query: Canada discount stock brokers: Interactive Brokers vs. Questrade?

positive: I have had accounts at both IB and Questrade. Whatever you've heard about Questrade, sadly much of it is true pertaining to 2007-2009. I have not had any issues with their service, and making the few trades I do with the QuestraderWEB service has been flawless. In the time that I've had the account, their service has constantly been improving (statements are easier to read, customer service is more responsive). You should read what FrugalTrader and Canadian Capitalist have to say along with the combined 1000+ comments before deciding. Interactive Brokers is a whole different world. Those guys are the definition of real-time. You can get daily and weekly statements, along with the typical monthly statements. Buying power, margin, etc, is all updated in real-time and viewable in their TWS software. Trading fees are definitely lower than Questrade unless you're routinely trading 800-1000+ shares. Most of my trades cost $1. Options have a lower limit before Questrade makes more sense. And nothing beats IB for forex. Ultimately it really depends on what you will be doing. Note that IB charges a minimum monthly fee of $10 ($3 if you're young and foolish). If you don't hit that with commissions, the balance is taken from your account. Also, all other fees are passed on to you (e.g. data, order cancellation). IB also doesn't have any registered accounts such as TFSA or RRSP, and doesn't plan to. If you'll be doing a bunch of hefty trading, IB offers a trading platform free of charge, but charges for everything else. Questrade instead has a monthly fee for its QuestraderPRO and QuestraderELITE services, but that includes data and flat rate commissions. If you're just looking for a place to invest cheaply without extra fees and plan on making a few trades a year, Questrade might be the right choice.

negative: Questrade is a Canada based broker offering US stock exchange transactions as well. It says this right on their homepage. ETFs are traded like stocks, so the answer is yes.  Why did you think they only offered funds?

negative: "Interactive Brokers offers global securities trading. Notice that the security types are: cash, stock (STK), futures (FUT), options (OPT), futures options   (FOP), warrants (WAR), bonds, contracts for differences (CFD), or   Dutch warrants (IOPT) There is a distinction between options (OPT), warrants (WAR), options on futures (FOP) and finally, Dutch Warrants (IOPT). IOPT is intuitively similar to an ""index option"". (For index option valuation equations, iopt=1 for a call, and iopt= -1 for a put. I don't know if Interactive Brokers uses that convention).  What is the difference between a ""Dutch Warrant"" and an option or warrant? Dutch warrants aren't analogous to Dutch auctions e.g. in the U.S.Treasury bond market. For North America, Interactive Brokers only lists commissions for traditional warrants and options, that is, warrants and options that have a single stock as the underlying security. For Asia and Europe, Interactive Brokers lists both the  ""regular"" options (and warrants) as well as ""equity index options"", see commission schedule. Dutch warrants are actually more like options than warrants, and that may be why Interactive Brokers refers to them as IOPTS (index options). Here's some background from a research article about Dutch warrants (which was NOT easy to find): In the Netherlands, ING Bank introduced call and put warrants on the   FT-SE 100, the CAC 40 and the German DAX indexes. These are some differences between [Dutch] index warrants and exchange traded index options: That last point is the most important, as it makes the pricing and valuation less subject to arbitrage. Last part of the question: Where do you find Structured Products on Interactive Brokers website? Look on the Products page (rather than the Commissions page, which does't mention Structured Products at all). There is a Structured Products tab with details."

negative: "Before the prevalence of electronic trading, trading stocks was very costly, dropping from ~15c in the late 1970s to less than a nickel per share today.  Exchange fees for liquidity takers are ~0.3c per share, currently. When orders were negotiated exclusively by humans, stocks used to be quoted in fractions rather than decimal, such as $50 1/2 instead of something more precise like $50.02. That necessary ease of negotiation for humans to rapidly trade extended to trade size as well.  Traders preferred to handle orders in ""round lots"", 100 shares, for ease of calculation of the total cost of the trade, so 100 shares at $50 1/2 would have a total cost of $5,050.  The time for a human to calculate an ""odd lot"" of 72 shares at $50.02 would take much longer so would cost more per share, and these costs were passed on to the client. These issues have been negated by electronic trading and simply no longer exist except for obsolete brokerages.  There are cost advantages for extremely large trades, well above 100 shares per trade. Brokerage fees today run the gamut: they can be as insignificant as what Interactive Brokers charges to as high as a full service broker that could charge hundreds of USD for a few thousand USD trade.  With full service brokerages, the charges are frequently mystifying and quoted at the time a trade is requested.  With discount brokerages, there is usually a fee per trade and a fee per share or contract.  Interactive Brokers will charge a fee per share or option only and will even refund parts of the liquidity rebates exchanges provide, as close as possible to having a seat on an exchange.  Even if a trader does not meet Interactive Brokers' minimum trading requirement, the monthly fee is so low that it is possible that a buy and hold investor could benefit from the de minimis trade fees. It should be noted that liquidity providing hidden orders are typically not rebated but are at least discounted. The core costs of all trades are the exchange fees which are per share or contract.  Over the long run, costs charged by brokers will be in excess of charges by exchanges, and Interactive Brokers' fee schedule shows that it can be reduced to a simple markup over exchange fees.   Exchanges sometimes have a fee schedule with lower charges for larger trades, but these are out of reach of the average individual."

negative: Interactive Brokers provides historical intraday data including Bid, Ask, Last Trade and Volume for the majority of stocks. You can chart the data, download it to Excel or use it in your own application through their API.  EDIT: Compared to other solutions (like FreeStockCharts.com for instance), Interactive Brokers provides not only historic intraday LAST**** trades **but also historic BID and ASK data, which is very useful information if you want to design your own trading system.  I have enclosed a screenshot to the chart parameter window and a link to the API description.

negative: I don't believe from reading the responses above that Questrade is doing anything 'original' or 'different' much less 'bad'. In RRSPs you are not allowed to go into debt. So the costs of all trades must be covered.  If there is not enough USD to pay the bill then enough CAD is converted to do so.  What else would anyone expect? How margin accounts work depends on whether the broker sets up different accounts for different currencies. Some do, some don't.  The whole point of using 'margin' is to buy securities when you don't have the cash to cover the cost.  The result is a 'short' position in the cash.  Short positions accrue interest expense which is added to the balance once a month.  Every broker does this. If you buy a US stock in a USD account without the cash to cover it, you will end up with USD margin debt.  If you buy US stock in an account that co-mingles both USD and CAD assets and cash, then there will be options during the trade asking if you want to settle in USD or CAD.  If you settle in CAD then obviously the broker will convert the necessary CAD funds to pay for it.  If you settle in US funds, but there is no USD cash in the account, then again, you have created a short position in USD.

negative: Your wife could open a non-registered margin trading account with a Canadian full-service or discount broker. An account at one of the top Canadian brokers should provide access to trade U.S.-listed options. I've traded both Canadian and U.S.-listed options with my own broker. On the application, you'd need to indicate an interest in trading options, and more specifically, what kind of option trades; e.g. long puts and calls only, covered writing, combination trades, etc. And yes, part of the application approval process (at least when I went through it) is to answer a few questions to prove that the applicant is aware of the types of risks with trading options. Be sure to do some research on the fees and currency/fx aspects before you choose a broker.  If you plan to exercise any options purchased or expect to be assigned for any you write, be aware that those fees are often different from the headline cost-per-trade advertised by brokers. For instance, I pay in excess of $40 when a call option I write gets assigned, vs. ~$10 that I'd pay if I just plain sold the stock. One other thing to investigate is what kind of online option trading research and order entry tools are available; not every broker has the same set of features with respect to options — especially if it isn't a big part of their business.

negative: While most all Canadian brokers allow us access to all the US stocks, the reverse is not true.  But some US brokers DO allow trading on foreign exchanges. (e.g. Interactive Brokers at which I have an account).  You have to look and be prepared to switch brokers.  Americans cannot use Canadian brokers (and vice versa). Trading of shares happens where-ever two people get together - hence the pink sheets.  These work well for Americans who want to buy-sell foreign stocks using USD without the hassle of FX conversions.  You get the same economic exposure as if the actual stock were bought.   But the exchanges are barely policed, and liquidity can dry up, and FX moves are not necessarily arbitraged away by 'the market'.  You don't have the same safety as ADRs because there is no bank holding any stash of 'actual' stocks to backstop those traded on the pink sheets.

negative: This very informative link gives a clear and comprehensive comparison (pros and cons) of various popular brokers: https://www.nerdwallet.com/blog/investing/best-online-brokers-for-stock-trading/ (Best Online Brokers for Stock Trading 2016) There are indeed some significant cons for the super-low commission fee. Just for a quick example, the Interactive Broker requires a minimum of 10k account balance, as well as the frequent trading activity even on monthly basis (or the minimum $10 commission would be charged).

negative: Tell your broker.  You can usually opt to have certain positions be FIFO and others LIFO.  Definitely possible with Interactive Brokers.

negative: You might what to check out Interactive Brokers. If your India stock is NSE listed they might be able to do it since they support trading on that exchange. I would talk to a customer service rep there first. https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/index.php?f=exchanges&p=asia

negative: Interactive Brokers offers many foreign markets (19 countries) for US based investors. You can trade all these local markets within one universal account which is very convenient in my view. IB offering

negative: You can use interactive brokers. It allows you to have a single account to trade stocks and currencies from several countries.

negative: There are some brokers in the US who would be happy to open an account for non-US residents, allowing you to trade stocks at NYSE and other US Exchanges. Some of them, along with some facts: DriveWealth Has support in Portuguese Website TD Ameritrade Has support in Portuguese Website Interactive Brokers Account opening is not that straightforward Website

negative: "Yes, Interactive Brokers is a good source for live data feeds and they have an API which is used to programmatically access the feeds, you will have to pay for data feeds from the individual data sources though.  The stock exchanges have a very high price for their data and this has stifled innovation in the financial sector for several decades in the united states. But at the same time, it has inflated the value and mystique of ""quants"" doing simple algorithms ""that execute within milliseconds"" for banks and funds.  Also RIZM has live feeds, it is a younger service than other exchanges but helps people tap into any online broker's feeds and let you trade your custom algorithms that way, that is their goal."

negative: Interactive Brokers advertises the percent of profitable forex accounts for its own customers and for competitors. They say they have 46.9% profitable accounts which is higher than the other brokers listed. It's hard to say exactly how this data was compiled- but I think the main takeaway is that if a broker actually advertises that most accounts lose money, it is probably difficult to make money. It may be better for other securities because forex is considered a very tough market for retail traders to compete in.  https://www.interactivebrokers.com/en/?f=%2Fen%2Ftrading%2Fpdfhighlights%2FPDF-Forex.php

negative: API wise there's just one at the retail level: Interactive Brokers (India). Brokerage is high though - 3.5 bps for F&O and 5 bps for cash.  I've used Sharekhan (good, can get to 2 bps brokerage, trading client software, no API). Also used multiple other brokerages, and am advising a new one, Zerodha http://www.zerodha.com. API wise the brokers don't provide it easily to retail, though I've worked with direct access APIs at an institutional level.

negative: Here are a couple of articles that can help highlight the differences between a broker and an online investment service, which seems to be part of the question that you're asking. Pay attention to the references at the end of this link. http://finance.zacks.com/online-investing-vs-personal-broker-6720.html Investopedia also highlights some of the costs and benefits of each side, broke and online investment services. http://www.investopedia.com/university/broker/ To directly answer your question, a broker may do anything from using a website to making a phone call to submitting some other form of documentation. It is unlikely that he is talking directly to someone on the trading floor, as the volume traded there is enormous.

negative: http://www.moneysupermarket.com/shares/CompareSharesForm.asp lists many. I found the Interactive Investor website to be excruciatingly bad. I switched to TD Waterhouse and found the website good but the telephone service a bit abrupt. I often use the data presented on SelfTrade but don't have an account there.

negative: "Certain brokers allow for hidden orders to be placed in the market. It is as simple as that. Refer to Interactive Brokers as one example. If you press on the "" i "" next to ""Hidden"" you will get the following description.  Some brokers may represent the hidden orders by an * next to the price level. Sometimes large orders are place as these hidden orders to avoid large movements in the stock price (especially if the stock is illiquid as per your observation)."

negative: If you want direct access trading that is very hard to get. However an active trading broker like interactive brokers, Trade station, or Light speed trading may be what you are looking for. If you have serious cash though value or income investing is better than trading which is pure speculation. I know that active trading can be exciting but it's also basically gambling when compared to research based long term investment. You can't fight the market makers, the guys on the dealer desks have way too many advantages over you. Just give this all some thought and see what you want to do.

negative: You can invest upto $200K per year abroad, and yes, you can buy Google as a stock. Consider opening an international account with a broker like interactive brokers (www.interactivebrokers.co.in) which allows you to fund the account from your local Indian account, and then on, buy shares of companies listed abroad.

negative: The reason it's not automatic is that Questrade doesn't want to force you to convert in margin accounts at the time of buying the stock. What if you bought a US stock today and the exchange rate happened to be very unfavorable (due to whatever), wouldn't you rather wait a few days to exchange the funds rather than lose on conversion right away? In my opinion, Questrade is doing you a favor by letting you convert at your own convenience.

negative: First--and I'm only repeating what has been said already--roboadvisors are a great way to avoid paying high MERs and still not have to do much yourself. The Canadian Couch Potato method is great IF you are disciplined and spend the time every few months to regularly re-balance your portfolio. However, any savings you gain in low MERs is going to very likely be lost if you aren't re-balancing or if you aren't patient and disciplined in your investing. For that reason, the Couch Potato way isn't appropriate for 97% of the general population in my opinion. But if you are reading this, you probably already aren't a member of the general population. For myself, life seems always too busy and I've got a kid on the way. I see a huge value in using a robo-advisor (or alternatively Tangerine) and saving time in my day. The next question, which robo-advisor is best? I did a bunch of research here and my conclusion is that they are all fairly similar. My final three came down to Wealthbar/Wealthsimple/NestWeatlh. Price structures vary, but minus a few dollars here or there, there isn't a lot of difference in costs. What made WealthSimple stick out was that they provide some options for US citizens that help me prevent tax headaches. They also got back to me by email with really detailed answers when I had questions, which was really appreciated. Their site and monthly updates are minimalist and intuitive to navigate. Great user experience all around (I do web design myself). My gut feeling is that they have their act together and will stick around as a company for a long while.

negative: You will likely need to open an account in another EU country, like a broker operating out of France, Britain or Germany, to get the best options.  If you are comfortable using an english language site and interface, I highly recommend Interactive Brokers as they let you trade in many markets simultaneously, have simple currency conversion, and great tools.  But, they are geared toward active traders so you might be better with a more retail oriented broker if you are new to trading stocks. There are many options.  Here is a list to start with:

negative: The following have been recommended to me for the UK: When I was doing my investigations, all had good reputations but Interactive Investor looked to have the nicer service and their fees seemed a bit more reasonable.  TD Waterhouse has the advantage of a number of sites serving local markets (TD Ameritrade for the US, for instance).

negative: Most UK stock brokers don't require or allow margin trading.  A quick web search for 'UK share dealing comparison' shows entries from money.co.uk and moneysupermarket.com who both provide lists of different brokers, e.g. Barclays, Hargraves Lansdown, IG Share Dealing, The Share Centre, TD Direct, Interactive Investor, YouInvest, etc. Some of the UK banks also provide a share dealing service, from quickly looking at their websites, Barclays, HSBC and Halifax all appear to provide share dealing services.

negative: "The answer, like many answers, is ""it depends"". Specifically, it depends on the broker, and the type of account you have with the broker. Most brokers will charge you once per transaction, so a commission on the buy, and a commission (and SEC fee in the US) on the sale. However, if you place a Good-til-Canceled (GTC) order, and it's partially filled one day, then partially filled another day, you'll be charged two commissions. There are other brokers (FolioFN comes to mind) that either have trading ""windows"", where you can make any number of trades within that window, or that have a fixed monthly fee, giving you any (probably with some upper limit) number of trades per month. There are other brokers (Interactive Brokers for example), that charge you the standard commission on buy and another commission and fee on sell, but can refund you some of that commission for making a market in the security, and pay you to borrow the securities. So the usual answer is ""two commissions"", but that's not universal. However, while commissions are important, with discount brokers, you'll find the percent you're paying for commissions is minimal, which losses due to slippage and poor execution can swamp."

negative: "This has been answered countless times before: One example you may want to look at is DGRO.  It is an iShares ETF that many discount brokers trade for free.  This ETF:  offers ""exposure to U.S. stocks focused on dividend growth""."

negative: Depending on your broker, you can buy these stocks directly at the most liquid local exchanges. For instance, if you are US resident and want to to buy German stocks (like RWE) you can trade these stocks over InteractiveBrokers (or other direct brokers in the US). They offer direct access to German Xetra and other local markets.

negative: "There are a number of choices: I prefer Dilip's response ""Have you tried asking etrade?"" No offense, but questions about how a particular broker handles certain situations are best asked of the broker.  Last - one should never enter into any trade (especially options trades) without understanding the process in advance. I hope you are asking this before trading."

negative: In Switzerland you should have access to many brokers with fair rates, e.g. Interactive Brokers. Going through them you then put the money in various Swiss stocks like Roche, Novartis, Swisscom, Credit Suisse, Logitech, etc. No stock should be more than 10% of the total. Since you pay 0% taxes on investment profits, you really should invest.  By going through a broker instead of your bank, you can cash out at any time without losing outrageous fees for the stock commissions (often 2% for banks, around 0% for brokers).  If you're employed you can also ask your employer to increase the amount of your salary that goes to the pension (2. Säule), which is not limited like the 7000 you mentioned (3.Säule).

negative: For question #1, at least some US-based online brokers do permit direct purchases of stocks on foreign exchanges. Depending on your circumstances, this might be more cost effective than purchasing US-listed ADRs. One such broker is Interactive Brokers, which allows US citizens to directly purchase shares on many different foreign exchanges using their online platform (including in France). For France, I believe their costs are currently 0.1% of the total trade value with a 4€ minimum. I should warn you that the IB platform is not particularly user-friendly, since they market themselves to traders and the learning curve is steep (although accounts are available to individual investors). IB also won't automatically convert currencies for you, so you also need to use their foreign exchange trading interface to acquire the foreign currency used to purchase a foreign stock, which has plusses and minuses. On the plus side, their F/X spread is very competitive, but the interface is, shall we say, not very intuitive. I can't answer question #2 with specific regards to US/France. At least in the case of IB, though, I believe any dividends from a EUR-denominated stock would continue to accumulate in your account in Euros until you decide to convert them to dollars (or you could reinvest in EUR if you so choose).


query: Can a car company refuse to give me a copy of my contract or balance details?

positive: "The comments are getting too much, but to verify that you are not insane, you are being bullied.  It sounds like this is a sub-prime loan, of which you are wisely trying to get out of.  It also sounds like they are doing everything in their power to prevent you from doing so.  For them you are a very profitable customer. This might take some legwork for you, but depending on how bad they are violating the law they might be willing to forgive the loan.  What I am trying to say, it might be very worth your while! Your first step will be looking for any free resources at your disposal: Just be cautious as many ""credit representation"" type business are only offering loan consolidation.  That is not what you need. Fight those bastards!"

positive: "You won't be able to sell the car with a lien outstanding on it, and whoever the lender is, they're almost certain to have a lien on the car.  You would have to pay the car off first and obtain a clear title, then you could sell it. When you took out the loan, did you not receive a copy of the finance contract?  I can't imagine you would have taken on a loan without signing paperwork and receiving your own copy at the time.   If the company you're dealing with is the lender, they are obligated by law to furnish you with a copy of the finance contract (all part of ""truth in lending"" laws) upon request.  It sounds to me like they know they're charging you an illegally high (called ""usury"") interest rate, and if you have a copy of the contract then you would have proof of it.  They'll do everything they can to prevent you from obtaining it, unless you have some help. I would start by filing a complaint with the Better Business Bureau, because if they want to keep their reputation intact then they'll have to respond to your complaint.   I would also contact the state consumer protection bureau (and/or the attorney general's office) in your state and ask them to look into the matter, and I would see if there are any local consumer watchdogs (local television stations are a good source for this) who can contact the lender on your behalf.  Knowing they have so many people looking into this could bring enough pressure for them to give you what you're asking for and be more cooperative with you. As has been pointed out, keep a good, detailed written record of all your contacts with the lender and, as also pointed out, start limiting your contacts to written letters (certified, return receipt requested) so that you have documentation of your efforts. Companies like this succeed only because they prey on the fact many people either don't know their rights or are too intimidated to assert them.  Don't let these guys bully you, and don't take ""no"" for an answer until you get what you're after. Another option might be to talk to a credit union or a bank (if you have decent credit) about taking out a loan with them to pay off the car so you can get this finance company out of your life."

positive: Phone conversations are useless if the company is uncooperative, you must take it into the written word so it can be documented.  Sent them certified letters and keep copies of everything you send and any written responses from the company.  This is how you will get actual action.

positive: The advice above is generally good, but the one catch I haven't seen addressed is which specific laws apply.  You said that you are in Arkansas, but the dealer is in Texas.  This means that the laws of at least two different states are in play, possibly three if the contract contains a clause stating that disputes will be handled in a certain jurisdiction, and you are going to have to do some research to figure out what actually applies.   One thing that may significantly impact this issue is whether you were in TX or AR when you signed the contracts.  If you borrowed the money in TX, and the lender is in TX, then it is almost certain that the laws of Texas will govern.  However, if you were living in AR at the time you acquired the loan, particularly if you were in AR when you signed the papers, you have a decent case for claiming that the laws of Arkansas govern.  I don't know enough about either state to know if one is more favorable to the consumer than the other, but it is a question you really want to have answered.  That said, I would be shocked if any state did not have provisions requiring the lender to provide a copy of the terms and a detailed statement of the account and transaction history upon request.  Spend some time on the web site of the Texas attorney general and/or legislator (because that is where the lender is, they are more likely to respect Texas law) to see if you can track down any specific laws or codes that you can reference.  You might also look into the federal consumer protection laws, though I can't think of one off hand that would apply in the scenario you have described.   Then work on putting together a letter asking them to provide a copy of the contract and a full history of the account.  As others noted, make sure you send it certified/return receipt, or better yet use a private carrier such as fedex, and check the box about requiring a signature. Above all you need to get the dialog transferred to a written form.  I can not stress this point enough.  Everything you tell them or ask for from here out needs to be done in a written format.  If they call you about anything, tell them you want to see their issue/offer in writing before you will consider it. You do not necessarily need a lawyer to do any of this, but you do need to know the applicable laws.  Do the research to know what your legal standing is.  Involve a lawyer if you feel you need to, but I have successfully battled several large utility companies and collection agencies into behaving without needing one.

positive: No, they cannot refuse to provide you with the current balance or a balance history. The other answers point you to resources that are available to help you put pressure on the dealership. The bottom line is that you now know that you have the right to the details and to audit their recording of the transactions. You should now use that information and demand a better response in writing. If they have to give you a response in writing, they can't deny the answer they gave in a court of law later on. They understand this, and they will take you more seriously if you send a letter. Make sure to keep copies of the letter and send it with certified delivery.

negative: "Understood. But based on the OP, it's not categorically clear what they were refusing.   If they refused to quote the balance and/or refused to take a phone payment that was otherwise in keeping with the cardholder agreement (i.e., the cardmember called the correct number for phone payments and balance-checking, etc), then yeah, they were not only being unreasonable, but also violating the contract.   What I read as ambiguous is whether the cardholder was specifically asking for the *payoff* balance/amount, and whether they were following process for phone-payments and balance-checking, etc.   IOW, it's not necessarily ""illegal"" and might not even be unreasonable for the customer-service number to have different departments for balance-checking and phone-payments versus card-cancellation. It's not falsifiably clear from the OP that the cardholder was not asking the person on the other end of the phone for categorical statements of fact that they were obligated to make.   I'm not accusing anyone of lying or saying that the CC company was acting reasonably, I'm just saying that language such as **""They do not provide mid-cycle payoff quotes""** is not evidence that they were doing any kind of funny-business."

negative: Dumb Coder has already given you a link to a website that explains your rights. The only thing that remains is how to execute the return without getting more grief from the dealer. Though the legal aspects are different, I believe the principle is the same. I had a case where I had to rescind the sale of a vehicle in the US. I was within my legal rights to do so, but I knew that when I returned to the dealership they would not be pleased with my decision. I executed my plan by writing a letter announcing my intention to return the vehicle siting the relevant laws involved with a space at the bottom of the letter for the sales person to acknowledge receipt of the letter and indicate that there was no visible damage to the car when the vehicle was returned. I printed two copies of the letter, one for them to keep, and one for me to keep with the signed acknowledgement of receipt. As expected, they asked me to meet with the finance manager who told me that I wouldn't be able to return the car. I thanked him for meeting with me and told him that I would be happy to meet in court if I didn't receive a check within 7 days. (That was his obligation under the local laws that applied.)

negative: No. A company cannot bill you for services you did not request nor receive. If they could, imagine how many people would just randomly get bills in their mail. Ignore them. They don't have a contract or agreement with you and can't do anything other than make noise. If they get aggressive or don't stop requesting money, hire an attorney and it will be taken care of.

negative: How can you not know? Brand new technology. Infection would be less likely if it seemed that the people doing this cared about the well being of the research subject. They don't have to take them out, but my point was that if they don't then they still have them. [Copying NFC chips is already being done](https://play.google.com/store/apps/details?id=com.skjolberg.nfc.clone2&hl=en). Stalking is simply a matter of doing the same thing that the company is in tracking the subject.  My motivation: when I was 10, I read a book that you might have heard of : 1984. Scared me to death. Still haunts me.

negative: As long as someone is willing to take it, you can write it!  I personally wrote a check for a new car.   The dealership didn't bat an eye.

negative: Without the contract it's hard to say for sure, but Consumer Reports indicates that it's pretty easy to lose these deposits; they're not as well protected as other deposits or purchases (depending on your state and other details).  You should make an effort to comply with all of the requests from the financing arm promptly, and in particular you should probably highlight that you could afford to pay for the car in cash (and be prepared to show bank/money market/investment statements to back that up).  Credit is mostly a numbers game, but there is a human on the other side making the decision (assuming you're remotely close) and that makes a big difference.   I would be prepared to walk away from your deposit if they come back and offer you a 5% APR or similar (and you're uncomfortable with the loan at that rate) - over 5 years, a $20k loan at 5% APR will cost you several thousand dollars; it might be worth it even if they don't give you your deposit back.  And if you're clearly ready to walk away from the deposit, that might cause them to negotiate in better faith. Some tips, both from that article and my general experience:

negative: Of course not, this is confidential information in the same way that I cannot phone up your bank and ask to see a list of the transactions that you have made. Any bank has to be extremely careful about protecting the private transactions of it's customers and would be subject to heavy fines if it revealed this information without the customer's consent.

negative: Yes, you did. To give an example of the contract terms that allow this, the [Capital One credit card agreement](https://www.capitalone.com/media/doc/credit-cards/Credit-Card-Agreement-for-Consumer-Cards-in-Capital-One-N.A.pdf) states:  > Credit Reports >  > We may report information about your Account to credit bureaus and others. Late payments, missed payments, or other defaults on your Account may be reflected in your credit report. Information we provide may appear on your and the Authorized Users’ credit reports. > > If you believe that we have reported inaccurate information about your Account to a credit bureau or other consumer reporting agency, notify us in writing at PO Box 30281, Salt Lake City, UT 84130-0281. When you write, tell us the specific information that you believe is incorrect and why you believe it is incorrect. > > We may obtain and use credit, income and other information about you from credit bureaus and others as the law allows.

negative: T. Rowe is my new 401 k company and they have been pretty professional the problem was they required information from my old employer who refused to give it to them. But I am in touch my my old 401 k account and will be doing some more research into the companies and processes you guys have given me amd try to choose what is best for me

negative: I suspect that part of the problem with responding to surveys is that marketers realized they could use surveys as advertising.  The last survey I actually responded to was over 5 years ago and was an ad for Geiko.  I realized half way when they started asking me detailed questions about my memory of Geiko's commercials over and I then refused to give the satisfaction of saying Geiko.

negative: I'm a business law student, so medical stuff isn't really my specialty. I'll share with you what I know though. First, as to the legality, I'm not aware of anything making it illegal for them to consider their business with you concluded. Absent any contract between you and the doctor, it seems to me that you agreed to pay them in cash. If I was the business, I'd assume our business had been concluded as well. As for any contracts between the insurance company and the doctor's office, as far as I know, that's between them. That wouldn't give you standing to sue the doctor. I'm unfamiliar with a patient submitting insurance claims, but if that's something you are allowed to do with your insurance company and all you need is more information, submit a request for your medical records to the doctor. Under United States law, your medical records are yours. You have a right to receive a copy of them. Keep in mind though that the doctor's office may charge you a small copying fee to cover expenses they incur while making a copy for you. As far as complaining, I would suggest your local Better Business Bureau. Each state generally has a medical board which oversees doctors. You might lodge a complaint with them as well. I hope this helps. Keep in mind that I'm not an attorney. This is not legal advice. This is only what I personally would do if I were in your situation. You can and should consult an attorney who is licensed to practice law in your particular jurisdiction.

negative: It is possible for an employer to check your credit score and it is legal. As long as you give them permission. You have every right to refuse BUT the employer also has the right to not give you a job.   The reason is to get an overall feeling for your integrity, discipline, and lifestyle. People in debt are more likely to embezzle, etc. A low credit score can also indicate that you make poor choices in your financial and purchasing deals. If you are refused a job you are qualified under the Fair Credit Reporting Act to get a copy of your credit report. Source - Legal Match

negative: "The answer is in your question: derivatives are contracts so are enforced in the same way as any other contract.  If the counterparty refuses to pay immediately they will, in the first instance be billed by any intermediary (Prime Broker etc.) that facilitated the contract. If they still refuse to pay the contract may stipulate that a broker can ""net off"" any outstanding payments against it or pay out using deposited cash or posted margins. The contract will usually include the broker as an interested party and so they can, but don't need to, report a default (such that this is) to credit agencies (in some jurisdictions they are required to by law). Any parties to the trade and the courts may use a debt collection agency to collect payments or seize assets to cover payment. If there is no broker or the counterparty still has not paid the bill then the parties involved (the party to the trade and any intermediaries) can sue for breach of contract. If they win (which would be expected) the counterparty will be made to pay by the legal system including, but not limited to, seizure of assets, enforced bankruptcy, and prison terms for any contempts of court rulings. All of this holds for governments who refuse to pay derivatives losses (as Argentina did in the early 20th century) but in that case it may escalate as far as war. It has never done so for derivatives contracts as far as I know but other breaches of contract between countries have resulted in armed conflict. As well as the ""hard"" results of failing to pay there are soft implications including a guaranteed fall in credit ratings that will result in parties refusing to do business with the counterparty and a separate loss of reputation that will reduce business even further. Potential employees and funders will be unwilling to become involved with such a party and suppliers will be unwilling to supply on credit. The end result in almost every way would be bankruptcy and prison sentences for the party or their senior employees. Most jurisdictions allow for board members at companies in material breach of contract to be banned from running any company for a set period as well. edit: netting off cash flows netting off is a process whereby all of a party's cash flows, positive and negative, are used to pay each other off so that only the net change is reflected in account balances, for example: company 1 cash flows netting off the total outgoings are 3M + 500k = 3.5M and total incomings are 1.2M + 1.1M + 1.2M = 3.5M so the incoming cash flows can be used to pay the outgoing cash flows leaving a net payment into company1's account of 0."

negative: I doubt it's legal, but for next time, just go onto the website and your balance will be right there front-and-center... no need to deal with some ill-informed cranky lady in a call center half-way across the world.

negative: In such a situation, is it really safe to give financial info to a person who does not encrypt it? Encryption only helps to an extent. i.e. during transmission of data or during brute force makes it more difficult to get the real data. However you concern is more of staff using this data, which encryption will not help much as they would be able to decrypt and see the data. In what ways could it be misused? This depends on the type of data. The financial data can be used to hack into your accounts if other bits of info are known. i.e. most of the times on Telephone requests; say putting card on hold, requesting balance on account, etc; only your address, mother maiden name, last few transaction details are asked. Some critical requests need more ID proofs; so generally not of concern. The other misuse would be selling this to marketing companies, so that you can be bombarded with sales pitch for anything and everything. The PAN and other ID documents are becoming more prone to mis-use. i.e. give a copy of PAN to open fraudulent accounts etc. A good practise would be to mark every copy of ID proof you give with the purpose as to why its given and a date. This would make the ID proof stale to an extent. If she is not going to encrypt it, should I ask her to delete all my old data and then create a new profile for my communication with her; the new profile not being my name, but a fake name? The regulations would not allow her to create fake accounts and may lead to issues and as such any recognised financial advisor would not allow this to be done. Quite a few countries have regulations for financial advisor's that need to be adhered to.

negative: The hospital likely has a contract with your insurance company which makes them obligated to bill the insurance before billing you! I had a similar occurrence that was thrown out when my insurance company provided a copy of a contract with the hospital to the judge. So if there is an agreement they must file with the insurance in timely manner.

negative: Go back to the dealership and leave the car there. Call your local news. They love these stories. After the news is out if they still won't give you your money back and void the contract then call the police. This is illegal and the business has violated the law.   Another option is to go to the police first. After the police report then hire a lawyer to sue the dealership. Then call the local news. This method may take longer, but it will have the biggest impact.

negative: No. Not in the Uk anyway, they are just an extra person/company that you have to pay.

negative: Yes, if their record keeping is faulty or failed. It is best to keep all records of repayment.  Incomplete records such as signing for a loan yet no repayment receipt can be at least a headache and at most expensive. The most important document is a record of 0 balance then there is nothing that the courts will allow creditors to collect if their records are faulty.

negative: No.  Unless you actually laid out cash for it, you can't write it off.

negative: Just FYI for the benefit of future users. Haven't been paid yet nor have I paid but some interesting facts. I decided to sign the contract with the person who approached me. The contract seemed harmless whereby I only transfer money once I retrieve the funds. Thanks to your comments here I also understood that I must make sure the funds really cleared in my account and can never be cancelled before I transfer anything.  He gave me the information of the check that matched my previous employer and made sense as it was a check issues just after I had left my job and the state. I did not used the contact details he provided me, but rather found the direct contact details of the go to person in my last institution and contacted them.  I still haven't been able to reclaim the funds, but that is due to internal problems between the state comptroller and my institution. Will come back to update if I am ever successful, but the bottom line is that it is probably not a scam. I am waiting for the final resolution of the case before I post the name of the company which approached me (if it is at all OK per the discussion board rules)

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'm not sure if you are including the use of credit cards in the intent of your quesiton.  However, I will give you some good reasons I use them even when I can pay cash: 1) I get an interest free loan for almost 30 days as long as I don't carry balances. 2) I get a statement detailing where I am spending my money that is helpful for budgeting. I'd never keep track to this level of detail if I were using cash. 3) Many cards offer reward programs that can be used for cash back. 4) It helps maintain my credit rating for those times I NEED to buy something and pay it off over time (car, house, etc.) 5) Not so much an issue for me personally, but for people that live paycheck to paycheck, it might help to time your cash outflows to match up with your inflows. For a business, I think it is mostly a cash flow issue. That is, in a lot of B2B type businesses customers can pay very slowly (managing their own cash flows). So your revenue can sometimes lag quite a bit behind the expenses that were associated with them (e.g payroll). A business line of credit can smooth out the cash flow, especially for companies that don't have a lot of cash reserves.

negative: Yeah dang. Guess it's probably written deep in the contract that this can happen and nothing is absolutely guaranteed.   Any specific experience on rental car chains? I've recently started using National and love the pick your own car experience...much faster and smoother but is more expensive (and luckily reimbursed mostly as well)

negative: "Okay, definitive answer for this particular company (Toyota Finance) is (somewhat surprisingly, and glad I asked) it must be fully insured at all times, including liability, even if being stored.  I asked at a dealership and they answered ""just fire and theft (of course)"" but I ended up calling their finance department and the answer was the opposite. So there you go. Thanks for the answers (and for trying to talk me out of wasting money)."

negative: What would happen if you was to cash a check, didn’t realize it was   to you and your finance company, take it to a local business that has   a money center, they cash the check without even having you sign let   alone having the finance companies endorsement on it . The money   cleared my account like a couple months ago and it was just brought up   now .. ? The reason why the check was made out the owner and the lender is to make sure the repairs were done on the car. The lender wants to make sure that their investment is protected.  For example: you get a six year loan on a new car. In the second year you get hit by another driver. The damage estimate is $1,000, and you decide it doesn't look that bad, so you decide to skip the repair and spend the money on paying off debts. What you don't know is that if they had done the repair they would have found hidden damage and the repair would have cost $3,000 and would have been covered by the other persons insurance.  Jump ahead 2 years, the rust from the skipped repair causes other issues. Now it will cost $5,000 to fix. The insurance won't cover it, and now a car with an outstanding loan balance of $4,000 and a value of $10,000 if the damage didn't exist needs $5,000 to fix.  The lender wants the repairs done. They would have not signed the check before seeing the proof the repairs were done to their satisfaction. But because the check was cashed without their involvement they will be looking for a detailed receipt showing that all the work was done. They may require that the repair be done at a certified repair shop with manufacturer parts.  If you don't have a detailed bill ask the repair shop for a copy of the original one.

negative: "The ""guaranteed minimum future value"" isn't really a guarantee so much as the amount they will charge you at the end of the agreement if you want to keep the car. In this sense it might better be considered a ""guaranteed maximum future cost"". If the car has fallen below that value at that point, then you can just hand back the car and you won't owe anything extra. If it turns out to be worth more, you end up in profit - though only if you either actually pay for the car, or if you roll over into a new PCP deal. So the finance company has an incentive to set it at a sensible value, otherwise they'll end up losing money. Most new cars lose a lot of value quickly initially, and then the rate of loss slows down. But given that it's lost £14k in 2 years, it seems pretty likely it'll lose much more than another £1k in the next 2 years. So it does sound like that in this case, they estimated the value badly at the start of the deal and will end up taking a loss on the deal when you hand it back at the end. It appears you also have the legal right to ""voluntary termination"" once you have paid off half the ""Total Amount Payable"". This should be documented in the PCP agreement and if you're half way into the deal then I'd expect you'll be about there. If that doesn't apply, you can try to negotiate to get out of the deal early anyway. If they look at it rationally, they should think about the value of your payments over the next two years minus the loss they will end up with at the end of those two years. But there's no guarantee they will. Disclaimer: Despite living in the UK, I hadn't heard of these contracts until I read this question, so my answer is based entirely on web searches and some inferences. The two most useful sources I found on the general subject were this one and this one."

negative: "A business can refuse cash (paper currency) payment pretty much in all cases provided it's a reasonable policy and/or notified during/in advance of contracting. Details in this link. ""all United States money as identified above are a valid and legal offer of payment for debts when tendered to a creditor. There is, however, no Federal statute mandating that a private business, a person or an organization must accept currency or coins as for payment for goods and/or services."" Even if the payment is being made to settle a debt or other obligation, the creditor may refuse payment if their rationale is reasonable (as determined by the courts)."

negative: "You can always ask. The answer is likely to be ""no"" -- the company is probably not set up to be able to tweak that number  on a case by case basis. I'm not sure whether there are regulations which might kick in, as well; these plans are regulated to prevent abuse and that tends to make doing anything unusual difficult. Find another tax-deferred/tax-advantaged investment and route the money there?"

negative: They sure can. They are two different legal entities, so why not? You can even write a check to yourself, and then deposit it back into your own account. (Not very useful, but you can). The tax implications are a very different question, as this might constitute taking money out of the company. Edit: In some countries, when the business hires someone to work for them, it is forbidden by law to do that, unless he/she is explicitly allowed to do it in his contract. The business owner himself however, can always 'allow' himself to do that.

negative: After doing some investigating, my employers contract with the credit card company has a clause that basically specifies that despite my name being on the credit card, and bills being sent to me, all liability is on the company. Additionally, the employer reserves the right to garnish wages in the event of a balance on the card. So it looks like it won't affect my credit score. I appreciate all of the advice.

negative: "Most practices I've gone to use a triplicate paper form called a ""medical encounter form""with the specialty's most common procedure codes and laboratory codes preprinted. (And rarer ones hand added).  The doctor fills this out and the office manager transcribes it. This also has a billing section where in my case the office manager initials ""cc"" for credit card.  You probably refused or threw away your copy, but can ask to review their copy.   Maybe there is a mis transcribed entry indicating payment at time of service."


query: What does “profits to the shareholders jumped to 15 cents a share” mean?

positive: "It means that the company earned 15 cents per share in the most recently reported quarter. Share price may or not be affected, depending on how buyers and sellers value the company. Just because profits ""jumped,"" does not mean the shares will follow suit. An increase in profits may have already been priced into the stock, or the market expected the increase in profit to be even higher. As the shareholder, you don't actually get any of these profits into your hands, unless the company pays out a portion of these profits as a dividend."

positive: It's a way to help normalize the meaning of the earnings report. Some companies like Google have a small number of publicly traded shares (322 Million). Others like Microsoft have much larger numbers of shares (8.3 Billion). The meaning depends on the stock. If it's a utility company that doesn't really grow, you don't want to see lots of changes -- the earnings per share should be stable. If it's a growth company, earnings should be growing quickly, and flat growth means that the stock is probably going down, especially if slow growth wasn't expected.

positive: "What does it mean in terms of share price? Should the share price increase by 15 cents?  No, but you're on the right track. In theory, the price of a share reflects it's ""share"" of time discounted future earnings. To put it concretely, imagine a company consistently earning 15 cents a share every year and paying it all out as dividends. If you only paid 25 cents for it, you could earn five cents a share by just holding it for two years. If you imagine that stocks are priced assuming a holding period of 20 years or so, so we'd expect the stock to cost less than 3 dollars.  More accurately, the share price reflects expected future earnings. If everyone is assuming this company is growing earnings every quarter, an announcement will only confirm information people have already been trading based on. So if this 15 cents announcement is a surprise, then we'd expect the stock price to rise as a function of both the ""surprise"" in earnings, and how long we expect them to stay at this new profitability level before competition claws their earnings away. Concretely, if 5 cents a share of that announcement were ""earnings surprise,"" you'd expect it to rise somewhere around a dollar."

negative: Without reading the source, from your description it seems that the author believes that this particular company was undervalued in the marketplace. It seems that investors were blinded by a small dividend, without considering the actual value of the company they were owners of. Remember that a shareholder has the right to their proportion of the company's net value, and that amount will be distributed both (a) in the form of dividends and (b) on liquidation of the company.  Theoretically, EPS is an indication of how much value an investor's single share has increased by in the year [of course this is not accurate, because accounting income does not directly correlate with company value increase, but it is a good indicator]. This means in this example that each share had a return of $10, of which the investors only received $1. The remainder sat in the company for further investment. Considering that liquidation may never happen, particularly within the time-frame that a particular investor wants to hold a share, some investors may undervalue share return that does not come in the form of a dividend. This may or may not be legitimate, because if the company reinvests its profits in poorer performing projects, the investors would have been better off getting the dividend immediately. However some value does need to be given to the non-dividend ownership of the company. It seems the author believes that investors failing to consider value of the non-dividend part of the corporation's shares in question led to an undervaluation of the company's shares in the market.

negative: The shareholders have a claim on the profits, but they may prefer that claim to be exercised in ways other than dividend payments. For example, they may want the company to invest all of its profits in growth, or they may want it to buy back shares to increase the value of the remaining shares, especially since dividends are generally taxed as income while an increase in the share price is generally taxed as a capital gain, and capital gains are often taxed at a lower rate than income.

negative: It's a dilution of the ownership; the public used to own x% of Facebook and now they own less than x% of the bigger Facebook that incorporates Whatsapp (assuming that Whatsapp was completely private before). Logically, the $15 billion is allocated proportionately between the existing stockholders (x% of it for the general public, y% for Mark Zuckerberg, etc).  However it doesn't really make sense to think of it that way unless Whatsapp is actually worthless. What's important are the proportions. Suppose that the newly issued shares correspond to 25% of the previous share capital. Then previously the general public owned x% out of 100%, and now they own x% out of 125%, i.e. (0.8x)% of the new share capital. Whether the actual value of those stocks has changed depends entirely on the actual value that Whatsapp adds to the old Facebook. As Dheer says, only time will tell on that one. Apart from the financial consequences, dilution is sometimes considered important because it can mean a change in influence: a significant shareholder would often be able to encourage the company to act in a certain way. With a lower percentage ownership, that influence is diminished.

negative: To quote Adam Smith, 'Everything is worth what its purchaser will pay for it'. In this case, that means, the value of a stock is equal to the price that someone will pay for it. If you buy shares in a company, the number of people who want shares in that company has just gone up by 1. If you buy shares in companies profiting from the DAPL, you are increasing demand for those shares. You are actually making those shares more valuable, not less. If you bought all those shares, then you could simply shut the pipeline down. But that means you'd be spending billions of dollars to do so - and that money would go to the people who own the company now. The concept of 'Shareholder Activism' that you refer to, is actually more that an individual who owns a substantial number of shares (usually in the 10% ballpark) will become outspoken on the direction of the company, and attempt to elect board members who will take action to suit their liking. This is done to increase the profits of the company, so that the shareholder can make more money off of their investment. It is very expensive, and not generally done for reasons of 'ethics', unless those ethics align with a view to long-term profit (in this case, you'd need at least $1Billion to buy enough of a stake in the DAPL to make a difference). What you may instead want to consider is 'ethical investing'. This refers to the concept that you should only put your investments in companies which act ethically. For example, you could buy shares in a solar company, if you felt that was an ethical industry. In this way, you drive up demand for those types of companies, and reward the business owners who act in that fashion.

negative: "My favorite line:   ""Companies should generate enough profits to justify the price that shareholders are willing to pay for its shares. Once shareholders are no longer willing to pay up for those profits, they should invest that money elsewhere.""   This person loses all credibility right here."

negative: Aside from the market implications Victor and JB King mention, another possible reason is the dividends they pay. Usually, the dividends a company pays are dependent on the profit the company made. if a company makes less profit, the dividends turn out smaller. This might incite unrest among the shareholders, because this means that they get paid less dividends, which makes that share more likely to be sold, and thus for the price to fall.

negative: I have an example of a trade I made some time ago.  By entering the position as a covered call, I was out of pocket $5.10, and if the stock traded flat, i.e. closed at the same $7.10 16 months hence, I was up 39% or nearly 30%/yr. As compared to the stock holder, if the stock fell 28%, I'd still break even, vs his loss of 28%. Last, if the stock shot up, I'd get 7.50/5.10 or a 47% return, vs the shareholder who would need a price of $10.44 to reflect that return. Of course, a huge jump in the shares, say to $15, would benefit the option buyer, and I would have left money on the table. But this didn't happen. The stock was at $8 at expiration, and I got my 47% return. The option buyer got 50 cents for his $2 bet.  Note, the $2 option price reflected a very high implied volatility.

negative: "Think about the implications if the world worked as your question implies that it ""should"":  A $15 share of stock would return you (at least) $15 after 3 months, plus another $15 after 6 months, plus another after 9 and 12 months.  This would have returned to you $60 over the year that you owned it (plus you still own the share).  Only then would the stock be worth buying?  Anything less than $60 would be too little to be worth bothering about for $15? Such a thing would indeed be worth buying, but you won't find golden-egg laying stocks like that on the stock market.  Why?  Because other people would outbid your measly $15 in order to get this $60-a-year producing stock (in fact, they would bid many hundreds of dollars).  Since other people bid more, you can't find such a deal available. (Of course, there are the points others have brought up: the earnings per share are yearly, not quarterly, unless otherwise noted.  The earnings may not be sent to you at all, or only a small part, but you would gain much of their value because the company should be worth about that much more by keeping the earnings.)"

negative: It just states that the price doesn't justify the valuation which is not a factual statement. Also this is based on someones opinion of the companies P/E. The P/E was published and public information and idiots on both the buy and sell side jumped in.   The article does not make a factual claim about Fraud (cooking the books), Francine McKenna speculates that management  and auditors cooked the books.

negative: Well, if one share cost $100 and the company needs to raise $10000, then the company will issue 100 shares for that price.  Right? However, say there's 100 shares out there now, then each share holder owns 1/100th of the company. Now the company will remain the same, but it's shared between 200 shareholders after the issuing of new shares.  That means each share holder now owns 1/200th of the company.  And hence only gets 1/200th of their earnings etc.

negative: It means $400m expected revenue, likely spread out over multiple years as it gets implemented, and not entirely guaranteed to happen as they still need to fulfill the contract. The impact on the stock price is complex - it should be positive, but nowhere close to a $400m increase in market cap. If the company is expected to routinely win such contracts, it may have no significant effect on the stock price, as it's already priced in - say, if analysts expect the company to win 1.2b contracts in this fiscal year, and now they've done 1/3 of that, as expected.

negative: "When they entered Bankruptcy they changed their stock symbol from AAMR to AAMRQ. The Q tells investors that the company i in Bankruptcy. This i what the SEC says about the Q: ""Q"" Added To Stock Ticker Symbol When a company is involved in bankruptcy proceedings, the letter ""Q""   is added to the end of the company's stock ticker symbol. In most   cases, when a company emerges from bankruptcy, the reorganization plan   will cancel the existing equity stock and the old shares will be   worthless. Given that risk, before purchasing stock in a bankrupt   company, investors should read the company's proposed plan of   reorganization. For more information about the impact of bankruptcy   proceedings on securities, please read our online publication,   Corporate Bankruptcy. The risks are they never recover, or that the old shares have nothing to do with new company. Many investors don't understand this. Recently some uninformed investors(?) tried to get a jump on the Twitter IPO by purchasing share of what they thought was Twitter but was instead the bankrupt company Tweeter Home Entertainment. Shares of Tweeter Home Entertainment, a Boston-based consumer   electronics chain that filed for bankruptcy in 2007, soared Friday in   a case of mistaken identity on Wall Street. Apparently, some investors confused Tweeter, which trades under the   symbol TWTRQ, with Twitter and piled into the penny stock. Tweeter, which trades over the counter, opened at 2 cents a share and   jumped as much as 15 cents — or 1,800 percent — before regulators   halted trading. Almost 15 million shares had changed hands at that point, while the   average daily volume is closer to 150,000. Sometimes it does happen that the new company does give some value to the old investors, but more often then not the old investors are completely wiped out."

negative: Earnings per share is the company profit (or loss), divided by the number of outstanding shares. The number should always be compared to the share price, so for instance if the EPS is $1 and the share price is $10, the EPS is 10% of the share price. This means that if the company keeps up this earning you should expect to make 10% yearly on your investment, long term. The stock price may fluctuate, but if the company keeps on making money you will eventually do so too as investor. If the EPS is low it means that the market expects the earnings to rise in the future, either because the company has a low profit margin that can be vastly improved, or because the business is expected to grow. Especially the last case may be a risky investment as you will lose money if the company doesn't grow fast enough, even if it does make a healthy profit. Note that the listed EPS, like most key figures, is based on the last financial statement. Recent developments could mean that better or worse is generally expected. Also note that the earnings of some companies will fluctuate wildly, for instance companies that produce movies or video games will tend to have a huge income for a quarter or two following a new release, but may be in the negative in some periods. This is fine as long as they turn a profit long term, but you will have to look at data for a longer period in order to determine this.

negative: "Share price is based on demand.  Assuming the same amount of shares are made available for trade then stocks with a higher demand will have a higher price.  So say a company has 1000 shares in total and that company needs to raise $100. They decide to sell 100 shares for $1 to raise their $100. If there is demand for 100 shares for at least $1 then they achieve their goal. But if the market decides the shares in this company are only worth 50 cents then the company only raises $50. So where do they get the other $50 they needed? Well one option is to sell another 100 shares. The dilution comes about because in the first scenario the company retains ownership of 900 or 90% of the equity. In the second scenario it retains ownership of only 800 shares or 80% of the equity. The benefit to the company and shareholders of a higher price is basically just math. Any multiple of shares times a higher price means there is more value to owning those shares. Therefore they can sell fewer shares to raise the same amount.  A lot of starts up offer employees shares as part of their remuneration package because cash flow is typically tight when starting a new business. So if you're trying to attract the best and brightest it's easier to offer them shares if they are worth more than those of company with a similar opportunity down the road. Share price can also act as something of a credit score. In that a higher share price ""may"" reflect a more credit worthy company and therefore ""may"" make it easier for that company to obtain credit. All else being equal, it also makes it more expensive for a competitor to take over a company the higher the share price. So it can offer some defensive and offensive advantages. All ceteris paribus of course."

negative: These are not real gains. Wherever you're looking this up, the prices are not adjusted for corporate actions. In a reverse stock split the price of a single share multiplies by five, but as a shareholder you hold only one share after for every five that you did before.

negative: the implications are that the company's earnings per share may seem greater, (after the company buys them there will be less shares outstanding), giving wall street the impression that there is more growth potential than there really is. its an accounting gimmick that can work for a few quarters while the company evaluates how else to impress wall street

negative: The original poster's concern is valid.  Sometimes, market orders do get executed at seemingly ridiculous prices. In addition to Victor's reasons for using a market order, sometimes a seller does not care how low the price is.  For example, after a company goes broke, its stock continues to trade for a while.  This allows shareholders to realize their losses for tax purposes, and allows short-sellers to close out their positions.  A shareholder who is trying to realize a 10 dollar per share loss for tax purposes probably does not care whether he gets 10 cents per share or 0.001 cents per share, so a sell-at-market order makes sense.

negative: It's a big dance. Share price will go up or down based on a number of factors, many that have nothing to do with the company operations. If a CEO fixates on quarterly returns, that will cause long-term investors to want that CEO replaced, or to sell their shares. Unless a CEO is weak and can't explain the business to shareholders he shouldn't need to focus on quarterlies. If he does then shareholders short and long will take advantage of the bump in price to exit, thus depressing the valuation. Then new money comes in after CEO is replaced.

negative: Vesting As you may know a stock option is the right to acquire a given amount of stock at a given price.  Actually acquiring the stock is referred to as exercising the option.  Your company is offering you options over 200,000 shares but not all of those options can be exercised immediately. Initially you will only be able to acquire 25,000 shares; the other 175,000 have conditions attached, the condition in this case presumably being that you are still employed by the company at the specified time in the future.  When the conditions attached to a stock option are satisfied that option is said to have vested - this simply means that the holder of the option can now exercise that option at any time they choose and thereby acquire the relevant shares. Dividends Arguably the primary purpose of most private companies is to make money for their owners (i.e. the shareholders) by selling goods and/or services at a profit.  How does that money actually get to the shareholders?  There are a few possible ways of which paying a dividend is one.  Periodically (potentially annually but possibly more or less frequently or irregularly) the management of a company may look at how it is doing and decide that it can afford to pay so many cents per share as a dividend.  Every shareholder would then receive that number of cents multiplied by the number of shares held. So for example in 4 years or so, after all your stock options have vested and assuming you have exercised them you will own 200,000 shares in your company.  If the board declares a dividend of 10 cents per share you would receive $20,000.  Depending on where you are and your exact circumstances you may or may not have to pay tax on this. Those are the basic concepts - as you might expect there are all kinds of variations and complications that can occur, but that's hopefully enough to get you started.

negative: "They are similar in the sense that they are transferring money from the company to shareholders, but that's about it. There is different tax treatment, yes, but that's because they are fundamentally different. Dividends transfer money equally to all shareholders, but that also reduces the value of each share by the same amount, since it's cash out the door, which drops the value of the company. Shareholders are taxed on dividends at the capital gains tax rate. A buyback returns the cash to shareholders who decide to sell.  Other shareholders get a secondary benefit of now owning a slightly larger portion of the company since there are fewer shares outstanding.  Shareholders only pay tax if they sell shares for a gain. It that means when company buyback their stock, the stock price will definitely go up? Not necessarily. It depends on the price that the company buys back the shares for and what the ""opportunity cost"" of that cash is - meaning what else could the company have done with the cash that would have been better? Buybacks often happen in mature companies with undervalued stock prices and fewer opportunities for further investment.  If a company has an intrinsic value of $10 a share but its stock is trading at $8 a share, then it can instantly get a 25% ""return"" by buying back stock.  I use the term ""return"" loosely since the company does not actually profit from the buyback, but from the shareholder's perspective the company is worth more per share."

negative: It means a 3% return on the value of the stock. If a stock has a $10 share price, the dividend would be $0.30. Normally though, the dividends are announced as a fixed amount per share, because the share price fluctuates. If a percentage were announced, then the final cost would not be known as the share priced could change radically before the dividend date.

negative: An LLC does not pay taxes on profits. As regards tax a LLC is treated as a Partnership, but instead of partners they are called members. The LLC is a passthrough entity. As in Partnerships members can have a different percentage ownership to the share of profits. The LLC reports the share of the profits of the members. Then the members pay the tax as an individual. The profit of the LLC is deemed to have been transferred to the members regardless of any funds transferred. This is often the case as the LLC may need to retain the profits for use in the business. Late paying customers may mean there is less cash in the LLC than is available to distribute.  The first answer is wrong, only a C corporation files a tax return. All other corporate structures are passthrough entities. The C corporation pays corporation tax and is not required to pass any funds to the shareholders. If the C corporation passes funds to the shareholders this is a dividend, and taxable to the shareholder, hence double taxation.

negative: Imagine that a company never distributes any of its profits to its shareholders. The company might invest these profits in the business to grow future profits or it might just keep the money in the bank. Either way, the company is growing in value. But how does that help you as a small investor? If the share price never went up then the market value would become tiny compared to the actual value of the company. At some point another company would see this and put a bid in for the whole company. The shareholders wouldn't sell their shares if the bid didn't reflect the true value of the company. This would mean that your shares would suddenly become much more valuable. So, the reason why the share price goes up over time is to represent the perceived value of the company. As this could be realised either by the distribution of dividends (or a return of capital) to shareholders, or by a bidder buying the whole company, the shares are actually worth something to someone in the market. So the share price will tend to track the value of the company even if dividends are never paid. In the short term a share price reflects sentiment, but over the long term it will tend to track the value of the company as measured by its profitability.

negative: The company's value (which should be reflected in the share price) is not how much money it has in the bank, but something along the lines of 'how much money will it make between now and the end of times' (adjusted for time value of money and risk). So when you purchase a share of a company that has, say, little money in the bank, but expects to make 1M$ profit this year, 2M$ for the following 3 years, and say, nothing after, you are going to pay your fraction of 7M$ (minus some discount because of the risk involved). If now they announce that their profits were only 750k$, then people may think that the 2M$ are more likely to be 1.5M$, so the company's value would go to ~ 5M$. And with that, the market may perceive the company as more risky, because its profits deviated from what was expected, which in turn may reduce the company's value even further.

negative: The price to earnings ratio is a measure of the company's current share price compared to the annual net earnings per share.  The other way to think about this is the number of years a company would take to pay back the share price if the earnings stay constant.  This ignores factors like inflation and can be used as an indicator of risk.  During the internet bubble many companies had P/E above 24 and no possible means of earning back the share prices that were inflated largely due to speculation. Most tools like Google Finance will list the P/E for a particular quote.

negative: Typically, no. Unless you have a detailed agreement spelling out the apportioning of costs, all operating expenses are deducted from gross income first, with the division of the proceeds coming out of net profit, in accordance with the type and % of shares you own, and per the terms of the shareholders agreement. This is a simplified answer, and does not address other methods of extraction, such as wages paid, loans to shareholders, interest paid on loans from shareholders, etc..

negative: A 15% discount is a 17.6% return. (100/85 = 1.176). For a holding period that's an average 15.5 days, a half month. It would be silly to compound this over a year as the numbers are limited.  The safest way to do this is to sell the day you are permitted. In effect, you are betting, 12 times a year, that the stock won't drop 15% in 3 days. You can pull data going back decades, or as long as your company has been public, and run a spreadsheet to see how many times, if at all, the stock has seen this kind of volatility over 3 day periods. Even for volatile stocks, a 15% move is pretty large, you're likely to find your stock doing this less than once per year. It's also safest to not accumulate too many shares of your company for multiple reasons, having to do with risk spreading, diversification, etc.  2 additional points -  the Brexit just caused the S&P to drop 4% over the last 3 days trading. This was a major world event, but, on average we are down 4%. One would have to be very unlucky to have their stock drop 15% over the specific 3 days we are discussing.  The dollars at risk are minimal. Say you make $120K/yr. $10K/month. 15% of this is $1500 and you are buying $1765 worth of stock. The gains, on average are expected to be $265/mo. Doesn't seem like too much, but it's $3180 over a years' time. $3180 in profit for a maximum $1500 at risk at any month's cycle.

negative: Companies are expected to make a profit, otherwise there is no point to their existence and no motivation for investment. That profit comes back to shareholders as growth and/or dividend. If a company is doing well and has a healthy profit to turn back into investment to facilitate increased future earnings, it increases shareholder equity and share price. If a company is doing well and has a healthy profit to pay out in dividend, it makes the shares more attractive to investors which pushes the price up. Either way, shares go up. Share prices drop when companies lose money, or there are market disturbances affecting all companies (recessions), or when individual companies fail. Averaged over all companies over the long term (decades), stocks can be reasonably expected to go up.

negative: I once bought both preferred and common shares in a bankrupt company.  It is true that those preferred shares had less potential for appreciation than the common shares.  The reason is because the preferred shares were trading around $50 and had a face value of $1000.  This means that if the bankruptcy proceedings ended up finding enough assets to make the preferred shares whole, then the preferred shareholders would be paid $1000 per share and no more than that.  So if you bought the preferred shares at $50 and received $1000 per share for them, then you made a 1900% gain. But if the bankruptcy proceedings found enough assets to pay not just the preferred shareholders but also the common shareholders, then the common shareholders had the potential for a greater gain than the preferred shareholders.  The common stock was trading around 20 cents at the time, and if enough assets were found to pay $10 per share to the common shareholders, then that would have been a 4900% gain.  The preferred shares were capped by their face value, but the common shares had no limit on how high they could go.

negative: Having a debt on a balance sheet does impact the capability and willingness of the company to pay dividend. But more than this it depends on the profitability of the company.  If the company is profitable, there is no reasons why it's share holders should not be rewarded. If the company does not have debt, lot of money and no profit, normally no or a symbolic dividend is paid. It is a good move by Fort. Dividend is the effective way of paying something back to the shareholders.

negative: "No, a jump in market capitalization does not equal the amount that has been invested.  Market cap is simply the stock price times the total number of shares. This represents a theoretical value of the company. I say ""theoretical"" because the company might not be able to be sold for that at all.  The quoted stock price is simply what the last buyer and seller of stock agreed upon for the price of their trade. They really only represent themselves; other investors may decide that the stock is worth more or less than that.  The stock price can move on very little volume. In this case, Amazon had released a very good earnings report after the bell yesterday, and the price jumped in after hours trading. The stock price is up, but that simply means that the few shares traded overnight sold for much higher than the closing price yesterday.  After the market opens today and many more shares are traded, we'll get a better idea what large numbers of investors feel about the price. But no matter what the price does, the change in market cap does not equal the amount of new money being invested in the company. Market cap is the price of the most recent trades extrapolated out across all the shares."

negative: Why do companies exist? Well, the corporate charter describes why the company exists. Usually the purpose is to enrich the shareholders. The owners of a company want to make money, in other words. There are a number of ways that a shareholder can make money off a stock: As such, maintaining the stock price and dividend payouts are generally the number one concern for any company in the long term. Most of the company's business is going to be directed towards making the company more valuable for a future buyout, or more valuable in terms of what it can pay its shareholders directly. Note that the company doesn't always need to be worried about the specifics of the day-to-day moves of the stock. If it keeps the finances in line - solid profits, margins, earnings growth and the like - and can credibly tell people that it's generally a valuable business, it can usually shrug off any medium-term blips as market craziness. Some companies are more explicitly long-term about things than others (e.g. Berkshire Hathaway basically tells people that it doesn't care all that much about what happens in the short term).  Of course, companies are abstractions, and they're run by people. To make the people running the company worry about the stock price, you give them stock. Or stock options, or something like that. A major executive at a big company is likely to have a significant amount of stock. If the company does well, he does well; if it does poorly, he does poorly. Despite a few limitations, this is really a powerful incentive. If a company is losing a lot of money, or if its profits are falling so it's just losing a lot of its value as a business, the owners (stockholders) tend to get upset, and may vote in new management, or launch some sort of shareholder lawsuit. And, as previously noted, to raise funds, a company can also issue new shares to the market as a secondary offering as well (and they can issue fewer shares if the price is high - meaning that whatever the company is worth afterward, the existing owners own proportionally more of it).