vania-janet/multiturn-rag-retrieval-data huggingface dataset:
We are FAR FAR better off than the majority. That is COMPLETELY true. But the point is that this does not made 300k$ easily, despite being far far far ahead of most. That's the crazy part -- the income disparity.  (P.s., where we live 400k$ gets you the shittiest house in town. You could get a tiny condo for 250k$ too)
Unless you have insider information (ILLEGAL!!!) don't go high risk over this time frame.  It makes about as much sense as betting on the horses. Stick it in a 3 or 6 month GIC at the pathetic rates the banks are giving.
The millionaires I know, all got rich because they got lucky. And when I had a million, I got that mostly by luck as well. I had to take some risks, and people said I was absolutely mad, but I stuck to my guns.   Most millionaires are rich because of luck. But very few of them will admit it. Preferring to think that skill, effort and business acumen got them there. Nope. It was luck.
"... until they collapse too!!!  This is ""Luft Gesheft"": German/Yiddish for ""making money out of thin air"".  Money should be made by making things and building things - adding value to something.   Apple Computers is one example - they make real money."
Never said I was, I'm definitely not. I'm an engineer and I do this on the side. But professionals go broke every day, and let's have this discussion again after silver and gold go past $300 and $5000 for the 1000th time in history of this system.
Not generally in my experience.  It is no more difficult than giving up all the extras us Americans feel like we are entitled to.  Just giving some of that shit up, internet, computers, cable/satellite/cellphones, can save an average person hundreds a month.  Don't take long to get to 5k doing THAT.  They choose to be unable to afford it, not that they aren't *actually capable of it* - there are outliers of course but not as many as the average of the bell curve.
These are not real gains. Wherever you're looking this up, the prices are not adjusted for corporate actions. In a reverse stock split the price of a single share multiplies by five, but as a shareholder you hold only one share after for every five that you did before.
"I started investing with $15,000 in 2009, my first trade being to buy Ford around $2 before the other two got bailed out. That single trade put me in the six figures. I've followed that up with equally successful trades such as shorting Netflix when they announced their new pricing plan, buying Tesla when they first started selling the Model S, etc. So yeah, even benchmarked against the 2009 bottom of the S&amp;P500, I've had ""success."""
"Even though this is really a psychology question, I'll try to give you an answer. You do nothing but stay away.  What's going on is too small to matter. Bernie Madoff took investor's money and scammed them for $15B. That's B, billion, 9 zeros (Yes, I realize the UK Billion has 12, these are US Billion). Harry Markopolos was on to him, and presented his evidence to the government, but ""No one would listen."" In quotes because that's the title of the book he published on his experience. Even Barron's had an article suggesting that Madoff's returns were impossible. Eventually, it came to light. In my own experience, there was a mortgage acceleration product called ""Money Merge Account."" It claimed to help you pay off your mortgage in a fraction of the time ""with no change to your budget."" For two years or so, I was obsessed with exposing this scam, and wrote articles, nearly every week discussing every aspect of this product. Funny how even though mortgages are math that's pretty easy to explain, few sellers wanted to talk about the math. Using the same logic that you don't need to understand how a car works as long as you know how to drive. There were some people that would write to tell me I saved them the $3500 cost of that product, but mostly I argued with sellers who dismissed every word I wrote as if the math were incomprehensible to anyone but the software guys who wrote it. In the end, I had compiled a PDF with over 60 pages of my writing on the topic, and decided to call it quits. The product was recycled and now is sold as ""Worth Unlimited,"" but the software is the same.  This is all a tangent to your problem. It simply offers the fact that the big scam, Bernie, continued for a long time, and people who were otherwise intelligent, fell for his promises, and didn't want to believe otherwise. The mortgage software had many bloggers writing. Searching on the web found a lot of discussion, very easy to find.  People will believe what they wish. Tell an Atheist that God exists, or a believer that He doesn't, and your words will fall on deaf ears. Unfortunately, this is no different."
"I bet he didn't even get offered an IPO - he probably thought that if you buy it on the first day that's the ""ipo"" and you can make money on a bounce.  Honestly, I think this open access to the stock market whereby anyone can be a 'trader' is a terrible thing."
I would stay away from the Actively Managed Funds.  Index funds or the asset allocation funds are your best bet since they have the lowest fees.  What is your risk tolerance?  How old are you? I would suggest reading:
if you don't intent to touch the money for 10 years or longer, then dumping 100% into a low-expense-ratio index fund seems like a perfectly reasonable thing to do. it is simple, low maintenance and fairly mindless. just remember to reinvest the dividends occasionally (e.g. every 6 months).  however, if you are the kind of person who is going to lose their nerve when the market goes down 30%, then putting some of your money into a bond index fund or even a treasury note fund would be better than selling stock in a down market. just figure out how much of your portfolio you are comfortable losing, and put that in stocks.  then put the rest in some stable value fund and watch it's value get slowly washed away by inflation while your stock investments rise through violent swings.
That makes sense but, given that, should I - at least for now - abstain from putting money into a system that is being so abused? Any money I put into my current mutual funds is going to support banks and the energy sector.
It all depends on whether you can manage your money or not. Many people are incapable of doing so in a responsible way. Like any service, you get what you pay for -- active management costs money!
Placing bets on targeted sectors of the market totally makes sense in my opinion.  Especially if you've done research, with a non-biased eye, that convinces you those sectors will continue to outperform.   However, the funds you've boxed in red all appear to be actively managed funds (I only double-checked on the first.)  There is a bit of research showing that very few active managers consistently beat an index over the long term.  By buying these funds, especially since you hope to hold for decades, you are placing bets that these managers maintain their edge over an equivalent index.  This seems unlikely to be a winning bet the longer you hold the position.   Perhaps there are no sector index funds for the sectors or focuses you have?  But if there were, and it was my money that I planned to park for the long term, I'd pick the index fund over the active managed fund. Index funds also have an advantage in costs or fees.  They can charge substantially less than an actively managed fund does.  And fees can be a big drag on total return.
This is probably the best, most concise and yet detailed answer to this oft-posed question I've seen on this sub. Have an upvote. Only thing I'd add is that HFs' comparatively more active approach creates a moat vs. mutual funds, which are seen as more long-term, passive investments. This means they can charge fees and have higher expense ratios (though obviously anyone in finance who has been conscious in the last five years knows that this is changing)
"Save the effort.  For personal finance purpose, just use the simple tools.  For example, if you like P&G very much but you want to diversify with ETF, use: http://etfdb.com/stock/PG/ https://www.etfchannel.com/finder/?a=etfsholding&symbol=PG Pick a ETF with highest weighting. Replace ""PG"" in the link with other tickers."
Barclays offers an iPath ETN (not quite an ETF), DJP, which tracks the total return of the Dow Jones-AIG Commodity Index.
UNG    United States Natural Gas Fund  Natural Gas USO    United States Oil Fund  West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil UGA    United States Gasoline Fund     Gasoline DBO    PowerShares DB Oil Fund     West Texas Intermediate Crude Oil UHN    United States Heating Oil Fund  Heating Oil I believe these are as close as you'd get. I'd avoid the double return flavors as they do not track well at all.  Update - I understand James' issue. An unmanaged single commodity ETF (for which it's impractical to take delivery and store) is always going to lag the spot price rise over time.   And therefore, the claims of the ETF issuer aside, these products will almost certain fail over time. As shown above, When my underlying asset rises 50%, and I see 24% return, I'm not happy. Gold doesn't have this effect as the ETF GLD just buys gold, you can't really do that with oil.
Just saw the update: Here's some ETFs for Canada from Vanguard.
If you enter a futures contract, it costs nothing.  So every time prices move against you, there is a margin call and you must put up some new money. Inverse ETF's use a variety of similar strategies to get their returns.  Many of these strategies may indeed require a margin call to the ETF issuer if prices move against you.  But remember the ETF did not cost nothing.  Investors contributed money in order to purchase each share of the ETF.  Therefore the ETF issuer has a big pot of money available for use as margin.  That's why the margin call never comes through to you. In a sense, you posted a ton of margin up front, so you won't have to make any additional margin contributions.  The money that will be used for margin calls is being kept in treasuries and money market securities by the ETF issuer until it's needed. If prices move against you badly enough that it looks like the ETF is at risk to not be able to post margin, the ETF would liquidate and you'd get whatever pittance was left after they exit all those positions.
Suppose that the ETF is currently at a price of $100.  Suppose that the next day it moves up 10% (to a price of $110) and the following day it moves down 5% (to a price of $104.5).  Over these two days the ETF has had a net gain of 4.5% from its original price. The inverse ETF reverses the daily gains/losses of the base ETF.  Suppose for simplicity that the inverse ETF also starts out at a price of $100.  So on the first day it goes down 10% (to $90) and on the second day it goes up 5% (to $94.5).  Thus over the two days the inverse ETF has had a net loss of 5.5%. The specific dollar amounts do not matter here.  The result is that the ETF winds up at 110%*95% = 104.5% of its original price and the inverse ETF is at 90%*105% = 94.5% of its original price.  A similar example is given here. As suggested by your quote, this is due to compounding.  A gain of X% followed by a loss of Y% (compounded on the gain) is not in general the same as a loss of X% followed by a gain of Y% (compounded on the loss).  Or, more simply put, if something loses 10% of its value and then gains 10% of its new value, it will not return to its original value, because the 10% it gained was 10% of its decreased value, so it's not enough to bring it all the way back up.  Likewise if it gains 10% and then loses 10%, it will go slightly below its original value (since it lost 10% of its newly increased value).
"I'm trying to understand how an ETF manager optimized it's own revenue.  Here's an example that I'm trying to figure out.  ETF firm has an agreement with GS for blocks of IBM. They have agreed on daily VWAP + 1% for execution price.  Further, there is a commission schedule for 5 mils with GS. Come month end, ETF firm has to do a monthly rebalance. As such must buy 100,000 shares at IBM which goes for about $100 The commission for the trade is 100,000 * 5 mils = $500 in commission for that trade. I assume all of this is covered in the expense ratio. Such that if VWAP for the day was 100, then each share got executed to the ETF at 101 (VWAP+ %1) + .0005 (5 mils per share) = for a resultant 101.0005 cost basis  The ETF then turns around and takes out (let's say) 1% as the expense ratio ($1.01005 per share)  I think everything so far is pretty straight forward. Let me know if I missed something to this point.  Now, this is what I'm trying to get my head around. ETF firm has a revenue sharing agreement as well as other ""relations"" with GS. One of which is 50% back on commissions as soft dollars. On top of that GS has a program where if you do a set amount of ""VWAP +"" trades you are eligible for their corporate well-being programs and other ""sponsorship"" of ETF's interests including  helping to pay for marketing, rent, computers, etc.  Does that happen? Do these disclosures exist somewhere?"
thanks! hence the etf - I hoped to get an ETF of say 20-25 positions, out of which 12 will lose in value, 10 will stay flat or lose a bit, and 2-3 go AAPL, bringing the total ETF up by a solid 10% or so :) and then the divident game begins.
If you want to see one split, well, a reverse split anyway, keep an eye on TZA, FAZ, BGZ, and any Direxion fund.  These funds decay continuously forever.  Once they get close to $10-$15 or so, they reverse-split them back to the $30-$50 range and the process starts over.  This happens about once a year. A few years ago I sent Direxion an email asking what happens when they run out of shares to reverse split and the reply was that's its an open fund where shares can be created or redeemed at will.  That still didn't answer the question of what happens when they run out of shares.  If they create new shares, the price will drop below the $10 level where many fund managers aren't allowed to buy.
You buy something on margin. It goes down. You get a margin call.  It's not more complex than that. The value of your account has to be X% of the asset you control. The fact that the ETF is bull, bear, triple long/short, doesn't really matter.
Do not buy any commodity tracking ETF without reading and understanding the prospectus. Some of these things get exposure to the underlying commodity via swaps or other hocus-pocus derivatives, so you're really buying credit obligations from some bank. Others are futures based, and you need to understand your potential upside AND downside. If you think that oil prices are going to continue to rise, you should look into sector funds, or better yet individual stocks that are in the oil or associated businesses. Alternatively, look at alternative investments like natural gas producers or pipeline operators.
Doomsayers can just buy the 5x Short ETFs instead of the 5x long, see where it leaves them. People who don't understand leverage shouldn't be writing articles about them. 3 seems to be a valid point to some degree, but why should there be a cap at 3x for ETFs when you can get way more leverage with other instruments.  I feel like these are the people who blame anything that qualifies as a derivative for 2008.
ETFs have caused many if not most stocks on the SP500 to become correlated.  I think at some point in the last couple of years, 90% of the SP500 were correlated to the index itself.  So you're going to see a lot of movement together of most stocks.
I asked this question in this weeks question thread.  But I'll ask it here too.    If the buy side here is an etf and has an expense ratio of x, does the rebate offset the expense or is accounted some other way? Another way, Is the rebate profit for the fund manager or the fund? Does it get disclosed somehow?
" To measure one's return against a benchmark, the mechanics of the benchmarks calculation are not needed. In a comment I offer an example - if there were an ETF based on some type of black-box investing for which the investments were not disclosed at all, only day's end pricing, my answer above still applies exactly. The validity of such comparisons is a different question, but the fact that the formulation of the EFT doesn't come into play remains. In my comment below which I removed I hypothesized an ETF name, not intending it to come off as sarcastic. For the record, if one wishes to start JoesETF, I'm ok with it."
Ordinary investors who own mutual funds (like vanguard or whatever) are subject to HFT scalping.  Mutual funds, pensions, etc are all operating in the markets with HFTs who are front running them for a tiny spread profit.  Million of ordinary investors are invested in those funds and therefore are getting charged this spread by the HFTs.
Not a lot. A few thousand. Enough to put food on the table. It has come in handy for me for other reasons as well, but nothing as dramatic as that. When the real economic crunch hit I had about $10K in case there was a run on the banks.
$1000 is not that much, and I think the best you can do with them is keeping them in a high-yield savings account (look at the online savings accounts that give 1% and more, not the regular bank savings accounts which are worthless). If you need money all of a sudden (for a school book, or rent, or bills, or some other emergency expense), you don't want to deal with selling stocks or funds (which may be at loss) or breaking into your CD's. It is usually considered a good practice to keep cash that would keep you afloat for 5-6 months in savings or some cash equivalent, as an emergency fund.
"One other thing to consider, particularly with Vanguard, is the total dollar amount available.  Vanguard has ""Admiralty"" shares of funds which offer lower expense ratios, around 15-20% lower, but require a fairly large investment in each fund (often 10k) to earn the discounted rate.  It is a tradeoff between slightly lower expense ratios and possibly a somewhat less diverse holding if you are relatively early in your savings and only have say 20-30k (which would mean 2 or 3 Admiralty share funds only)."
People have asked a lot of good questions about your broader situation, tolerance for risk, etc, but I'm going to say the one-size-fits-most answer is: split some of your monthly savings (half?) into the VEU Vanguard FTSE All-World ex-US ETF and some into VTI Vanguard Total Stock Market ETF. This can be as automatic and hassle-free as the money market deposit and gives a possibility of getting a better return, with low costs and low avoidable risk.
I don't know how long run but this last week people have been talking about McDonalds a lot.  I think the trick is to set a limit and have it auto sell when it is met. There is no need to hold forever and therefor what is 'long term' can be variable.
"In the grand scheme of things, Earth is going to be a barren rock and Sol will have turned into a red giant.    ""In our lifetimes"" is a decent measure of ""very long time"" when you're talking about things like economics and Moore's Law."
I think that long term, bitcoin is a great investment. In fact I predict a big spike in price right around the new year when the block reward halves. I also predict that inflation will hit all fiat currencies much harder than their respective governments will ever admit.
You've thought it through and you know the risks, so more power to you. I'd only add that recovering from big downdrafts gets harder as you age, and you're also depending on the S&amp;P 500's pretty impressive history to repeat. To me the 6%-9% long-run historical range of S&amp;P 500 returns doesn't match up well with the new era of weaker, 2%-ish economic growth since the early 2000s. Insofar as growth is driven by secular trends such as worsening demographics and fewer productivity advances, you're depending on other factors (globalization driving earnings power, central banks continuing to distort asset prices indefinitely, etc.) to get to that long-run 6%-9%. If the S&amp;P enters a leaner couple of decades, it will be much harder to recover from losses.
Major things to consider: If you're expecting to look at the property market: it might prove to be sensible to start doing it now, since the market is just recovering, and (IMHO warning -I'm not a professional investor, just a random guy on the internet) prices still hasn't caught up with value fundamentals.  check out cash ISA's for a 24-36 month timeframe; most do a reasonable 3-4% AER, with the current inflation rate being around 4%, this will, at the very least, make sure your money doesn't loose it's purchasing power. Finally, a word of caution: SIPPs have a rather rubbish AER rates. This, by itself, wouldn't be much of a problem on a 30-40 years timeframe, but keep the (current, and historically strictly monotonically increasing) 4% inflation rate in mind: this implies the purchasing power of any money tied in these vehicles will  loose it's purchasing power, in a compounding manner. Hope this helps, let me know if you have any questions.
"Why does it have to be a long shot?  We're pulling in the better part of $300k/yr on TIME TRACKING. Long shot? Methinks not. If you educate yourself about what people pay for, there's no reason it has to be a ""long shot"" to begin with.  I *hate* wasting my time for no reward."
If you are investing for 10 years, then you just keep buying at whatever price the fund is at. This is called dollar-cost averaging. If the fund is declining in value from when you first bought it, then when you buy more, the AVERAGE price you bought in at is now lower. So therefore your losses are lower AND when it goes back up you will make more. Even if it continues to decline in value then you keep adding more money in periodically, eventually your position will be so large that on the first uptick you will have a huge percent gain. Anyway this is only suggested because you are in it for 10 years. Other people's investment goals vary.
Or I am in it for the long hall and am full expecting it to go down again. Probably two or three more times before I retire. Just gotta ride it out and have a stomach for when it goes down. Stick to the plan because history always repeats itself. I think 2007 showed us anything is that the governments will risk massive inflation before it lets the market fail. And if inflation hits you want your money wrapped up in the market to grow at the correct rate.
It's been six months. I know it's been a loss, but we pulled our money out before the recession as well because things smelled bad then, too. That proved to be a wise decision. We are also in our 50s, so capital preservation is a big consideration.
One thing no one else has touched on is the issue of time frame. If I'm looking to hold my shares over the next few years, I don't mind riding out a few short-term bumps, while the short-seller is looking to make a quick profit on some bad news. Sure, I could sell and rebuy, but that's a lot of hassle, not to mention commissions and tax issues.
&gt; 5-10 years  Dude, 5-10 years is nothing. For people who make a living in the trucking industry that means that in as little as 5 years they may need to have have reinvented their careers. If you're a career truck driver without any other education you could be screwed before you know it.
It just means that they think that in the long-term, interest rates should be around 3-4%, i.e. probably between 3% and 4%, but perhaps a bit lower or higher occasionally.
Honestly, I think you are falling for a myth. Family business can also decide to go for short term maximum profit at the expense of long term. And shareholders can decide to look long term, just go to shareholder meetings and you will see everything. Its not so black and white.  For the rest I agree, except for anti-monopolly laws. In general, anti-monopolly laws only help create olligopollies/monopollies not removing them.
As other posters have pointed out, many other potential factors at play here besides value, but that said, a huge part of my long-term money that I don't want to manage myself is in actively managed EM funds.