Tax here as well, unfortunately

What is it there?

like 9% i think...it's a scam

It’s 9% here too

The beauty is, if I have to leave CA, I take it all with me. It's not in a bank.

I mean, sucks it’s nine everywhere, good they’re not absolutely gouging you in CA though

All mine’s in a safe bolted to the floor lmao

Real downtown Birmingham hours

wew

I garden late at night sometimes.

Do inventory occasionally.

@Argument of Perigee got me fired up to count my treasure. He has me beat to be sure, but you feel like a king having what people used to suffer all day to get....until 1913 a dime was a days pay...a silver dime.

No one’s stolen my plants this year, which owns. Last year I put a tomato plant out in the courtyard outside my window and someone stole it. Not the tomatoes off the plant, just picked up the pot and dabbed out.

jerks

Quarters were silver up until 67 or so, right?

Were dimes the same?

64

The old mercury dimes had an awesome aesthetic

but 65 there are some 40% coins...I think half dollars.

Markup on coins vs bullion shift...some months dimes and quarters have a higher premium to people than the metal.

You could watch the trends and sell on craigslist to people and buy bullion with it...but I just buy what's cheap usually.

I think all the silver but a bit I have are maple leaves

I have a few American silver dollars and a 2oz turtle from Niue

They're pretty, but I don't like Queen Liz

I have a bunch of Canadian, they were sterling until sometime in the 40s I think, then 80 until late 60s I think...don't remember the years but I got that because it was AT SPOT...

Other than that I get generic rounds.

I have a tube or two of Eagles, but they're not my fav.

I’d love to get my hand on some Krugerrands one day

Not today because ow oof expensive, but some day

Those have a nice color, but they are explicitly restricted in air travel...

You can only take 15 with you if you’re leaving South Africa I think

Legal tender laws

Oh wow

South Africa also has some strict law about exporting them if I remember right

I didn't know that, maybe I'll go there someday...

When I'm rich.

Yeah I’d love to go. They have this really cool, old times colonial train that’ll run you down from Johannesburg to Cape Town

Wild.

I hope it's still there when I get the opportunity.

As long as the tracks haven’t been stolen

Ha

https://m.news24.com/SouthAfrica/News/healthcare-trains-locomotive-derails-after-piece-of-tracks-was-allegedly-stolen-20170617

Wasn’t kidding

Oh wow

hopefully jnug acts just like this tomorrow

@Deleted User how many shares do you own?

Not in it right now

@Deleted User planning to buy I guess? You said you hope it increases tomorrow

yeah, plenty of room for profits from today

also $AMD

jnug hopefully gets out of this alltime low, so much room to grow

@Deleted User how did it go?

jnug was pretty unresponsive

made a nice 6.1% on $NIO though

ipo's can be wild

I wish I saw it in the morning

Chinese equivalent of Tesla

@ThisIsChris

@Deleted User nice congrats! I've never bought on IPO day, sounds fun. Closest situation to that I've done is around Earnings Reports.

I don't trust buying earnings reports, even with good news the thing still drops sometimes lol

haha I mostly trade options so Earnings reports are the most fun. You don't have to even bet up and down, but just betting on volatility instead

@Deleted User take the options pill

oosh, I'm too afraid for that right now

@Deleted User My pitch is that it can be safer than stocks. Say I had bought 100 shares of JNUG at the previous close of 7.58, and I also bought a Put option with a strike of 7.50. Then even though JNUG went down to 7.31 today, I have the *option* (literally, the Put option I bought) to sell those shares at the 7.50 strike price. So this was safer than the alternative of not having an option at all.

Yeah I'll have to school myself on options

@Deleted User This is a good intro course https://www.tastytrade.com/tt/shows/step-up-to-options/episodes

*tips fedora*

A crash course in stop limits

hmny is a tragedy, was looking at it earlier

@ThisIsChris Is this the channel to talk about personal finance?

I just moved into my own apartment and might need some budgeting tips

@Jacob yeah!

Okay great. I have a few questions.

For non-perishable items, is there any reason why I shouldn't just buy massive packages at a time and have it last me the whole year? Why keep going back to the store? There's some good deals on Amazon and I'm thinking I might just buy a few big packages of non-perishable stuff.

I've set a weekly food budget of $75. I haven't decided yet to set a budget for other items because (1) it's much easier to get carried away and spend too much money on food than it is on miscellaneous stuff like haircuts which I just kinda buy as necessary and (2) food needs are pretty consistent, but, for other stuff, I might not need to buy anything one week, while, another week, I might have to buy a lot because something broke / I have a mess to clean up / whatever. Is this fine?

Should I ignore the budget the first week I move in? There was nothing here when I got hear, so, naturally, my first week expenses are going to be a lot more than every week after. A lot of the food items I bought on my first day were either non-perishable or just stuff that lasts a while like spices, butter, oil, etc.

@Jacob on delivering the non-perishables, the only downside is the space they take up in your home. If you're having them delivered anyway then you can buy more as you need unless you're getting some bulk discount. That being said, even though I have very little space I've still found it worth it to stock up on non-perishables precisely like you suggest.

@Jacob as for your food budget I honestly wouldn't worry. I suggest getting a credit card and putting it all on that. Yeah I know that sounds scandalous but even if you spend triple that for this last year in college then being a tech worker in Washington you're going to have more than enough money to pay it all back within a few months even while paying rent and all that jazz. I know it sounds cavalier now but I've seen so many college students jump through stupid hoops to save money in college and then as soon as they get real paychecks they're like "wow, I don't know why I was killing myself during my 4 years of freedom in college when I could have just paid it back with my paycheck's leftovers in the first 3-9 months of a real job."

Yes debt is an issue for people but the only "real" debt from college is loans for tuition and board.

I’m strongly against debt. It feeds the jewish degradation of our society, it creates bad habits, and it robs initial savings from the beauty of compounding interest.

And do not buy ANYTHING with a time horizon of 1-year. You will have different experiences and opinions in 6 months, much less 1 year after living on your own for the first time. First, it ties up money in assets that don’t give a return. Second, they take up space. Third, you might not even like that same thing in 6 months or you’ll be sick of it.

Ya I probably won't go full prepper and buy and entire year supply

Thanks guys

(I might still buy a lot though)

Don’t go buying a bunch of tools like I did because I was used to dad having them. Tools are expensive and many of them I don’t use enough to justify. Simpler to pay a small premium to have someone else work on the more complicated tasks.

Don’t buy a lot. Wait 3 months before you go heavy on anything. You’ll learn so much and adjust your tastes so much in the first year of living on your own.

Go to an estate sale to get all your kitchenware. It will save you several hundred dollars.

@Tanner - SC Funny you mention that, I agree that "buying stuff just because you were used to having it around as a kid and felt every house needed one" I find is one of the biggest sources I've seen of stupid or regretted purchases. Especially as a college student you wind up hauling a ton of stuff that you will never even need anyway.

The way I buy tools is I get them when I need them. I work on a farm so it's a bit different for me since I do mechanical work all day on equipment that in some cases was built 30 years ago and reassembled by 3 different mechanics so I need a lot of tools, but most people honestly can get away with one of those cheap home sets.

I have also just bought tools as I needed them. You can get the vast majority done with a couple screwdrivers and a hammer. You also don’t really know what you don’t have until you need it, but such is the beauty of Walmart at 2am.

I’m not at the point in my life yet when I can afford one of those giant rolling metal tool caddies people have in their garages.

*Yet,* I can’t wait to become hank hill.

Oh, also you can buy a lot of kitchenware type stuff from the goodwill’s online store.

You can get those kitchenaid mixers for like. 1/5th the cost of retail.

Literally all I want to do is track my spending. I don't want to link my bank account and report my income and all that bullshit. Is there a good program to do this?

excel

Ya, I was thinking maybe just a spreadsheet

What's the best way to do this? A big long column? Separate columns for every month? Week? Is there a way to break it down by both week and month?

Probably, there's alot you can do with it, it just depends on how it makes sense to you

@Jacob I just use a spreadsheet, I can send my format to you if you want

I've never had the need to do this, I'm a bit 👃 'y with my money

I've always just saved and hardly spent

@Ben - OH Sure, that could help. Thanks.

I've always saved and barely spent, too, but now I'm living on my own, so it's a bit harder

understandable

Couldn't get any roommates?

Moreso that I didn't have to

And didn't want to

I get that

I'm not rich or anything, it's just that I live in a rural area, so rent is cheap enough that it's not really that big of an issue

I might get roommates once my lease ends, since I have a friend here now who is in a similar situation. But I would never become roommates with a stranger.

@Jacob Dave Ramsey, the home budgeting master, has an app to track spending that does not require linking a bank account.
<https://www.daveramsey.com/everydollar/>

"If you don't have an emergency fund built up, you should only be seeing the inside of a restaurant if you're *working* in it." - Dave Ramsey

Dave Ramsey is cool because he puts the most obvious, common sense financial literacy into the simplest of terms

@Tanner - SC thanks for sharing that, I had no idea he had an app.

Has anyone taken the insurance exam? Any idea of what to expect?

IIRC I think @ophiuchus has

Anybody here have any experience with homeowners insurance claims and/or fema disaster claims? Thanks to Florence, I lost my fence, most of my shingles, had driving rain and seepage come in on the windward side of the house. Also had a tree crash down on my shed, punctured the roof, some of my tools are kill...

Predict it offering 400% ROI if Kavanaugh confirmed by end of Sunday https://www.predictit.org/Contract/11361/Will-the-Senate-confirm-a-SCOTUS-nominee-in-September#data

80% ROI if Kavanaugh confirmed by end of October https://www.predictit.org/Market/4602/How-many-Yea-votes-will-Kavanaugh-receive-in-a-confirmation-vote-by-Oct-31 (Vote No on 49-

@ThisIsChris Thanks Chris!

@SamanthaM you're welcome!

Tl;dr I’ve got a bunch of damage, could’ve been much much worse. I’ve got homeowners insurance, and wind/hail. I have filed a claim and the adjuster is coming in the morning.

My question is, does anyone have any experience applying with FEMA for disaster assistance or an SBA loan? I’m very reluctant to apply for any kind of assistance, I’m also worried about getting myself in a bind financially. Even with insurance, i simply cannot afford several thousand dollars in extra cost/deductible. I am the sole provider currently, as my wife stays home with our 2 year old son and 5 month old daughter. We do not spend frivolously, and we’ve got a small savings, which I would rather not erase completely on a deductible and miscellaneous cleanup costs. The FEMA website certainly makes it very clear that even “undocumented immigrants” can receive assistance if they have a “child who is a citizen” but I have a sneaking suspicion that any gov’t funds will be prioritized for basically everyone besides white taxpaying families.

I apologize for the wall of text, I’ve never filed an insurance claim before, and I certainly don’t want to let my insurance company get away with not taking care of my home.

@ThisIsChris You think he'll be confirmed?

@Jacob absolutely, he had 55-56 senators lined up before the harassment allegations, and they've all fallen apart now. No one is willing to confirm any of them, not even the accusers, and Kavanaugh actually has documentation he couldn't have even been at the parties where these events allegedly happened.

All that's left now is some cope posting by the media, Republican leadership have been playing this very tactfully always being beyond respectful of the accusers, and have still scheduled their vote for Friday. Senate cloture rules require them to allow 30 hours for debate which will mean the real vote will probably happen Saturday afternoon

@Jacob I wrote this in another server : Looking to act on a Kavanaugh confirmation vote. Unfortunately for the purpose of trading on a post-confirmation-vote rally, the vote will probably happen while markets aren't open over the weekend. Senate Cloture rules allow McConnell to limit debate to just 30 more hours after a cloture petition is approved. Such a petition wouldn't be approved until after the Ford/Kavanaugh hearings Thursday afternoon. The last broad-market instrument to trade (broad-market ETFs) stops trading 8pm EST on Friday, 30 hours prior to that being 2pm EST Thursday. Unless Christene Ford announces she's not going to testify today or tomorrow, then Cloture won't happen until after Friday 8pm EST, but it has to happen before October 1st to count for the next Supreme Court session. It could be possible for the senate to vote on Kavanaugh around the open of Futures on Sunday evening, but this is also unlikely because last minute votes are the result of hardline negotiation tactics (like for budget bills). I haven't seen any senators trying to horse-trade their vote for Kavanaugh, so this is likely to be an up-or-down vote as soon as the minimum debate time expires Friday night or on Saturday. https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Cloture#Procedure

Don't be eager to move out if you have less than 5k in savings and an unreliable car 😌

This, tbqh

what do you guys think about swinging $enph?

pattern looks nice

@Deleted User interesting, are they sensative to the Trump China tariffs?

RIP tesla

SEC charging elon musk with fraud, seeking removal as chairman and CEO

“Funding secured”, “share price 420”, “he thought it would make his girlfriend laugh”

I guess hydrogen won this war.

That's a big drop... But why isn't the drop more?

Who made money on PredictIt? @ThisIsChris @SamanthaM ?
https://twitter.com/columbiabugle/status/1045733873131417600?s=21

Haven’t used PredictIt before. Good suggestion!

@Tanner - SC here yes!

I misunderstood. The Friday vote was simply a vote on whether or not to vote on Saturday. This is clown world. And regarding the Saturday vote ...

"Jeff Flake is saying that if Trump doesn’t order a “pause” for a week-long FBI investigation, Flake will kill the vote in the final vote in the Senate, which he has the ability to do if he can get just one other GOP Senator to go along with him, which he can do."

What can we expect to see from this?

@Deleted User stock market went up over night. In the deal it's probably better for the US, although Mexico/Canada are going to be happier with this than no deal at all

Anyone following the shakeup in GE leadership? New CEO, Lawrence Culp, is the first outsider in 126 years.

@SamanthaM yeah I've been following it a bit but I didn't know about that. What do you think? When I was a kid my dad used to tell me GE has some of the smartest people, so when I started investing in the early 2010s I looked into it, but it was already struggling for years at that point. Any thoughts?

Your dad is right, they have great people. The company, however, has been in decline since 2000. They’re a huge conglomerate with subsidiaries in nearly unrelated industries. It’s an unsustainable model.

Would be better if GE were to break up and create smaller holding companies based on its 10 basic segments.

are there any professional investors in IE?
i'd like to "hire" one of our own to invest my money

If you don't find one, consider robo investing. I learned about it from my graduate-level investment finance professor.

It takes all the mathematics that investment managers follow and automates it, assessing your risk tolerance and allocating accordingly.

I've met one I beleive at an IE speaking event, not sure his discord.

@SamanthaM may be able to help you out

@Zyzz Thx. Already dm-ed.

Whelp, I'm just about done completing my first month of real trading with an account up 11.5%.

not terrible?

Not at all. Robinhood?

robinhood to execute, think or swim to analyze

Very nice

I may redownload Robin hood soon. Because of /biz/, I became convinced that it was exclusively for pump and dump schemes

@Tanner - SC my only questing about robo-investing is, if it works so well, why are people selling it for a buck instead of hoarding it for themselves haha

@Deleted User robo-investing’s value proposal is not that it beats the market. That’s the value proposal of hedge funds, among other things. The value proposal of robo investing is that it automatically aligns your risk tolerance along the optimum sharpe ratio ... **with the lowest fees humanly possible** and without human bias. So if you want 75% of the risk of a well-diversified portfolio, it does the diversification for you and it does the 75% allocation for you.
<https://en.m.wikipedia.org/wiki/Sharpe_ratio>

interesting, have you any experience in using one?

@Deleted User congrats!

@Deleted User no sir. I don’t like bonds nor the current state of equities, but I like learning about investing and recommend robo for most people over human manager (index fund is another option). If/when I get back into equities, that’ll be one of my first destinations. I’m impressed with what I’ve seen.

What's your ideal equity market look like?

I don't have much perspective being rather new

Bonds are Jewish instruments to steal income from future generations to pay profits to investors today.

As for equities, the current political environment is very unstable. The country is also in extreme debt. Beyond that ...

P/E ratios at record high levels, over 25 when average is closer to 15.

Housing index has surpassed 2007 peak.

Half of children are on food stamps.

Over half of the country does not have the cash to cover a $500 unexpected expense.

@ThisIsChris what are you thoughts about investing in desalination and other water treatment solutions companies?

@Deleted User https://www.prnewswire.com/news-releases/water--wastewater-treatment-market-worth-67472-billion-by-2025-hexa-research-643914303.html

I was going to write something off the cuff but unsurprisingly @SamanthaM has a well researched response 😁

Yes. These stocks are basically penny stocks, but I wonder if they are worth it. One of the biggest companies is in OY VEY.

lol

I'm going to read Samantha's thing before commenting

The Saudis are screwed. They have a ton of desalination plants. Everyone in the region will be breaking down their gates in the next 50 years.

Check out the First Trust ISE Water Index Fund (FIW) ETF and the Guggenheim S&P Global Water Index ETF (CGW). Both are composed of companies (generally small/mid-cap-ish) involved in the infrastructure of water. 😃

Thanks @ThisIsChris !!

Thank you! The problem with energy companies, in my amateur opinion, is the Solyndra effect.

Alternative energy, I should say.

Good point. Great example of the Govt sinking money into a non-organic industry.

At least, in that specific case

I wish I had invested in wind thirteen years ago. My entire part of the country is full of windmills

I don't even notice them anymore

It’s a fad industry that can capitalize on the political winds.

@Wood-Ape - OK/MN yeah. So many wind farms in TX area too.

Are you thinking Facebook will rebound @SamanthaM ?

Eh, maybe. Not worth following too closely. I’d buy a couple dozen shares if it ever dipped below $150.

Might get a boost after the gics reclassification moves FB to “Communications Services”

One of the amazing things these days is that you can trade in "weather futures" and in "electricity futures"

Right! It’s fascinating what can be considered a commodity

...weather futures?

isn't that literally gambling?

Yeah I love that about the markets. One of the things that has been mind bending for me is Volatility futures, and how they can be thought of as a commodity with cotango

@Jacob for one side of the trade it is probably a hedge against heating costs or poor growth conditions, or whatever else weather effects monetarily

That's brilliant

Let's say one industry is affected by weather that is too cold, and one is affected by weather that is too hot. That way both have an incentive to make the investment, and it ends up being kind of an insurance policy.

Yes! It's so interesting!

I worked at Dairy Queen, which was screwed when the weather was bad. So, a Dairy Queen owner could hedge against bad weather days in the Summer, while another business could hedge against air conditioning cost.

@ThisIsChris @Jacob What would be your opinion of creating a commodity portfolio based on the seasonal cycles rather than the traditional industry cycles?

Well, it depends what you're trying to do

I would love to try it, I'm looking forward to retail brokers having weather futures available.

If you live in an area with high heating cost, it might make sense to hedge against unexpectedly cold days

Not sure if you know of any but I couldn't find any @SamanthaM

Not certain if any exist. Haven’t researched it that heavily though.

@Jacob Great point. Fund could cover a specific territory with consistent seasonal patterns. An example being the mid-Atlantic

@ThisIsChris Great FT article today re GE. “General Electric has an Overactive Imagination.”

@SamanthaM Thanks, I just read it! What do you think?

@SamanthaM To me it was an interesting article, it says to me there is a lot of uncertainty, the problems may be the investors and board of directors, and there's not particularly any reason to think the problems diagnosed by the author will be addressed, though it would be great if they were.

any of you guys ever trade pre/post market?

@Deleted User yeah a lot, especially since I've started trading futures sometimes

I found out robinhood lets you trade 30 minutes pre and 2 hours post for free, so I'm trying to learn up

cause it seems like alot of movement happens outside of market hours

is there anything I should know about it? or is it basically just low volume trading

@Deleted User most of the time it's just low volume trading, although pre-market is interesting as people prepare for the big opening. However after and premarket trading is awesome when a company releases an earnings report

I always thought the morning open was risky, do you usually trade then?

Sometimes quick trades, trying to "scalp" a little bit (ie enter and exit really quickly on momentum)

Because market open is the most frequent time of day for big movements

yeah I used to think (in the constraints of normal hours) that it was impossible to really predict or get in on the big movements

Nothing is guaranteed but there's often a drift in the "random walk". Especially when there's a lot of volume going on like at market open, it's going to go in one direction or another. Sometimes it's a push in one direction immediately followed by a push in the opposite directions, but as long as you learn to take your profits and not hold on out of greed then you can make some modest money on the side

market is so boring this week man

Is anyone interested in currency arbitrage?

👀

Very

All they need to do to tank the fragile economy and make Trump look bad is to raise the interest rates. A correction is inevitable and needed, these crazy low rates are not sustainable, but the economy is so dependent upon them that the future of the economy is in the hands of the elite. They can issue a rate increase or two at any time and launch us into recession. I wonder if this is their back-up plan to cast Trump in a negative light going into the mid-terms.
<https://www.forbes.com/sites/jjkinahan/2018/10/10/stocks-start-on-four-day-sp-500-skid-as-rising-rates-remain-center-stage/>

@SamanthaM what do you have in mind about currency arbitrage?

@ThisIsChris Nothing currently. Bought a book on it and was hoping someone had prior experience. With the fluctuation in the value of currencies in developing market economies, it seemed like a good time to capitalize on an opportunity.

@Tanner - SC Good chance. If that’s the case then a rate increase, or at least the threat of one, could be expected within the next month. Or, it could just be a coincidence in timing. Great article though!

I was betting that they were planning on holding off the rate increase recession until Trump was up for re-election. But since their Kavanaugh plan failed, they might have to accelerate the recession plan to avoid yet another Supreme Court placement loss before 2020.

Or maybe they let the republicans win the mid-terms, and sometime thereafter when the left is frothing at the mouth, trigger the recession to remove the violent left’s inhibition, so that they progress to violence and political terrorism.

Dafuq did you guys do to Wall Street?

it wasn't me I promise 👀

Brainlet here. Are the (((usual suspects))) crashing the market with no survivors as a pre midterms October surprise?

@Tanner - SC Interesting assessment. You’re right in the fact that many fed decisions are politically motivated. The forecast now is that there will be a final rate hike before the end of the year, three in 2019, and a final in 2020. The bond market will be absolutely hammered, which is going to greatly impact older citizens and retirees. Also bad news for pension plans and conservative investors.

@Tanner - SC On the plus side, emerging market equities are currently being hit by the strong dollar, rising rates, and trade wars. Good time to buy before the recovery.

@SamanthaM re: currency book, yeah from what I understand 5 trillion are traded on FOREX each day, seems to make sense there'd be lots of opportunities for arbitrage. I use TD Ameritrade I only have access to some main currencies (USD, CAD, GBP, AUD, JPY, EUR, and a few others) but even there that could be good enough. If someone were an institutional investor it seems there's money to be made closing the arbitrage between currencies and currency futures as well, since currency futures have less volume they tend to lag

@Deleted User the federal reserve rose interests rates 😢 @Wood-Ape - OK/MN this is like the 4-th or 5th time they've raised interest rates under Trump, they only did it once under the whole time with Obama, so some people argue that, but I would give it 80% odds that it's just coincidence and not intentional to mess with Trump in particular