vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
In case you didn't see over the past few years, especially in banks, falling stock prices often lead to ratings downgrades. The logic is that a bank who's stock price is low, or falling, is suffering from a decrease in their ability to tap the equity markets in times of need.  With less ability to tap the equity markets in times of need, this means it is less likely the bank can raise funds to pay off debt, and thus, makes their debt more risky.   It's unfair for me to imply a 100% causal relationship here, because that's not the case, but each of the markets interact with each other in some way. You will at least notice that, whether leading or trailing, companies that have a decreasing stock price also often have a decreasing credit rating.  You'll also notice that stocks which slip under $5 often times get put on credit watch.   The logic could go any which way around the circle, but a company that cuts its dividend may lose some investors who were in it for the dividend. This can cause stock price to fall. Credit agencies, depending on the situation, may approve of companies that cut their dividend (more cash to pay off debt), or, may indicate the dividend cut is not enough to make up for the company's falling profits.   In the absence of full information, a cut in the dividend is often seen as a sign of weakness or a sign of tough times for the company in the future. Companies which have changes in dividend are looked at as less stable, more unpredictable, blah blah blah.   Again, I'm not implying a 100% causal relationship here, but, each of these markets work with each other somehow, and a bank which cuts its dividend may be expecting lower profitability, slower growth, need the funds to cover lawsuit payouts or settlements with insert-regulatory-agency, or any number of other situations.
It isn't that the companies force traders, it is more the other way around. Traders wouldn't trade without margin. The main reason is liquidity and taking advantage of minor changes in the forex quotes. It goes down to pips and traders make profit(loss) on movement of pips maybe by 1 or 2 and in some cases in 1/1000 or less of a pip. So you need to put in a large amount to make a profit when the quotes move up or down. Supposedly if they have put in all the amount upfront, their trading options are limited. And the liquidity in the market goes out of the window. The banks and traders cannot make a profit with the limited amount of money available at their disposal. So what they would do is borrow from somebody else, so why not the broker itself in this case maybe the forex company, and execute the trades. So it helps everybody. Forex companies make their profit from the fees, more the trades done, more the fees and hence more profit. Traders get to put their fingers in many pies and so their chances of making profits increases. So everybody is happy.
Note: My sister works for one of the largest clinical development, testing, and commercialization companies so I know some of the key issues but not all. This answer does not constitute advice on any particular stock or other instrument. This is mostly well researched opinion. The problem with biotech companies (and a few other areas of technology) is that a lot of money is spent, and debt incurred, on ensuring that products are effective and safe to go to market. At any stage these tests can fail and the product is essentially worthless. At this stage the developers will have learnt a lot about the drug and how it is as efficacious as it is and so the next iteration of the potential drug will be better and hopefully less likely to cause complications and harmful side effects. The process of gaining approval for this second iteration is just as expensive, if not more so, than the last. This means that they are spending a lot of money on the drug and, for small biotech companies concentrating on one or few drugs, will have little to no income generation to offset this. If the money runs out before they get the product out they are bankrupt even if the drug is perfect. A second issue is that they are not the only firm looking for a cure. They might have a very good drug that works very well but another company may have a better one in the pipeline that will either take their monopoly position or take all of their business based on the relative cost and efficacy. The longer it takes them to get through testing, the more likely it is that this will happen and the more likely it is that the competing drug will be first to market and receive all of the free publicity that goes with that. In this case the risk is that they have a product (eventually) but no market for it and so will again run out of money. Another consideration is what the cure is actually worth. Prevention and awareness is already reducing the number of (wealthy) western people who have HIV and so the market size is falling where the most profit can be made. In order to get any return on your investment a profit will be required. Where HIV rates are rising is in poor countries in Africa, Asia, and south America where the price at which people could afford to buy a cure is likely to be lower than even the break even price for the firm.
They actually do handle large scale natural disasters. However this is when the Insurance companies' reinsurance contracts kick in. One insurance company can have multiple reinsurance contracts to help them mitigate disasters like this.    The insurance company might be on the hook for the first 25 million of a catastrophic event, then a reinsurance company A will be on the hook for the next 50 millions in excess of the first 25 million, then reinsurance company B will be on the hook for the next 25 million in excess of the first 75 million, etc. Reinsurance is essentially insurance for insurance companies (joking called insurance inception). Additionally reinsurance companies can get reinsurance, called retrocession.   Source: I work for a specialized insurance banking and finance group in Dallas. Our clients have exposure on the Texas coast and Houston.
You calculate the loss by adding back the interest that was made off the car loan. This is usually mitigated through down payments and longer loan terms (the 7 year auto loan is becoming popular). After a downpayment and a year's worth of payments (which are interest front loaded) I doubt that finance companies would have huge losses.
"Lol master in computer science. I'm an idiot. K bro. I'm just calling it like it is.  The problem with finance guys is they look at rich guys and accept their word as law. I don't care if this guy is a ""VP"" or whatever, I care if he has the technical chops to understand the technology. I'm willing to bet money he hasn't read a single paper on the technology, including the original Bitcoin paper, which by the way explicitly says do not speculate on cryptocurrencies (fun fact). I agree it's overvalued, but it's because traders with no idea of the real value of the tech are speculating.  Everyone is speculating on crypto, but historically disruptive tech is far undervalued. Think Microsoft when the iPhone was coming out. People were literally saying Apps are stupid and will never take off. At the end of the day I have money in it and we'll see where it goes."
"I don't agree that the market as a whole is a ponzi scheme, but there are some ponzi-like aspects to it. If you buy high quality stocks like Coca Cola, Johnson and Johnson, AT&amp;T, Verizon, Kraft, Wells Fargo (the vanilla bank, not one of the crazy ones), IBM, Berkshire Hathaway etc and simply hold onto them for the next 10-20 years, you will make money. Even over the last decade, when stocks ""went nowhere"", you still came out ahead through the dividend payments. It was just at an unsatisfactory rate of return. Also ""the market"" consists of a lot more than just stocks. Corporate bonds are a big market and I always recommend people to look at bonds. If you cannot judge whether a company is credit worthy, how can you invest in the common stock? I've made a lot more money myself in the bond market than in the stock market. However, for many stocks, they do look a lot like ponzi schemes. This is true, in particular, with many of the tech stocks (Cuban was a tech investor, so that is probably where his sentiment is coming from). You have many of these companies that create great products. However, they never have positive cash flow because all the money is spent to develop new products. As the share price goes up, the company issues new shares to fund research, stock options to employees to enrich them, etc. However, eventually, they run into a string of bad research that do not yield a new product and the share price plunges. Perhaps the company goes bankrupt. So you have a company that developed great products, but the shareholders never got a penny in dividends and the final shareholders have paper worth zero. Take a look at Research in Motion for example. Creating the Blackberry has to be one of the biggest successes in tech over the last decade. However, has the shareholders gotten any richer? Only if they traded amongst themselves, nobody got a dividend. What happened to the many billions of dollars they made during the peak popularity years of Blackberry?
"To add to MrChrister's answer:  Canada also has a Consumer Price Index (CPI) used to measure inflation that is distinct and separate from that maintained by the United States. There are differences in inflation between the U.S. and Canada because our currencies are different, and there may be different items in the ""basket"" of goods that constitutes the index. You can find current information on the Canadian CPI at Statistics Canada, here: Latest release from the Consumer Price Index. Also, the Bank of Canada – our central bank – maintains a free online Inflation Calculator.  The BoC's inflation calculator is handy because you can enter a dollar amount for a past date and it will figure out what that would be in today's dollars.  For instance, $100 in 1970 dollars had the same purchasing power (under the CPI) as $561.76 in 2009 dollars! And you're right – if you get a salary increase that is less than the rate of inflation, then in theory you have lost purchasing power.  So, anybody really looking for a raise ought to make an effort to get more than the increase in CPI.  Of course, some employers are counting on you not knowing that, because any increase that's less than CPI is effectively a salary decrease; which could mean more profit for them, if they are able to increase their prices / revenues at inflation or better. Finally, consider that salary & wage increases also contribute to inflation!  Perhaps you've heard of the wage/price inflation spiral.  If you haven't, there's more on that here and here."
That’s a race to the bottom though. There will always be someone willing to work for less than minimum wage, or doing unsafe work without proper protection, or work unpaid overtime in an hourly position, etc.   The worker protections aren’t just paternalistic. They are also about self-interest. The more companies that profit off of poor working conditions, the worse it is for all the rest of us.
A lack of experience and judgement would certainly describe your posts where you are concerned about Sears' employees.  They should get a job at Panera bread with very little lost in income. Problem solved.  The larger issue is the vaccum of higher paid jobs going overseas or companies milking the same old tired business models for less and less profit every year.
"Silicon Valley sexism explained? ""And then there are things like the ""brilliant jerk"" phenomenon, the idea that the smarter you are, the less nice you have to be. Engineering culture is notorious for verbal abuse. It's common for engineers to personally attack each other's intelligence, especially in environments where multiple people are contributing code to a project and other people are reviewing that code...So, many of these male engineers rise up through tech companies and become managers. And when they do, they may bring with them a sense of entitlement, and a hostile work culture. """
The more I read of these articles about Uber/Lyft etc. and the superior service that they are offering over taxi companies, the more I think about the increasingly strong links between Uber and the Google self-driving car.   When self-driving vehicles are available the service will be even better - where the service provider will be embarrassed about, and probably offering discounts to, anyone waiting more than 10 minutes.  Once self-driving vehicles are available then all of these confrontations over Uber vs the taxi industry become moot. If regulations won't allow me to use Uber, and I don't want to wait for a taxi, then I can just order a self-driving vehicle from a car rental company. It will essentially offer me exactly the same chauffeur(less) service, but without the regulations hampering delivery of the vehicle.  If, as can be expected, extra regulations are put in the way of car rental companies, then I will join a car sharing company and order a self-driving one to deliver itself to me. It will essentially offer me exactly the same chauffeur(less) service, but without the regulations hampering delivery of the vehicle.  TL;DR - The writing is on the wall for taxi companies - Uber is the start, but the arrival of self-driving cars will signal their demise.
Just look at equity purchases and follow the corporate bond money trail.  80% of all stock purchases were made by the same companies that issued the stock and they used bond money to do so.  Everything is running off of near zero interest bond money.  Everything.  Notice how careful they are to use words like revenue instead of profit.  We never ever hear about P/E ratios now.  Meanwhile the financial news sites make up the craziest headlines to explain the constant upward momentum (Dow soars as Trump wipes properly for the first time this week).  The scope of manipulation is beyond anything we can comprehend.  Tech is one of the worst offenders.  We have bubbles everywhere now and plenty of fake ZIRP dependent jobs to go with them.
"&gt;those fossil free funds have been outperforming their fossilized index counterparts  Why am I not surprised that over a 3 year or less time period, during the worst oil crash in at least 20 years, a fund the excludes that sector is performing better? What a misleading statement.   Like saying in early 2000, ""oh my tech-free fund is outperforming the funds with tech stocks"" while ignoring the dot com bubble bursting having any effect, and implying that tech stocks will never recover."
The problem is the H1B program is currently being abused to fill entry level positions, which it wasn't designed to do.  Now we have a glut of American entry level tech workers unable to find work because companies use H1B workers to fill entry level spots. Why? Because it's cheaper they can save $10k per year per worker. And here's the real kicker, most of these H1B workers go back to their home country once finished, so the talent and money doesn't stay in the states. And now we have a shortage of senior tech workers because who would have thought that not giving entry level workers here the chance to work, while tossing away the H1B workers every five years, would bite them in the ass?!!!
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. There are also many collaborations between Euro companies which was quiet pleasing for me to see. We fully understand that the USA under Trump have reinstated the sanction for USA. However our understanding is that we in the UK are not at present restricted by Sanctions to trade with Iranian companies. We strongly feel that the British medical technology sector here in the UK could benefit considerably it could also help It to progress and grow to take a bigger global Market share as well bring in 100s of millions in revenues for the UK economy. We strongly feel that with Brexit negotiations in the pipeline, as well as the geo political situation that the world finds itself in right now, that this is the right time to work in collaboration with this consortium and help them with completion of this project successfully and lawfully. We strongly feel though that the due diligence carried in any trade deals needs to be within a framework of EU, UK regulations and in compliance with any UN or other sanctions we are un aware off. We had been planning to use due diligence guidelines from the USA when dealing with Iranian companies, however we feel this is the main reason why France and Germany along with Italy are winning all the contracts in Iran, and with the help of relevant government departments we would like to develop our own plan for this based on the current situation. We would like this to be the beginning of a number of high level trade deals we are in negotiations with right now with high level Middle Eastern business consortiums, in Dubai, Doha, Muscat, Tehran, Kuwait. We feel Britain has missed it to France and Germany when it comes to Iran, and would like to work with all the relevant departments to create a due diligence plan which is effective and helps us reach our goals. I would appreciate any advice you can give us in this respect.
"This is kinda off track from what the the article is getting at, but it's related. I think now more than ever a company needs to focus on pleasing the customer. In this day and age one customer has the power to reach a million other people.  Look at Reddit, we crash websites when just one person submits a link. Depending on what our intentions are this can be good or bad.   I feel like the bigger companies have strayed away from this concept. With E3 in the news you can't help but see how the every day gamer views the ""bigger"" companies such as EA and Microsoft with disdain because they aren't focusing on the customers needs."
But to transfer all the wealth coming into my city from DOD projects to go directly into companies that no longer have work to do since they are not doing the DOD project.............That is less work and more welfare. Our society isn't really set up for that.
"You obviously know staggeringly little about the automotive industry. Thanks for putting it on display.  _edit_ You talk about companies like GM and BMW like they haven't been working on electric systems for _years_, and you throw the word ""technology"" around like some kind of buzzword you don't understand. The Model S does not operate on ""magic"", and outside of the drive train is no more sophisticated (less if you look at the actual available features) than your average E-Class or 5 series."
Venture capital is most prevalent in tech industries because of their high upfront capital requirements, and it's even more important for young biotech companies because they require sophisticated computing and laboratory equipment and highly-trained staff before they can even begin their research. These capital requirement are only expected to rise as subfields like genetic engineering become more widespread in the industry; when half the staff of a young company have PhD's in bioinformatics and they need high-end computing power to evaluate their models, you can see why the initial costs can be quite high. To put this in perspective, in 2010, ""venture capitalists invested approximately $22 billion into nearly 2,749 companies."" That comes out to roughly $7.8M per company. The same year (I've lost the article that mentioned this, unfortunately), the average venture capital investment in the biotech industry was almost double that, at $15M. Since many years can elapse between initial investment in a biotech company and the earliest potential for earnings, these companies may require large amounts of early investment to get them through this period. It's also important to understand why the biotech industry, as a whole, may exhibit low earnings for a long period after the initial investment. Much of this has to do with the drug development process and the phases of clinical trials. The biotech industry isn't 100% dedicated to pharmaceutical development, but the overlap is so significant that the following information is more than applicable. Drug development usually goes through three phases: Drug discovery - This is the first research stage, where companies look for new chemical compounds that might have pharmaceutical applications. Compounds that pass this stage are those that are found to be effective against some biological target, although their effects on humans may not be known. Pre-clinical testing - In this stage, the company tests the drug for toxicity to major organs and potential side effects on other parts of the body. Through laboratory and animal testing, the company determines that the drug, in certain doses, is likely safe for use in humans. Once a drug passes the tests in this stage, the company submits an Investigational New Drug (IND) application to the FDA. This application contains results from the animal/laboratory tests, details of the manufacturing process, and detailed proposals for human clinical trials should the FDA approve the company's IND application.
Honestly, I'm not going to argue with some of the insane bullshit some companies pull - but if you've ever needed medication in ANY form, a pharma likely created (even for yeast infections). Frankly, thanks to these companies and decades of blockbusters - they're starting to address the real niche diseases out there (plus, how else will they make money - patents are running out). To pull a blanket statement like that is well, misinformed. The world isn't black and white. As much as you might lambaste the industry, there are a LOT of good willed people here that are seriously trying to eradicate horrible, horrible diseases.
I'd say blockchain technology more than cryptocurrency, cryptocurrency is just 1 application of blockchain tech; and we have not seen the whole development, not just yet.  Like someone else commented AI/Robotics at large is the 1 big thing I see coming down the pipeline.
If he can't manage, best is he sells it off. Its easier to manage cash. Not sure what tax you are talking about. He should have already paid tax on fair market value of the 20 flats. If the intention of Mr X is to gift to son by way of death, then yes the tax will be less. Else whenever Mr X sells there will be tax.  how to manage these 20 apartments? Hire a broker. He may front run quite a few things like showing the place etc. There is a risk if he is given a free hand, he may not get good quality tenant. There are quite a few shark brokers [its unregulated] who may arm twist seeing the opportunity of an old man with 20 flats. See if you can do long term lease with companies looking for guest house etc, or certain companies who run guest house. They would like the scale, generally 3-5 years contracts are done. The rent is good and overall less hassle. The risk is most would ask to invest more in furnishing and contracts can be terminated in months notice. If the property is in large metro [Delhi/Bangalore/Chennai/etc] These places have good property management companies. Ensure that you have independent lawyer; there are certain aspects of law that may need to be studied.