vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"That's because Ford - like many other managers of large defined benefit plans - decided that, instead of defeasing its obligations through an [effective immunization program](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Immunization_%28finance%29), they would just put less money into equities and pray for the equity risk premium to carry the day for them.  Lo and behold, it didn't work for a lot of them.  In the meantime, their liabilities began to far outstrip the assets meant to offset them to the point where even a one-for-one asset-liability match wouldn't help.  So now guess what?  They tell you ""shit, we fucked this up, so here's your payout - good luck.""  As if the worker is going to have a clue as to how to effectively manage his money so as to minimize longevity and savings risk.  Let me make something clear:  It is not beyond the means of modern finance to effectively implement and administer a defined benefit program.  It involves ""doing the right thing"" by employees, which in some cases involves not taking risks with equity and instead simply ensuring that assets meant to offset liabilities are appropriate in both timing and magnitude."
That's not why they are mad. From the article:  'However, Oliver found court documents stating Alpha later asked its bankruptcy trustee if the coal company could save $3 million by cutting health and life insurance benefits of around 1,200 non-union retirees — so that the company could then pay $11.9 million in bonuses to fifteen top executives, including Crutchfield.'
Walmart can afford to pay more, they just choose not to because it's legal to keep their workforce underemployed. The profits Walmart posts every quarter exceed the drain on public services their employees create. What really grinds my gears is that paying an employee a fair wage tends to attract much more talented and dedicated workers who will be much more productive than the warm bodies currently running the place.
The management expense ratio (MER) is the management fee, plus all of the other costs required to run the fund, excluding any trading costs. Here's a pretty good explanation.
For the purpose of personal finance, treating $500 as Interest Expense is sufficient.  For business accounting, it involves making the $500 a contra-liability and amortizing it as interest expense over the course of life of the loan.
But this is the same for all businesses. Expenses suck, but their a part of doing business. This is such a predictable expense as well.  Interestingly in Norway we have maternity/paternity leave that totals 12 months. Recently 3 months of this has been made into paternity leave only. This means that the risk of losing an employee for at least 3 months exists for both genders (while still the chance of a women being gone for longer is still higher).  Realistically, many men take 6 months (and some even more).
Where we’re going, we don’t need profits Twitter Facebook LinkedIn Print this page 15 SEPTEMBER 19, 2017 By: Alexandra Scaggs Simply put, earnings no longer reliably reflect changes in corporate value and are thus an inadequate driver of investment analysis. – Profs Feng Gu and Baruch Lev, in a paper for the CFA Institute’s Financial Analysts Journal Well then! This idea challenges the very heart of traditional equity-market investment analysis. The authors point out that legendary stock-picker Benjamin Graham spent hundreds of pages of his 1962 book on analysing and predicting earnings and other quarterly metrics. Earnings prediction is still central to most sell-side analysis as well. But if profits, EBITDA or sales were truly central for corporate valuation, wouldn’t markets punish regular loss-makers like Tesla and Amazon more severely? And wouldn’t there be a stronger return to predicting profits? The returns to such predictions have diminished over time, according to the authors of the paper, which might help explain the persistent underperformance by active fund managers. While the professors commit a minor chart crime below by starting the Y-axis at 1.5 per cent, it seems notable that potential gains were lower during the 2009 downturn than during the dot-com bust: The 30-year pattern of the gains from the earnings growth investment strategy is depicted in Figure 2. Again, the deterioration of gains from perfect growth prediction is evident. Clearly, the problem lies with reported earnings, not in the way investors use them. Simply put, earnings no longer reliably reflect changes in corporate value and are thus an inadequate driver of investment analysis. The decline in profits’ importance can be explained by a fundamental change in the way companies create value, they say. There are lots of names for the change: The information revolution, the rise of the knowledge economy, and so on. No matter what you call it, the idea is that modern production relies less on physical capital and more on intellectual capital. Accounting and financial analysis methods have failed to adapt to this change, they say. For example, companies are required to expense R&amp;D and sales expenses immediately, while they can amortise expenses from capital investment and acquisitions (including intangibles) over time.
The big problem I see with this article is it does not state what the profits would be minus the licensing fees. It only states revenue, which is obviously a bad indicator of taxes owed.   Also, licensing fees are applicable in some markets. For example in markets like China that mandate a company do business under a subsidiary, licensing is a legitimate expense, considering the subsidiary might not be wholly owned by the parent company (per the country's laws).   That said, this is the UK we're talking about, so it is clearly not in that situation. I was just pointing out in some markets it is a legitimate expense. Maybe the UK could make licensing fees a non-deductible expense after a certain percentage of subsidiary income. Its a complex problem, I would be interested to see if any other jurisdictions have tackled it.
"Regardless of if the 'higher profits' are create from higher volumes and more workers, the key word there is PROFITS - not 'revenue', not 'income' or any similar word. PROFITS - a word used to describe the amount left AFTER paying expenses - such as the salaries of those additional workers (if any).  The point is, the worker deserve a share of those profits. It is their work that has made them - in addition to the work of the CEO, of course, but still...the CEO could not have created 'better margins' or done 'better deployment of capital' if it were not for the efforts of those workers in the first place.  This is the main problem with the economy right now. No one feels the responsibility to those who have helped them succeed. They keep using a 'slash and burn' financial strategy - slash salaries and benefits and burn up your labor force to extract every dollar you can for the top. The only problem is, now they're running out of things to slash and the workers they've burned have nothing left. And they wonder why the economy is in the crapper.  I keep being reminded of a quote from Ladyhawke as said by the evil bishop:   ""I raise their taxes, only to be told there's nothing left for me to tax. Imagine."""
"While COBRA premiums are not eligible to be a ""business"" expense they can be a medical expense for personal deduction purposes.  If you're itemizing your deductions you may be able to deduct that way.  However, you will only be able to deduct the portion of the premium that exceeds 10% of your AGI. Are you a full time employee now or are you a 1099 contractor?  Do you have access to your employers health plan?"
Because some overhead expenses will be shared (accounting, most salaries, sales etc.) it's far easier to give him an ownership stake in the company because you won't be able to calculate net profit for each component correctly. What I would say to him is, in exchange for $80K and the contract with his building company (make sure it is significant enough to be worth it$ you will give him 35% of the company.   How did you come up with he $1 million in net profit calculation? How much of that is reliant on his business?
"Several, actually: Maintenance costs. As landlord, you are liable for maintaining the basic systems of the dwelling - structure, electrical, plumbing, HVAC. On top of that, you typically also have to maintain anything that comes with the space, so if you're including appliances like a W/D or fridge, if they crap out you could spend a months' rent or more replacing them. You are also required to keep the property up to city codes as far as groundskeeping unless you specifically assign those responsibilities to your tenant (and in some states you are not allowed to do so, and in many cases renters expect groundskeeping to come out of their rent one way or the other). Failure to do these things can put you in danger of giving your tenant a free out on the lease contract, and even expose you to civil and criminal penalties if you're running a real slum. Escrow payments. The combination of property tax and homeowner's insurance usually doubles the monthly housing payment over principal and interest, and that's if you got a mortgage for 20% down. Also, because this is not your primary residence, it's ineligible for Homestead Act exemptions (where available; states like Texas are considering extending Homestead exemptions to landlords, with the expectation it will trickle down to renters), however mortgage interest and state taxes do count as ""rental expenses"" and can be deducted on Schedule C as ordinary business expenses offsetting revenues. Income tax. The money you make in rent on this property is taxable as self-employment income tax; you're effectively running a sole proprietorship real-estate management company, so not only does any profit (you are allowed to deduct maintenance and administrative costs from the rent revenues) get added to whatever you make in salary at your day job, you're also liable for the full employee and employer portions of Medicare/Medicaid/SS taxes.
You recognize expense when you sell the hot dog. When you pay for the buns you have inventory, which is an asset. When you sell the hot dog - you have cost of goods sold, which is the expense. Expense principle says that you recognize expense when you use the product. You use the buns when you actually sell the hot dog, not before. The matching principle is also honored because you recognize expense of the buns at the time of recognizing revenue of the hot dog.
I just described its function. Tell me what they do other than what I described, and also tell me how much of drug companies' budgets are consumed in this process (preferably the unecessary parts of the process), especially compared to the rest of the drug spending and inordinate profits.  Drug companies run ads, they have sales reps (pharma girls), they have tort cases (not a symptom of regulation), they have research, they have HUGE employee and CEO salaries and bonuses, they have distribution costs. Trust me when I say that regulation isn't the driving force here.
"I can pretty much guarantee you that the vast majority of new small companies will NOT grow to have 50 workers (they probably won't even have 49 workers, or 48, or even 47).  Once they approach 40, other ""solutions"" -- even beyond the ""part time employees"" suggested by the author (a thing I would expect will be ""addressed"" by a change in the detailed regulations -- the Federal government will attempt to stop this obvious loophole by redefining what constitutes a ""full time employee"") -- MANY other solutions will be executed (dividing the company into two or three distinct entities with slightly different ownership {for example wife owns one location, husband another, etc}, plus the obvious expanded use of temp agencies, contract and/or subcontract workers, subbing work {especially generic administrative work} out to other firms, etc).  Any and all of those will probably cost far LESS than $40k a year (which is probably a woefully underestimated number)."
You can just buy the items personally and then submit an expense report to the company to get reimbursed. Keep all the receipts. Paying with a company check is also fine, but you might run into problems with stores not accepting checks.
Annual-report expense ratios reflect the actual fees charged during a particular fiscal year.  Prospectus Expense Ratio (net) shows expenses the fund company anticipates will actually be borne by the fund's shareholders in the upcoming fiscal year less any expense waivers, offsets or reimbursements. Prospectus Gross Expense Ratio is the percentage of fund assets used to pay for operating expenses and management fees, including 12b-1 fees, administrative fees, and all other asset-based costs incurred by the fund, except brokerage costs. Fund expenses are reflected in the fund's NAV. Sales charges are not included in the expense ratio. All of these ratios are gathered from a fund's prospectus.
They didn't double profits by simplifying the menu.  They completely slashed all their expenses (forcing corporate employees to work double while training their replacements for half the price, etc)  3G is known for this.  Hence the 33 year old CEO, they take everyone senior work them until they quit and replace them with kids who make almost nothing.
Nice try. No. If you were in the music industry, you might have a case. Depending on the exact job, certain things related to music would be a business expense. I don't see how this would pass an audit as it really is unrelated to the work you do.
I completely agree, I think anyone with half a brain could have seen this coming. I would guess their major expenses are product development.... But losing that much money that quickly AND having growth slow down is not a good position to be in
"and part of the point of this article is to get that kind of information out there, so that people can say ""oo well maybe that law is needed"" or ""oh I read that article on reddit and maybe I wont shop there""  not sure if anyone is claiming they are breaking the law.  But it should also be noted that many very large businesses like costco and starbucks and ben and jerries, dont cut employee costs to the bone. And while what walmart is doing is legal, there is nothing wrong with calling them greedy pricks, when society has shown that businesses can succeed in american without being greedy pricks.   otherwise I agree with your comment"
isn't aware of specific plan claims or costs and is not part of the benefits executive committee, 2. won't be instructed to screen for health deficiencies because it's against the law, 3. a company generally won't test the water here because $50,000 per year is less than 1% of the company's annual medical expenses, 4. $50,000 is well below the cost to litigate a discrimination law-suit. Really the flaw in your thought process is that $50,000 in annual medical expense is a lot. A harsh child-birth can run in the $250,000 range, so these companies never hire women? Or never hire men who could add a spouse who's in child bearing years? Or never hire women who might have a female spouse who could be in child bearing years? A leukemia diagnosis will ratchet up $1,000,000 in a year. Spend a bit of time in intensive care for $25,000 per day and you're fired? A few thousand bucks on diabetes meds isn't anything relative to the annual cost of your average self-funded plan. The second flaw is that the hiring managers get insight in to specific claims. They don't. Third, you don't hand over medical records on your resume anyway. I typed this out in one single draft and have no intention of editing anything. I just wanted paint a broad picture, I'm sure things can be nit-picked or focused on."
I finally got one to separate my business and personal expenses.  It will make accounting at the end of the year a lot easier.
You send the proper form to the other person for the amount you gave him, and file it as your business expense on your Schedule C.
And the fact that if notes trade up high enough they tend to get taken out with lower yielding notes (pending the call schedule), so in theory there is more limited upside in high-yield, whereas equity could theoretically trade to infinity.  The positives for high-yield is that they generate monthly cash flow via coupon payments and have less down-side relative to equities. Naturally this lower down-side comes at the expense of lower up-side as well.
The quote price is simply the last price at which a trade completed.
These are yields for the government bonds. EuroZone interest rates are much lower (10 times lower, in fact) than the UK (GBP zone) interest rates. The rates are set by the central banks.
"My guess is that the point is that yields on bonds and cash equivalents is so low that inflation will cause the inflation-adjusted returns to be negative. There is something to be said for how much inflation can eat out of investment returns. At the same time, I would note the occupation of the person making that post along with what biases this person likely has. ""Entrepreneur, Started & sold several cos, Author 11 books (latest ""Choose Yourself!"") , Angel Inv., JamesAltucher.com"" would to me read as someone that isn't who I'd turn for investment advice when it comes to employer-sponsored plans. Be careful of what you blindly follow as sometimes that is how wolves lead the sheep to slaughter."
I would suggest following your quote and having a read of the web page supplied, that buys then sells or sells short then buys (the same security on the same day) four or more times in five business days, ... So it is a two way transaction that counts as 'one'.
as long as US bonds will keep their status of a safe haven and the dollar will continue to be the world reserve currency the bond rates will stay low. hell, after S&amp;P downgraded the US credit rating, the bond yields actually dropped, indicating an influx on money.   the shock will come. sooner or more probably later.. it won't be the end of the world, just another nasty downturn.
Most people think that 'normally' interest rates are positive, because we are so familiar with the basic principle that: if I lend you some money then you need to pay me some interest. But in a world where everyone is worried about bank failures, people might prefer to effectively 'deposit' our savings with the US treasury (by buying their bonds) than to deposit their savings in the local bank. The US treasury will see this extra demand and put up the prices of their bonds (they are not stupid at the US treasury, you know!), so maybe the price of the 10-year treasury will go above $120. It could, right? In this scenario, the implied yield on the 10-year treasury is negative. There you go, yields have gone negative because of credit risk concerns.
Bid 1: $5 billion, max price: don't care (noncompete) Bid 2: $10 billion, max price: don't care (noncompete) Bid 3: $5 billion, max price: $98 Bid 4: $5 billion, max price: $95 Bid 5: $10 billion, max price: $92 Bid 6: $5 billion, max price: $90 Notice there is a total of $40 billion in bids. The auction is only for $23 billion. This means some bids will go unfilled. The ratio between bids and the amount of the auction is called the bid-to-cover ration. For our example it is 1.74 ($40/$23). A high bid-to-cover ratio indicates a strong demand for the bonds since there are a lot of bidders. A low ratio indicates weak demand. A ratio under 2.0 is considered weak. The bids are filled in the following manner: Results of our example auction: Bid 1: $5 billion, max price: noncompetitive, All $5 billion filled at $95 Bid 2: $10 billion, max price: noncompetitive, All $10 billion filled at $95 Bid 3: $5 billion, max price: $98, All $5 billion filled at $95 Bid 4: $5 billion, max price: $95, Only $3 billion filled at $95 Bid 5: $10 billion, max price: $92, Not filled Bid 6: $5 billion, max price: $90, Not filled Once the auction is completed the treasury will post the results of the auction. Below is the actual results of the auction. There are some additional items that are reported from the auction: High Rate: This is the highest yield (or the lowest price) that was accepted at the auction. For our example this would be $95. Allotted at High: This is the percentage of the total that was filled at the highest accepted yield (or lowest accepted price). For our example, the last $3 billion we filled was at the lowest price so our allotment at high would be $3/$23 = 13%. Price: Price as determined by the auction.
"I don't have experience with TSP in particular, but they look to be roughly the same as 401(k) loans. If the ""G Fund rate"" is equal to the yield of government bonds, then your main risk is the risk that yields increase, which means the interest you're paying is less than what you would have earned on the investments. Here are some other things to consider: For any car loan, I would borrow as little as possible with as short a term as possible.  To me, the interest savings and additional risks from borrowing from your retirement isn't worth it."
I would read any and all of the John Bogle books.  Essentially:  We know the market will rise and fall.  We just don't know when specifically.   For the most part it is impossible to time the market. He would advocate an asset allocation approach to investing.  So much to bonds, tbills, S&P500 index, NASDAQ index.  In your case you could start out with 10% of your portfolio each in S&P500 and NASDAQ.  Had you done that, you would have achieved growth of 17% and 27% respectively.  The growth on either one of those funds would have probably dwarfed the growth on the entire rest of your portfolio.  BTW 2013 and 2014 were also very good years, with 2015 being mostly flat. In the past you have avoided risk in the market to achieve the detrimental effects of inflation and stagnant money.  Don't make the same mistakes going forward.
I'm not too familiar with the Bank of England's objectives, but it seems similar to the FED's QE program. The interest rate the BOE sets, similar to the FED rate, affects mainly the short term (the left side) of the [interest rate curve](http://www.bankofengland.co.uk/statistics/pages/yieldcurve/default.aspx). However, in order to bring down intermediate and long term rates, central banks will buy intermediate and long dated government and corporate bonds. The government's added demand will drive those bond prices up, which will drive yields down.  But like I said, I'm not too familiar with the BOE's bond purchasing program, so I could be way off base here.
"I'm not a fan of using cash for ""emergency"" savings. Put it in a stable investment that you can liquidate fairly quickly if you have to. I'd rather use credit cards for a while and then pay them off with investment funds if I must. Meanwhile those investments earn a lot more than the 0.1 percent savings or money market accounts will. Investment grade bond funds, for example, should get you a yield of between 4-6% right now. If you want to take a longer term view put that money into a stock index fund like QQQ or DIA. There is the risk it will go down significantly in a recession but over time the return is 10%. (Currently a lot more than that!) In any event you can liquidate securities and get the money into your bank is less than a week. If you leave it in cash it basically earns nothing while you wait for that rainy day which many never come."