Quake3World

plained wrote:
...... whiskey- here in Canada if a person has an existing home mortgage, they must put 50% of the principal as downpayment to acquire a vacation property mortgage

Interesting but we do just about have the original mortgage covered and so I should at my age

The bank are being bastards and ask we sell off some investment managed funds that are taking a little longer than expected

They are providing 105% approx of the purchase price but it is for investment, people will pay us to live there and it will be an income stream (hopefully) and if not we have a weekender and 5 star holiday unit at our disposal. Today was finance day and all's well save some ripples in the pool

The most scary thing I have learnt (?) or is that learned (?) in this process is that we as Customers (note capital C) pay these people (account keeping/setup/cancellation, call 'em what you like) exorbitant fees to manage our money. I have got to wonder

^misantropia^ wrote:You picked a bad example. S&P 500 is a by-committee index and not necessarily neutral in the stocks they pick (and companies on the list profit from the 'follower funds' effect). Rather, look at the US stock market as a whole and tell me what ROI to expect.

Ah, but selling at a loss is not really a sustainable long-term strategy, is it now? /cheek

But seriously, is there ever a time when it's a good idea to cut your losses and walk away? This is a hotly debated topic among the traders I know (I hesitate to call them friends, traders don't have friends). The 'hang on for dear life and hope for better times' attitude is most common but it's by no means prevailing. I'm on the fence, convince me!

Yeah, those things are true, plus it probably suffers from the bias that companies will be excluded before they go bankrupt. Then again.. so what? You could buy an index fund that tracks it and make the same return, plus the index is highly diversified across companies and markets (clients). I see no issues with using it as a benchmark, but you're welcome to provide me with total return indexes (means incl reinvested dividends) that have performed much worse (and please no cherry picking a la Japan).

I find that remark by traders a bit unusual at the very least. All the succesful, disciplined traders that I know employ stop-loss orders: when things aren't going their way, the position gets closed automatically because of the risk that things will get even worse. History is filled with traders bankrupting themselves or even banks trying to make up the loss by fighting against the market and not getting themselves out of the position. When considering selling, you should only consider the prospects of the company compared to the price NOW, and not get caught up in your purchase price through anchoring bias.

It's a poor analogy on many levels, but think about it this way: if you flip a coin 5 times in a row, does the fact that it came heads every time change the probability that the next time it will come tails? Similarly, purchase price has nothing to do with how much something costs now or will cost in the future, past performance is not a good measure of future performance, etc.

Ah, maybe I should've mentioned that I do on/off consulting for HFTs. That's market making (at large volumes) and probably quite different from what the average pension fund manager does. You inevitably end up with superfluous stock and what do you do with it? It obviously depends on what the stock is doing but there is often no clear-cut answer.

^misantropia^ wrote:Ah, maybe I should've mentioned that I do on/off consulting for HFTs. That's market making (at large volumes) and probably quite different from what the average pension fund manager does. You inevitably end up with superfluous stock and what do you do with it? It obviously depends on what the stock is doing but there is often no clear-cut answer.

Okay, with market making I can see how you would end up with stock you didn't want to buy in the first place. I meant daytraders who make a living by news trading etc. I think in general I would still want to get rid of stuff that I wasn't planning on buying, if nothing else then to mitigate risks.

By the way, what sort of consulting services do you provide?

Tech consultancy (what else?), cramming as many transactions into a short a time span as possible.

If there's anything you want to know about high-performance, low latency computing AMA.

duffman91 wrote:This is what I do and suggest. (Serious post):
Credit Cards - Always pay on time, keep a revolving balance, transfer to lower APR, and never close accounts.

why not close accounts?

Whiskey 7 wrote:............................ we have a weekender and 5 star holiday unit ....

Just a quick update.
All went well at the 11th hour.
We just spent the weekend there in our new purchase.

One word fits, and that's beautiful

So the point; Life is too short, so aim for a goal and shoot the bugger out of the sky

n1 whiskey!
pics soon?

MKJ wrote:n1 whiskey!
pics soon?

As I said simply beautiful

Spent sometime on the weekend setting up house, buying electric stuff, pillows, crockery and glassware.

On the shopping list still is a microwave and a new TV
Thinking largish (spell?) and LED technology with inbuilt everything.

I am looking at this model 42LE5310 from LG Electronics _______________ _______________ specs

that looks absolutely stunning.

fffuuuu-
wanna swap houses?

lol, makes Geoff's place look like a dump...

Fucking sweet whiskey 7, WINNING!
Good on ya, mate

lol...what a shithole.

hahaha

nice place W7. Summer hide-out, ya? I'll swing by for a visit one day.

xer0s wrote:lol, makes Geoff's place look like a dump...

Geoff's place makes Geoff's place look like a dump...