query: How come we can find stocks with a Price-to-Book ratio less than 1?

positive: "The VDE fund is an energy fund so this is a function of recent price changes in oil (and gas, coal, &c).   For example. Lets say last year when oil was $100 per barrel a bunch of companies saw a good return and put $ 100 million into a bunch of leases, boreholes, pumps, &c to return $10 million per year, and the market says yeah, they're all together worth 100M. Now oil is less, maybe $40 per the link.  These exploration companies don't have a lot of labor or variable costs; they are operationally profitable, may have ""use it or lose it"" leases or minimum pumping requirements for contract or engineering reasons.  Lets say the cash flow is 7M so the market values them at 70M.  They still have about 100M book value so here we are at .7 and I believe the scenario in the question.  Nobody would invest in new capacity at this oil price.  The well equipment could be repurposed but not the borehole or lease, so the best use is to continue pumping and value it on cash flow.  If an individual well runs negative long enough and goes bust, either a different pumper will pay the minimum price that gives profitable cash flow, or that borehole that cost millions to dig is shut off and rendered valueless.  The CNBC article says some explorers are playing games with debt to maintain yield, so there is that too. In the ETF, your bet is that the market is wrong and oil will go up, increasing future cash flows (or you like the current yield, taking on the risk that some of these oil explorers could go bust)."

positive: A lower Price/Book Value means company is undervalued. It could also mean something horribly wrong. While it may look like a good deal, remember;

positive: Note that the formula for Price to Book ratio is:  Stock Price / {[Total Assets - (Intangible Assets + Liabilities)] / Stock Outstanding}  http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/price-to-bookratio.asp  http://www.investopedia.com/articles/fundamental/03/112603.asp  There's a number of factors that could lead to a lower than 1. The primary reason, imho, could be the company is in a state of retiring stock with debt. The company is selling penny stocks (only to get people more interested in it's later development) which are inherently undervalued. There may be other reasons, but definitely check out both articles.

positive: Book value = sell all assets and liquidate company . Then it's the value of company on book. Price = the value at which it's share gets bought or sold between investors.  If price to book value is less than one, it shows that an 100$ book value company is being traded at 99$ or below. At cheaper than actually theoretical price. Now say a company has a production plant . Situated at the most costliest real estate . Yet the company's valuation is based upon what it produces, how much orders it has etc while real estate value upon which plant is built stays in book while real investors don't take that into account (to an extend). A construction company might own a huge real estate inventory. However it might not be having enough cash flow to sustain monthly expense. In this scenario , for survival,i the company might have to sell its real estate at discount. And market investors are fox who  could smell trouble and bring price way below the book value  Hope it helps

negative: "Here is how I would approach that problem: 1) Find the average ratios of the competitors: 2) Find the earnings and book value per share of Hawaiian 3) Multiply the EPB and BVPS by the average ratios. Note that you get two very different numbers.  This illustrates why pricing from ratios is inexact.  How you use those answers to estimate a ""price"" is up to you.  You can take the higher of the two, the average, the P/E result since you have more data points, or whatever other method you feel you can justify.   There is no ""right"" answer since no one can accurately predict the future price of any stock."

negative: While on the surface it may seem that the warrant you described is trading below intrinsic value, there are many reasons why that might not be the case. It's more likely that you are lacking information, than having identified a derivative instrument that the market has failed to reasonably price. For instance, might there be a conversion ratio on the warrants other than the 1:1 ratio that you seem to be assuming? Sometimes, warrant terms are such that multiple warrants are required to buy one share of stock. Consider: The conversion ratio is the number of warrants needed in order to buy   (or sell) one investment unit. Therefore, if the conversion ratio to   buy stock XYZ is 3:1, this means that the holder needs three warrants   in order to purchase one share. Usually, if the conversion ratio is   high, the price of the share will be low, and vice versa. (source) Conversion ratios are sometimes used so that warrants can be issued on a 1:1 basis to existing stockholders, but where the potential number of new shares to be issued is much less. Conversion ratio is just one such example that could lead to perceived mispricing, and there may be other restrictions on exercise. Warrants are not issued by an options exchange using standardized option contract terms, and so warrant terms vary considerably from issuer to issuer. Even series of warrants from the same issuer may have differing terms. Always look beyond any warrant quote to find a definitive source of the warrant's precise terms — and read those terms carefully before taking any position.

negative: "To perhaps better explain the ""why"" behind this rule of thumb, first think of what it means when the P/E ratio changes.  If the P/E ratio increases, then this means the stock has become more expensive (in relative terms)--for example, an increase in the price but no change in the earnings means you are now paying more for each cent of earnings than you previously were; or, a decrease in the earnings but no change in the price means you are now paying the same for less earnings. Keeping this in mind, consider what happens to the PE ratio when earnings increase (grow)-- if the price of the stock remains the same, then the stock has actually become relatively ""cheaper"", since you are now getting more earnings for the same price.  All else equal, we would not expect this to happen--instead, we would expect the price of the stock to increase as well proportionate to the earnings growth.  Therefore, a stock whose PE ratio is growing at a rate that is faster than its earnings are growing is becoming more expensive (the price paid per cent of earnings is increasing).  Similarly, a stock whose PE ratio is growing at a slower rate than its earnings is becoming cheaper (the price paid per cent of earnings is decreasing).  Finally, a stock whose P/E ratio is growing at the same rate as its earnings are growing is retaining the same relative valuation--even though the actual price of the stock may be increasing, you are paying the same amount for each cent of the underlying company's earnings."

negative: "What you need to do is go to yahoo finance and look at different stock's P/E ratios. You'll quickly see that the stocks can be sorted by this number. It would be an interesting exercise to get an idea of why P/E isn't a fixed number, how certain industries cluster around a certain number, but even this isn't precise. But, it will give you an idea as to why your question has no answer. ""Annual earnings are $1. What is the share price?"" ""Question has no answer"""

negative: Look at Price/book value and there are more than a few stocks that may have a P/B under 1 so this does happen. There are at least a couple of other factors you aren't considering here: Current liabilities - How much money is the company losing each quarter that may cause it to sell repeatedly. If the company is burning through $100 million/quarter that asset is only going to keep the lights on for another 2.5 years so consider what assumptions you make about the company's cash flow here. The asset itself - Is the price really fixed or could it be flexible? Could the asset seen as being worth $1 billion today be worth much less in another year or two? As an example, suppose the asset was a building and then real estate values drop by 40% in that area. Now, what was worth $1 billion may now be worth only $600 million. As something of a final note, you don't state where the $100 million went that the company received as if that was burned for operations, now the company's position on the asset is $900 million as it only holds a 90% stake though I'd argue my 2 previous points are really worth noting. The Following 6 Stocks Are Trading At or Below 0.5 x Book Value–Sep 2013 has a half dozen examples of how this is possible. If the $100 million was used to pay off debt, then the company doesn't have that cash and thus its assets are reduced by the cash that is gone. Depending on what the plant is producing the value may or may not stay where it is. If you want an example to consider, how would you price automobile plants these days? If the company experiences a reduction in demand, the plant may have to be sold off at a reduced price for a cynic's view here.

negative: In the stock market many participants enter orders that are not necessarily set at the current market price of the stock (i.e. they are not market orders, they are limit orders). They can be lower than the market price (if they want to buy) or they can be higher than the market price (if they want to sell). The set of orders at each point of time for a security is called the order book. The lowest selling price of the order book is the offer or ask, the higher buying price is the bid. The more liquid is a security, the more orders will be in the order book, and the narrower will be the bid-ask spread. The depth of the order book is the number of units that the order book can absorb in any direction (buy or sell). As an example: imagine I want to buy 100 units at the lowest offer, but the size of the lowest offer is only 50 units, and there is not any further order, that means the stock has little depth.

negative: If you don't have a good knowledge of finance, maybe you should not put too much money in individual stocks. But if you really want to invest, you can just compare the rate of return of the most known stocks available to you (like the one from the S&P for the US). The rate of return is very simple to compute, it's 100*dividend/share price. For example a company with a current share price of 50.12 USD that delivered a dividend of 1.26 USD last year would have a rate of return of 100 * 1.26/50.12= 2.51% Now if you only invest in the most known stocks, since they are already covered by nearly all financial institutions and analysts: If you are looking for lower risk dividend companies, take a sample of companies and invest those with the lowest rates of return (but avoid extreme values). Of course since the stock prices are changing all the time, you have to compare them with a price taken at the same time (like the closing price of a specific day) and for the dividend, they can be on several basis (yearly, quartely, etc..) so you have to be sure to take the same basis. You can also find the P/E ratio which is the opposite indicator (= share price/dividend) so an higher P/E ratio means a lower risk. Most of the time you can find the P/E ratio or the rate of return already computed on specialized website or brokers.

negative: See this link...I was also looking an answer to the same questions. This site explains with an example  http://www.independent-stock-investing.com/PE-Ratio.html

negative: There are books on the subject of valuing stocks. P/E ratio has nothing directly to do with the value of a company. It may be an indication that the stock is undervalued or overvalued, but does not indicate the value itself. The direct value of company is what it would fetch if it was liquidated. For example, if you bought a dry cleaner and sold all of the equipment and receivables, how much would you get? To value a living company, you can treat it like a bond. For example, assume the company generates $1 million in profit every year and has a liquidation value of $2 million. Given the risk profile of the business, let's say we would like to make 8% on average per year, then the value of the business is approximately $1/0.08 + $2 = $14.5 million to us. To someone who expects to make more or less the value might be different. If the company has growth potential, you can adjust this figure by estimating the estimated income at different percentage chances of growth and decline, a growth curve so to speak. The value is then the net area under this curve.  Of course, if you do this for NYSE and most NASDAQ stocks you will find that they have a capitalization way over these amounts. That is because they are being used as a store of wealth. People are buying the stocks just as a way to store money, not necessarily make a profit. It's kind of like buying land. Even though the land may never give you a penny of profit, you know you can always sell it and get your money back. Because of this, it is difficult to value high-profile equities. You are dealing with human psychology, not pennies and dollars.

negative: Ya, that's a lot of data - especially considering your relative lack of experience and the likely fact that you have no idea what to do with what you're given.  How do you even know you need minute or tick-based bid-ask data?    You can get a lot more than OHLC/V/Split/Dividend.  You can get:  * Book Value; * Dividend information (Amount, yield, ex date, pay date); * EBITDA; * EPS (current AND estimates); * Price/sales ratio; * Price/book value; * Price/earnings ratio; * PEG ratio; * Short ratio; * Market cap.  Among other things, all for free.

negative: Ditto Bill and I upvoted his answer. But let me add a bit. If everyone knew exactly what the risk was for every investment, then prices would be bid up or down until every stock (or bond or derivative or whatever) was valued at exactly risk times potential profit. (Or more precisely, integral of risk times potential profit.) If company A was 100% guaranteed to make $1 million profit this year, while company B had 50% change to make a $2 million profit and 50% to make $0, and every investor in the world knew that, then I'd expect the total price of all shares of the two stocks to stabilize at the same value. The catch to that, though, is that no one really knows the risk. The risk isn't like, we're going to roll a die and if it comes up even the company makes $1 million and if it comes up odd the company makes $0, so we could calculate the exact probability. The risk comes from lack of information. Will consumers want to buy this new product? How many? What are they willing to pay? How capable is the new CEO? Etc. It's very hard to calculate probabilities on these things. How can you precisely calculate the probability that unforeseen events will occur? So in real life prices are muddled. The risk/reward ratio should be roughly sort of approximately linear, but that's about the most one can say.

negative: NAV is  how much is the stuff of the company worth divided by the number of shares. This total is also called book value. The market cap is share price times number of shares. For Amazon  today people are willing to pay 290 a share for a company with a NAV of 22 a share. If of nav and price were equal the P/B (price to book ratio) would be 1, but for Amazon it is 13.  Why? Because investors believe Amazon is worth a lot more than a money losing company with a NAV of 22.

negative: "It's been said before, but to repeat succinctly, a company's current share price is no more or less than what ""the market"" thinks that share is worth, as measured by the price at which the shares are being bought and sold. As such, a lot of things can affect that price, some of them material, others ethereal. A common reason to own stock is to share the profits of the company; by owning 1 share out of 1 million shares outstanding, you are entitled to 1/1000000 of that company's quarterly profits (if any). These are paid out as dividends. Two key measurements are based on these dividend payments; the first is ""earnings per share"", which is the company's stated quarterly profits, divided by outstanding shares, with the second being the ""price-earnings ratio"" which is the current price of the stock divided by its EPS. Your expected ""yield"" on this stock is more or less the inverse of this number; if a company has a P/E ratio of 20, then all things being equal, if you invest $100 in this stock you can expect a return of $5, or 5% (1/20). As such, changes in the expected earnings per share can cause the share price to rise or fall to maintain a P/E ratio that the pool of buyers are willing to tolerate. News that a company might miss its profit expectations, due to a decrease in consumer demand, an increase in raw materials costs, labor, financing, or any of a multitude of things that industry analysts watch, can cause the stock price to drop sharply as people look for better investments with higher yields. However, a large P/E ratio is not necessarily a bad thing, especially for a large stable company. That stability means the company is better able to weather economic problems, and thus it is a lower risk. Now, not all companies issue dividends. Apple is probably the most well-known example. The company simply retains all its earnings to reinvest in itself. This is typically the strategy of a smaller start-up; whether they're making good money or not, they typically want to keep what they make so they can keep growing, and the shareholders are usually fine with that. Why? Well, because there's more than one way to value a company, and more than one way to look at a stock. Owning one share of a stock can be seen quite literally as owning a share of that company. The share can then be valued as a fraction of the company's total assets.  Sounds simple, but it isn't, because not every asset the company owns has a line in the financial statements. A company's brand name, for instance, has no tangible value, and yet it is probably the most valuable single thing Apple owns. Similarly, intellectual property doesn't have a ""book value"" on a company's balance sheet, but again, these are huge contributors to the success and profitability of a company like Apple; the company is viewed as a center of innovation, and if it were not doing any innovating, it would very quickly be seen as a middleman for some other company's ideas and products. A company can't sustain that position for long even if it's raking in the money in the meantime. Overall, the value of a company is generally a combination of these two things; by owning a portion of stock, you own a piece of the company's assets, and also claim a piece of their profits. A large company with a lot of material assets and very little debt can be highly valued based solely on the sum of its parts, even if profits are lagging. Conversely, a company more or less operating out of a storage unit can have a patent on the cure for cancer, and be shoveling money into their coffers with bulldozers."

negative: In order to see whether you can buy or sell some given quantity of a stock at the current bid price, you need a counterparty (a buyer) who is willing to buy the number of stocks you are wishing to offload. To see whether such a counterparty exists, you can look at the stock's order book, or level two feed. The order book shows all the people who have placed buy or sell orders, the price they are willing to pay, and the quantity they demand at that price. Here is the order book from earlier this morning for the British pharmaceutical company, GlaxoSmithKline PLC.  Let's start by looking at the left-hand blue part of the book, beneath the yellow strip. This is called the Buy side. The book is sorted with the highest price at the top, because this is the best price that a seller can presently obtain. If several buyers bid at the same price, then the oldest entry on the book takes precedence. You can see we have five buyers each willing to pay 1543.0 p (that's 1543 British pence, or £15.43) per share. Therefore the current bid price for this instrument is 1543.0. The first buyer wants 175 shares, the next, 300, and so on. The total volume that is demanded at 1543.0p is 2435 shares. This information is summarized on the yellow strip: 5 buyers, total volume of 2435, at 1543.0. These are all buyers who want to buy right now and the exchange will make the trade happen immediately if you put in a sell order for 1543.0 p or less. If you want to sell 2435 shares or fewer, you are good to go. The important thing to note is that once you sell these bidders a total of 2435 shares, then their orders are fulfilled and they will be removed from the order book. At this point, the next bidder is promoted up the book; but his price is 1542.5, 0.5 p lower than before. Absent any further changes to the order book, the bid price will decrease to 1542.5 p. This makes sense because you are selling a lot of shares so you'd expect the market price to be depressed. This information will be disseminated to the level one feed and the level one graph of the stock price will be updated. Thus if you have more than 2435 shares to sell, you cannot expect to execute your order at the bid price in one go. Of course, the more shares you are trying to get rid of, the further down the buy side you will have to go. In reality for a highly liquid stock as this, the order book receives many amendments per second and it is unlikely that your trade would make much difference. On the right hand side of the display you can see the recent trades: these are the times the trades were done (or notified to the exchange), the price of the trade, the volume and the trade type (AT means automatic trade).  GlaxoSmithKline is a highly liquid stock with many willing buyers and sellers. But some stocks are less liquid. In order to enable traders to find a counterparty at short notice, exchanges often require less liquid stocks to have market makers. A market maker places buy and sell orders simultaneously, with a spread between the two prices so that they can profit from each transaction. For instance Diurnal Group PLC has had no trades today and no quotes. It has a more complicated order book, enabling both ordinary buyers and sellers to list if they wish, but market makers are separated out at the top. Here you can see that three market makers are providing liquidity on this stock, Peel Hunt (PEEL), Numis (NUMS) and Winterflood (WINS). They have a very unpalatable spread of over 5% between their bid and offer prices. Further in each case the sum total that they are willing to trade is 3000 shares. If you have more than three thousand Dirunal Group shares to sell, you would have to wait for the market makers to come back with a new quote after you'd sold the first 3000.

negative: "If you are looking for numerical metrics I think the following are popular: Price/Earnings (P/E) - You mentioned this very popular one in your question.  There are different P/E ratios - forward (essentially an estimate of future earnings by management), trailing, etc..  I think of the P/E as a quick way to grade a company's income statement (i.e: How much does the stock cost verusus the amount of earnings being generated on a per share basis?). Some caution must be taken when looking at the P/E ratio.  Earnings can be ""massaged"" by the company.  Revenue can be moved between quarters, assets can be depreciated at different rates, residual value of assets can be adjusted, etc..  Knowing this, the P/E ratio alone doesn't help me determine whether or not a stock is cheap. In general, I think an affordable stock is one whose P/E is under 15. Price/Book - I look at the Price/Book as a quick way to grade a company's balance sheet.  The book value of a company is the amount of cash that would be left if everything the company owned was sold and all debts paid (i.e. the company's net worth).  The cash is then divided amoung the outstanding shares and the Price/Book can be computed.  If a company had a price/book under 1.0 then theoretically you could purchase the stock, the company could be liquidated, and you would end up with more money then what you paid for the stock. This ratio attempts to answer: ""How much does the stock cost based on the net worth of the company?"" Again, this ratio can be ""massaged"" by the company.  Asset values have to be estimated based on current market values (think about trying to determine how much a company's building is worth) unless, of course, mark-to-market is suspended.  This involves some estimating.  Again, I don't use this value alone in determing whether or not a stock is cheap. I consider a price/book value under 10 a good number.   Cash - I look at growth in the cash balance of a company as a way to grade a company's cash flow statement.  Is the cash account growing or not? As they say, ""Cash is King"".  This is one measurement that can not be ""massaged"" which is why I like it.  The P/E and Price/Book can be ""tuned"" but in the end the company cannot hide a shrinking cash balance. Return Ratios - Return on Equity is a measure of the amount of earnings being generated for a given amount of equity (ROE = earnings/(assets - liabilities)).  This attempts to measure how effective the company is at generating earnings with a given amount of equity.  There is also Return on Assets which measures earnings returns based on the company's assets. I tend to think an ROE over 15% is a good number. These measurements rely on a company accurately reporting its financial condition.  Remember, in the US companies are allowed to falsify accounting reports if approved by the government so be careful.  There are others who simply don't follow the rules and report whatever numbers they like without penalty. There are many others.  These are just a few of the more popular ones.  There are many other considerations to take into account as other posters have pointed out."

negative: You can't. If there was a reliable way to identify an undervalued stock, then people would immediately buy it, its price would rise and it wouldn't be undervalued any more.

negative: "What you are seeking is termed ""Alpha"", the mispricing in the market. Specifically, Alpha is the price error when compared to the market return and beta of the stock. Modern portfolio theory suggests that a portfolio with good Alpha will maximize profits for a given risk tolerance. The efficient market hypotheses suggests that Alpha is always zero. The EMH also suggests that taxes, human effort and information propagation delays don't exist (i.e. it is wrong). For someone who is right, the best specific answer to your question is presented Ben Graham's book ""The Intelligent Investor"" (starting on page 280). And even still, that book is better summarized by Warren Buffet (see Berkshire Hathaway Letters to Shareholders). In a great disservice to the geniuses above it can be summarized much further: closely follow the company to estimate its true earnings potential... and ignore the prices the market is quoting. ADDENDUM: And when you have earnings potential, calculate value with: NPV = sum(each income piece/(1+cost of capital)^time) Update: See http://finance.fortune.cnn.com/2014/02/24/warren-buffett-berkshire-letter/ ""When Charlie Munger and I buy stocks..."" for these same ideas right from the horse's mouth"

negative: A company's stock value is indicative of the market's collective belief of the future of the company. The relationship of between price and book value will vary according to the quality of the company, the category of stock, etc. In extreme cases, say Bank of America, the stock trades at a fraction of book, because BOA's books are a fantasy by most people's reckoning.

negative: "As @ApplePie pointed out in their answer, at any given time there is a finite amount of stock available in a company. One subtlety you may be missing is that there is always a price associated with an offer to buy shares. That is, you don't put in an order simply to buy 1 share of ABC, you put in an order to buy 1 share of ABC for $10. If no one is willing to sell a share of ABC for $10, then your order will go unfilled. This happens millions of times a day as traders try to figure the cheapest price they can get for a stock. Practically speaking, there is always a price at which people are willing to sell their shares. You can put in a market order for 1 share of ABC, which says essentially ""I want one share of ABC, and I will pay whatever the market deems to be the price"". Your broker will find you 1 share, but you may be very unhappy about the price you have to pay! While it's very rare for a market to have nobody willing to sell at any price, it occasionally happens that no one is willing to buy at any price. This causes a market crash, as in the 2007-2008 financial crisis, when suddenly everyone became very suspicious of how much debt the major banks actually held, and for a few days, very few traders were willing to buy bank stocks at any price."

negative: You can engage in a pair trade that involves analyzing how closely percentage wise these stocks trade tick for tick. You can bet on the ratio expanding or contracting. only slightly more information here, but maybe explained more intuitively: http://www.investopedia.com/terms/p/pairstrade.asp and here is an example: http://www.investopedia.com/university/guide-pairs-trading/pairs-trade-example.asp

negative: "You absolutely should consider expenses. Why do they matter when the ""sticker price"" already includes them?  Because you can be much more certain about what the expense ratio will be in the future than you can about what the fund performance will be in the future. The ""sticker price"" mixes generalized economic growth (i.e., gains you could have gotten from other funds) with gains specific to the fund, but the expense ratio is completely fund-specific.  In other words, when looking at the ""sticker price"" performance of a fund, it's difficult to determine how that performance will extend into the future.  But the expense ratio will definitely carry into the future.  It is rare for funds to drastically change their expense ratios, but common for funds to change their performance. Suppose you find a fund that has returned a net of 8% over some time period and has a 1% expense ratio, and another fund that has returned a net of 10% but has a 2% expense ratio.  So the first fund returned 9%-1% = 8% and the second returned 12%-2%=10%.  There are decent odds that, over some future time period, the first fund will return 10%-1%=9% while the second fund will return 10%-2%=8%.  In order for the second fund to be better than the first, it has to reliably outperform it by 1%; this is harder than it may sound.  Simply put, there is a lot of ""noise"" in the fund performance, but the expense ratio is ""all signal"". Of course, if you find a fund that will reliably return 20% after expenses of 3%, it would probably make sense to choose that over one that returns 10% after expenses of 1%.  But ""will reliably return"" is not the same as ""has returned over the past N years"", and the difference between the two phrases becomes greater and greater the smaller N is.  When you find a fund that seems to have performed staggeringly well over some time period, you should be cautious; there is a good chance that the future holds some regression to the mean, and the fund will not continue to be so stellar. You may want to take a look at this question which asked about Morningstar fund ratings, which are essentially a measure of past performance.  My answer references a study done by Morningstar comparing its own star ratings vs. fund expenses as a predictor of overall results.  I'll repeat here the take-home message: How often did it pay to heed expense ratios? Every time. How often did it pay to heed the star rating? Most of the time, with a few exceptions. How often did the star rating beat expenses as a predictor? Slightly less than half the time, taking into account funds that expired during the time period. In other words, Morningstar's own study showed that its own star ratings (that is, past fund performance) are not as good at predicting success as simply looking at the expense ratios of the funds."

negative: "Investopedia explains how a stock split impacts the stock's options: Each option contract is typically in control of 100 shares of an underlying security at a predetermined strike price. To find the new coverage of the option, take the split ratio and multiply by the old coverage (normally 100 shares). To find the new strike price, take the old strike price and divide by the split ratio. Say, for example, you own a call for 100 shares of XYZ with a strike price of $75. Now, if XYZ had a stock split of 2 for 1, then the option would now be for 200 shares with a strike price of $37.50. If, on the other hand, the stock split was 3 for 2, then the option would be for 150 shares with a strike price of $50. So, yes, a 2 for 1 stock split would halve the option strike prices.  Also, in case the Investopedia article isn't clear, after a split the options still control 100 shares per contract. Regarding how a dividend affects option prices, I found an article with a good explanation: As mentioned above, dividends payment could reduce the price of a stock due to reduction of the company's assets. It becomes intuitive to know that if a stock is expected to go down, its call options will drop in extrinsic value while its put options will gain in extrinsic value before it happens. Indeed, dividends deflate the extrinsic value of call options and inflate the extrinsic value of put options weeks or even months before an expected dividend payment.  Extrinsic value of Call Options are deflated due to dividends not only because of an expected reduction in the price of the stock but also due to the fact that call options buyers do not get paid the dividends that the stock buyers do. This makes call options of dividend paying stocks less attractive to own than the stocks itself, thereby depressing its extrinsic value. How much the value of call options drop due to dividends is really a function of its moneyness. In the money call options with high delta would be expected to drop the most on ex-date while out of the money call options with lower delta would be least affected. If a stock is expected to drop by a certain amount, that drop would already have been priced into the extrinsic value of its put options way beforehand. This is what happens to put options of dividend paying stocks. This effect is again a function of options moneyness but this time, in the money put options raise in extrinsic value more than out of the money put options. This is because in the money put options with delta of close to -1 would gain almost dollar or dollar on the drop of a stock. As such, in the money put options would rise in extrinsic value almost as much as the dividend rate itself while out of the money put options may not experience any changes since the dividend effect may not be strong enough to bring the stock down to take those out of the money put options in the money. So, no, a dividend of $1 will not necessarily decrease an option's price by $1 on the ex-dividend date.  It depends on whether it's a call or put option, and whether the option is ""in the money"" or ""out of the money"" and by how much."

negative: I found a possible data source. It offers fundamentals i.e. the accounting ratios you listed (P/E, dividend yield, price/book) for international stock indexes. International equity indices based on EAFE definitions are  maintained by Professor French of French-Fama fame, at Dartmouth's Tuck Business School website. Specifics of methodology, and countries covered is available here. MSCI is the data source. Historical time interval for most countries is from 1975 onward. (Singapore was one of the countries included). Obtaining historical ratios for international stock indices is not easily found for free. Your question didn't specify free though. If that is not a constraint, you may wish to check the MSCI Barra international stock indices also.

negative: [] As you can see from the graphs above, as absolute distance from ATM (At The Money) increases, the ratio represented by Delta begins to approach 0:1 or 1:1. Meaning, as Delta approaches 1 the option price moves up 1 dollar for every 1 dollar the stock price moves up. As Delta approaches 0 the option price does not move as the stock price moves. As the absolute distance from ATM increases Gamma approaches zero (0). Meaning, as the price of the option increases or decrease the change in delta is at its highest as the option price is nearest the money. As the price of the option moves away from the money, in either direction, it changes less drastically. Interestingly, Delta is the first derivative of the value of the option price with respect to the underlying asset price. And Gamma is the first derivative of Delta. Definition of Delta Definition of Gamma

negative: There are lists with Top 1,000 Most and Less correlated stocks for different markets, I think you'll find the solution here:  https://unicornbay.com/tools/most-less-correlated-assets

negative: You want to buy when the stock market is at an all-time low for that day. Unfortunately, you don't know the lowest time until the end of the day, and then you, uh can't buy the stock... Now the stock market is not random, but for your case, we can say that effectively, it is. So, when should you buy the stock to hopefully get the lowest price for the day? You should wait for 37% of the day, and then buy when it is lower than it has been for all of that day. Here is a quick example (with fake data): We have 18 points, and 37% of 18 is close to 7. So we discard the first 7 points - and just remember the lowest of those 7. We bear in mind that the lowest for the first 37% was 5. Now we wait until we find a stock which is lower than 5, and we buy at that point: This system is optimal for buying the stock at the lowest price for the day. Why? We want to find the  best position to stop automatically ignoring. Why 37%? We know the answer to P(Being in position n) - it's 1/N as there are N toilets, and we can select just 1. Now, what is the chance we select them, given we're in position n? The chance of selecting any of the toilets from 0 to K is 0 - remember we're never going to buy then. So let's move on to the toilets from K+1 and onwards. If K+1 is better than all before it, we have this: But, K+1 might not be the best price from all past and future prices. Maybe K+2 is better. Let's look at K+2 For K+2 we have K/K+1, for K+3 we have K/K+2... So we have: This is a close approximation of the area under 1/x - especially as x → ∞   So 0 + 0 + ... + (K/N) x (1/K + 1/K+1 + 1/K+2 ... + 1/N-1) ≈ (K/N) x ln(N/K) and so P(K) ≈ (K/N) x ln(N/K) Now to simplify, say that x = K/N We can graph this, and find the maximum point so we know the maximum P(K) - or we can use calculus. Here's the graph:  Here's the calculus: To apply this back to your situation with the stocks, if your stock updates every 30 seconds, and is open between 09:30 and 16:00, we have 6.5 hours = 390 minutes = 780 refreshes. You should keep track of the lowest price for the first 289 refreshes, and then buy your stock on the next best price. Because x = K/N, the chance of you choosing the best price is 37%. However, the chance of you choosing better than the average stock is above 50% for the day. Remember, this method just tries to mean you don't loose money within the day - if you want to try to minimise losses within the whole trading period, you should scale this up, so you wait 37% of the trading period (e.g. 37% of 3 months) and then select. The maths is taken from Numberphile - Mathematical Way to Choose a Toilet. Finally, one way to lose money a little slower and do some good is with Kiva.org - giving loans to people is developing countries. It's like a bank account with a -1% interest - which is only 1% lower than a lot of banks, and you do some good. I have no affiliation with them.

negative: Other metrics like Price/Book Value or Price/Sales can be used to determine if a company has above average valuations and would be classified as growth or below average valuations and be classified as value. Fama and French's 3 Factor model would be one example that was studied a great deal using an inverse of Price/Book I believe.

negative: > These publishers are running e-books into the dirt by price fixing them to same price as physical books  No, they are not:  > We set our ebook prices far below corresponding print book prices, reflecting savings in manufacturing and shipping. More than 80% of the ebooks we publish are priced at $9.99 or lower. Those few priced higher—most at $11.99 and $12.99—are less than half the price of their print versions. Those higher priced ebooks will have lower prices soon, when the paperback version is published.  [source](http://www.latimes.com/books/jacketcopy/la-et-jc-hachette-ceo-michael-pietsch-response-about-ebook-pricing-20140811-story.html)  > Amazon is tired of pushing their over priced shit (that is only that price because of some paranoid business exec's that are afraid of change worrying about their hard back sales) because it hurts their kindle and frankly they dont need them.     And how is this not abusing their market share?  > For the average consumer books are so easy to pirate we are just skipping all the middle men entirely, but I think a lot of those people would mind spending 4-5$ for a book (At least soft cover prices, paying the Hard cover price for a god damn e-book is extortion).  Again, no one is trying to make people pay the hard cover price for an ebook. Hachette just wants the ability to price some of their popular new releases at a few bucks more to more quickly recoup the money they fronted the author, editors, marketing teams, etc before that book's release. And then to lower the price around the same time the cheaper paperback version of the book comes out.

negative: "ycharts.com has ""Weighted Average PE Ratio"" and a bunch of other metrics that are meant to correspond to well known stock metrics.  Other websites will have similar ratios."

negative: "Your logic breaks down because you assume that you are the only market participant on your side of the book and that the participant on the other side of the book has entered a market order. Here's what mostly happens: Large banks and brokerages trading with their own money (we call it proprietary or ""prop"" trading) will have a number of limit (and other, more exotic) orders sitting on both sides of the trading book waiting to buy or sell at a price that they feel is advantageous. Some of these orders will have sat on the book for many months if not years. These alone are likely to prevent your limit orders executing as they are older so will be hit first even if they aren't at a better price.  On more liquid stocks there will also be a number of participants entering market orders on both sides of the book whose orders are matched up before limit orders are matched with any market orders. This means that pairing of market orders, at a better price, will prevent your limit order executing. In many markets high frequency traders looking for arbitrage opportunities (for example) will enter a few thousand orders a minute, some of these will be limit orders just off touch, others will be market orders to be immediately executed. The likelihood that your limit order, being as it is posited way off touch, is hit with all those traders about is minimal. On less liquid stocks there are market makers (large institutional traders) who effectively set the bid and offer prices by being willing to provide liquidity and fill the market orders at a temporary loss to themselves and will, in most cases, have limit orders set to provide this liquidity that will be close to touch. They are paid to do this by the exchange and inter-dealer brokers through their fees structure. They will fill the market orders that would hit your limit if they think that it would provide more liquidity in such a way that it fulfils their obligations. Only if there are no other participants looking to trade on the instrument at a better price than your limit (which, of course they can see unless you enter it into a dark pool) AND there is a market order on the opposite side of the book will your limit order be instantaneously be hit, executed, and move the market price."

negative: It might seem like the PE ratio is very useful, but it's actually pretty useless as a measure used to make buy or sell decisions, and taken largely on its own, pretty useless becomes utterly and completely useless. Stocks trade at prices based on future expectations and speculation, so that means if traders expect a company to double its profits next year, the share price could easily double (there are reasons it might not increase so much, and there are reasons it could increase even more than that, but that's not the point). The Price is now double, but the Earnings is still the same, so the PE ratio is double, and this doubling is based on something some traders know, or think they know, but other traders might not know or not believe! Once you understand that, what use is a PE ratio really? The PE ratio of a company might be low because it is in a death spiral, with many traders believing it will report lower and lower profits in years to come, and the lower the PE ratio of a given company gets probably, relatively, the more likely it is to go bust! If you buy a stock with a low PE ratio you must do so because you feel you understand the company, understand why the market is viewing it negatively, believe that the negativity is wrong or over done, and believe that it will turn around. Equally a PE ratio might be high, but be an excellent buy still because it has excellent growth prospects and potential even beyond what is priced in already! Lets face it, SOMEONE has been buying at the price that's put that PE ratio where is is, right? They might be wrong of course, or not! Or they might be justified now but circumstances might change before earnings ever reach the current priced in expectation. You'll know next year probably! To answer your actual question... first you should now understand there is no such thing as a stock that is on sale, just stocks that are priced broadly according to the markets consensus on its value in years to come, the closest thing being a stock that is 'over sold' (but one man's 'over sold' is another man's train crash remember)... so what to actually look for? The only way to (on average) make good buy and sell decisions is to know about investing and trading (buy some books, I have 12), understand the businesses you propose to invest in and understand their market(s) (which may also mean understanding national and international economics somewhat).

negative: "In the long run (how long?) a shares price always reverts to being its proportional amount of the company's residual equity plus the net present value of its expected future cash flows. Or at least that's the theory. In practice PE ratio is used not as a way of measuring what the stock price itself will do but what the fundamental value of holding that share is compared to its price. It is a way of measuring what a company is worth compared to its price and comparing it against other companies to find companies where the underlying value of the company is underrepresented by the price. Comparing PE ratios within the same industry or sector is the most valid use for this (other than comparing previous years of the same company) and the validity of the comparison drops as the structure of the firm you are comparing with gets more different to that of the company. Each industry has its own ""typical"" average PE ratio and these differ wildly between industries so in a great many cases even comparing PE ratios between similar stocks in different industries isn't valid. Any weird pseudo PE ratio that you create for other instruments will be meaningless. In general the best way to compare investments across multiple instruments is by comparing returns. when comparing stocks to other instruments you may want to use the return on stock price or the return on capital employed (ROCE) depending on whether you want to compare the trading performance or the fundamental performance."


query: How should I prepare for the next financial crisis?

positive: How would gold have protected you during the 2007/8 crisis?  In no way, shape or form. The ways to protect yourself at any time are: Boring, huh?

positive: Those ‘crises’ are only an issue if you need your savings during the time of crisis. If you have time to sit it out, you should just do that, and come out of the crisis with a gain. People that lose money during a crisis lose it because they sell their investments during the crisis, either because they had to or because they thought they should. If you look at historic values of investments, the market overall always recovers and goes over the orignal value some time after the crisis. Investing even more right in the crisisis the best way to make a lot of money.

positive: Your asset mix should reflect your own risk tolerance.  Whatever the ideal answer to your question, it requires you to have good timing, not once, but twice. Let me offer a personal example. In 2007, the S&P hit its short term peak at 1550 or so. As it tanked in the crisis, a coworker shared with me that he went to cash, on the way down, selling out at about 1100. At the bottom, 670 or so, I congratulated his brilliance (sarcasm here) and as it passed 1300 just 2 years later, again mentions how he must be thrilled he doubled his money. He admitted he was still in cash. Done with stocks. So he was worse off than had he held on to his pre-crash assets. For sake of disclosure, my own mix at the time was 100% stock. That's not a recommendation, just a reflection of how my wife and I were invested.  We retired early, and after the 2013 excellent year, moved to a mix closer to 75/25. At any time, a crisis hits, and we have 5-6 years spending money to let the market recover. If a Japanesque long term decline occurs, Social Security kicks in for us in 8 years.  If my intent wasn't 100% clear, I'm suggesting your long term investing should always reflect your own risk tolerance, not some short term gut feel that disaster is around the corner.

positive: In the 2008 housing crash, cash was king.  Cash can make your mortgage payment, buy groceries, utilities, etc. Great deals on bank owned properties were available for those with cash.  Getting a mortgage in 2008-2011 was tough. If you are worried about stock market crashing, then diversification is key.  Don't have all your investments in one mutual fund or sector.   Gold and precious metals have a place in one's portfolio, say 5-10 percent as an insurance policy.  The days of using a Gold Double Eagle to pay the property taxes are largely gone, although Utah does allow it. The biggest lesson I took from the crash is you cant have too much cash saved.  Build up the rainy day fund.

positive: A somewhat provocative (but not unserious) proposal: Rent, don't buy a house to live in. In 2007/8, the thing that got many people in deep trouble is their mortgage. It's not a productive investment but a speculative bet on what was in fact a bubble and a class of assets that is notoriously slow to recover after a slump. Before thinking about your savings or buying into silly ideas about gold, you should realise that as a middle class worker, the biggest risk after a crisis is losing your job. Renting your accommodation means being able to downgrade or move very quickly and not being forced to sell a house at the worse possible time. If you really do need to liquidate some of your investments at a bad time, having a more diversified portfolio means that you are not losing everything to meet some short-term obligations. Assuming you're in the US, this means forgoing some nice tax advantages that might be too tempting to resist (I'm not so I am basing this on what I read on this site) but, bubbles aside, there is nothing that makes real estate a particularly good investment as such, especially if you also live in the house you're buying. You might very well come out on top but you expose yourself to several risks and are less prepared to face a crisis.

negative: "I'm looking to leave my corporate finance position in the next several months. Looking at positions externally with more responsibilities in the same realm or to move to a financial services type role in consulting or similar. A lot of job postings call out ""financial modeling"" as a desired skill. What specifically is meant by this? Modeling cash flows? Estimating P&Ls given some assumptions? Valuation? I'm in Excel all day in my role but still can't seem to make sense of what I should be doing to prepare for a next step in my early career. The ""models"" I typically work with involve calculating accruals or analyzing sales/ margin data in my corporate environment which has become very stale as of late. Thanks!"

negative: Having an interview next week with a few companies, one of which is a bank as a financial analyst. Now the main job description is on detailed financial analyst, audit firm experience, 3 yr exp and review of customer/segment. Was it investment banking? Interview wise what I need to prepare for? I have prepared my project experiences and examples relevant to what they are finding for in power point. What else should I be prepared for?

negative: "The cause of the increase in 2006-2011 was the financial crisis, where, if you recall, the global banking system came close to collapse for reasons that are well documented. Rightly or wrongly, gold is seen as a safe haven asset in times of crisis. The price of gold began to decline in 2011 when the markets decided that the risk of a global banking system collapse had passed without further incident. In the period leading up to 2006, the price of gold was in a flat-to-down trend because there was little net buying interest in gold and large gold sales had been executed by various central banks around the world who felt that gold no longer had a place in central bank reserves.   In modern economies gold is seen as a ""fringe"" asset.  It has no role to play.  The recent financial crisis may have dented that perception, but those dents are now being forgotten and the price of gold is returning to its long-term downward trend.  When the next financial/banking crisis is upon us, the price of gold will again (probably) rally.  The extent of the rally will depend on the extent of the crisis."

negative: "Not sure how I came across the Motley Fool blog in the first instance, but found the writing style refreshing - then along came some free advice on ASX share prospects, then the next day and email expounding the benefits I would get by joining up for two years at 60% off if I hit the button ""now"", getting in at ground floor on the next technology stock rocket - I replied: ""What a hard sell - why wouldn't I apply the age old adage of "" If it sounds too good to be true, it probably is"" Their reply was; ""Thanks for your note. The honest answer is that despite people knowing they should do something to help themselves prepare for their financial futures, few actually do it. We find these messages actually work in getting people to hit 'yes', much better than an understated email that just says 'here are our results and our philosophy - let us know if you're interested', unfortunately. Yours Foolishly"" So I have put some of these recommendations onto a watch list, time will tell."

negative: In the US, for most mortgages: The rules for how you compute LTV vary. Usually it's based with current value. With FHA loans, you cannot have the property re-assessed -- LTV is based on the original loan amortization. Note that in the wake of the housing crisis, assessors have suddenly become very conservative with valuations, so be prepared to fight over the valuation.

negative: ">the population is burdened with debt and anxious about job security,  and long term security  and healthcare (and not sending them into poverty because of it)  and the country remaining solvent  and what the next financial crisis will be   and the terrorist boogymen  H. L. Mencken once said, *""The whole aim of practical politics is to keep the populace alarmed (and hence clamorous to be led to safety) by menacing it with an endless series of hobgoblins, all of them imaginary.""*   I don't know how imaginary it all is but they sure are menacing the shit out of us with it."

negative: Do some research on the Great Depression before you start spouting how insignificant the 2008 financial crisis was.  I despise that the banks got the bailout, but you apparently have no idea how bad it would have gotten if they were permitted to fail in a cascade.

negative: Yeah, it ends up being a bail out.   But then again, the tax payers bailed out the banks during the financial crisis (a crisis that was largely perpetuated by them) so should it be okay not to help bail these homeowners out during an actual natural disaster...

negative: I bet you also believe that the financial crisis is the fault of people who borrowed more than they could afford.  The mortgage brokers and banks are not at fault and its the dumb consumers who should have hired an attorney and an financial planner before singing any paperwork that got us into this mess.

negative: Can someone who understands this part of the business explain what exactly happened and how they benefited? I have read a few articles, and I don't really understand.    I work in a bank, and seeing how some other aspects of the financial crisis were portrayed in the news, I have a feeling the whole story isn't being told. How could this have possibly gone on undetected?

negative: "**Are you nuts?**  >*""Are you talking about TARP because that was paid back early and at 6.2% interest, the gov't made money on that bailout. The auto bailout however lost the gov't billions at the taxpayers expense and the bondholders got screwed over and the unions made out like bandits. Your title just shows how bias and uneducated you are on the subject. ""*  I'm talking about the GFC/Global Financial Crisis. In 2008.   -------------QUOTED TEXT--------------  http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Financial_crisis_of_2007%E2%80%9308  This article is about the financial crisis that peaked in 2008. *For the global recession triggered by the financial crisis, see [Great Recession](http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Great_Recession).*  The financial crisis of 2007–2008, also known as the Global Financial Crisis and 2008 financial crisis, is considered by many economists the worst financial crisis since the Great Depression of the 1930s.[1]   It resulted in the threat of total collapse of large financial institutions, the bailout of banks by national governments, and downturns in stock markets around the world. In many areas, the housing market also suffered, resulting in evictions, foreclosures and prolonged unemployment. The crisis played a significant role in the failure of key businesses, declines in consumer wealth estimated in trillions of U.S. dollars, and a downturn in economic activity leading to the 2008–2012 global recession and contributing to the European sovereign-debt crisis.[2][3] The active phase of the crisis, which manifested as a liquidity crisis, can be dated from August 9, 2007, when BNP Paribas terminated withdrawals from three hedge funds citing ""a complete evaporation of liquidity"".[4]  The bursting of the U.S. (United States) housing bubble, which peaked in 2006,[5] caused the values of securities tied to U.S. real estate pricing to plummet, damaging financial institutions globally.[6][7] The financial crisis was triggered by a complex interplay of policies that encouraged home ownership, providing easier access to loans for (lending) borrowers, overvaluation of bundled subprime mortgages based on the theory that housing prices would continue to escalate, questionable trading practices on behalf of both buyers and sellers, compensation structures that prioritize short-term deal flow over long-term value creation, and a lack of adequate capital holdings from banks and insurance companies to back the financial commitments they were making.[8][9][10][11] Questions regarding bank solvency, declines in credit availability and damaged investor confidence had an impact on global stock markets, where securities suffered large losses during 2008 and early 2009. Economies worldwide slowed during this period, as credit tightened and international trade declined.[12] Governments and central banks responded with unprecedented fiscal stimulus, monetary policy expansion and institutional bailouts. In the U.S., Congress passed the American Recovery and Reinvestment Act of 2009.  (continued- thats just the first two paragraphs)"

negative: "Can it be so that these low-interest rates cause investors to take greater risk to get a decent return?  With interest rates being as low as they are, there is little to no risk in banking; especially after Dodd-Frank. ""Risk"" is just a fancy word for ""Will I make money in the near/ long future."" No one knows what the actual risk is (unless you can see into the future.) But there are ways to mitigate it. So, arguably, the best way to make money is the stock market, not in banking.  There is a great misallocation of resources which at some point will show itself and cause tremendous losses, even maybe cause a new financial crisis? A financial crisis is backed on a believed-to-be strong investment that goes belly-up.  ""Tremendous Losses"" is a rather grand term with no merit. Banks are not purposely keeping interest rates low to cause a financial crisis.  As the central banks have kept interest rates extremely low for a decade, even negative, this affects how much we save and borrow. The biggest point here is to know one thing: bonds. Bonds affect all things from municipalities, construction, to pensions. If interest rates increased currently, the current rate of bonds would drop vastly and actually cause a financial crisis (in the U.S.) due to millions of older persons relying on bonds as sources of income."

negative: I haven't read this article, but the most pressing question I have from the headline is the timeline. We all know that triple-a rated CDOs were horrific in the financial crisis. How about ones that have been created in the past couple of years?

negative: Not anytime soon, I suspect, but not necessarily for financial reasons. I found this interesting, including the link to the five tests, but I think that this topic is only partially judged through financial eyes, there's a lot of political issues around this with national identity/immigration issues already in the spot light as well as political aspirations. If there will be a call in the near future to join the Euro, how would that reflect on the financial industry in the UK from a PR perspective? and on the political leadership and how it managed the financial crisis?  I believe that it is in the interest of all the people in the high positions to show the country getting back on track rather than making ground shaking moves. But what do I know....:-)

negative: Somalia, that's your trump card? I'm equally disgusted at both parties and the role they played during the financial crisis which affected the entire world, and because I won't play sheep and walk in lock-step to the polls for Obama (or Romney), your suggestion is that I move to Somalia?   Can you not see how ridiculous you are?

negative: "I don't understand how millenials could have gotten ""stuck"" in cities by the 2008 financial crisis. Cities are expensive AF and if your job goes away you do too after a short period. Back to mom and dad, typically, in the suburbs, typically."

negative: Weren't they one of the healthy banks during the financial crisis? I wonder what keeps them ahead of the pack or if the actual J. P. Morgan had any advise that they still adhere to today. I'm sure being part of a powerful organization that has shaped the financial industry has it perks in terms of having insider knowledge of how the innards of the industry work.

negative: "Chance presented me with the opportunities. Hard work enabled me to be prepared to take those opportunities when presented. Had the opportunities that I did take not presented themselves I was very prepared to move on to the next ones. I always say, ""I have backup plans for my backup plan's backup plan."""

negative: I heard Jim Grant say on his podcast that it's weird how long things take these days. It feels like problems never go away, and nothing is ever fixed quickly.   It's been almost a decade since the financial crisis and things are basically unchanged.

negative: "My advice is to quit worrying about the salesman's tactics.  They are a distraction.  What do you want?  How much are you willing to pay for it.  If you want the instrument, decide how much you want to pay for it.  Round down to the next even hundred.  Take that much in $100 bills.  Put the money in his hand and say, ""This is what I have, take it or leave it"".  You must be prepared to walk out of the store without the instrument."

negative: A stopped clock is right two times a day.   We may get a market crash similar to the financial crisis or the dot com crash or we may not. What if over the next 10 years rates rise very sluggishly, low inflation, and  low growth more or less continues with maybe one brief and shallow recession. In that case I bet US stocks produce 4-5% returns per year and US bonds produce maybe 1-2% per year.  European and emerging market stocks should have higher returns because they are in an earlier part of the cycle.  I think your baseline has to look something like that.  The last two crashes were caused by the tech bubble and the housing bubble - where is the bubble today? US stocks are expensive, but probably not in bubble territory. Bonds worldwide are unattractive with low or negative yields - negative yields maybe a bubble, but central banks will be the most hurt by negative rates and they are in a strong position to take the pain.   There could be a crash I just don't see how we get there yet - maybe china?

negative: >Which one is Citibank  I literally *just* told you retard.   >Those CEO's (including this prick) were responsible for it.   No they werent. CDO's / MBS's are *not* from depository banks. The financial institutions that are responsible for the financial crisis are primarily Lehman Brothers, Bear Stearns and AIG. AKA 2 *investment* banks and an insurance firm. So as I've said, you don't understand the difference between a depository bank and an investment bank.   You also have 0 idea on how a collateral works.   And again, tax payers didn't lose a single cent.   You're brainless.

negative: "Well.... If you have alllll your money invested, and then there's a financial crisis, and there's a personal crisis at the same time (e.g. you lose your job) then you're in big trouble. You might not have enough money to cover your bills while you find a new job. You could lose your house, ruin your credit, or something icky like that.  Think 2008. Even if there's not a financial crisis, if the money is in a tax-sheltered retirement account then withdrawing it will incur ugly penalities. Now, after you've got an emergency fund established, things are different. If you could probably ride out six to twelve months with your general-purpose savings, then with the money you are investing for the long term (retirement) there's no reason you shouldn't invest 100% of the money in stocks. The difference is that you're not going to come back for that money in 6 months, you're going to come back for it in 40 years. As for retirement savings over the long term, though, I don't think it's a good idea to think of your money in those terms. If you ever lose 100% of your money on the stock market while you've invested in diversified instruments like S&P500 index funds, you're probably screwed one way or another because that represents the core industrial base of the US economy, and you'll have better things to worry about, like looking for a used shotgun. Myself, I prefer to give the suggestion ""don't invest any money in stocks if you're going to need to take it out in the next 5 years or so"" because you generally shouldn't be worried about a 100% loss of all the money in stocks your retirement accounts nearly so much as you should be worried about weathering large, medium-term setbacks, like the dot-com bubble crash and the 2008 financial crisis. I save the ""don't invest money unless you can afford to lose it all"" advice for highly speculative instruments like gold futures or social-media IPOs. Remember also that while you might lose a lot of your money on the stock market, your savings accounts and bonds will earn you pathetic amounts by comparison, which you will slowly lose to inflation. If you've had your money invested for decades then even during a crash you may still be coming out ahead relative to bonds."

negative: So your argument is, all depository banks can do the functions of an investment bank, therefore all banks were responsible for the financial crisis? Awesome argument. Do tell me how citibank is the same as JP Morgan again. How are you this dense?  Also, nothing I've said is false whereas everything you've said is.

negative: "I love how you're being downvoted even though you're providing a very basic answer that is easy to look up and see that you are correct, no the majority of people Linhares just listed aren't ""economists"" - but then again redditors vote based on they feel, irregardless of the facts. I also love how everyone now feels as though the financial crisis was easy to spot - I bet if we went back and asked them in 2007 they would have all foreseen it as well. Yes, a few exceptionally intelligent people (Roubini, Shiller, Grantham etc.) foresaw it, but then again thousands of intelligent people make forecasts on financial markets every day and the majority fail to outperform it. The survivor bias in action I guess."

negative: Based on Dalio's interviews, he seems to think it's kind of too little too late. He said the Fed did a great job maneuvering out of the crisis, but then coasted for too long when they should have been tightening. Now it's too late and trying to play catch up might destabilize things to the point where they would be the *cause* of the next recession.

negative: Impossible to unwind. Its a monetary roach motel.  They will try to raise rates and unwind their balance sheet until there is another financial crisis, to which there will be another round of QE that dwarfs the previous rounds.  Unwinding has the real possibility of triggering another financial crisis.  If the bond market turns bearish after a 30 year bull market I wouldnt want to be holding dollars.

negative: "Should be titled, ""Facebook IPO: Could Mark Zuckerberg _Be Worth_ $24 Billion?""  They are reportedly looking to float only 10% of shares, at $10 billion, valuing the company at $100 billion. That doesn't mean Zuckerberg gets a paycheck of $24B on that day.   While I think it's crazy that all these companies are getting such high valuations, I really want to see Facebook's financials. I also wonder how much worse Facebook will get with unnecessary shit when their goal is to meet their next quarter earnings."

negative: "My favorite Fed ""admission"" was from Alan Greenspan during his testimony in Congress about what caused the 2008 financial crisis. Senator Waxman basically asked Greenspan if he had fucked up. Greenspan's glib reply was;  ""I found a flaw in the model that I perceived is the critical functioning structure that defines how the world works, so to speak.""  In other words, his grand economic theory was fatally flawed. So to speak. Unbelievable.   [YouTube link - 4:45 ](https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=R5lZPWNFizQ)"

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negative: With trillion dollar plus deficits, it's not like we're running an austerity program here.  When you say sacrifice, compared to what?  Two trillion dollar deficits?   Your observation of constant predictions of imminent doom is valid. The timeline has been extended by a series of bubbles- market, housing, fiscal deficits...  The shortcoming of doom prognosticators is that they underestimate the willingness of those in power to do whatever it takes to prolong the status quo, regardless of the long term consequences.   The game is perpetuated by ever increasing debt, and government became the borrower of last resort once the rest of the economy was tapped out.  The govt's ability to continue along this course in the open market is questionable as the Fed appears to be monetizing a large portion of newly issued debt.  The end game is a currency crisis.  It's nice to have a timeline accompanying a prediction, and critical for investing, but it is often very difficult to do, and in this case, it has been extremely difficult because the policy decisions have been rational from the perspective of elites maintaining their status, but not optimal from the standpoint of solving the problem.  That doesn't mean the predictions are useless though.  You could live in a flood zone and not be able to predict with accuracy when the next flood will occur, but that doesn't mean you shouldn't prepare.  Given the uncertainty with timing this, it seems to me the best course of action is not to try to time it, especially with respect to investing based on market timing, but to prepare the best you can for what will inevitably eventually occur.

negative: They'll never punish the people actually responsible. Because that would include people like current Treasury Secretary Jack Lew who was the Chief Operating Officer at Citigroup through the financial crisis. As much as I don't like the big banks, the current management, employees, and shareholders have very little to do with the fraud committed 7-10 years ago. If you put the previous generation of management in jail or if you bankrupt them with fines, then the current generation of management and employees will wise up and not do stupid/illegal shit. The settlement just shows the current generation that the next guy will pay for your crimes.