aspiringsensei

I'll offer feedback on the ratings system. My one gripe with your site is that the "buy" or "sell" justifications provided by your users seem weak. For example:

    Electric cars are pretty modern now and Tesla is one of  the few companies, that really can offer some excitement to them

- User Vlado

If you'd really like these guys to learn about investing, you should think about putting prompts in to get them considering the various factors that might lead to this being a successful investment:

* What's this company's valuation? * How does it compare in the competitive landscape? * How well-capitalized is it? * Etc, etc.

It seems like these are "bus station judgments" in large part, where people go "i like this company, it will do well." Build in prompts for deeper consideration if you really want to teach people something and generate useful data.

My employer is hyper-strict about stuff that is directly competitive with their offerings, but has tightly "ringfenced" those offerings and allows us to do what we like outside them.

>Maintaining a short position is expensive

Short positions on companies like Netflix should be initiated using capped-loss derivatives instead of assuming the unlimited risk of selling the company's stock short.

Buying a long-dated put option is often the best way to short something, assuming you have conviction.

Great link, I've definitely spent much longer than I expected reading these articles.

Bloggers outnumber AAPL sell-side coverage by infinity to 48.

Do you mean "incentive to predict conservatively" rather than "incentive to under-predict"?

Many people are eating for survival, not epicurean delights. I hear your complaints about lack of taste, but I don't think they invalidate the method of growing hydroponically.

As a former Sevilla resident, nice to click around for a while.

> Using a $225,000 microscope

I saw a microscope for sale at best buy for $40! This is waste, pure and simple!

edit: Either I'm not funny or people don't get sarcasm. Probably the former.

This is a great question: I am working on getting you an answer from a derivatives expert.

I suspect the reason has to do with difficulty inherent to unbundling existing derivatives contracts in order to isolate "your" mortgage, but I'll circle back when I get an expert opinion.

A parallel reddit thread: http://www.reddit.com/r/AskReddit/comments/d34k0/what_do_you...

The Magnetar trade was fascinating, and I humbly submit that any reporting done by This American Life is likely to be better reporting than any other news agency out there.

>I've been in both workplaces and graduate programs where one's political views were simply assumed.

Ditto with religion. I'm not devout, but I don't believe it's anyone's right to sit around and mock religious people on pure "durr hurr god isn't real" grounds.

There's a bright side in this: seriously.

If we don't live our lives with the expectation that we will finally begin enjoying them when we retire, we might begin living our lives to our more short-term satisfaction.

Not that saving for retirement is stupid - it isn't - but working at a job you hate because it will provide retirement benefits is.

Take vacations now, go skiing now, spend time with your kids now...those are the takeaways. I hope the "countdown to retirement" mentality ends as a casualty of future uncertainty.

Also, adding links to other blog posts responding/reacting to posts in what I'm reading.

I hadn't considered this angle: are you able to flesh out the degree to which they will be able to do this?

I'm non-technical, so it's not immediately clear to me:

* the potential increase in cashflow yields from improving ad targeting (what change will it make? isn't google pretty good at this already?) * How the data from Zynga & Slide will flow out of the facebook ecosystem and into the broader web (is your slide identity linked to your google search identity somehow?)

I'd appreciate any thoughts that occur to you. Still puzzling over the point of a back-door into facebook user data and what that might bring. Could they export that into a google profile? Would an understanding of what individuals "like" and "dislike" in concert with knowledge of their social graph's likes and dislikes lead to more targeted advertising?

I guess those are the questions that google bought the company to answer: 182m is not that much in terms of earnings for them, and they might have been able to pay in stock.

Thanks for getting my mind whirring.

I would humbly submit that PP&E likely is dominated by warehousing facilities and books at a place like B&N. It may include some real estate, but I wouldn't bet on it representing the value of 720 store locations, even with aggressive depreciation schedules.

I would bet their PP&E likely has a large emphasis on esoteric distribution equipment, as well as some stores. I am just wildly speculating though: the business of selling books is too crappy (low cashflow yeilds) to get me interested enough to crack open a 10-k.

Don't you incur large potential liabilities by dispensing financial advice over the internet?

You seem to be assuming they own all of their retail stores. Is this true?

Is it just me or is MA kind of a jerk?

- Guy who is kind of new to this "hacker" conversation and might be asking a stupid question

> eTrade destroyed the old school retail stock broker

Don't look now, but these guys are still very much alive[1].You may not use them, but plenty of people are still charging $150 for a stock trade under a theory their advice is of value.

[1] Assuming you're referring to the mid-80s school of brokers, not the standardized commissions school.

I would use the heck out of your site if I could text ideas into it somehow (via twitter?).

Also if it recorded metadata about my location, that'd be pretty neat. (how many seconds/word I was writing, what the weather was like, astrological stuff, etc.)

The only ways I can think of making my journal.txt file better are text integration and useless metadata...because I really do want to know if I write more while Aquarius is prominent.

>Keeping the design minimalist and 'blingless'

I read that as "bing-less" which might also be a wise design choice.

Well...I'm already in a better capital position than them ;)

Here are some good questions to ask yourself, questions your advisor should ask you, and questions you should ask your advisor.

If you can get clear answers to all this stuff, you're doing pretty well.

full disclosure: I work for this organization. Interested to hear what you think about the site & etc.

http://www.cfainstitute.org/about/investor/Pages/questions_a... http://www.cfainstitute.org/about/investor/Pages/questions_a... http://www.cfainstitute.org/about/investor/Pages/questions_a...

I'm partial to treasurydirect's t-bills program. No fees (except if you sell early) and short maturity.

I don't think we'll come to agreement. There are bad FA's out there. Your wife got bad advice, and bad advice is out there. I certainly agree that a lot of FAs are meatsticks who should be locked away.

But I think our dissonance comes from a place you might not expect. I view the prime contribution of a financial advisor to be the construction and adherence to a financial plan with clearly stated assumptions and goals.

I don't think most investors can do this on their own, and I don't think reading "A random walk down wall street" will help them.

Personal investors are poorly served by a mentality which suggests aiming for the highest total return is their goal. They should instead seek to generate a return which will provide for their needs.

Also, equal weight indexes tend to broadly outperform cap-weighted indexes, fyi.

I am not a financial advisor, but I am a personal finance writer.

This is well intentioned, but too reductive.

All 401(K)/403(B) plans are not the same. Mine is managed by the vanguard and has microscopic fees.

Similarly, all investors are not the same. I don't think it's necessarily sane to sock money into an S&P 500 index fund, especially one that's capitalization weighted.

As much as it sucks to say this...the best way to deal with your finances is to get an advisor. A lot of them are leeches, but good ones exist.

The emergency fund idea is a great one though. I'm partial to keeping 3 months of expenses in cash and another 9 months in highly liquid, low volatility securities.

Can you possibly link modafinil? I tried looking around the site and couldn't find it through the product list. Perhaps I am navigating wrong, as is common.

Also, what didn't you like about adrafinil?

Some places do that, and they're generally not places you'd like to work for.

Places that cold-call will do bulk hirings with the expectation that most people will leave. A lot of the time these arrangements allow employers to force a lot of work out of their employees with questionable tactics.