Can noise trader behaviour explain the discounts found in closed-end funds?
204715
This is generally true, but not always. If a closed-end fund invests in securities not easily purchased by individuals you will usually find a premium.\n\nBack to the question of the discount...\nThere are multiple reasons why discounts exist. One can be the "value" of the manager. If the manager is perceived as one who subtracts (rather than adds) value then a discount is natural. Another reason may have to do with liquidity: turning the portfolio into real cash - to which no discount should be applied - may incur many more costs and delays (another type of cost) than investors might think. A further reason might be lack of transparency: if the investing public is less than sure what the fund owns at a particular moment then a discount is only prudent.
614651
FIFO, LIFO, and Average Cost generally refer to merchandise, especially food inventory. I'm not sure it really applies to stocks.
179504
I was checking this out the other day, but bought PTEN instead.  This stock is fundamentally unsound, the only positive is the 31% quarterly revenue growth, undoubtedly due to the increase in gold prices.  Technically, it's another story; all indicators are Very Bullish in the Short, Mid and Long terms and the stock seems to be forming a solid base finding support at 5.94.  Personally, I'd buy this stock if I weren't currently in another issue, though I rarely get involved with an issue that is fundamentally weak because it makes very little sense.  \n\nHaving said that, if I get stopped out of PTEN and KRY is still in it's base, my play will be to get in as close to 5.75 as possible with a fixed stop loss at $4.90 because volatility could push it to it's previous resistance at 4.91.  If it closes below 5.25 I'll be keeping a close eye on it, and will consider cutting my losses, depending on indicators.  If it stops me out before I can react I'll just take my loss and move on, but it will be a much larger loss than I normally take, because I usually set an 8-10% stop loss, so I would consider this a risky play.  However, if the stock breaks it's resistance at 6.14 and closes higher than it's previous high of 6.25 I'll change my stop loss to a trailing stop of 10% and just hold on, because I can see this stock easily moving to 9-12 before it's next pull back.\n\nWhatever you do, protect your downside.
130563
I like Scottrade.  $7 market orders, fast executions, good customer service when I need it, which hasnt been often.  Their website provides a lot of good research information.
295955
I am not a complete believer in efficient market theory, so I can't be a good defender of it.  However, I will say research has shown the market is partially efficient.  Evidence shows that the vast majority of mutual fund mangers can not beat the market.  See the first link below for a discussion.  (I don't agree with everything in this link, however.)\n\nI find John Ross's claims of "hogwash" less than convincing. His facts are wrong.  American mutual funds do not routinely outperform the market.  See the second link.  American Funds Washington Mutual A has underperformed the market 4 out of 7 years.  It did well, but it did not routinely outperform.\nHarvard does not routinely have an average yearly return greater then 15% every year.  See the third link.  In 2003, they reported they did 10.1% over 5 years and 14.7% over 10 years.  However they did do well.\nThere have been monkey throwing darts contests.  The most famous ones were in the Wall Street Journal.  However, they didn't actual train a monkey to throw darts, they had a staff member play the monkey.  The professionals won, the monkeys lost.
182396
As far as I know there is no indicator on the volume of forex charts. \n\nThat is why banks and larger institutions have the upper hand on retail investors as they can see and hear about the large orders coming in whereas the retail investor is left out in the cold.
21066
it depends on what you mean by "efficient"\n\nin general, markets do seem to move in a "random walk" and seem so efficient it's hard to outperform them.\n\nthere are statistics that say 75%+ of fund managers FAIL to outperform the market.... that is, most managers do LESS than the "average"(market)\n\nalthough some do much better.  oh well.
358100
Look here in the completed items. The items with a green price were sold. The items with a red price did not sell or did not have their reserve price met.\n\nGood luck!
650223
This is a common mistake that most people make. I still try to figure this out… why do people buy when the market is high and sell when the market is low? It’s like going to a supermarket and asking them to charge you more for milk that’s on sale. \n\nHere’s some advice…\n\nInvest most of your money in mutual funds.  The reason… because they’re managed by people that know what they’re doing.  It’s ok to play individual stocks too, just don’t sink all you money into them.  You can also get away from commission fees by setting up an auto-investment plan with the online service that you’re using.  Doing some analysis won’t help you pick good companies, knowing the management will, however you and I don’t have that luxury.  So… what do we do?  Well, let’s start with the tangibles.  What products do they sell?  If that product would disappear could we live with out it or would it seriously hurt the way we live (i.e. toilet paper)?  How popular is this/these products and how easy is it to enter this particular market.  What competitors do they have?  What are they doing different?  Let’s take a look at the financials, how much debt is this company carrying? **** that’s the most important question.  Good companies become great by carrying little debt.  Look up book value ratio. This measures a company's stock price compared to it's book price.  \n\nEX.\n\nIf a company XYZ’s stock price is selling at $5 a share and the book value (liquidating the company) is $10, then just by buying this stock you’ve already made a $5 profit.   Hope this helps.\n\nAlso… hold your investments.  \n\nInvestments are supposed to be held for long periods of time. When I say long periods, I mean 10, 15, 20, 30 years. The key is that companies will make money, that’s what they’re in business for. Inflation, for a short-term, could affect this, however most companies will pass this off to consumers or find ways to cut back on costs. Do you see my logic…AS LONG AS COMPANIES ARE IN BUSINESS TO MAKE MONEY, you have nothing to worry about.
199136
The discrepency between forward and trailing P/E is not an indicator of whether a stock is undervalued or not.  Trailing P/E is Price/last 12 months earnings while forward P/E is Price/next 12 months earnings.  Each of these time periods are independent of one another and cannot be compared.  A better method may be to look at forward P/E for your stock versus the industry average forward P/E over time.  It is important to look at a time series of data to determine what is normal for the industry and how your target firm relates to the industry average.  \n\nBe careful when using relative valuations like this for long term investment decisions.  Some firms are priced relatively higher or lower than an industry based on their earnings for a reason.  Typically, the market values the quantity of earnings (captured in the P/E) and the quality of the earnings (not captured in the P/E).  The quality of the earnings relates to the riskiness of the earnings.  Actually, to be technically correct, the market values cash flows, which may or may not relate to earnings.  Earnings can be manipulated by management to make a firm appear stronger or more stabile than it truly is.  Over the last few years, there have been many examples of firms going under and upper management being tried for earnings manipulation.  \n\nI am an advocate of the Discounted Cash Flow approach, but if you are interested in relative valuation and strategies that are based on multiples, Aswath Damodaran (professor at NYU) has some really good texts talking about taking an economic approach to price multiples.  Another good text is "Security Analysis on Wall Street" by Hooke.\n\nSome other multiples that you may be interested in are the PEG ratio (P/E divided by growth), market-to-book (became very popular in the 80's), and Price/Sales (good for valuing start-ups, tech firms, and many service firms).  Keep in mind that while a ratio may hold well in terms of valuation for one industry, it may not hold well for other industries.  Additionally, within an industry, differences in firms' capital structure, revenue recognition, depreciation methodologies, capitalization policies, and off-balance sheet financing may force you to restate ratios in order to make them comparable and relevant.
2171
well, fx cfds are great and hedge funds use them to make millions.. but day trading? the answer above said it.. a losing game.\n\ni think sometime ago i came across a emperical studied that proved day-traders lose everything in the long-run. \n\nsome of the best traders dont over-trade. they don't commit without any goal. \n\ninvestment is key. \n\ncan potentially make lot of money from trading cfds from making 10 trades a year - holding them for sometime -provided u have the margin.. than from day-trading. the money u make today ull lose tomorrow.
111800
call a broker or go online to one of the discounters like schwab.com\n\nTHI is the symbol
652149
OK, let's put some numbers on the problem.  We have an asset with monthly volatility of about 10% and a near-zero expected return in the long run. How likely is it that its price will increase by 70% in five months?  If I am doing my math correctly, this would be a 3.17 standard deviation event, meaning that the likelihood of that happening is about 0.08%. \n\nIf you built an ARMA model, you could probably get a higher likelihood estimate though...  I'd run one out of curiosity, but I don't have eViews handy...
248229
Looks ok to me.  eg:\nhttp://finance.yahoo.com/q?s=MSFT\non Sunday 7th March 2006 shows:\nTrade Time: May 5 \nDay's Range: 23.52 - 23.95\n\nWhich stocks were you looking at, and when?
579110
They have different prices.  Some do a flat rate, some take a percentage of investments.  Ask each one their price.
41917
Companies have differnet interest to consider when they emit stock or bonds. There are company interests and investors interests.\nFirst of all they consider the price of the transaction, that is determined on the primary market when new issues are first offered, generally at a fixed price. In the secondary market the price is determined by demand and supply. \nSometimes in the secondary market the price is very different from the primary, in this cases the emitting company understands that its estimation of the stock price was wrong.\nFor example, if a company emits stoks at a fixed price and in the secondary market the price goes dramataclly down, the financial manager will obviously be "happy" because he managed to find founds at a  lower cost. General management on the other hand will be quite less "happy" because investors insatisfaction is a very unplesant thing to deal with.
651191
I just tried to answer this question, typed several paragraphs, then you pulled it. What's the deal?\n\nAnyway, I also sold the EUR this morning, but got stopped out on the spike up at 8:30 prior to the decline. It then declined 50 pips.\n\nIf you had used a trailing 20 pip stop, your trade would have worked out fine.\n\nDon't you move your stop to breakeven when it goes in your favor?\n\nYou did the right thing by executing on the short side, but just didn't manage it when it started running. You have to know that a news release that cements in another rate hike is going to cause volatitility.\n\nThe reasons it went a certain way are unimportant. Just because it doesn't do what you expect is no reason not to trade it. Just follow price and volume, increase your odds, and decrease your risk where and when possible. Sometimes there are no reasons, and you would rarely trade if you had to have a reason every time from some media talking head.\n\nTrade the Mini when volatility increases if you can't afford to lose $1,500.