What are the Expenses Associated with the Purchase of ETFs?
There may be fees and commissions involved in the purchase of ETFs, and ongoing expenses that reduce earnings over time. Purchasing an ETF will probably involve paying some fees or commissions to the service or broker through which you acquired the shares, but these days those commissions are fairly minimal. These fees will be the same or less than you might pay for using their services to acquire positions in other securities. ETFs are a relatively cheap way to gain an exposure to a particular sector of the market or to take a position that might otherwise be difficult and expensive to research, calculate, and engineer. Continue reading...
What is the Fiduciary Standard?
The Fiduciary Standard stipulates that an advisor must place the client’s best interests first. The best way to understand the fiduciary standard is to think in terms of another standard, called the suitability standard. The suitability standard says that a broker/advisor need only recommend investment products that are “suitable” for the client - but those investments do not necessarily have to be in the client’s best interests. Continue reading...
How Do You Mine Ethereum?
When mining on the Ethereum blockchain, you are rewarded in Ether, but you may need to do some calculations to find out it if will be profitable for you. Ethereum mining can still be done profitably, as of the time of this writing, by individuals on their home computers, as long as they have decent hardware. This is no longer the case for Bitcoin, Litecoin, and a few other coins, due to the development of ASIC (application-specific integrated circuits) mining rigs used by the nascent mining industry, which have rendered home computers obsolete and have begun to present a significant centralization threat on the decentralized blockchain. Continue reading...
What is the Current Ratio/Liquidity Ratio?
The current ratio is a measure of a company’s immediate liquidity, calculated by dividing current assets by current liabilities. The value of this ratio lies in determining whether a company's short-term assets (cash, cash equivalents, marketable securities, receivables and inventory) are sufficient enough to pay-off its short-term liabilities (notes payable, current portion of term debt, payables, accrued expenses and taxes). Generally speaking, the higher the current ratio, the better. Continue reading...
What is Cash Accounting?
Cash Accounting is the accounting method where only finalized transactions are documented. Larger, publicly traded companies are actually not allowed to use Cash Accounting because it can’t keep up with all the Payable, Receivables, and so forth that large companies have to keep on their books. Instead, larger companies are required by the SEC to use Accrual Accounting, which makes ledger entries for cash that has not yet be paid or received, among other things. Continue reading...
What is a Pension?
Pensions are income streams guaranteed to employees upon their retirement. A Pension is a type of Defined Benefit Plan in which your employer promises to pay you a certain amount every month for the rest of your life. Employers who are part of the pension plans are sometimes called pensioners. An employer retains the funds in a trust, usually, and everyone’s pension assets are pooled together in what’s called a Pension Fund. Continue reading...
What are currency warrants?
Currency warrants are relatively new to the international Forex market. They function like puts or calls, depending on whether it is a purchase warrant or a warrant to sell, but they have longer durations, usually between one and five years until they expire. They can be purchased to take a position on a currency index or on a currency pair. Warrants were originally issued by corporations, giving investors the ability to redeem the warrant like a call option to purchase a stock at a strike price. Continue reading...
What is a Spin-off?
A spin-off is when a division or subsidiary of a company is separated from the parent corporation and starts to offer its own shares. The term can also colloquially refer to a situation where a group of talent leaves the larger company to start their own firm doing similar work as they used to do. As far as the SEC is concerned, the definition of a spin-off must include the shareholders of the parent corporation being offered a substantially proportionate amount of shares in the new company. Continue reading...
What is an Unrealized Gain?
Gains and losses are only "real" when shares are sold or withdrawals are made, but up until that point the gains were more of a notional amount, and are said to be "unrealized." A more salient way to understand unrealized gains is to look at the opposite: unrealized losses. If a person makes an investment of $1,000 and the value of the shares drops sharply the next week, has the person lost any money? The answer of course is no, not unless he sells the shares and takes the lower market price for them. Continue reading...
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