vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
"I actually think it's you who are missing a grasp of economics. Don't confuse investments in existing companies with investments that actually boost the economy.   If I drop $100,000 into Microsoft stock, and someone else sells it, I am just putting money into their pocket. It doesn't boost the economy. If we all dump our money into the stock market it just increases the prices and ""value"" of the stocks.   The only real investors (as in contributing directly to economic growth and productivity) are angel investors, entrepreneurs, and people who invest in IPOs."
The idea of a stockmarket is multiple people betting on the value of an asset and then getting paid the difference between their bet and the real value of the asset.  The goal being to keep the value of the stock as accurate as possible so capital is allocated to companies that will use it most efficiently.  The reward for people making these bets is a portion of that capital.    What you are suggesting is just a graph of the average happiness.  The difficult part of turning this into a market, is being able to assign value to happiness, value that you can gain or lose by choice.      Ironically, money is a indicator of happiness.  When apple came out with the iPhone, people saw it and decided it would make them happier if they owned it creating demand.  Investors noticed that people believed owning an iphone would make them happier so they bid up the price of AAPL stock.  People are happier with their iPhones and investors benefitted from this happiness and got cash allowing them to spend money on things to increase their happiness.    In order to extract happiness from the stock market a lot of other things come into play.  A biotech company curing cancer would be a solution to something that drastically decreases happiness.  Increasing alcohol sales might be a result of people trying to offset the sadness in the short term but in the long term it is a depressant and doesn't make you happy.  An individual might be happier with an extra $10B but overall 1 million people getting $10k each would increase average happiness much more.  But somebody like buffet can invest in companies that can generate way more happiness than just handing out cash.    The happiness report is an annual report of happiness.  Looking at these results next to the Gini coefficient (income inequality), and industry growth by country might start to give you an idea of what affects happiness.  For instance in Africa income inequality could sky rocket while the stock market plummets and happiness could still increase because of public health investments made years ago, causing the infant mortality rate to plummet.  If you want to think about this topic I recommend reading the great escape by Angus Deaton.
1) cryptos becoming almost, kind of legitimate or at least somewhat seriously discussed as an investment class (lol)  2) low vol, tight trading ranges, people worried that people aren't worried enough   3) unwinding of feds balance sheet and monetary tightening  4) rip retailers, long live FANG (ugh)  5) every start up that uses the internet is claiming to be a tech company is able to achieve absurd valuations (e.g. Blue Apron)   Idk. These might not be very great but maybe that's the story in itself. Markets are fairly calm in spite of all the turmoil as of late.
As an easy way to answer... look at an index, let's say the S&P 500.  Look at the price this last October, and predict where it will move in November... easy right?  It already happened, and you have the benefit of hindsight.  The move looks like such a consistent, obvious continuation of the previous up and down pattern.  It looks predictable, like you could have guessed that.  Now, look at today's price, and predict where it will go next month.  Not so easy now?  The problem is, every point you're at, all the time, looks like a possible inflection point or turning point.  If you're following an uptrend, you may think it'll continue, but you may also think that it zigged so far up already, that now it's ready for a zag down where you'll buy.  So you wait... and it keeps rising, and you kick yourself for missing out.  Next time, you see another uptrend and resolve to buy it regardless, thinking now it'll keep going, but it turns down the second you buy it, and keeps dropping.  You kick yourself again.  The market is amazing at doing this to you every time.  In real time, every wiggle in the price looks simultaneously like a trend that could continue, and like a trend that has moved far enough and is ready to reverse.  And more likely you'll guess the wrong one.   The ONLY way with some little hope of succeeding is to study study study, and find and learn trading rules with just over 50/50 chances (like buying when a moving average is touched within an uptrend as an example, and setting a stop loss at -1%, and a sell limit at +2% or something), and then never ever deviate from that strategy, because your only hope is in the consistency of statistics and odds over time.  You'll get many -1% losses, and hopefully enough 2% gains to compensate the losses, plus some profit.   OR, to make it easier, just buy in on a dip, and hold and hold and collect dividends, and be content to match the market without effort.
"&gt; I will need to see sources, but actually they are claiming that it is on every stock, bond or derivative. Let me know when you find a source for this claim. &gt; That is clearly not the same as ""I didn't ask to be born"" True, however only if you are taking action to change the condition that you are railing against. Just saying ""I didn't ask for to be born into this"" just rings hollow in my ears. Voting is definitely more productive. Running for office to push the ideas would do even more. Heading out to open land to make your society in your image would definitely prove your point, as long as it works. &gt; I love how you assume that it takes a government to have a stable civilization. I don't assume, we only have some 10,000 years of recorded history to provide some backup for the statement. And not saying that this form of government is perfect, we just have plenty of evidence that no government is less so. &gt; The only infrastructure I truly need to trade stock now is my computer (made by a private business), my electricity (provided to me by another private business), and my internet connection. That is not true. Lets go beyond the invention of internet. It exists, and it provides us with the ability to trade stock, so lets pretend that it always existed so, and ignore the billions of investment in infrastructure and R&amp;D it took to get her (on commercial as well as governments part). So, the inference that you made is all you need to trade is your computer, electricity, and the internet... all provided by commercial entities. No need for government. Yes, and no. How long do you think that electricity would keep pumping if there was no one to regulate how much each district gets to pull? If there was no one to enforce pricing and payment? After all, if the electricity company cuts power to a house, and they just run out to the junction box and hot wire their own connection - who stops them? If there is no government, that how do we keep people paying?
"It's one thing to piss off a few million ""regular"" people.   Piss off a couple thousand rich people and you're in real trouble.   Just imagine if there are any politician's details in that high income mix?  What if there's information that's on that CD that isn't in their financial disclosure?  ----  Side note:   People still use CDs?"
"Certainly, there aren't algorithms lying in wait for me to enter a buy order for a couple thousand dollars worth of APPL. However, anybody that has a pension plan or a 401k gets shaved by predatory HFT. This is the majority of *ordinary investors*. Most of the population doesn't trade in individual stocks. The ones that have their investments managed by large funds are most certainly affected. Katsayuma's dissection of the underlying mechanisms makes that abundantly clear. I can understand why those with a financial stake attempt to discredit Katsuyama, but it's fairly transparent bullshit. Bullshit that ""you seem to have been suckered in"" by."
assuming that a couple big players are making the majority of money in the stock market (which is true), it is logical to assume that most smaller players are losing.   For example, if one big hedge fund makes 20% a year,  it means either 20 funds lost 1%, or 5 funds lost 4%, and etc.   Assuming that the economy is not drastically getting much better, stocks are a zero sum game. Therefore, the couple of funds with the most resources will be taking from the people that aren't as advanced or taking a chance.
You should not trade based on what news is just released, if you try you will be too slow to react most of the time. In many cases the news is already priced into the stock during the anticipation of the news being released. Other times as soon as the news is released the price will gap up or down in response to the news.  Some times when you think that the news is good, like new record profits have been achieved, but the share price goes down instead of up. This may be due to the expectation of the record profits by analysts to be 20% more than last year, but the company only achieves 10% more than last year. So the news is actually seen as bad because, even though record profits, it hasn't met expectations. The same can happen in the other direction, a company may make a loss and the share price goes up. This may be because it was expected to make a 50% loss but only made a 20% loss due to cost cutting, so this is seen as a good thing and the price can shoot up, especially if it had been beaten down for months. An other example is when the Federal Reserve in the USA put up interest rates earlier this month. Some may have seen this as bad news and expected share prices to fall, but instead prices rallied. This was actually seen as good news, firstly because it had been expected for a long time, and secondly and more importantly because a small rise in interest rates after many years of near zero rates is a sign of the economy finally starting to improve. If the economy is improving, that means more people will have jobs, more people will be spending more money, companies will start to make higher revenues and start to expand, which means higher profits and higher share prices. A better way to trade is to have a written trading plan and use technical analysis to develop a set of buy and sell criteria that you follow to the tea. Then back test your trading plan through various market conditions to make sure you get a positive expectancy.
"As an entrepreneur, I have nothing against ambitious people working hard to become rich. I do however have a problem with people who want to hear bad economic news on hopes the central banks will pump money into it and push the markets up. I get even more pissed seeing these undeserving pricks get rich when their dreams come true. I am not saying the stock market is a bad thing. But if you get rich why not start a business and build real wealth then maybe invest a little in it? Why depend on the stock market as a primary means of generating wealth? Some of these people are like parasitic traitors hoping for everyone else to suffer so they can get rich off of them (notice I said ""some"" not ""all.""  edit:if you are going to downvote me at least have the balls to tell me what you disagree with. Maybe I'm saying something stupid and being a dick. I admit it's happened before but at least call me out instead of being passive-aggressive about it."
"Simply put, you cannot deterministically beat the market. If by being informed and following all relevant news, you can arrive at the conclusion that company A will likely outperform company B in the future, then having A stocks should be better than having B stocks or any (e.g., index based) mix of them. But as the whole market has access to the very same information and will arrive at the same conclusion (provided it is logically sound), ""everybody"" will want A stocks, which thus become expensive to the point where the expected return is average again.  Your only options of winning this race are to be the very first to have the important information (insider trade), or to arrive at different logical conclusions than the rest of the world (which boils down do making decisions that are not logically sound - good luck with that - or assuming that almost everybody else is not logically sound - go figure)."
"It is Bitcoin ""Cash"", not Bitcoin ""Stocks"". It is really silly to gauge it by traders sentiment. Sure the value will drop as uninterested people cash out pushing the value down. After that, the value may stabilize to a higher value making traders that jumped the gun really regret being short sighted.  August 8 is the day on which SegWit goes into effect, but it brings nothing immediately new to the table. Bitcoin's blocks are no longer full, so the immediate issues of backed up transactions and high fees are no longer present. We saw Litecoin implement SegWit and nothing magical immediately happen. They even are working on Litening Network, but people seem pretty disinterested, at least from a market value perspective (it is all real cool to us tech geeks).  SegWit allows Lightening Network to be implemented in the future, which really excites businesses and startups because of the opportunity of profiting off of transaction fees without investing in mining hardware. Everyone wants to profit being a middle man. Hence the constant negative propaganda against Bitcoin Cash. Don't get me wrong, the side chains of Lightening Network will enable some cool stuff, but right now it is simply a corporate money grab to fix the purposely created bottleneck issue of Bitcoin, which Bitcoin Cash disposed of."
First, what Daniel Carson said. Second, if you're getting started, just make sure you are well diversified.  Lots of growth stocks turn into dividend stocks over time-- Microsoft and Apple are the classic examples in this era.  Someday, Google will pay a dividend too. If you're investing for the long haul, diversify and watch your taxes, and you'll make out better than nearly everyone else.
Try using technical analysis, look at the charts and look for stocks that are uptrending. The dfinition of an uptrend being higher highs and higher lows. Use a stochastic indicator and buy on the dips down when the stochastic is in the oversold position (below 20) and and crossing over about to turn back upwards. Or you can also use the stochastic to trade shares that have been ranging between two prices (say between $10 and $12) for a while. As the price approaches the $10 support and the stochastic is in oversold, you would buy as the price rebounds off the $10 support and the stochastic crosses and starts rebounding back up. As the price starts reaching the resistance at $12 (with stocastic in overbought at above 80) you would look to sell and take profits. If you were able to do short selling in the competition, you could short sell at this point in time and make profits on the way up as well as on the way down. There are many more techniques you could use to set up trade opportunities using technical analysis, so it may be a subject you could research further before the comptition begins. Good luck.
Watch from the 5:00 min mark on the video as Jim Crammer talks about PG easily not being worth the price of the market at that time. He said ""Who cares?"", ""Its not a real price"", ""$49.25 bid for 50,000 shares if I were at my hedge fund."" http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=86g4_w4j3jU You can value a stock how you want, but its only actually worth what someone will give you for it. More examples: Anadarko Petroleum, which as we noted in today's EOD post, lost $45 billion in market cap in 45 milliseconds (a collapse rate of $1 billion per millisecond), flash crashing from $90 all the way to an (allegedly illegal) stub quote of $0.01. http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-05-17/how-last-second-flash-crash-pushed-sp-500-1667-1666 How 10,000 Contracts Crashed The Market: A Visual Deconstruction Of Last Night's E-Mini Flash Crash http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2012-12-21/how-10000-contracts-crashed-market-visual-deconstruction-last-nights-e-mini-flash-cr Symantec Flash-Crash Destroys Over $1.5 Billion In Less Than A Second http://www.zerohedge.com/news/2013-04-30/symantec-flash-crash-destroys-over-15-billion-less-second This sort of thing happens so often, I don't pay much attention anymore."
"In gambling, the house also takes a cut, so the total money in the game is shrinking by 2-10 percent.  So if you gain $100, it's because other people lost $105, and you do this for dozens of plays, so it stacks up.  The market owns companies who are trying to create economic value - take nothing and make it something. They usually succeed, and this adds to the total pot and makes all players richer regardless of trades.   Gambling is transactional, there's a ""pull"" or a ""roll"" or a ""hand"", and when it's over you must do new transactions to continue playing.   Investing parks your money indefinitely, you can be 30 years in a stock and that's one transaction. And given the long time, virtually all your gains will be new economic value created, at no one else's expense, i.e. Nobody loses.  Now it's possible to trade in and out of stocks very rapidly, causing them  to be transactional like gambling: the extreme example is day-trading.  When you're not in a stock long enough for the company to create any value (paid in dividends or the market appreciating the value), then yes, for someone to gain, someone else must lose. And the house takes a cut (e.g. Etrade's $10 trading fee in and out).  In that case both players are trying to win, and one just had better info on average.   Another case is when the market drops. For instance right after Brexit I dumped half my domestic stocks and bought Euro index funds. I gambled Euro stocks would rebound better than US stocks would continue to perform.  Obviously, others were counterbetting that American stocks will still grow more than Euro will rebound.  Who won that gamble?  Certainly we will all do better long-term, but some of us will do better-er. And that's what it's all about."
Older folk might wish to let the dividends and cap gains be paid in cash, and use that cash towards their RMDs (required distributions).  If you are investing in mutual funds and wish to keep adding to the funds you've selected, the reinvestment is a simple way to avoid having to visit the account and make a new purchase. In other words, you invest $5500, buy the fund, and X years from now, you simply have more shares of the fund but no cash o worry about.  The pro is as mentioned, and the con is really for the 70-1/2+ people who will need to take their RMDs. (Although even they can take the RMD in kind, as fund shares)
"If this money is intended to be used for retirement and depending on how old ""older"" is, it sounds a little risky to be putting too much money in a stock based mutual fund.  While the CDs may seem like crappy investments right now, it is important to down-shift risk as you get closer to retirement because this person won't have as much time to recover if the markets take another big dip."
If you want to speculate on gold price you should always buy an ETF/ETC (Exchange Traded Commodity). The reasons are simple: Easy to buy and sell (one mouse click) Cheap to buy and sell (small bank commission), compared to buy real gold (always 6 to 12% comission to the local shop when you buy and when you sell), see this one it's one cheap gold buy/sell shop I found on the internet But if you sometimes feel unsecure that you might one day loose everything due to a major economy collapse event (like an armageddon), or not to have enough money in bad periods or during retirment, and it makes you feel better to know you buried 999 Gold Sovereign in your house backyard (along with a rifle as suggested in comments), then just buy them and live an happy life (as long as you hide your gold in good ways and write a good treasury map).
Vanguard has just recently started listing its funds in London but it doesn't look like the High Dividend Yield ETF is available yet. You'll need to either get a broker who can trade on the U.S. markets (there might be tax and exchange rate complications), or wait until Vanguard lists this stock on the London exchange.
It depends on the exact level of risk that you want, but if you want to keep your risk close to zero you're pretty much stuck with the banks (and those rates don't look to be going up any time soon). If you're willing to accept a little more risk, you can invest in some index tracking ETFs instead, with the main providers in Australia being Vanguard, Street State and Betashares.  A useful tool for for an overview of the Australian ETF market is offered by StockSpot. The index funds reduce your level of risk by investing in an index of the market, e.g. the S&P 200 tracked by STW.  If the market as a whole rises, then your investment will too, even though within that index individual companies will rise and fall. This limits your potential rate of return as well, and is still significantly more risky than leaving your cash in an Aussie bank (after all, the whole market can fall), but it might strike the right balance for you. If you're getting started, HSBC, Nabtrade, Commsec and Westpac were all offering a couple of months of free trades up to a certain value.  Once the free trades are done, you'll do better to move to another broker (you can migrate your shares to the others to take advantage of their free trades too) or to a cheaper broker like CMC Markets.
If you want to trade to gain from short-term volatility, you can use Derivative-based ETFs that try to track the inverse of a broad index like the S&P 500. Note that these ETFs only track the index over a 1 day period, so you shouldn't hold these. If you're looking for a longer-term investment strategy, look at low-beta stocks, which often do well or produce dividend income during volatile times. Examples include McDonald's Corp and utilities like Consolidated Edison.
More on a technical note, but the spread on an ETF tends to be worst at market open and near market close. (assuming the ETF constituents are traded on a synchronous basis.) If possible, it's often best to let market makers get up and running before allowing your order to flow into market.
Yes, it depends on the fund it's trying to mirror.  The ETF for the S&P that's best known (in my opinion) is SPY and you see the breakdown of its holdings.  Clearly, it's not an equal weighted index.