query: What evidence do I need to declare tutoring income on my income tax?

positive: I have been a private tutor on and off for about 30 years, in three countries, so I understand your concerns!  I always kept records as though it was a real business - even if I only had one student I kept records of dates/times/names, and also tracked where the money went (I never spent it straight up - it always got deposited to complete the paper trail; yes, this is paranoia on my part).  I've never been asked to prove anything with regards this income (although I have no Canadian experience). It's always been a case of tell the tax folks and make sure my arse is covered if they come asking questions. Hope this helps.

negative: If you get 1099-G for state tax refund, you need to declare it as income only if you took deduction on state taxes in the prior year. I.e.: if you took standard deductions - you don't need to declare the refund as income. If you did itemize, you have to declare the refund as income, and deduct the taxes paid last year on your schedule A. If this year you're not itemizing - you lost the tax benefit. If it was not clear from my answer - the taxes paid and the refund received are unrelated. The fact that you paid tax and received refund in the same year doesn't make them in any way related, even if both refer to the same taxable year.

negative: "DirectGov has a good overview here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/TaxOnPropertyAndRentalIncome/DG_4017814 and answers to your specific questions here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/TaxOnPropertyAndRentalIncome/DG_10013435 In short, you do need to declare the rental income on your tax return and will need to pay tax on it (and note that only the mortgage interest (not the full repayment) is deductible as an ""allowable expense"", see the full list of what is deductible here: http://www.direct.gov.uk/en/MoneyTaxAndBenefits/Taxes/TaxOnPropertyAndRentalIncome/DG_10014027 )."

negative: If this is a business expense - then this is what is called reimbursement. Reimbursement is usually not considered as income since it is money paid back to you for an expense you covered for your employer with your after-tax money. However, for reimbursement to be considered properly executed, from income tax stand point, there are some requirements. I'm not familiar with the UK income tax law specifics, but I reason the requirements would not differ much from places I'm familiar with: before an expense is reimbursed to you, you should usually do this:  Show that the expense is a valid business expense for the employer benefit and by the employer's request. Submit the receipt for reimbursement and follow the employer's procedure on its approval. When income tax agent looks at your data, he actually will ask about the £1500 tab. You and you'll employer will have to do some explaining about the business activity that caused it. If the revenue agent is not satisfied, the £750 that is paid to you will be declared as your income. If the required procedures for proper reimbursement were not followed - the £750 may be declared as your income regardless of the business need. Have your employer verify it with his tax accountant.

negative: From India Tax point of view: Some one else may give the US tax treatment. Refer to this similar question what taxes I need to pay in India Capital Gains. My accountant never asked or reported the bought property in taxes- should he reported in taxes?Did he do wrong not reporting   should I report the property in my next year taxes?   If you mean in IT Returns, yes it should be declared. Can i bring the money back if needed? By Back if you mean repatriate to US, The capital portion would be Ease if the loan property was purchased or loan repaid from NRE. Else there is limit on the amount and paperwork. Consult a CA. If I rent the property instead of selling, do I have to report the income and what income?   should I be filling taxes on the rental income in India or just in USA or both   You are taxable for the rent and have to report it as income and pay taxes in India.

negative: This is taxable in India. You need to declare the income and pay taxes accordingly

negative: Under what section do I declare my profits when I pay tax? You have to declare this as income from other source and pay tax as per tax brackets. I'm from India and have been trading in binary options for a while now Trading in India on binary options is illegal. If you are using Forex from India for trading, this is not allowed as per Foreign Exchange Management Act.

negative: I keep visiting Dubai Not sure what kind of work it is, assuming it regular job. For the period mentioned above I was out of India for more than 182 days,  If you were out of India for more than 182 days in a given financial year then you would NRI for tax purposes. till date I have not transferred any money from Dubai to my India account. Whether you have transferred the money or not is not relevant for tax purposes. Your status [NRI / Resident] is relevant. Do I need to declare the income I have earned in Dubai? No you are not required to as your status is NRI. You are required to file a return on the income [Salary/Interest/gains/etc] accruing in India. Do I need to change my residential status ? Not sure where you are wanting to change this. Will the income I have earned in Dubai is taxable ? As you are NRI, the income earned outside of India is not taxable in India. From a tax point of view, it does not matter whether you keep the funds in Dubai or transfer it back to India. Edit: The Income Tax rules are not very clear if your wife can claim for her father-in-law. Best consult a CA. For quite a few regulations, Wife's father-in-law are treated at par with father.

negative: "The decision as to what counts as income is up to the bank. You'll need to ask them whether or not rental income can be included in the total. I can offer some anecdotal evidence: when I applied for a mortgage to buy my home, I already had a rental property with a buy-to-let mortgage on it. Initially the bank regarded that property as a liability, not an asset, because it was mortgaged! However, once I was able to show that there was a good history of receiving enough rent, they chose to ignore the property altogether -- i.e. it wasn't regarded as a liability, but it wasn't regarded as a source of income either. More generally, as AakashM says, residential mortgages are computed based on affordability, which is more than just a multiple of your salary. To answer your specific questions: Covered above; it's up to the bank. If you're married, and you don't have a written tenancy agreement, and you're not declaring the ""rent"" on your tax return, then it seems unlikely that this would be regarded as income at all. Conversely, if your partner is earning, why not put their name on the mortgage application too? Buy-to-let mortgages are treated differently. While it used to be the case that they were assessed on rental income only, nowadays lenders may ask for proof of the landlord's income from other sources. Note that a BTL cannot be used for a property you intend to live in, and a residential mortgage cannot be used for a property you intend to let to tenants -- at least, not without the bank's permission."

negative: "My employer decided to pay my salary in India after I submit a form W-8BEN. This means that the wages / salary is deemed accrued for work from India. Hence your employer need not withhold and pay taxes on this wage in US. Is this payment taxable in the States since I am staying outside of States? Should I declare this income to IRS in case if I go back to the States later this year? No tax is due as the work is done outside on US. If you go back this would be similar to as you had gone first. Depending on your ""tax residency status"" you would have to declare all assets. If my US employer wires my US salary to my NRE account is that taxable in India? This is still taxable in India. It is advised that you have the funds transferred into a regular savings account. Please note you have to pay taxes in advance as per prescribed due dates in Sept, Dec, March. how does the Indian tax man identify if it is a taxable income and not just the regular remittance. This question is off topic here. Whether income taxes finds out about this is irrelevant. By law one is required to pay taxes on income earned in India."

negative: The money was sent from my US bank to my father in India Your father can receive unlimited amount of money as GIFT from you. There is no tax implication on this transaction. Related question After 3 years, my father received a note from the income tax dept. asking him to pay income taxes. Possibly because the income does not match and there maybe high value transactions. This should be replied preferably with the help of CA. Now, the CA is asking him to pay tax in the money I transferred. Is that correct? This is incorrect. Please change the CA and get someone competent. If not, what should I or he do in this case? Get guidance from another CA. Your father can establish that this was convenience and show evidence of transfer from you [need bank statements from your bank and Indian bank]. Property registration payments receipts, etc. Or he can also show this as Gift. If required get a gift deed created.

negative: I have never had a lender ask my budget, only my income, savings, credit rating and value of the collateral. That's considered adequate info to estimate risk for most ordinary loans. Yes, they may want the income proven by evidence from your employer or via a copy of your tax returns. They don't care what you buy as long as there's evidence you'll make loan payments on time for the life of the loan.

negative: Now, I have kept this money and after interval of 6 month or year whenever the USD price go up, I do exchange with Indian currency and deposit in my account. Now do I have to pay Tax on this money?  No you are not required to pay any tax as the income was accrued when your were NRI for tax purposes. The Foreign currency upto USD 2000 can be held by an individual without any time limit. i.e. you can convert then whenever you want. There is nothing that needs to be declared in Tax Returns.

negative: "For the financial year 1 April 2014 to 31 March 2015, as you have [or will be] spent more than 182 days outside India, you would be treated as ""Non-Resident"" [NRI] for tax purposes.  If you are NRI  Show my Kuwaiti Income in my Income Tax Return?   Pay any tax on the money that I am sending to savings bank accounts in India You need not Pay Tax on your income outside India. i.e. there is no tax obligation created. It cannot be declared in Tax Returns. However any interest you earn on the money deposited in India would be subject to taxes. Will my wife have to show the income and/or pay the income tax on the money that I am sending to her savings bank accounts? There is no Income to you wife [Income is something you earn] and hence its out of scope from Income Tax act. It would fall under gift tax rules. As per Gift Tax one can transfer unlimited funds between close relatives. Hence there is No tax. It would be better if you open an NRO/NRE account and transfer funds into that account"

negative: I assume the OP is the US and that he is, like most people, a cash-basis tax payer and not an accrual basis tax payer. Suppose the value of the rental of the unit the OP is occupying  was reported  as income on the OP's 2010 and 2011 W-2 forms but the corresponding income  tax was not withheld.  If the OP correctly transcribed these income numbers onto his tax returns, correctly computed the tax on the income reported on his 2010 and 2011 1040 forms, and paid the amount due in timely fashion,  then there is no tax or penalty due for 2010 and 2011. Nor is the company entitled to withhold tax on this income for 2010 and 2011 at this time; the tax on that income has already been paid by the OP directly to the IRS and the company has nothing to do with the matter anymore. Suppose the value of the rental of the unit the OP is occupying  was NOT reported as income on the OP's 2010 and 2011 W-2 forms.  If the OP correctly transcribed these income numbers onto his tax returns, correctly computed the tax on the income reported on his 2010 and 2011 1040 forms, and paid the amount due in timely fashion,  then there is no tax or penalty due for 2010 and 2011. Should the OP have declared the value of the rental of the unit as additional income from his employer that was not reported on the W-2 form, and paid taxes  on that money? Possibly, but it would be reasonable to argue that the OP did nothing wrong other than not checking his W-2 form carefully: he simply assumed the income numbers included the value of the rental and copied whatever the company-issued W-2 form said onto his 1040 form. At least as  of now, there is no reason for the IRS to question his 2010 and 2011 returns because the numbers reported to the IRS on Copy A of the W-2 forms match the numbers reported by the OP on his tax returns.    My guess is that the company discovered that it had not actually declared the value of the rental payments on the OP's W-2 forms for 2010 and 2011 and now wants to include this amount as income on subsequent W-2 forms. Now, reporting a lump-sum benefit of $38K (but no actual cash)  would have caused a huge amount of income tax to need to be withheld, and the OP's next couple of paychecks might well have had zero take-home pay as all the money was going towards this tax withholding. Instead, the company is saying that it will report the $38K as income in 78 equal installments (weekly paychecks over 18 months?)  and withhold $150 as the tax due on each installment. If it does not already do so, it will likely also include the value of the current rent as a benefit and withhold tax on that too. So the OP's take-home pay will reduce by $150 (at least) and maybe more if the current rental payments also start appearing on the paychecks and tax is withheld from them too. I will not express an opinion on the legality of the company withholding an additional $150 as tax from the OP's paycheck, but will suggest that the solution proposed by the company (have the money appear as taxable benefits over a 78-week period, have tax withheld, and declare the income on your  2012, 2013 and 2014 returns) is far more beneficial to the OP than the company declaring to the IRS that it made a  mistake on the 2010 and 2011 W-2's issued to the OP, and that the actual income paid was higher. Not only will the OP have to file amended returns for 2010 and 2011 but the company will need to amend its tax returns too. In summary, the OP needs to know that He will have to pay taxes on the value of the waived rental payments   for 2010 and 2011. The company's mistake in not declaring this as income to the OP   for 2010 and 2011 does not absolve him of the responsibility   for paying the taxes What the company is proposing is a very reasonable solution to the   problem of recovering from the mistake. The alternative, as @mhoran_psprep points out, is to amend   your 2010 and 2011 federal and state tax returns to declare the   value of the rental during those years as additional income,   and pay taxes (and possibly penalties) on the additional   amount due. This takes the company completely out of the picture,   but does require a lot more work and a lot more cash now rather   than in the future.

negative: You need to register as self-employed with HMRC (it is perfectly fine to be self-employed and employed by an employer at the same time, in exactly your kind of situation). Then, when the income arrives you will need to declare it on your yearly tax return.  HMRC information about registering for self-employment and declaring the income is here: https://www.gov.uk/working-for-yourself/overview There's a few extra hoops if your clients are outside the UK; the detail depends on whether they are in the EU or not. More details about this are here: https://www.gov.uk/online-and-distance-selling-for-businesses/selling-overseas .

negative: I am not an accountant, but I do run a business in the UK and my understanding is that it's a threshold thing, which I believe is £2,500. Assuming you don't currently have to submit self assessment, and your additional income from all sources other than employment (for which you already pay tax) is less than £2,500, you don't have to declare it. Above this level you have to submit self assessment. More information can be found here I also find that HMRC are quite helpful - give them a call and ask.

negative: You won't be paying any taxes for income generated in the US as long as you are not-resident in India. You pay US taxes. You can file a null return in India just in case (all zeroes). If you have any income in India - bank deposits in your name, house rental income and so on - that needs to be declared and tax needs to be paid in India.

negative: No.  You don't need to pay the IRS before such a transfer – though you'll need to fill out certain paperwork to report the money transfer to authorities if it exceeds a threshold amount.  If the money is income, you'll need to declare it on your income tax return and then pay the taxes due.  If it is a gift, other rules apply and tax may be due.  Do proper due diligence and consult with a trusted tax professional. However:   Please see the comments above – this sounds like a potential scam.

negative: "ITR1 or ITR2 needs to be filed. Declare the income through freelancing in the section ""income from other sources"""

negative: Yes, if you can split your income up over multiple years it will be to your advantage over earning it all in one year.  The reasons are as you mentioned, you get to apply multiple deductions/credits/exemptions to the same income. Rather than just 1 standard deduction, you get to deduct 2 standard deductions, you can double the max saved in an IRA, you benefit more from any non-refundable credits etc. This is partly due to the fact that when you are filing your taxes in Year 1, you can't include anything from Year 2 since it hasn't happened yet. It doesn't make sense for the Government to take into account actions that may or may not happen when calculating your tax bill. There are factors where other year profit/loss can affect your tax liability, however as far as I know these are limited to businesses. Look into Loss Carry Forwarded/Back if you want to know more. Regarding the '30% simple rate', I think you are confusing something that is simple to say with something that is simple to implement.  Are we going to go change the rules on people who expected their mortgage deduction to continue? There are few ways I can think of that are more sure to cause home prices to plummet than to eliminate the Mortgage Interest Deduction. What about removing Student Loan Interest? Under a 30% 'simple' rate, what tools would the government use to encourage trade in specific areas? Will state income tax deduction also be removed? This is going to punish those in a state with a high income tax more than those in states without income tax. Those are all just 'common' deductions that affect a lot of people, you could easily say 'no' to all of them and just piss off a bunch of people, but what about selling stock though? I paid $100 for the stock and I sold it for $120, do I need to pay $36 tax on that because it is a 'simple' 30% tax rate or are we allowing the cost of goods sold deduction (it's called something else I believe when talking about stocks but it's the same idea?) What about if I travel for work to tutor individuals, can I deduct my mileage expenses? Do I need to pay 30% income tax on my earnings and principal from a Roth IRA? A lot of people have contributed to a Roth with the understanding that withdrawals will be tax free, changing those rules are punishing people for using vehicles intentionally created by the government. Are we going to go around and dismantle all non-profits that subsist entirely on tax-deductible donations? Do I need to pay taxes on the employer's cost of my health insurance? What about 401k's and IRA's? Being true to a 'simple' 30% tax will eliminate all 'benefits' from every job as you would need to pay taxes on the value of the benefits. I should mention that this isn't exactly too crazy, there was a relatively recent IRS publication about businesses needing to withhold taxes from their employees for the cost of company supplied food but I don't know if it was ultimately accepted. At the end of the day, the concept of simplifying the tax law isn't without merit, but realize that the complexities of tax law are there due to the complexities of life. The vast majority of tax laws were written for a reason other than to benefit special interests, and for that reason they cannot easily be ignored.

negative: PayPal transactions are not taxed in Australia. Income is taxed, and Ad network income is income.  Your relative will receive the money, and will have to declare the income so it can be taxed.  Your relative will then have to pay the tax. If you are to do this, you should transfer enough money from each payment for your relative to pay the tax; the rest you can move around however you wish.

negative: I cannot speak for the specific jurisdictions but you will generally pay income tax in each jurisdiction and be required to declare your foreign income in both. Your annual assessment takes into account both domestic and foreign income so sadly, there is no tax windfall to you. I would imagine that Finland and Belgium have tax treaties so you will not have to pay tax twice. You need an accountant in both countries to sort this for you.

negative: "I'm assuming that by saying ""I'm a US resident now"" you're referring to the residency determination for tax purposes. Should I file a return in the US even though there is no income here ? Yes. US taxes its residents for tax purposes (which is not the same as residents for immigration or other purposes) on worldwide income. If yes, do I get credits for the taxes I paid in India. What form   would I need to submit for the same ? I am assuming this form has to   be issued by IT Dept in India or the employer in India ? The IRS doesn't require you to submit your Indian tax return with your US tax return, however they may ask for it later if your US tax return comes under examination. Generally, you claim foreign tax credits using form 1116 attached to your tax return. Specifically for India there may also be some clause in the Indo-US tax treaty that might be relevant to you. Treaty claims are made using form 8833 attached to your tax return, and I suggest having a professional (EA/CPA licensed in your State) prepare such a return. Although no stock transactions were done last year, should I still   declare the value of total stocks I own ? If so what is an approx. tax   rate or the maximum tax rate. Yes, this is done using form 8938 attached to your tax return and also form 114 (FBAR) filed separately with FinCEN. Pay attention: the forms are very similar with regard to the information you provide on them, but they go to different agencies and have different filing requirements and penalties for non-compliance. As to tax rates - that depends on the types of stocks and how you decide to  treat them. Generally, the tax rate for PFIC is very high, so that if any of your stocks are classified as PFIC - you'd better talk to a professional tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State) about how to deal with them. Non-PFIC stocks are dealt with the same as if they were in the US, unless you match certain criteria described in the instructions to form 5471 (then a different set of rules apply, talk to a licensed tax adviser). I will be transferring most of my stock to my father this year, will   this need to be declared ? Yes, using form 709. Gift tax may be due. Talk to a licensed tax adviser (EA/CPA licensed in your State). I have an apartment in India this year, will this need to be declared   or only when I sell the same later on ? If there's no income from it - then no (assuming you own it directly in your own name, for indirect ownership - yes, you do), but when you sell you will have to declare the sale and pay tax on the gains. Again, treaty may come into play, talk to a tax adviser. Also, be aware of Section 121 exclusion which may make it more beneficial for you to sell earlier."

negative: "As you are earning an income by working in India, you are required to pay tax in India. If you contract is of freelance, then the income earned by you has to be self declared and taxes paid accordingly. There are some expenses one can claim, a CA should be able to guide you.   Not sure why the Swiss comapny is paying taxes?. Are they depositing this with Income Tax, India, do they have a TAN Number. If yes, then you don't need to pay tax. But you need to get a statement from your company showing the tax paid on behalf of you. You can also verify the tax paid on your behalf via ""http://incometaxindia.gov.in/26ASTaxCreditStatement.asp"" you cna register. Alternatively if you have a Bank Account in India with a PAN card on their records, most Banks provide a link to directly see"

negative: I want to know it is taxable any guidelines As per the income tax rules, this is taxable to you. The amount will be treated as gift to you. The limit of this in a year [across all friends] is Rs 50,000. If the limit exceeds, the entire amount is taxable. You would need to declare this as other income and pay taxes as per your tax brackets.

negative: Such activity is normally referred to as bartering income. From the IRS site - You must include in gross income in the year of receipt the fair market value of goods or services received from bartering. Generally, you report this income on Form 1040, Schedule C (PDF), Profit or Loss from Business (Sole Proprietorship), or Form 1040, Schedule C-EZ (PDF), Net Profit from Business (Sole Proprietorship). If you failed to report this income, correct your return by filing a Form 1040X (PDF), Amended U.S. Individual Income Tax Return. Refer to Topic 308 and Amended Returns for information on filing an amended return.

negative: I have read from lot of places that transferring funds from NRO to NRE is possible given correct documents are provided. Yes this is correct. The key document 15CB establishes that you have paid taxes that were due before money is transferred from the NRO account to the NRE account and/or are repatriated. Here is what I am simply doing- Steps 3 & 4 more so the step 4 can be seen as new income. So the source of the funds is originally from NRE account. However, the CA feels that since my withdrawal and deposit mechanism in NRO is cash, I might be subject to questioning.   Is there any issues in doing the above? The CA is right. The Cash Withdrawal and Cash Deposit has broken the link between the money withdrawn and the money deposited. It could easily be the case that the Cash Withdrawals were spent on expenses and the Cash Deposit is new (taxable) income to you. This new income needs to be declared and the taxes paid. If you Uncle is a close relative (the exact relationships that are called close relatives are defined by law), the return of the money can be declared to be a gift from your Uncle to you and no taxes are due from you on the money. If the funds are large, it is advised to have a gift deed. It is not a simple matter of creating a gift deed stating that your Uncle has given you a gift; your Uncle has to show how he acquired so many assets that he gave you some money as a gift and whether appropriate taxes were paid by him.  If your Uncle is not a close relative, he can still gift you up to Rs 50,000 per year without you having to pay any income tax on the money received, but again, a gift deed would be needed to account for the cash deposits. In short, keep speaking to your CA. He will advise you on the best course of action. Related Question Transfering money from NRE account in India to family member

negative: "Transferring the money or keeping it in US does has no effect on taxes. Your residency status has. Assuming you are Resident Alien in US for tax purpose and have paid the taxes to IRS and you are ""Non-Resident"" Indian for tax purposes in India as you are more than 182 outside India. How would it effect my Tax in US and India If you are ""Non-Resident"" in India for tax purposes, there is no tax liability of this in India. I have transferred an amount of approx 15-20k$ to Indian Account (not NRE) By RBI regulation, if you are ""Non-Resident"" then you should get your savings account converted to ""NRO"". You may not may not choose to open an NRE account. To keep the paper work clear it helps that you open an NRE account in India. Any investment needed ? Where do i need to declare if any ? These are not relevant.  Note any income generated in India, i.e. interest in Savings account / FDs / Rent etc; taxes need to be paid in India and declared in US and taxes paid in US as well. There is some relief under DTAA. There are quite a few question on this site that will help you clarify what needs to be done."

negative: You need to report the interest expense, assuming the loans were for your business: You need to report interest expense (only interest, principle is not an expense just as the loan proceeds are not income). The interest expense goes to the appropriate line on your Schedule C or E (depending on whether you used the loan for the online business or the rental). People whom you borrowed from must also report the interest as income to them on their Schedule B. You cannot deduct the interest expense if they don't report it as interest income. If you didn't take the loans for your business then the interest is not deductible. You don't need to report anything. People who lent you money still have to report the interest you paid to them as income on Schedule B. If you paid no interest (free loan) or below/above market interest to a related party (family member), then the imputed interest is considered income to them and gift to you. They need to report it on their Schedule B, and depending on amounts - on a gift tax return. For $1K to $10K loans there probably will be no need in gift tax returns, the exemption is for $14K per year per person. If the imputed interest rules may apply to you, better talk to a licensed tax adviser on how to proceed.

negative: The committee folks told us Did they also give you advice on your medication? Maybe if they told you to take this medicine or that you'd do that? What is it with people taking tax advice from random people? The committee told you that one person should take income belonging to others because they don't know how to explain to you which form to fill. Essentially, they told you to commit a fraud because forms are hard. I now think about the tax implications, that makes me pretty nervous. Rightly so. Am I going to have to pay tax on $3000 of income, even though my actual winning is only $1000? From the IRS standpoint - yes. Can I take in the $3000 as income with $2000 out as expenses to independent contractors somehow? That's the only solution. You'll have to get their W8's, and issue 1099 to each of them for the amounts you're going to pay them. Essentially you volunteered to do what the award committee was supposed to be doing, on your own dime. Note that if you already got the $3K but haven't paid them yet - you'll pay taxes on $3K for the year 2015, but the expense will be for the year 2016. Except guess what: it may land your international students friends in trouble. They're allowed to win prizes. But they're not allowed to work. Being independent contractor is considered work. While I'm sure if USCIS comes knocking, you'll be kind enough to testify on their behalf, the problem might be that the USCIS won't come knocking. They'll just look at their tax returns and deny their visas/extensions. Bottom line, next time ask a professional (EA/CPA licensed in your State) before taking advice from random people who just want the headache of figuring out new forms to go away.

negative: Are there any IRS regulations I should be aware of when sending money to India? None. As long as you are following the standard banking channels. You are also declaring all the accounts held outside US in your tax returns. FBAR. Is it legal to do so?  Yes it is legal. do I have to declare how much I am investing and pay extra taxes? As part of FBAR. Income earned [including interest, capital gains, etc] needs to be paid in India [there are some exemptions for example interest on NRE accounts] as well as in the US [relief can be claimed under DTAA Indian version here and US here]. So if you already have paid taxes on salary and say transfer USD 10K to India; there is no tax on this 10K. If this 10K generates an income of say 2K; this 2K is taxable as per normal classification and rules.

negative: "It seems that you think you are freelancing, and they think you are an employee. What's bad for you, the tax office will also think you are an employee if they withhold tax for you. Alternatively, they think you are stupid, and they keep the money, but are actually not paying it to the tax office at all, in which case you will have a bad surprise when you do your tax returns.  First, I'd ask them for proof that they are indeed paying these taxes into some account related to you. I'd then ask a tax adviser for some serious advice. If they are acting out of incompetence and not out of malice, then you should be mostly fine, but your work there will count as employment.  Heaven knows why they treat you as an employee. Check your contract with them; whether it is between you and them or your company and them. It maybe that they never hired a contractor and believe that they have to pay employment tax. They don't. If your company sends them a bill, then they need to pay that bill, 100% of it, and that's it. Taxes are fully your business and your responsibility. As ""quid"" said, if they say they are withholding tax, then at the very least there must be a paystub that proves they have actually been paying these taxes. If they withhold taxes, and there is no paystub, then this looks like a criminal attempt to cheat you.  If they have actually paid taxes properly into your account, then they are merely creating a mess that can hopefully be fixed. But it is probably complicated enough that you need a tax advisor, even if you had none before, since instead of paying to your company, they paid some money to the company, and some to you personally."


query: Does doing your “research”/“homework” on stocks make any sense?

positive: "Doing your homework means to perform what's more accurately called ""fundamental analysis"". According to proponents of fundamental analysis (FA), it is possible to accurately determine how much a stock should trade for and then buy or sell the stock based on whether it trades above or below this target price. This target price is based on the discounted anticipated future earnings of your stock, so ""doing your homework"" means that you figure out how much future earnings you can expect from the stock and then figuring out at what rate you want to discount those future earnings (Are 1000 dollars that you'll earn next year worth $800 today or $900 or only $500? That depends on the overall economic and political climate...) So does this make any sense? Depends. I'm aware that there are a lot of anecdotes of people researching a stock, buying that stock and doing well with that stock. But poor decisions can at times lead to good outcomes... EDIT: Due to some criticism, I want to expand on a few points. So, is homework completely for naught? No!"

positive: "TL;DR: Sure, ""do your own homework"" is sometimes a cop out. But that doesn't mean we shouldn't do our homework. I agree that in many cases this is a cop-out by commentators. However, even if you believe in perfect market efficiency, there is benefit in ""doing your homework"" for many reasons. One of which you already mention in the question: different stocks all with the same ""value"" might have widely ranging risk. Another factor that might vary between stocks is their tax consequences. High dividend stocks might be a better fit for some buyers than others. One stock might be priced at $40 because there is a small chance they might get regulatory approval for a new product. This might make this stock very risky with a 20% of being $150 in 12 months, and a 80% chance of being $20. Another stock might be priced at $40 because the company is a cash cow, declining in revenues but producing a large dividend of $0.40 per quarter. Low risk, but also with some potential tax disadvantages. Another stock might be priced at $40 because it's a high growth stock. This would be less risky than the first example, but more risky than the second example. And the risk would be more generalized, i.e. there wouldn't be one day or one event that would be make or break the stock. In short, even if we assume that the market is pricing everything perfectly, not all stocks are equal and not all stocks are equally appropriate to everyone. Sometimes when we hear an analyst say ""they should have done their homework"" they are really saying ""This was a high risk/high reward stock. They should have known that this had a potential downside."" And that all assumes that we believe in 100% pure market efficiency. Which many disagree with, at least to some extent. For example, if we instead subscribe to Peter Lynch's theories about ""local knowledge"", we might believe that everyone has some personal fields of expertise where they know more than the experts. A professional stock analyst is going to follow many stocks and many not have technical experience in the field of the company. (This is especially true of small and mid cap stocks.) If you happen to be an expert in LED lighting, it is entirely feasible (at least to me) that you could be able to do a better job of ""doing homework"" on CREE than the analysts. Or if you use a specialized piece of software from a small vendor at work, and you know that the latest version stinks, then you will likely know more than the analyst does. I think it is somewhat akin to going to a doctor. We could say to ourselves ""the doctor is more knowledgeable about me than medicine, I'm just going to do what they tell me to do."" And 99% of the time, that is the right thing to do. But if we do our ""homework"" anyway, and research the symptoms, diagnoses, and drugs ourselves as well, we can do get benefits. Sometimes we just can express our preferences amongst equal solutions. Sometimes we can ask smarter questions. And sometimes we have some piece of knowledge that the doctor doesn't have and can actually make an important discovery they didn't know. (And, just like investing, sometimes we can also have just enough knowledge to be dangerous and do ourselves harm if we go against the advice of the professionals.)"

positive: "The markets are not as information efficient as some might have you believe. But on the contrary, looking up what the aggregate professional analysts have said is also part of ""doing your homework"""

positive: In fact markets are not efficient and participants are not rational. That is why we have booms and busts in markets. Emotions and psychology play a role when investors and/or traders make decisions, sometimes causing them to behave in unpredictable or irrational ways. That is why stocks can be undervalued or overvalued compared to their true value.  Also, different market participants may put a different true value on a stock (depending on their methods of analysis and the information they use to base their analysis on). This is why there are always many opportunities to profit (or lose your money) in liquid markets. Doing your research, homework, or analysis can be related to fundamental analysis, technical analysis, or a combination of the two. For example, you could use fundamental analysis to determine what to buy and then use technical analysis to determine when to buy. To me, doing your homework means to get yourself educated, to have a plan, to do your analysis (both FA and TA), to invest or trade according to your plan and to have a risk management strategy in place. Most people are too lazy to do their homework so will pay someone else to do it for them or they will just speculate (on the latest hot tip) and lose most of their money.

negative: Yes, it makes sense. Like Lagerbaer says, the usefulness of technical indicators can not be answered with a simple yes or no. Some people gain something from it, others do not. Aside from this, applying technical indicators (or any other form of technical analysis - like order flow) to instruments which are composed of other instruments, such as indexes (more accurately, a derivative of it), does make sense. There are many theories why this is the case, but personally i believe it is a mixture of self fulfilling prophecy, that the instruments the index is composed of (like the stocks in the S&P500) are traded in similar ways as the index (or rather a trade-able derivative of it like ETFs and futures), and the idea that TA just represents human emotion and interaction in trading. This is a very subjective topic, so take this with a grain of salt, but in contrast to JoeTaxpayer i believe that yields are not necessary in order to use TA successfully. As long as the given instrument is liquid enough, TA can be applied and used to gain an edge. On the other hand, to answer your second question, not all stocks in an index correlate all the time, and not all of them will move in sync with the index.

negative: "You should spend zero on your stock research company.  If the management of the company actually had persistent skill in picking stocks, they would not be peddling their knowledge to the retail market for a few hundred dollars.  They would rake in millions and billions by running a huge hedge fund and buy themselves a private island or something.  Unfortunately for them, hedge fund investors are not as gullible as retail investors and are more likely to sue when they discover they have been lied to. Many stock ""research"" companies are trying to manipulate you into paying too high a price for stocks.  They buy a small stock, recommend it, and then sell it at the artificially (and temporarily) high price.  Others are simply recommending stocks pretty much at random. You could do that just as well as they can, and for free. Portfolio performance evaluation is a complex problem.  The research company knows that its recommendations will ""make good money"" about half the time and that's enough to bring in a lot of uninformed people.  To know whether your portfolio actually did well you need to know how much risk there was in the portfolio and how a competing ""dumb"" portfolio with similar characteristics fared over the same time period.  And you need to repeat the experiment enough times (or long enough) to know the outcome wasn't luck.  I can say confidently that your portfolio performance doesn't back up the claim that the research company has skill above and beyond luck.  Much less $599 worth of skill. I can also say very confidently that there are no investors with a total of 20 thousand dollars to invest for whom purchasing stock recommendations is worth the cost, even if those recommendations do have some value.  Real stock information is valuable only to large investors because the per-dollar value is low. Please do not give money to or otherwise support a semi-criminal ""stock research"" enterprise."

negative: Is it POSSIBLE? Of course. I don't even need to do any research to prove that. Just some mathematical reasoning: Take the S&P 500. Find the performance of each stock in that list over whatever time period you want to use for your experiment. Now select some number of the best-performing stocks from the list -- any number less than 500. By definition, the X best must be better than or equal to the average. Assuming all the stocks on the S&P did not have EXACTLY the same performance, these 10 must be better than average. You now have a diversified portfolio that performed better than the S&P 500 index fund. Of course as they always say in a prospectus, past performance is not a guarantee of future performance.  It's certainly possible to do. The question is, if YOU selected the stocks making up a diversified portfolio, would your selections do better than an index fund?

negative: Thanks /u/LupusSuperius . Great information. Do you have any terms  or articles(perhaps on investopedia or similar)you can recommend I search for how much debt is ideal to take on for a start up?  I'd like to learn more instead of getting you to do my homework if that makes sense.  My simulation is similar to Capsim. We've made two strategic decisions: 1. We went capital intensive in the first year to build up factory capacity. Year 1 we have very little R&D, but year 2 we plan to increase R&D budget.   Since it is a capital intensive year, should that capital expenditure be funded by debt entirely and I leave equity alone? I noticed this drives down my WACC, but I see a decrease in NPV because of increased interest payments. Also does it make sense to increase the debt to pay for R&D as well? The way I see it paying for the manufacturing plant on debt isn't bad because you get an asset out of it at the end, but paying for a R&D program seems foolish because in this simulation there's a chance your R&D program fails and does not provide results, so we would  see no return on the debt in that case.   Thanks again.

negative: Yes it does, I have just had the worst luck with my job search so far. I do need to brush up on my investing knowledge for interviews because I have been out of school for a few months now  Edit: do you work in ny? Any tips on getting me résumé noticed?

negative: If you are looking to hire a competent work injury attorney, then do your homework; research them, their work ethic, their commitment, their knowledge and record of winning. The right professionals have the experience to help people get what is owed to them

negative: "To be fair, while he was harsh and over-critical, he was realistic.    Based on your vague wording (understandable, you think you have a unique proprietary idea) but the other stuff you mentioned, I don't think you can confidently say it'll make ""way over $200,000"".  It doesn't seem like you've done much research at all, have a business plan together, or any credible experience to evaluate your idea without personal bias.    Hope you continue to pursue it, but do your homework.  Learn how to put together a business plan, etc.  Because obviously if you came to an investor with your idea explained in the style of your original post, you'd more than likely be laughed off as a delusional kid."

negative: "Well, they don't ""make"" money in the sense of income, but they receive money in exchange for shares of stock (more of the company is owned by the public).  The Warrant entitles the holder to purchase stock directly from the company at a fixed price.  It is very much like an open-market call option, but instead of the option holder buying stock from a third party (which does not affect the company at all), the holder buys it directly from the company, increasing the number of shares outstanding, and the proceeds go directly to the company. If the holders do not exercise the warrants, the company does not receive any cash, but they also don't issue any new shares."

negative: The sentiment is because between closing and opening a lot can happen, and between opening and the time your order actually goes through, even more can happen.  An after-hours trade has an extra amount of short-term risk attached; the price of a stock at the opening bell is technically the same as its price as of the closing the previous trading day, but within a tenth of a second, which is forever in a computerized exchange, that price may move drastically one way or the other, based on news and on other markets. The sentiment, therefore, is simple; if you're trading after-hours, you're trading risky. You're not trading based on what the market's actually doing, you're trading based on what you think the market will do in the morning, and there's still more math going on every second in the privately-held supercomputers in rented cubes in the NYSE basement than you could do all night, digesting this news and projecting what it's going to do to the stocks. Now, if you've done your homework and the stock looks like a good long-term buy, with or without any after-hours news, then place the order at 3 in the morning; who cares what the stock's gonna do at the opening bell. You're gonna hold that stock for the next ten years, maybe; what it does in 5 seconds of opening turmoil is relatively minor compared to the monthly trends that you should be worrying about.

negative: I won't be able to model stock prices using this information.  The pros aren't likely to use Google as much. Even the casual investor is likely to have his own habits. For example, I've come to like how Yahoo permits me to set up a portfolio and follow the stocks I want. And the information that interests me is there, laid out nicely, price, history, insider trades, news etc.  But your effort probably still has some discovery value, as it will help you understand when interest in a company suddenly swells above normal. Nothing wrong with a good project like that. Just don't expect to extract too much market-beating success from it. The pros will eat your lunch, take your money, and not even say thanks. Welcome to Money.SE.

negative: Stock markets are supposed to be about investment and providing capital to companies for operations and research.  High frequency trading is only about gaming the market and nothing else.  Arguments that this provides more capital or liquidity don't make any sense because the speed of trading is such that listed companies cannot take advantage and only high frequency traders are served.

negative: Yes, add the stocks/mutual funds that you want and then you would just need to add all the transactions that you theoretically would have made. Performing the look up on the price at each date that you would have sold or bought is quite tedious as well as adding each transaction.

negative: Yes though I'd likely put a caveat on that. If you take short-term investments and extrapolate the results to get an annual result this can be misleading. For example, if a stock goes up 10% in a month, assuming this will continue for the next 11 months may not be a great idea. Thus, beware of how much data do you have in making these calculations. When looking at long-term investments, the compound annual growth rate can be quite useful for comparison.

negative: Sure. No-one promises that all the outstanding stocks are ever for sale, but if you get them all - you get them all, what marketplace you used for that doesn't really matter.

negative: Are you trying to get someone to do your homework for you?  This question has been answered repeatedly in the negative by everyone who actually studies the economy.  Read Mundell-Flemming model, and learn this stuff.  You can see why currency regimes like the Euro make sense from a theoretical stand point, but where flexible exchange rates are a welcome release valve for pressures.  You obviously have never studied economics. Hyper inflation doesn't happen becuase of floating exhange rates.  Hyperinflation happens when people lose faith in the governing body, regardless of who that is.  You think political regimes won't change just because there is one currency?  No, they will still spent 1.05 for every dollar they bring in taxes.  Hyperinflation is not a problem of floating exchange rates, it doesn't follow from any causal relationship.

negative: "IMO, what it seems like you've done is nothing more than having screened out a company worth further investigation. The next step would be a thorough analysis of the company's past financials and current statements to arrive at your own opinion / forecast of the immediate and far future of the company's prospects.  Typically, this is done by looking at the company's regulatory filings, and maybe some additional searching on comparison businesses.  There are many sources of instruction for how one might ""value"" or ""analyze"" a company, or that provide help on ""reading a balance sheet"".  (This is not an easy skill to learn, but it is one that will prove invaluable over a lifetime of investing.) It is possible that you'll uncover a deteriorating business where the latest selling, and subsequent drop in price that caused the high yield, is well-deserved.  In which case, you know to stay away and move on to the next idea. On the other hand, you might end up confident that the company is not suffering from a drop in sales, rise in expenses, growing debt payments, loss of ""moat"", etc.  In which case, you've found a great investment candidate.  I say candidate because you still may decide this company isn't for you, even if the financials are right, because you might find better opportunities for an equal, or acceptable, return at lower risk while you're researching. As to the yield being high when there are no problems with the fundamentals of the business, this may simply be because of panic selling during this past few week's downturn, or some other sort of temporary and superficial scare.  However, be warned that the masses can remain irrational, and thus the price stay suppressed or even drop further, for longer than you're willing to wait for your ROI.  The good news is that in that case, you're being well compensated to wait at a 11+% yield!"

negative: "Another thing people forget is that you can only under perform the average (aka the index) if you try. For most things in life, the harder you try, the better you do. In investing, that is not true. You can lock in ""average"" by simply buying the index fund. If you try, but you don't work as hard as everybody else who is trying or if you are not as smart as everybody else who is trying, then you will be below average. If you try, and you do better research, you are intelligent, and most importantly more disciplined, you can beat the average. That is an awful lot of work to be a few percent above average. It's like a 100 man marathon race where you can choose to come in 50th place if you don't run, it definitely beats running 26 miles only to come in 70th place. Also, note the people who know they are not very skilled will choose to be non-participants. If you are in the top 30% percentile in skill, you'll get killed if 80% of the participants choose to sit out and you are competing with the top 20%. It becomes one of these funny game theory experiments where even if you know what your rank is, do you choose to sit out or not? (Or perhaps you will choose to participate when the shoe shine boy is giving out stock advice, and take the opposite side of the bet).  For most people, it doesn't make sense to try. It makes the most sense to lock in the average by putting money into index funds (stocks and bonds) over time. It certainly beats doing several hours of work a week and then getting below average. It only makes sense to try to beat the average if you are really excited about stocks (it is your job or it is your primary hobby) and you have enough capital where getting that extra +3% return over the average is significant (otherwise, just work more on your day job and you'll make more money through wages). I really cannot stress the last point enough, I know some people who are very smart and they do a lot of research on the market, and they get pretty good percentage returns. So you have to be cheap as hell or rich as hell before it makes sense to invest your own money. Otherwise, you'll spend 20-30 hours a week researching to make a few thousand dollars more than the index over a year (which consequently gets spent on celebratory drinking or something, so it never compounds). Not a wise way to spend your time."

negative: "The penny/pink sheet stocks you tend to see promoted are the ones a) with small public floats or, b) they are thinly traded.  This means that any appreciable change in buy/sell volume will have an outsized effect on the stock's share price, even when the underlying fundamentals are not so great.  Promoters are frequently paid based on how much they can move a stock's price, but such moves are not long-lasting.  They peter out when the trading volumes return to more normal ranges for the stock because all of the hype has died out. There are some small-cap NASDAQ stocks which can be susceptible to promotion for the same reason -- they have small floats and/or are thinly traded.  Once someone figures out the best targets, they'll accumulate a position and then start posting all kinds of ""news"" on the web in an effort to drum up interest so they can sell off their position into the buying that follows.   The biggest problem with penny/pink sheet stocks is that they frequently fail to publish reliable financial statements, and their ownership is of a dubious nature.  In the past, these types of stocks have been targeted by organized crime syndicates, which ran their own ""pump and dump"" operations as a way to make relatively easy money.  This may still be true to some extent today.   Be wary of investing in any publicly-traded firm that has to use promoters to drum up investor interest, because it can be a serious red flag.  Even if it means missing out on a short-term opportunity, research the company before investing.  Read its financials, understand how it has behaved through its trading history, learn about the products/services it is selling.  Do your homework.  Otherwise you are doing the investing equivalent of taking your money and lighting it on fire. Remember, there's a good reason these companies are trading as penny/pink sheet stocks, and it generally has nothing to do with the notion (the promoters will tell you) that somehow the ""market has missed out on this amazing opportunity.""  Pump and dump schemes, which lie at the heart of almost all stock promotion, rely on convincing you, the investor, that you're smart enough to see what others haven't.  I hope this helps. Good luck!"

negative: Here would be the general steps to my mind for creating such a plan: Write out the final desired outcome. Is it $x in y years to fund your retirement? Is it $a in b years to put as a house down payment? This is the first step in defining how much money you want at what point in time. Consider what is your risk tolerance and how much time do you plan on spending in this plan. Is it rebalancing once a quarter and that's it or do you plan on doing monthly research and making tweaks all the time? This is slightly different from the first where one has to be mindful of how much volatility would one handle and what time commitment does one have for an investing strategy. Also, how much money would you be adding to the investments on what kind of time table would also be worth noting here. Construct the asset allocation based on the previous two steps along with historical returns averaged out to be a first draft of what you are buying in general. Is it US stocks? Is it a short-term bond fund? There are more than a few choices here that may make sense and it is worth considering based on the first couple of responses that determine what this will look like. Retirement in 40 years may be quite different than a house down payment in 2 years for example. Determine what brokerages or fund companies would offer such funds along with what types of accounts you'd want to have as in some countries there may be tax-advantaged accounts that may be useful to use here. This is where you're almost ready to start by doing the homework of figuring out how will things work. This may vary depending on one's jurisdiction. Get the applications from whatever institutions you'll be using and run with the desired asset allocation across various funds and accounts. Note that in the first few steps there were points of being aware of how much would you have, how aggressive are you investing and so forth. This is where you actually send in the money and get things rolling. Run with the plan and make tweaks as needed to achieve result, hopefully desired or better.

negative: With the disclaimer that I am not a technician, I'd answer yes, it does. SPY (for clarification, an ETF that reflects the S&P 500 index) has dividends, and earnings, therefore a P/E and dividend yield. It would follow that the tools technicians use, such as moving averages, support and resistance levels also apply.  Keep in mind, each and every year, one can take the S&P stocks and break them up, into quintiles or deciles based on return and show that not all stock move in unison. You can break up by industry as well which is what the SPDRs aim to do, and observe the movement of those sub-groups.  But, no, not all the stocks will perform the way the index is predicted to.  (Note - If a technician wishes to correct any key points here, you are welcome to add a note, hopefully, my answer was not biased)

negative: 130k in LA?  That's not life-changing or anything.  Do the usual: save money, buy used cars, cheapest rent you can live with, etc.  If it was me, I'd be researching the local housing market.  Save cash until you find a deal you like.  Work the numbers, do your homework.  You're the finance guy - you should know what a good deal looks like.

negative: Based on that logic, go to a casino and bet it all on black...you have a better chance of being right...certainly it will minimize the duration of the pain...   I hope to gonzo that you have better research behind this decision than a simple feeling...don't forget that with options it doesn't matter if you are right or wrong as to if gold will drop or go up in price...what matters is WHEN that will happen...options have a limited life...If you think this is a bubble then so be it, but make sure you have done your homework with regard to TIMEFRAME!

negative: Yes. The real question is whether you should. You should consider your investment options, and take into the account that there's much more hype than value in many companies.

negative: "In a sense, yes. There's a view in Yahoo Finance that looks like this   For this particular stock, a market order for 3000 shares (not even $4000, this is a reasonably small figure) will move the stock past $1.34, more than a 3% move.  Say, on the Ask side there are 100,000 shares, all with $10 ask. It would take a lot of orders to purchase all these shares, so for a while, the price may stay right at $10, or a bit lower if there are those willing to sell lower.  But, say that side showed $10 1000, $10.25 500, $10.50 1000. Now, the volume is so low that if I decided I wanted shares at any price, my order, a market order will actually drive the market price right up to $10.50 if I buy 2500 shares ""market"".  You see, however, even though I'm a small trader, I drove the price up. But now that the price is $10.50 when I go to sell all 2500 at $10.50, there are no bids to pay that much, so the price the next trade will occur at isn't known yet. There may be bids at $10, with asking (me) at $10.50. No trades will happen until a seller takes the $10 bid or other buyers and sellers come in."

negative: No. Like Keshlam said, unless you have a crystal ball there is no sure thing. However based on the things you said in your question, you could be better off doing some back testing. With your findings, you can then set up trades in your favor but again it's not 100%. You may also want to check out quant finance stackexhange.

negative: "If you sold the stock for a profit, you will owe tax on that profit. Whether it is taxed as short-term or long-term capital gains depends on how long you held the stock before selling it. Presumably you're going to invest this money into mutual funds or something of that sort. Those may pay dividends which can be reinvested, and will grow in value (you hope) just as the individual stock shares would (you hope). Assuming the advice you've been given is at all reasonable, there's no need for buyer's remorse here; you're just changing your investing style to a different point on the risk-versus-return curve. (If you have to ask this question, I tend to agree that you should do more homework before playing with shares in individual companieS ... unless you're getting thess shares at employee discount, in which case you should still seriously consider selling them fairly quickly and reinvesting the money in a more structured manner. In a very real sense your job is itself an ""investment"" in your employer; if they ever get into trouble you don't want that to hit both your income and investments.)"

negative: "Yes, of course there have been studies on this.  This is no more than a question about whether the options are properly priced. (If properly priced, then your strategy will not make money on average before transaction costs and will lose once transaction costs are included.  If you could make money using your strategy, on average, then the market should - and generally will - make an adjustment in the option price to compensate.) The most famous studies on this were conducted by Black and Scholes and then by Merton. This work won the Nobel Prize in 1995. Although the Black-Scholes (or Black-Scholes-Merton) equation is so well known now that people may forget it, they didn't just sit down one day and write and equation that they thought was cool. They actually derived the equation based on market factors. Beyond this ""pioneering"" work, you've got at least two branches of study.  Academics have continued to study option pricing, including but not limited to revisions to the original Black-Scholes model, and hedge funds / large trading house have ""quants"" looking at this stuff all of the time.  The former, you could look up if you want. The latter will never see the light of day because it's proprietary. If you want specific references, I think that any textbook for a quantitative finance class would be a fine place to start.  I wouldn't be surprised if you actually find your strategy as part of a homework problem. This is not to say, by the way, that I don't think you can make money with this type of trade, but your strategy will need to include more information than you've outlined here.  Choosing which information and getting your hands on it in a timely manner will be the key."

negative: No, and using a 37 year old formula in finance that is as simple as: should make it obvious technical analysis is more of a game for retail traders than investment advice. When it comes to currencies, there are a myriad of macroeconomic occurrences that do not follow a predictable timescale. Using indicators like RSI on any time frame will not magically illuminate broad human psychology and give you an edge. It is theoretically possible for a single public stock's price to be driven by a range of technical traders who all buy at RSI 30 and sell at RSI 70, after becoming a favorite stock on social media, but it is infinitely more likely for all market participants to have completely different goals.

negative: "Your scenario depicts 2 ""in the money"" options, not ""at the money"". The former is when the share price is higher than the option strike, the second is when share price is right at strike. I agree this is a highly unlikely scenario, because everyone pricing options knows what everyone else in that stock is doing. Much about an option has everything to do with the remaining time to expiration. Depending on how much more the buyer believes the stock will go up before hitting the expiration date, that could make a big difference in which option they would buy. I agree with the others that if you're seeing this as ""real world"" then there must be something going on behind the scenes that someone else knows and you don't. I would tread with caution in such a situation and do my homework before making any move.   The other big factor that makes your question harder to answer more concisely is that you didn't tell us what the expiration dates on the options are. This makes a difference in how you evaluate them. We could probably be much more helpful to you if you could give us that information."

negative: Let's ask another question:  Why do you buy X at price $Y? Here are some answers: Now, another question:  Are you guaranteed to get at least $Y worth of value when you buy X? Of course not!  A lot of things can happen.  Your car can be a lemon.  Your pedigreed Dachshund can get run over by a snowblower.  Or, the prices of the underlying commodity or security can go against your futures contract. You can raise your chances of getting appropriate value out of X by doing your homework and hedging your risk.  The more homework you do, the less of a gamble you're taking.

negative: most def.  When I have an algorithmic trading strategy I want to spitball, or some question about how to exploit netback pricing inefficiency between West Texas Intermediate and Brent prices based on some sort of shipping rate change, I'd like to post here.  When I want a new job, I'll go to r/financialcareers.

negative: Only if you sell the stock in question, and use the proceeds to buy other stock. (You should probably never feel bad about selling your company stock, even if it goes up a lot later, because from a risk-exposure basis you are already exposed to your company's performance through your career. Unless you have a lot of other savings, you should diversify.)