query: Inverse Relationship between Volatility and Beta

positive: "For any isolated equity market, its beta will less resemble the betas of all other interconnected equity markets.  For interconnected markets, beta is not well-dispersed, especially during a world expansion because richer nations have more wealth thus a dominant influence over smaller nations' equity markets causing a convergence.  If the world is in recession, or a country is in recession, all betas or the recessing country's beta will start to diverge, respectively.  If the world's economies diverge, their equity markets' betas will too.  If a country is having financial difficulty, its beta too will diverge. Beta is correlation against a ratio of variance, so variance or ""volatiliy"" is only half of that equation.  Correlation or ""direction"" is the other half.  The ratio of variance will give the magnitude of beta, and correlation will give the sign or ""direction"". Therefore, interconnected emerging equity markets should have higher beta magnitudes because they are more variant but should generally over time have signs that more closely resemble the rest.  A disconnected emerging equity market will improbably have average betas both by magnitude and direction."

negative: Options reflect expectations about the underlying asset, and options are commonly priced using the Black-Scholes model:  N(d1) and N(d2) are probability functions, S is the spot (current) price of the asset, K is the strike price, r is the risk free rate, and T-t represents time to maturity.  Without getting into the mathematics, it suffices to say that higher volatility or expectation of volatility increases the perceived riskiness of the asset, so call options are priced lower  and put options are priced higher. Think about it intuitively. If the stock is more likely to go downwards, then there's an increased chance that the call option expires worthless, so call options must be priced lower to accommodate the relative change in expected value of the option.  Puts are priced similarly, but they move inversely with respect to call option prices due to Put-Call parity. So if call option prices are falling, then put option prices are rising (Note, however, that call prices falling does not cause put prices to rise. The inverse relationship exists because of changes in the underlying factors and how pricing works.) So the option action signifies that the market believes the stock is headed lower (in the given time frame). That does not mean it will go lower, and option traders assume risk whenever they take a particular position. Bottom line: gotta do your own homework! Best of luck.

negative: "Typically investing in only two securities is not a good idea when trying to spread risk. Even though you are in the VTI which is spread out over a large amount of securites it should in theory reduce portfolio beta to zero, or in this case as close to it as possible. The VTI however has a beta of 1.03 as of close today in New York. This means that the VTI moves roughly in exact tandem as ""the market"" usually benched against the S&P 500, so this means that the VTI is slightly more volatile than that index. In theory beta can be 0, this would be akin to investing in T-bills which are 'assumed' to be the risk free rate. So in theory it is possible to reduce the risk in your portfolio and apply a more capital protective model. I hope this helps you a bit."

negative: "lol, please, calculate the correlation and let me know how close to 1 it is. And then let me know what kind of sensible economic model looks like SPX Level = const + beta * Fed Balance Sheet Level. That's a great way to just throw useful statistical inference out the fucking window.  Edit: I'd also like to make it abundantly clear that this is a monumentally retarded ""correlation"" to consider in the first place. The Fed balance sheet prior to 2008 was relatively tiny and unchanging, and yet the stock market was just as volatile in prior years."

negative: "Certainly no one knows in advance how much a stock is going to swing around. However, there are measures of how much it has swung around in the past, and there are people who will estimate the probability. First of all, there's a measure of an individual stock's volatility, commonly referred to as ""beta"". A stock with a beta of 1 tends to rise and fall about as much as the market at large. A stock with a beta of 2, in the meantime, would rise 10% when the market is up 5%. These are, of course, historical averages. See Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Beta_(finance) Secondly, you can get an implied measure of volatility expectations by looking at options pricing. If a stock is particularly volatile, the chance of a big price move will be baked into the price of the stock options. (Note also that other things affect options pricing, such as the time value of money.) For an options-based measure of the volatility of the whole market, see the Volatility Index aka the ""Fear Gauge"", VIX.  Wikipedia: http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/VIX Chart: http://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=%5EVIX Looking at individual stocks as a group (and there's an oxymoron for you), individual stocks are definitely much more likely to have big moves than the market. Besides Netflix, consider the BP oil spill, or the Tokyo Electric Power Company's Fukushima incident (yow!). I don't have any detailed statistics on quantitatively how much, mind you, but in application, a standard piece of advice says not to put more than 5% of your portfolio in a single company's stock. Diversification protects you. (Alternatively, if you're trying to play Mr. Sophisticated Stock-Picker instead of just buying an index fund, you can also buy insurance through stock options: hedging your bets. Naturally, this will eat up part of your returns if your pick was a good one)."

negative: If you do not need it for a day or a week or something like that, an easy thing to do to get the beta of a security is to use wolframalpha.  Here is a sample query: BETA for AAPL Calculating beta is an important metric, but it is not a be all end all, as there are ways to hedge the beta of your portfolio. So relying on beta is only useful if it is done in conjunction with something else. A high beta security just means that overall the security acts as the market does with some multiplier effect. For a secure portfolio you want beta as close to zero as possible for capital preservation while trying to find ways to exploit alpha.

negative: "What exactly do you need explained?  Short term returns show ""fat tails"" in their distribution.  Long term returns converge towards a gaussian distribution.  The authors think there's a connection between this and the ""long memory"" of volatility (i.e. that the autocorrelation of absolute volatilities also has a fat tail)."

negative: great example of levered tracking error is any 2x/3x VIX etf. during periods of high volatility (like last week) you will be able to realize much higher returns on the underlying index as the levered and inverse ETFs are unable to replicate their intended performance using market securities.  it is not uncommon to see the VIX up ~30% with levered ETFs only netting ~10-12% as opposed to the intended 60 or 90%, for example

negative: From a theoretical POV, it's in part due to Beta. Beta is a measure of volatility compared to the market. If the market returns 10%, and the risk free is 5%, then a company that has a beta 2 will have 2*(10%-5%) + 5% = 15% return. Usually it's not that great a measure for individual stocks because of the lack of diversification, eg if a company has a beta of 1, ie same expected returns as the market, and then it has a really bad earnings report, obviously is still going to go down even if the market is going up.  Fixed equation, Forgot to add RF back in.

negative: Imagine a $1,000 face value bond paying 10% interest semi-annually. That means every 6 months there is $50 being paid. Now, if the price of that bond doubled to $2,000, what is the yield? It is still paying $50 every 6 months but now sports a 5% yield as the price went up a great deal. Similarly, if the price of the bond was cut in half to $500, now it is yielding 20% because it is still paying out the $50 every 6 months. The dollar figure is fixed. What percentage of the price it is can vary and that is why there is the inverse relationship between prices and yields. Note that the length of the bond isn't mentioned here where while usually longer bonds will have higher yields, there can be inverted yield curves as well as calls on some bonds. Also, inflation-indexed and convertible bonds could have different calculations used as principal adjustments or possible conversion to stock can change a perception on the overall return.

negative: There are multiple ETFs which inversely track the common indices, though many of these are leveraged.  For example, SDS tracks approximately -200% of the S&P 500.  (Note: due to how these are structured, they are only suitable for very short term investments) You can also consider using Put options for the various indices as well.  For example, you could buy a Put for the SPY out a year or so to give you some fairly cheap insurance (assuming it's a small part of your portfolio). One other option is to invest against the market volatility.  As the market makes sudden swings, the volatility goes up; this tends to be true more when it falls than when it rises.  One way of invesing in market volatility is to trade options against the VIX.

negative: "Yes, I completely agree with you there.  Interest rates and prices have an inverse relationship.  The point that I am trying to make is that when home prices are not manipulated by some stupid government program, they will ""seep to their level""."

negative: Without knowing the WSC's objectives, priorities of those objectives and affordability we cannot determine which type of insurance is best. Life insurance for seniors is very expensive if you examine the per unit cost (e.g. cost per $1000 of death benefit). Therefore affordability is a critical deciding factor for WSC.  Let's assume that we know the WSC's affordability and therefore the monthly premium is a fixed determined number, then there is a inverse relationship between the length of coverage and the amount of coverage. We have to achieve a balance between these two factors to best meet the WSC's objective. If the proposed plan is not affordable then the WSC must leave out his/her objectives with lesser priorities out of the total coverage amount.

negative: The biggest challenge with owning any individual stock is price fluctuation, which is called risk. The scenarios you describe assume that the stock behaves exactly as you predict (price/portfolio doubles) and you need to consider risk. One way to measure risk in a stock or in a portfolio is Sharpe Ratio (risk adjusted return), or the related Sortino ratio. One piece of advice that is often offered to individual investors is to diversify, and the stated reason for diversification is to reduce risk. But that is not telling the whole story. When you are able to identify stocks that are not price correlated, you can construct a portfolio that reduces risk. You are trying to avoid 10% tax on the stock grant (25%-15%), but need to accept significant risk to avoid the 10% differential tax ($1000). An alternative to a single stock is to invest in an ETF (much lower risk), which you can buy and hold for a long time, and the price/growth of an ETF (ex. SPY) can be charted versus your stock to visualize the difference in growth/fluctuation. Look up the beta (volatility) of your stock compared to SPY (for example, IBM). Compare the beta of IBM and TSLA and note that you may accept higher volatility when you invest in a stock like Tesla over IBM. What is the beta of your stock? And how willing are you to accept that risk? When you can identify stocks that move in opposite directions, and mix your portfolio (look up beta balanced portolio), you can smooth out the variability (reduce the risk), although you may reduce your absolute return. This cannot be done with a single stock, but if you have more money to invest you could compose the rest of your portfolio to balance the risk for this stock grant, keep the grant shares, and still effectively manage risk. Some years ago I had accumulated over 10,000 shares (grants, options) in a company where I worked. During the time I worked there, their price varied between $30/share and < $1/share. I was able to liquidate at $3/share.

negative: I know that assets like bonds have prices that have an inverse relationship with interest rates, but what other assets do as well? I'm a bit new to finance and all that so I'm trying to learn. Would real estate prices be high as well? If so, why?

negative: You can average the betas across the different cross listings.  EX:   Exchange 1 - Beta .8  Exchange 2 - Beta .6  Exchange 3 - Beta .7  (.8 + .6 + .7) / 3 =  avg Beta .7  You can do simple average as based above or you can do a weighted average and take into account other factors.

negative: "Its important to note that aggression, or better yet volatility, does not necessarily offer higher returns.  One can find funds that have a high beta (measure of volatility) and lower performance then stock funds with a lower beta.   Additionally, to Micheal's point, better performance could be undone by higher fees.   Age is unimportant when deciding the acceptable volatility.  Its more important as to when the money is to be available.  If there might be an immediate need, or even less than a year, then stick to a savings account.  Five years, some volatility can be accepted, if 10 years or more seek to maximize rate of return. For example assume a person is near retirement age.  They are expected to have 50K per year expenses.  If they have 250K wrapped up in CDs and savings, and another 250K in some conservative investments, they can, and should, be ""aggressive"" with any remaining money.     On the contrary a person your age that is savings for a house intends to buy one in three years.  Savings for the down payment should be pretty darn conservative.   Something like 75% in savings accounts, and maybe 25% in some conservative investments.  As the time to buy approaches they can pull the money out of the conservative investments at a optimal time. Also you should not be investing without an emergency fund in place.  Get that done first, then look to invest. If your friend does not understand these basic concepts there is no point in paying for his advice."

negative: "The most fundamental answer is that when you short a stock (or an ETF), you short a specific number of shares on a specific day, and you probably don't adjust this much as the price wobbles goes up and down. But an inverse fund is not tied to a specific start date, like your own transaction is.  It adjusts on an ongoing basis to maintain its full specified leverage at all times.  If the underlying index goes up, it has to effectively ""buy in"" because its collateral is no longer sufficient to support its open position.  On the other hand, if the underlying index goes down, that frees up collateral which is used to effectively short-sell more of the underlying.  So by design it will buy high and sell low, and so any volatility will pump money out of the fund. I say ""effectively"" because inverse funds use derivatives and contracts, rather than actually shorting the underlying security.   Which brings up the less fundamental issue.  These derivatives and contracts are relatively opaque; the counter-parties are in it for their own benefit, not yours; and the people who run the fund get their expenses regardless of how you do, and they are hard for you to monitor.  This is a hazardous combination."

negative: Long convexity is achieved by owning long dated low delta options. When a significant move occurs in the underlying the volatility curve will move higher. Instead of a linear relationship between your long position and it's return, you receive a multiple of the linear return. For example: Share price $50 Long 1 (equals 100 shares) contract of a 2 year 100 call Assume this is a 5 delta option If the stock price rises to $70 the delta of the option will rise because it is now closer to the strike. Lets assume it is now a 20 delta option. Then  Expected return on a $20 price move higher, 100 shares($20)(.20-.05)=$300 However what happens is the entire volatility surface rises and causes the 20 delta option to be 30 delta option. Then The return on a $20 price move higher, 100 shares($20)(.30-.05)=$500 This $200 extra gain is due to convexity and explains why option traders are willing to pay above the theoretical price for these options.

negative: To get the probability of hitting a target price you need a little more math and an assumption about the expected return of your stock.  First let's examine the parts of this expression. IV is the implied volatility of the option.  That means it's the volatility of the underlying that is associated with the observed option price.  As a practical matter, volatility is the standard deviation of returns, expressed in annualized terms.  So if the monthly standard deviation is Y, then Y*SQRT(12) is the volatility. From the above you can see that IV*SQRT(DaysToExpire/356) de-annualizes the volatility to get back to a standard deviation.  So you get an estimate of the expected standard deviation of the return between now and expiration. If you multiply this by the stock price, then you get what you have called X, which is the standard deviation of the dollars gained or lost between now and expiration.  Denote the price change by A (so that the standard deviation of A is X). Note that we seek the expression for the probability of hitting a target level, Q, so mathematically we want 1 - Pr( A < Q - StockPrice)  We do 1 minus the probability of being below this threshold because cumulative distribution functions always find the probability of being BELOW a threshold, not above. If you are using excel and assuming a mean of zero for returns, the probability of hitting or exceeding Q at expiration, then, is That's your answer for the probability of exceeding Q. Accuracy is in the eye of the beholder.  You'd have to specify a criterion by which to judge it to know the answer.  I'm sure more sophisticated methods exist that are more unbiased and have less error, but I think it's a fine first approximation.

negative: Let's say I have a large company with a sub-unit which accounts for 40% of their revenues. The company is traded at a foreign stock exchange, but have the sub-unit that is located domestically. The beta of the company can be easily found online or calculated manually. How do I determine the beta of a sub-unit of a multinational company?

negative: "i deleted my comment that this was a reply to so I'll repost it.  It was:   >I don't know the answer, but I'm pretty sure this is incorrect.  You have to take into account the correlations of the securities across the three different markets.  It's definitely not as simple as dividing by three.  The reason why I don't think this is correct is because you can imagine an exchange in which there is only one other security, and the asset in question is perfectly correlated and therefore has a beta of 1.  You could then have a different exchange with thousands of securities where the asset has a beta of 0.3.  The  simple average method would produce a beta of .65, when it's probably true that the correct answer is closer to 0.3.  The solution is not generalizable so I don't think it can be right. It neglects the relative sizes of the exchanges and the correlation of the underlying assets with each other.  Which leads me to consider, perhaps the right thing to do is to calculate the returns across all three exchanges and the returns of the asset on all three exchanges, do a weighted average and use that variance/covariance to calculate the beta across all three exchanges.  I'm not sure what purpose, practically, such a beta would serve.  I think the correct answer is to take the beta of the asset with respect to the largest (most diversified) exchange.  Ultimately, using a basket of securities like the S&P 500 is just a proxy for ""the market"", whatever that means.  It doesn't truly represent the realm of possibilities for the diversified investor, but it's close enough  tl,dr: I say pick one exchange and go with it"

negative: "The answer depends on what is your portfolio's objective.   If you are operating a multi-asset class portfolio (i.e. your portfolio has both bonds and stocks) and are targeting absolute returns, then yes, comparing a stock's beta (or correlation) to a bond benchmark makes sense. What you do with this stock's ""bond beta"" information further depends on what kind of return profile you want your multi-asset class portfolio to have. If you want stocks that appreciate in price when bond prices decline, then of course you want to buy ""negative bond beta"" stocks.  If you are operating a purely relative equity portfolio (i.e. you are benchmarked to the stock market), then comparing the ""bond beta"" is of little use to you.  Hope this helps."

negative: A rising tide lifts all ships   Most (but not all) stocks trend along with the general market. Some trend right along with the market (and have a beta at, or very near, one) some follow the Market, but are less sensitive (having a beta of less than one). Some are hypersensitive (and would have a beta of greater than one).  Beta defined  So most of the day to day movement of a stock is because the general market is moving (in the same direction). Of course, exceptional news about the company would cause its price to move independent of the general market. But more often than not the price of a stock moves just because the rest of the market is moving.

negative: My level of analysis is not quite that advanced. Can you share what that would show and why that particular measure is the one to use?  I've run regression on prices between the two. VIX prices have no correlation to the s&p500 prices. Shouldn't true volatility result in the prices (more people putting options on the VIX during the bad times and driving that price up) correlate to the selloff that occurs within the S&P500 during recessions and other events that would cause significant or minor volatility? My r2 showed no significance within a measurement of regression within Excel.  But, *gasp* I could be wrong, but would love to learn more about better ways of measurement :)

negative: I think what's screwing up my calculation is the (reL), return on equity levereged figure. The beta for KORS apparently is -0.58, so when I use the formula reL = rf + (ßL)(rm - rf), I get -0.0048 as my reL.   Am I doing my beta wrong? Am I supposed to use a different figure for my beta?    ALSO, further in the process, when using the formula for WACC, my E/(D+E) is essentially 1.0 because market value of equity for KORS is 7bill and its market value of debt is only like 147 million.  edit: I'm beginning to believe that my beta of -0.58 is not rightly used. It's what yahoo told me, but other sources are saying that the beta of KORS is more like -0.01 or close to 0. Yes?   edit 2: Using -0.01 beta, I get a rdWACC of 2.2%. Now this seems more plausible. I did some research on negative betas and found out that they basically don't really exist aside from gold. So Yahoo must be giving me a weird beta figure. Other websites are all giving me -0.01, so I believe that is correct.

negative: "The main difference between a bull market and a bear market is due the ""the leverage effect"". http://www.princeton.edu/~yacine/leverage.pdf The leverage effect refers to the observed tendency of an asset’s   volatility to be negatively correlated with the asset’s returns.   Typically, rising asset prices are accompanied by declining   volatility, and vice versa. The term “leverage” refers to one possible   economic interpretation of this phenomenon, developed in Black (1976)   and Christie (1982): as asset prices decline, companies become   mechanically more leveraged since the relative value of their debt   rises relative to that of their equity. As a result, it is natural to   expect that their stock becomes riskier, hence more volatile. More volatile assets in a bear market are not such good investments as less volatile assets in a bull market."

negative: "(Congrats on earning/saving $3K and not wanting to blow it all on immediate gratification!) I currently have it invested in sector mutual funds but with the rise and fall of the stock market, is this really the best way to prepare long-term? Long-term?  Yes! However... four years is not long term.  It is, in fact, borderline short term.  (When I was your age, that was incomprehensible too, but trust me: it's true.) The problem is that there's an inverse relationship between reward and risk: the higher the possible reward, the greater the risk that you'll lose a big chunk of it. I invest that middle-term money in a mix of junk high yield bond funds and ""high"" yield savings accounts at an online bank.  My preferences are HYG purchased at Fidelity (EDIT: because it's commission-free and I buy a few hundred dollars worth every month), and Ally Bank."

negative: Correct, long/short strategies should have zero beta with the stock market. But this is intentional, and investors in true *hedged* funds seek this *portable alpha* as a complement to their long-only sleeve in the portfolio.  My question is: if for example, you are long low P/E stocks, and a short high P/E stocks what *creates* the alpha? Your portfolio should have zero beta. I believe in the long-run this long/short P/E strategy [generates ~300 basis points of return per year (un-levered)](http://mba.tuck.dartmouth.edu/pages/faculty/ken.french/data_library.html).  Is not reasonable to assume if returns from long only investing is driven by beta (and investors use 6% to 12% discount rates in their valuation models), then an an un-levered long/short strategy should always under-perform a long-only strategy in the long-run. The purpose of long/short strategies is not to beat long-only investing, it is to create [portable alpha](https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Portable_alpha).  In fact, at a high level of abstraction, the *average* long/short strategy should not earn a return greater than the risk free rate in the long-run because the strategy has zero beta.

negative: The only way to hedge a position is to take on a countervailing position with a higher multiplier as any counter position such as a 1:1 inverse ETF will merely cancel out the ETF it is meant to hedge yielding a negative return roughly in the amount of fees & slippage. For true risk-aversion, continually selling the shortest term available covered calls is the only free lunch.  A suboptimal version, the CBOE BuyWrite Index, has outperformed its underlying with lower volatility. The second best way is to continually hedge positions with long puts, but this can become very tax-complicated since the hedged positions need to be rebalanced continually and expensive depending on option liquidity. The ideal, assuming no taxes and infinite liquidity, is to sell covered calls when implied volatility is high and buy puts when implied volatility is low.

negative: Good job.  Assuming that you are also contributing to retirement, you are bound to be a wealthy person.  I'm not really sure how Australia works as far as retirement, but I am pretty sure you are taking care of that too.    Given your time frame (more than 5 years) I would consider investing at least a portion of the money.  If I was you, I would tend to make that amount significant, say 75% in mutual funds, 25% in your high interest savings.  The ratio you choose is up to you, but I would be heavier in the investment than savings side.  As the time for home purchase approaches, you may want more in savings and less in investments. You may want  to look at a mutual fund with a low beta.  Beta is a measure of the price volatility.  I did a google search on low beta funds, and came up with a number of good articles that explains this further.  Having a fund with a low beta insulates you, a bit, from radical swings in the market allowing you to count more on the money being there when needed. One way to get to the proper ratio, is to contribute all new money to the mutual fund until it is in proper balance.  This way you don't lower your interest rate for a month. Given your time frame, salary, and sense of responsibility you may be able to do the 100% down plan.  Again, good work!

negative: so... asset price inflation decoupled from fundamentals (thank you QE) along with rise in ETF (notorious depressant on volatility) means options trader are underestimating volatility? Who calculates the daily spreads between HV and IV, anyone? Im new to this.

negative: It is a question of how volatile the stock is perceived to be, its beta correlation to the S&P500 or other index. Margin requirements are derived from the Federal Reserve, Self Regulatory Organizations, the exchange itself, the broker you use, and which margining system you are using. So that makes this a loaded question. There are at least three margin systems, before you have your own risk officer in a glass room that doesn't care how leveraged up you get. Brokers primarily don't want to lose money.


query: Transfer $50k to another person's account (in California, USA)

positive: A non-cash transaction will not be a problem. The bank will have to fill out federal paperwork if there are large amounts of cash involved.  This is to stop the underground economy.  This can even extend to non-banks. If you were to walk into a car dealer or some other stores and hand them a bag  of cash they will also report it. You can do what you propose without having to transfer any money between accounts. Your girlfriend can put the furniture and landscaping on her credit card, or write checks to the stores or companies. Based on the number of questions on this site regarding how to transfer funds between banks and accounts, the mechanics of the transfer is the hard part. Resist the urge to use cash to make the transfer. That will require paperwork. Many people find that the old standard of using checks to transfer funds is easy, safe and quick.

positive: It will not be a problem; people regularly move larger sums. It will be reported to law authorities as large enough to be potentially of interest, but since you can explain it that's fine.

negative: One reason is mergers and acquisitions. The large companies that make up the S&P500 continue to grow by buying smaller companies. This enables them to grow at a faster rate then just organic growth.  Another reason is that many of the large companies making up the S&P500 operate on a global scale or at least not just in the USA. By doing so they access markets with higher GDP growth rates. By entering new markets they are able to grow at a faster rate than the USA GDP growth rate.

negative: Sorry for this late reply.  I currently live in Iceland (I am a United Statesian). People here told me they thought checks were just something that were in movies. I was amazed by this. So here are some reasons that I see to being why it works still in the usa. 1. Social Security system. Most Euro, Nordic countries have their lives, bank accounts, ect tied to their 'Social Security' number and that number is not top secret like it is in the USA. In fact here in Iceland you throw your number around to anyone who wants it because they cant do anything with it but pay you money really. 2. Banks. In the USA there are millions, MILLIONS of small town banks. That means that doing direct deposits or transfers is much much harder to achieve. Example: Iceland has two banks. The most common way of loaning a friend money or paying for that hotel room if you forgot to bring cash or your card is to say 'Give me your SSN and I will transfer to you'. It takes about 30 seconds to do a funds transfer. In the USA you can't do that. They would think you are lying or not want to give they bank info or because of the fees from small town banks it would be pointless. Also a lot of these small banks will not accept direct deposit (I had a bank growing up that still does not) These are some of the main reasons that I think cause the flow of checks in the usa.

negative: "Here is the first google result for ""USA worst states for business"" and a result from [CNBC 2014](http://www.cnbc.com/id/101769584)  1. Rhode Island  2. Hawaii  3. West Virginia  4. Alaska  5. Connecticut   Illinois is a top 3 tax state along with New York and California but taxes are not the only thing to take into account unless you are a Tea Party supporter."

negative: It sounds like something is getting lost in translation here. A business owner should not have to pay personal income tax on business expenses, with the caveat that they are truly business expenses. Here's an example where what you described could happen: Suppose a business has $200K in revenue, and $150K in legitimate business expenses (wages and owner salaries, taxes, services, products/goods, etc.) The profit for this example business is $50K. Depending on how the business is structured (sole proprietor, llc, s-corp, etc), the business owner(s) may have to pay personal income tax on the $50K in profit. If the owner then decided to have the business purchase a new vehicle solely for personal use with, say, $25K of that profit, then the owner may think he could avoid paying income tax on $25K of the $50K. However, this would not be considered a legitimate business expense, and therefore would have to be reclassified as personal income and would be taxed as if the $25K was paid to the owner. If the vehicle truly was used for legitimate business purposes then the business expenses would end up being $175K, with $25K left as profit which is taxable to the owners. Note: this is an oversimplification as it's oftentimes the case that vehicles are partially used for business instead of all or nothing. In fact, large items such as vehicles are typically depreciated so the full purchase price could not be deducted in a single year. If many of the purchases are depreciated items instead of deductions, then this could explain why it appears that the business expenses are being taxed. It's not a tax on the expense, but on the income that hasn't been reduced by expenses, since only a portion of the big ticket item can be treated as an expense in a single year.

negative: Nitransfers - A USA Leading E-commerce Company. Buy Breast Cancer Products Online at the best price in Florida, USA. Our goal is to make the best heat transfers, that are easy to peel and will last longer than the garment you print it on.

negative: For the Roth the earnings: interest, dividends, capital gains distributions and capital gains are tax deferred. Which means that as long as the money stays inside of a Roth or is transferred/rolled over to another Roth there are no taxes due. In December many mutual funds distribute their gains. Let's say people invested in S&P500index fund receive a dividend of 1% of their account value. The investor in a non-retirement fund will be paying tax on that dividend in the Spring with their tax form. The Roth and IRA investors will not be paying tax on those dividends. The Roth investor never will, and the regular IRA investor will only pay taxes on it when they pull the money out.

negative: For tax optimization, cash is stored mostly overseas, according to the New York Times. For Apple, everytime a song or an app is bought in Europe, Africa or Middle East, money flows to iTunes Sàrl, in Luxemburg. Royalties on patents flow internally from Apple in California to Apple in Ireland. Then profits flow to the Carribean. The problem is that cash cannot be brought back to the USA without huge taxes.

negative: "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.ocregister.com/2017/08/28/what-business-exodus-california-tops-in-u-s-for-company-creation/) reduced by 81%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Even the headquarters of Jamba Juice and Carl&#039;s Jr. So with much talk about companies supposedly fleeing California en masse - purportedly due to unfriendly conditions for business - would you be surprised if I told you the state had the nation&#039;s largest increase in the number of companies between 2014 and this year?  > Even if you rank states on percentage growth, California still looks pretty good in this period: It ranked 10th best for small business creation; No. 17 for mid-size; 23rd for giant companies and 13th in overall growth.  > Yes, several indexes of relative business attractiveness by state give California low grades.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6x1wk6/what_business_exodus_california_tops_in_us_for/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~201450 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **California**^#1 **company**^#2 **state**^#3 **business**^#4 **growth**^#5"

negative: I'm not saying they aren't properly structured to take advantage of the conditions. But they are absolutely being subsidized for better or worse.    California alone has spent $500m in electric car subsidies and is considering earmarking another $3b. The vast majority of those funds have gone towards Tesla. No other Mfg has been a bigger recipient.   Call a spade a spade.   I don't personally care enough to oppose it, but it's an advantage nonetheless.

negative: "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.pewtrusts.org/en/research-and-analysis/blogs/stateline/2017/08/15/supposedly-symbolic-state-travel-bans-have-real-bite) reduced by 88%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Conference and convention planners say there is a powerful stigma associated with the state bans that goes beyond government travel, scaring away visitors who aren&#039;t state employees or who hail from states other than the one that issued the ban.  > California banned state travel to Tennessee to protest a state law allowing mental health counselors and therapists to refuse to treat patients based on religious objections or personal beliefs.  > California state Assemblyman Evan Low, a Democrat who sponsored the California travel ban law, said its intent is not to &quot;Impose our California values on another sister state. The real issue is that we are making a strong statement that supports fundamental basic humanity.""   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6u4udi/supposedly_symbolic_state_travel_bans_have_real/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~192444 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **state**^#1 **ban**^#2 **California**^#3 **travel**^#4 **city**^#5"

negative: "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](https://www.nytimes.com/2017/07/26/climate/california-climate-policy-cap-trade.html) reduced by 91%. (I'm a bot) ***** > Per capita, California has the third-lowest emissions in the nation, after New York and the District of Columbia, which means further cuts will come less easily than they would for a state like Texas.  > While no one is exactly sure how much California&#039;s climate policies will ultimately cost, this ceiling will set a limit on that price tag: If climate policy poses too severe a threat to economic growth, the state will prioritize growth.  > What the World Might LearnMr. Brown has promoted California&#039;s policies as a way of convincing the world that the United States won&#039;t abandon the fight against climate change, even after Mr. Trump announced a withdrawal from the Paris climate agreement.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6pqq7x/california_is_going_far_beyond_other_states_on/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~176290 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **state**^#1 **California**^#2 **emissions**^#3 **climate**^#4 **cap**^#5"

negative: See what the contract says about transfers or subleases. A lease is a credit agreement, so the lessor may not allow transfers.  You probably ought to talk to an accountant about this. You can probably recognize most of the costs associated with the car without re-financing it in another lease.

negative: "I am not a lawyer, and I am assuming trusts in the UK work similar to the way they work in the US... A trust is a legally recognized entity that can act in business transactions much the same way as a person would (own real property, a business, insurance, investments, etc.). The short answer is the trust is the owner of the property. The trust is established by a Grantor who ""funds"" the trust by transferring ownership of items from him or herself (or itself, if another trust or business entity like a corporation) to the trust.  A Trustee is appointed (usually by the Grantor) to manage the trust according to the conditions and terms specified in the trust. A Trustee would be failing in their responsibility (their fiduciary duty) if they do not act in accordance with the purposes of the trust. (Some trusts are written better than others, and there may or may not be room for broad interpretation of the purposes of the trust.)   The trust is established to provide some benefit to the Beneficiary. The beneficiary can be anyone or anything, including another trust. In the US, a living trust is commonly used as an estate planning tool, where the Grantor, Trustee, and Beneficiary are the same person(s). At some point, due to health or other reasons, a new trustee can be appointed. Since the trust is a separate entity from the grantor and trustee, and it owns the assets, it can survive the death of the grantor, which makes it an attractive way to avoid having to probate the entire estate. A good living trust will have instructions for the Trustee on what to do with the assets upon the death of the Grantor(s)."

negative: "This is the best tl;dr I could make, [original](http://www.sfchronicle.com/opinion/editorials/article/Editorial-California-must-summon-will-to-meet-11943507.php) reduced by 93%. (I'm a bot) ***** > For a complicated policy problem, the California housing crisis can be explained simply: People want to live in California, and Californians don&#039;t want them to.  > As the Legislature&#039;s own researchers have noted, &quot;The scale of these programs - even if greatly increased - could not meet the magnitude of new housing required.&quot; Based on past results, for example, a $3 billion bond measure under consideration wouldn&#039;t produce enough homes to close a year&#039;s worth of the continuing gap between the demand for and construction of new housing.  > California legislators have yet to take assertive action on the housing crisis.   ***** [**Extended Summary**](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/6v14lb/editorial_california_must_summon_will_to_meet/) | [FAQ](http://np.reddit.com/r/autotldr/comments/31b9fm/faq_autotldr_bot/ ""Version 1.65, ~195355 tl;drs so far."") | [Feedback](http://np.reddit.com/message/compose?to=%23autotldr ""PM's and comments are monitored, constructive feedback is welcome."") | *Top* *keywords*: **housing**^#1 **development**^#2 **California**^#3 **New**^#4 **Bill**^#5"

negative: The 401(k) contribution is Federal tax free, when you make the contribution, and most likely State too.  I believe that is true for California, specifically. There was a court case some years ago about people making 401(k) or IRA contributions in New York, avoiding the New York state income tax.  Then they moved to Florida (no income tax), and took the money out.  New York sued, saying they had to pay the New York income tax that had been deferred, but the court said no.  So you should be able to avoid California state income tax, and then later if you were to move to, for example, Texas (no income tax), have no state income tax liability. At the Federal level, you will have different problems.  You won't have the money; it will be held by the 401(k) trustee.  When you try to access the money (cash the account out), you will have to pay the deferred taxes.  Effectively, when you remove the money it becomes income in the year it is removed. You can take the money out at any time, but if you are less than 59 1/2 at the time that you take it, there is a 10% penalty.  The agreement is that the Feds let you defer paying the tax because it is going to finance your retirement, and they will tax it later.  If you take it out before 59 1/2, they figure you are not retired yet, and are breaking your part of the agreement. Of course you can generally leave the money in the 401(k) plan with your old employer and let it grow until you are 59.5, or roll it over into another 401(k) with a new employer (if they let you), or into an IRA.  But if you have returned to your own country, having an account in the U.S. would introduce both investment risk and currency risk. If you are in another country when you want the money, the question would be where your U.S. residence would be.  If you live in California, then go to, say France, your U.S. residence would still be California, and you would still owe California income tax.  If you move from California to Texas and then to France, your U.S. residence would be Texas.   This is pretty vague, as you might have heard in the Rahm Emanual case -- was he a resident of Chicago or Washington, D.C.?  Same problem with Howard Hughes who was born in Texas, but then spent most his life in California, then to Nevada, then to Nicaragua, and the Bahamas.  When he died Texas, California and Nevada all claimed him as a resident, for estate taxes.  The important thing is to be able to make a reasonable case that you are a resident of where ever you want to be -- driver's license, mailing address, living quarters, and so on.

negative: "Wow, this turns out to be a much more difficult problem than I thought from first looking at it. Let's recast some of the variables to simplify the equations a bit. Let rb be the growth rate of money in your bank for one period. By ""growth rate"" I mean the amount you will have after one period. So if the interest rate is 3% per year paid monthly, then the interest for one month is 3/12 of 1% = .25%, so after one month you have 1.0025 times as much money as you started with. Similarly, let si be the growth rate of the investment. Then after you make a deposit the amount you have in the bank is pb = s. After another deposit you've collected interest on the first, so you have pb = s * rb + s. That is, the first deposit with one period's growth plus the second deposit. One more deposit and you have pb = ((s * rb) + s) * rb + s = s + s * rb + s * rb^2. Etc. So after n deposits you have pb = s + s * rb + s * rb^2 + s * rb^3 + ... + s * rb^(n-1). This simplifies to pb = s * (rb^n - 1)/(rb - 1). Similarly for the amount you would get by depositing to the investment, let's call that pi, except you must also subtract the amount of the broker fee, b. So you want to make deposits when pb>pi, or s*(ri^n-1)/(ri-1) - b > s*(rb^n-1)/(rb-1) Then just solve for n and you're done! Except ... maybe someone who's better at algebra than me could solve that for n, but I don't see how to do it. Further complicating this is that banks normally pay interest monthly, while stocks go up or down every day. If a calculation said to withdraw after 3.9 months, it might really be better to wait for 4.0 months to collect one additional month's interest. But let's see if we can approximate. If the growth rates and the number of periods are relatively small, the compounding of growth should also be relatively small. So an approximate solution would be when the difference between the interest rates, times the amount of each deposit, summed over the number of deposits, is greater than the fee. That is, say the investment pays 10% per month more than your bank account (wildly optimistic but just for example), the broker fee is $10, and the amount of each deposit is $200. Then if you delay making the investment by one month you're losing  10% of $200 = $20. This is more than the broker fee, so you should invest immediately. Okay, suppose more realistically that the investment pays 1% more per month than the bank account. Then the first month you're losing 1% of $200 = $2. The second month you have $400 in the bank, so you're losing $4, total loss for two months = $6. The third month you have $600 in the bank so you lose an additional $6, total loss = $12. Etc. So you should transfer the money to the investment about the third month. Compounding would mean that losses on transferring to the investment are a little higher than this, so you'd want to bias to transferring a little earlier. Or, you could set up a spreadsheet to do the compounding calculations month by month, and then just look down the column for when the investment total minus the bank total is greater than the broker fee. Sorry I'm not giving you a definitive answer, but maybe this helps."

negative: Absolutely. An IRA works just like any other brokerage account except that there are constraints on contributions and withdrawals. You can invest in just about anything you'd like. Because the title of your question is slightly ambiguous I'll add this for clarity. You can't directly add stocks to an IRA account. You can only fund it with cash. However, you can buy any stock you want with the cash you transferred into the account. If you want to move a stock into an IRA account from another account you will need to cash it out first, transfer the cash, then re-buy the stock.

negative: I use another solution: debit card with an account kept empty most of the time and another account in the same bank without any card. I keep the money on the second card-less account, and when I want to buy something, I instantly transfer the appropriate amount to the account with the card and pay. That way money is on the account tied to a debit card only for a minute before payment, and normally it is empty - so even if someone would try to fraudulently use my card number - I don't care - the transaction will be rejected. I think its the perfect solution - no fraud possible, and I don't have to worry about possibly having to bother calling my bank and requesting a chargeback, which is stressful and a waste of time and harmful to peace of mind (what if they refuse the chargeback)? I prefer to spend a minute before each transaction to transfer the money between the two accounts, and that time is not a waste, because I use it to reconsider the purchase - which prevents impulse-buying.

negative: Oh yeah, it's SUCH a pain in the ass. /s  People just want things to be done for them. It took me all of 10 minutes to set up a new USAA checking/savings account last week, and another 10 online with a BofA rep to close down my account.

negative: The other day I commented with another redditor in another post about how the farm workers in California should be happy with a minimum wage model that allows them to bust their ass and make up to $20/hour. So it depends on who/what we're talking about.

negative: Our banking system is pretty archaic compared to Europe's.  I never realized it until I started managing bank accounts overseas for work.  I manage many in the U.K., with their banking system you can send money to any person or company using a sort code & account (similar to our routing # and account) - and it's free, simple, and reaches the other account within 2 hours.   You can include invoice #s, etc.   It's the same banks that we have over here (HSBC, Citi, etc), I imagine the only reason why they haven't rolled it out over here is because they make a lot of $$$ off of wires in the US (similar concept but we pay $30-60 per each domestic transfer and it can take days).  When my boss moved over here from UK and opened a personal bank account he was horrified to find out that the bill pay function in online banking sent paper checks and that you couldn't just send money to people/companies easily and immediately.  The infrastructure and technology is already in place at the big banks, but the banks make big fees off offering us archaic features and too few Americans realize it can be so much easier; until we legislate that banks offer us the better services that already exist elsewhere I doubt we'll get them.