50.  That leads to what JB King was talking about -- there's also the S&P 500 Value, which is roughly the cheapest stocks relative to earnings. Value does tend to beat the broad index over the long haul, because there's nothing like getting a good deal (note a stock can be in both the growth and value categories). This holds true with other indexes as well like the Russel 2000. All that said, you're not going to see a huge difference between S&P 500 and S&P 500 Growth. I believe this is because the S&P 500 itself leans a bit to the growthy side.   PS: With VOOG Vanguard is tracking the S&P 500 Growth Index, which is actually a thing and not Vanguard itself filtering stocks."
The expense ratio is 0.17% so doesnt that mean that for every 10K I   keep in the money market fund I lose $17/year?  Not really. The expense ratio is taken before distributions are paid which applies to all mutual funds. Should I care about this?  In this case not really. If it was a taxable account, then other options may be more tax-efficient that is worth noting. The key with money market funds is that the expense ratio often represents how much money the administrators will take before paying out the rest. So, if your money market fund bought investments that paid .25% then you'd likely see .08% as that is what is left over after the .17% is taken in the dividends. If at the start of the year, the funds NAV is $1, and at the end of   the year, the funds NAV is still $1, I havent lost anything right? Right. Wikipedia has a good article on money market funds. Keep in mind that most money market funds are run as one of a number of funds from a fund family that may have to take a little less profit on the money market funds when rates are low.
"While it's definitely possible (and likely?) that a diversified portfolio generates higher returns than the S&P 500, that's not the main reason why you diversify. Diversification reduces risk.  Modern portfolio theory suggests that you should maximize return while reducing risk, instead of blindly chasing the highest returns. Think about it this way--say the average return is 11% for large cap US stocks (the S&P 500), and it's 10% for a diversified portfolio (say, 6-8 asset classes). The large cap only portfolio has a 10% chance of losing 30% in a given year, while the diversified portfolio has a 1% chance of losing 30% in a year. For the vast majority of investors, it's worth the 1% annual gap in expected return to greatly reduce their risk exposure. Of course, I just made those numbers up. Read what finance professors have written for the ""data and proof"". But modern portfolio theory is believed by a lot of investors and other finance experts. There are a ton of studies (and therefore data) on MPT--including many that contradict it."
Another option is to look at the rent difference between where you need to be and where the others would rent, without considering your job. You pay the difference, which is due to your unique requirements, and split the remainder equally.