vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
They make a killing. In Queensland, a state of Australia, they only have one Distributor, Energex, so there is no competition. All power comes from them. As such, the prices are ridiculously high since retailers can't afford to sell it any cheaper than what they bought it for. This company Energex has employees that casually take 3 hour lunch breaks and still earn over 100k a year and they are not even execs. Meanwhile the consumers in that state are going broke from the energy prices.
Actually it's a perfectly good way. There is solid evidence showing most top level corporation CEOs do relatively little. A huge amount of the time their profits are down to market increases, they claim responsibility. Yet they blame the market when it is on a downturn abduction avoid losing bonuses etc. So they win every way.   Really share holders needsimple majority (not super majority as it is now) to oppose remuneration packets and for the votes to be binding not merely advisory as they are now. Also share holders should be able to offer counter remuneration packages etc.   The remuneration committee system is in need of huge reform because it does not work (as committee members are industry peers at or around that level it always pays to inflate offers because they benefit as it inflates exec wages in the industry) and is full of perverse incentives. Share holders need more power and claw back systems introduced for poor performance and more modest bonuses, bonuses spread over long periods of time and linked to long term profitability, no golden handshakes or welcomes, more measured bonuses and some claw backs set against market indicators so they dont ride on successes out of their control. There also needs to be more willingness to fire poorly performing execs.
"Former employee so I have a little insight. They are very scared of unionization and also losing their exemption in the Railway Act. This classifies FedEx as an Airline/railway company, where UPS is a ground shipping company. What that means is that FedEx has protections against unions. FedEx ground drivers are not employees, they are contractors. Some of these guys are not happy and the states were changing laws to benefit the workers in some way (i'm not entirely sure how it works). But FedEx is smart so they are reclassifying these people as ""Independent Service Providers"". They are forcing single route drivers to sell to multi-route/ISP owners. When you have an owner that owns multiple routes they ar eless likely to be pro-union and it also puts another barrier between the driver and FedEx."
The fund expense ratio is 0.61% annually, for a whopping before expense TE of +2.5% annually. This is once again highly statistically significant, with p values of 0.015 after expenses and 0.0022 before expenses. (The SD of the TE is higher for DFSCX than for NAESX, lowering its degree of statistical significance.) It is remarkable enough for any fund to beat its benchmark by 2.5% annually over 17 years, but it is downright eerie to see this done by an index fund. To complete the picture, since 1992 the Vanguard Extended Index Fund has beaten its benchmark (the Wilshire 4500) by 0.56% per year after expenses (0.81% net of expenses), and even the Vanguard Index Trust 500 has beaten its benchmark by a razor thin 0.08% annually before (but not after) expenses in the same period. So what is going on here? A hint is found in DFA's 1996 Reference Guide: The 9-10 Portfolio captures the return behavior of U.S. small company stocks as identified by Rolf Banz and other academic researchers. Dimensional employs a ""patient buyer"" discount block trading strategy which has resulted in negative total trading costs, despite the poor liquidity of small company stocks. Beginning in 1982, Ibbotson Associates of Chicago has used the 9-10 Portfolio results to calculate the performance of small company stocks for their Stocks, Bonds, Bills, and Inflation yearbook. A small cap index fund cannot possibly own all of the thousands of stocks in its benchmark; instead it owns a ""representative sample."" Further, these stocks are usually thinly traded, with wide bid/ask spreads. In essence what the folks at DFA learned was that they could tell the market makers in these stocks, ""Look old chaps, we don't have to own your stock, and unless you let us inside your spread, we'll pitch our tents elsewhere. Further, we're prepared to wait until a motivated seller wishes to unload a large block."" In a sense, this gives the fund the luxury of picking and choosing stocks at prices more favorable than generally available. Hence, higher long term returns.
"Using a ""vehicle"" is a common technique to isolate project-specific risk from the remainder of the company. There's not any problem with the vehicle making zero paper profits, it was only ever a paper company.   The dodgy bit is when they start offering remuneration to participants based on the vehicle's profits - anyone with any sense goes on gross.  Or when they are artificially shifting the profits around for tax reasons."
"That would be a very *evil* move on Google's part. As a Firefox user close to 100% of my searches are done through the built-in search bar, which is set to Google by default. That's got to be worth something surely.   Besides which, I don't really see what Google has to gain by having their browser ""kill"" Firefox. Their goal should be a healthy ecosystem of standards-compliant browsers, all the better to keep the web open so they earn more money."
"I think the first misconception to clear up is that you are implying the price of a stock is set by a specific person. It is not. The price of a stock is equal to the value that someone most recently traded at. If Apple last traded at $100/share, then Apple shares are worth $100. If good news about Apple hits the market and people holding the shares ask for more money, and the most recent trade becomes $105, then that is now what Apple shares are worth. Remember that generally speaking, the company itself does not sell you its shares - instead, some other investor sells you shares they already own. When a company sells you shares, it is called a 'public offering'. To get to your actual question, saying something is 'priced in' implies that the 'market' (that is, investors who are buying and selling shares in the company) has already considered the impacts of that something. For example, if you open up your newspaper and read an article about IBM inventing a new type of computer chip, you might want to invest in IBM. But, the rest of the market has also heard the news. So everyone else has already traded IBM assuming that this new chip would be made. That means when you buy, even if sales later go up because of the new chip, those sales were already considered by the person who chose the price to sell you the shares at. One principle of the stock market (not agreed to by all) is called market efficiency. Generally, if there were perfect market efficiency, then every piece of public information about a company would be perfectly integrated into its stock price. In such a scenario, the only way to get real value when buying a company would be to have secret information of some sort. It would mean that everyone's collective best-guess about what will happen to the company has been ""priced-in"" to the most recent share trade."
No, as a director normally you can't. As a director of a Limited company, all those payments should be accounted for as directors' remuneration and have been subject to PAYE and NIC, even if you are self-employed. Currently there is no legislation which prevents a director from receiving self-employment income from a company in which he is a director, however the default position of HMRC's is that all the payments derived from the directorship are subject to PAYE. In other words, it's possible only invoice from an unconnected business or in a consultancy role that's not directly related to the trade of business. But it really depends on the circumstances and the contracts in place. Sources: Monsoon at AAT forum, David Griffiths at UKBF, Paula Sparrow and Abutalib at AW  More sources: If a person does other work that’s not related to being a director, they may have an employment contract and get employment rights. Source: Employment status as director at Gov.uk In principle, it is possible for an employee or office holder to tender for work with their employer outside their normal duties, in circumstances where that individual will not be providing service as an employee or office holder but as a self-employed contractor. Where there is any doubt about whether service is provided constitutes employment or self-employment, see the Employment Status Manual (ESM). Source: Section 62 ITEPA 2003 at HMRC
I place 90% of the blame on Carly, and then the board: that bitch was primed by her contract to gut and fillet the company.  When a board links a CEOs remuneration to annual profit, it makes unscrupulous individuals do things which have clear and obvious negative long term impacts, but which will hike the annual profit for THIS year and another YEAR or so, but then turn badly negative.  Because Carly is a little bitch, and wanted to extract as much money as was humanly possible from her position at HP, she embarked on the most disastrous set of actions possible.  The direct result is what we see now.  CEO compensation should NEVER be linked to profitability for an individual year, but to their performance throughout their tenure, and then beyond.  It's my belief a CEO should take a base salary of no more than 50 times the MEAN worker's salary is. NOT the average. Because that simply encourages the board to enrich the management team, rather than the workers.  If the company is profitable for a single year, CEOs should receive a large bonus - say no more than 20 times the MEAN salary at the company.  AND 3 years AFTER the CEO leaves, he'd be entitled to another round of payments base on long term performance of the company. This means CEOs have a duty and a very large responsibility to ensure that their replacement is actually a better CEO than they are!  When board members leave, there's no incentive to them personally, to ensure their replacement is even capable, let alone excellent.  The other issue I have with CEOs is their stock options, or stock grants. I believe all companies should have strict rules about stock ownership by the board. They must own a certain number of shares, and those shares must be purchased before they join the board, and demonstrably NOT by any mechanism which the company pays for.  Directors and officers with no personal investment interest in the performance of the company are a concern.
"Dude, I'm a small business owner. The fact of the matter is employee costs are a big expense. But the truth is, I think people that pay minimum wage are scum.   If you're so convinced that a livable wage would make it ""worse"", why don't you standardize a companies 10-k and show me that the cost of the product will raise equal to the wage increase? You can't, because it won't. The cost increase on margins is divided over every operating metric a company has, and therefore the price won't increase at a 1:1 ratio.   Further, the margins that are made by the companies employing the people making minimum wage are often from government assistance. So you're claiming it's cheaper for the populace to create false net revenues by directing tax dollars to support the very people that can't buy food because of a $7 an hour wage.   Then you have the countless people stuck in the welfare hole of losing their benefits if they get a slightly better job that just knocks them out of the specified ranges required to qualify. So you have people that want to work, but now can't make too much money or it will make their life worse, all because of the system that was created by a minimum wage that never matched inflation and cheap companies that rely on welfare systems to keep their employees happy a rough to keep living.   Companies that pay minimum wage are jokes."
Stock prices are indeed proportional to supply and demand. The greater the demand for a stock, the greater the price. If they are, would this mean that stock prices completely depend on HOW the public FEELS/THINKS about the stock instead of what it is actually worth? This is a question people have argued for decades. Literature in behavioral finance suggests that investors are not rational and thus markets are subject to wild fluctuation based on investor sentiment. The efficient market theory (EMT) argues that the stock market is efficient and that a stock's price is an accurate reflection of its underlying or intrinsic value. This philosophy took birth with Harry Markovitz's efficient frontier, and Eugene Fama is generally seen as the champion of EMT in the 1960's and onward.  Most investors today would agree that the markets are not perfectly efficient, and that a stock's price does not always reflect its value. The renowned professor Benjamin Graham once wrote: In the short run, the market is a voting machine but in the long run it is a weighing machine. This suggests that prices in the short term are mainly influenced by how people feel about the stock, while in the long run the price reflects what it's actually worth. For example, people are really big fans of tech stocks right now, which suggests why LinkedIn (stock: LNKD) has such a high share price despite its modest earnings (relative to valuation). People feel really good about it, and the price might sustain if LinkedIn becomes more and more profitable, but it's also possible that their results won't be absolutely stellar, so the stock price will fall until it reflects the company's fundamentals.
There are many different things that factories have to take care of when they are choosing a ventilation system for their company. It is something that is going to keep the employees safe and possibly help to keep costs down. Roof vents are an option for many of these.
Littleadv has given you excellent general advice, but to my mind, the most important part of it all and the path which I will strongly recommend you follow, is the suggestion to look into a mutual fund. I would add even more strongly,  go to a mutual fund company directly    and make an investment with them directly instead of making the    investment through a brokerage account.  Pick an index fund with low expenses, e.g. there are S&P 500 index funds available with  expenses that are a fraction of 1%. (However, many also require minimum investments on the order of $2500 or $3000 except for IRA accounts).  At this time, your goal should be to reduce expenses as much as possible because expenses, whether they be in brokerage fees which may be directly visible to you or mutual fund expenses which are invisible to you, are what will eat away at your return far more than the difference between the returns of various investments.
The smart phone platform vendors are missing out on a new niche that would make life easier for corporate workers and IT departments alike.  The current problem is the 'BYOD' trend, of every office worker wanting to bring their own device, iPhone, tablet, whatever. This is a problem because this is an uncontrolled environment from an IT point of view.  What if there was an app that ran on android/iOS/windows8/whatever that acted as a Virtual Phone that was encrypted and walled off from the rest of the users phone. And it is under complete control of corporate IT, so they are happy too. It would have its own number and act like a separate phone. However the user would only have one phone taking up pocket space, instead of classic situation of carrying their own phone and a 'work' phone.  The best company placed for this is RIM. They have a lot of experience in integrating phones to corporate environments. IT departments already have experience with the blackberry platform. They still have a large amount of money to burn in a Hail Mary project such as this and they are (or were) desperate enough to try such a change in direction.  They should exit the hardware business and make a virtual phone app that corporate IT can roll out to employees phones. Hell it would even be cheaper for companies than handsets alone.  They would own this market outright and if executed well, most companies would be on board and RIM would be back with the massive profit margins software usually carries. Instead of the lower margin hardware usually has.
The black cab industry needed a shakeup for sure, but Uber's labour practices are terrible. You can't go around not giving employees the rights they deserve. And yes they are employees, just like Deliveroo and all the others are too.  Shitty labour practices should be stopped - that's what regulations are for - protecting consumers and employees.  If Uber started treating their drivers better I'd hope London would welcome them back. We'll see if that ever hapoens.
A share is more than something that yields dividends, it is part ownership of the company and all of its assets. If the company were to be liquidated immediately the shareholders would get (a proportion of) the net value (assets - liabilities) of the company because they own it. If a firm is doing well then its assets are increasing (i.e. more cash assets from profits) therefore the value of the underlying company has risen and the intrinsic value of the shares has also increased. The price will not reflect the current value of the firms assets and liabilities because it will also include the net present value of expected future flows. Working out the expected future flows is a science on par with palmistry and reading chicken entrails so don't expect to work out why a company is trading at a price so much higher than current assets - liabilities (or so much lower in companies that are expected to fail). This speculation is in addition to price speculation that you mention in the question.
One thing to consider besides what rules Oregon has, is what rules your old state have. Of course the lack of income tax in Nevada means that most people are trying to convince their new state they are still a resident of Nevada. You are a full-year Oregon resident if you live in Oregon all year.   You are also a full-year Oregon resident, even if you live outside   Oregon, if all of the following are true: Part-year resident: You are a part-year resident if you moved into or out of Oregon during the tax year. The requirement for financial life means that you should: change all your Nevada banks to Oregon banks; Change all your mail to Oregon; Sell any property or end any leases you have in Nevada. Or course you need to research the rules for in state college tuition, death with dignity  if any apply to you. In border areas you must be careful to establish residency for children to attend public schools. Some families try to cheat to get their children into a better school.
That is a loaded question. The American taxpayer isn't subsidizing their business model. We are paying for a social safety net, yes. But no one is forcing Walmart employees to work there, or to not take other jobs to supplement their income, etc. You are looking at the situation with a very child like perspective, as though they are victims. If anything, rather than targeting one large company and blaming them, we should focus on promoting legislation that increases the minimum wage, since many other businesses have the same practices as Walmart, and always will as long as the law lets them.
You clearly are not paying attention to what Walmart is doing and how smart they are doing it. They have an insane amount of stores and network far beyond Amazon for shipping/receiving and a far more dedicated customer base. They are also diving into areas that make middle class Americans love the fuck out of them. There stock price is where it should be unlike Amazons insanely inflated price. The best part is they are doing it even more intelligently than Amazon who is putting far to many hands in the cookie Jar. Their spending power and market cap can easily match Amazon if not exceed it. They are also not trying to squash out the middle man they are building UP the middle man. Also, if you think Walmart has no manufacturing you need to educate your self heavily on what they are doing here in the states.  EDIT:I'll clarify...I in now way like Amazon or Walmart as a company past financial gains. I think they are both cunts of company's that could and should treat their employees better and I wish they would.
It's no answer to say that you might buy the stock in the hope that the price of the stock will go up and you can sell at a profit even with no dividends. Why would anyone else pay anything for this stock? Well, unless their stock certificates are pretty and people like to collect them or something like that. Otherwise you're supposing that people would knowingly buy into a pyramid scheme. (Of course in real life there are usually uncertainties. If a company is dying, some people may believe, rightly or wrongly, that there is still hope of reviving it. Etc.) Don't confuse the value of the assets of a company with the value of its stock. They are related, of course -- all else being equal, a company with a billion dollars in assets will have a higher market capitalization than a company with ten dollars in assets. But you can't calculate the price of a company's stock by adding up the value of all its assets, subtracting liabilities, and dividing by the number of shares. That's just not how it works. Long term, the value of any stock is not the value of the assets but the net present value of the total future expected dividends. Subject to all sorts of complexities in real life."
You question is a bit scary to me. You show $2100 rent, and let's even assume that's 100%, i.e. never a vacancy. (Rule of thumb is 10% vacancy. Depending on area, a tenant may stay a year, but when they leave, you might need to have a bit of maintenance and miss 2 months rent) You count the mortgage and taxes, and are left with $500/mo. Where is the list of ongoing expenses? I suggest you put that $500/mo into a separate account and let us know a year from now if anything is left. To Anthony's point. I agree 100%, no one can tell you everything you need to know. But, whatever my answer, or his, other members with experience (similar or different) will add to this, and in the end you'll have a great overview. The truth is that it's easy for me to sit here and see what you may be missing. By the way, if you look at the 'rules of thumb' they will make your head spin. There are those who say the target is for the rent to be 2% of the value of the house. But, there are markets where this will never happen. There's another rule that says the expenses (besides mort/tax) should be planned at 50% of the rent, i.e. you should put aside $1000/mo for expenses over the long term. The new house will be lower of course, but in years past year 10 or so, this number will start to look reasonable.