Re: Autism, brain damage and cooperation
--- Bryan D Caplan [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: Actually, I was thinking about kids' amazing ability to learn languages, which involves massive memorization. Language learning is a hard-wired trait--another well established fact. Kids pick up language automatically from their environment. Some neuroscientists consider it to be analogous to imprinting, the space for language is already there waiting to be filled. This imprinting faculty dries up around puberty. That's why it is so much easier for kids to learn new languages, and to learn them as native speakers, i.e. to become true polyglots. It is also why most adults are never really able to get rid of their accents when after learning a new language. ...IQ is this all powerful explanatory device, or that it is meaningless when it's neither Not all powerful, just one of the best available. The purpose of the IQ test, and its main use, is to predict school success; it is used to identify children who need extra help in school before it's too late. How this relates to cooperative problems is another issue. -jsh = ...for no one admits that he incurs an obligation to another merely because that other has done him no wrong. -Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Discourse 16. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
lumpy decimals
Howdy, Now that the NYSE has gone to trading in decimals, does anybody actually negotiate to the penny? While I'm afraid that my reasoning is obvious, here's why I ask anyway: Negotiating to the penny is expensive, and it may be worth a few cents to get the trade over with and move on. Once particular multi-penny spreads become popular, they should solidify into standards similar to how lawyer percentages on money awards and manager percentages become standardized. So it seems like rather than negotiating to the penny, the market should eventually gravitate to generally accepted multi-penny spreads--perhaps similar to the system that decimal trading sought to replace. Does any one know if that is happening in the market? Does any one expect it to happen in the market? If not why? -jsh = ...for no one admits that he incurs an obligation to another merely because that other has done him no wrong. -Machiavelli, Discourses on Livy, Discourse 16. __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
Defense of Free Trade
What is the best overall, relatively comprehensive (i.e. not just an intro to the basic principles) book arguing for free trade/globalization? I've been trying to look around amazon.com, but most of the recent stuff (Globalization and its Discontents for instance) seem to be describing the faults of globalization. Thanks, John Jernigan
Re: Defense of Free Trade
What is the best overall, relatively comprehensive (i.e. not just an intro to the basic principles) book arguing for free trade/globalization? John Jernigan One of the best books arguing for free trade remains the classic by Henry George, Protection or Free Trade. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
Re: Why do people pick stocks?
There is another reason howevr. Even the lowest cost index mutual funds have more overhead then you are going to have if you use a discount broker and buy and hold (and they hide these costs Who is the they - mutual funds or discount brokers? And how are they being hidden? I've been told by a Law Professor who works on security regulation that the management fees reported by index funds do not fully reflect the costs they incur for reballencing their portfolio's to match market shares and that the actual costs are a multiple of the reported management fees. It was claimed that if one compared the return on the SP500 to the return on holding the mutual fund the difference in basis points would be larger than the reported management fees. I told this to a stock broker who insisted that that was wrong or that I had misunderstood and that perhaps what the law professor meant was that because the fund incurs capital gains in the process of dealing with fluctuations in invested funds and these have to be paid out and taxed that that would account for the difference between the afrter tax return from holding the market yourself and holding the mutual fund. Take your pick. I don't have first hand knowledge to judge. Discount brokers can really beat a .2% annual fee with no loads on either end? For sure. Most brokerage houses don't have any fees other than fees for trading. Even if you have a round-trip cost of $100 for $10,000 worth of stock (you can do much better than this - - $14 is not out of the question) if you hold it for 20 years you are way ahead of a .2% annual fee. But again, according to my sources the actual difference in performance between holding yourself and holding in the lowest cost mutual fund is a lot more than .2% per year. - - Bill Dickens
Re: options for employees
OK, so after everything I wrote yesterday, I saw this article this morning: http://reuters.com/news_article.jhtml;jsessionid=RXNPH5PSAYMYKCRBAE0CFFAKEEATGIWD?type=businessnewsStoryID=1198165 Coca-Cola said it would expense all future stock option grants based on the fair value at the date options are granted. That value will be determined from stock prices received from financial institutions that trade Coke shares under terms identical to the options. It would be curious to see the exact accounting treatment (whether the options are revalued each quarter, what happens when they expire, what happens when they're exercised, etc...) but the article doesn't say. - Joel
Index mutual funds
If I want to buy shares in the 500 or so companies on the SP 500, I'll be looking at commissions of at least $3000, right (unless I have a commissionless trading account, which requires a minimum balance of $500,000 or so)? If I hold those stocks for 20 years without ever rebalancing, that's $150/year. $150 divided by .2% is $75,000. What if I don't happen to have $75,000? Should I not invest in stocks at all until I've raised that much money just so I can save on commissions and fees? If I buy 10 stocks and hold them for 20 years, I might pay less in commissions and management fees, but I'm much less diversified, right? There is definitely a point at which mutual funds become less cost-effective than buying individual stocks, but I'm pretty certain you need to have at least $1 million dollars lying around in your stock portfolio for that to be true. I've read in the Wall Street Journal that exchange-traded funds are a better deal than index mutual funds if you have $30,000. If you are able to accumulate $30,000 in cash every month, then mutual funds don't make sense. (That implies a disposable income of at least $360,000 a year). At lower amounts, mutual funds are by far the best choice for convenience, cost, and diversification. Are there any flaws in my reasoning here? James
Re: Index mutual funds
[EMAIL PROTECTED] 07/14/02 14:19 PM If I want to buy shares in the 500 or so companies on the SP 500, I'll be looking at commissions of at least $3000, right (unless I have a commissionless trading account, which requires a minimum balance of $500,000 or so)? If I hold those stocks for 20 years without ever rebalancing, that's $150/year. $150 divided by .2% is $75,000. What if I don't happen to have $75,000? Should I not invest in stocks at all until I've raised that much money just so I can save on commissions and fees? If I buy 10 stocks and hold them for 20 years, I might pay less in commissions and management fees, but I'm much less diversified, right? There is definitely a point at which mutual funds become less cost-effective than buying individual stocks, but I'm pretty certain you need to have at least $1 million dollars lying around in your stock portfolio for that to be true. I've read in the Wall Street Journal that exchange-traded funds are a better deal than index mutual funds if you have $30,000. If you are able to accumulate $30,000 in cash every month, then mutual funds don't make sense. (That implies a disposable income of at least $360,000 a year). At lower amounts, mutual funds are by far the best choice for convenience, cost, and diversification. Are there any flaws in my reasoning here? James
Re: Index mutual funds
If I want to buy shares in the 500 or so companies on the SP 500, Should I not invest in stocks at all until I've raised that much money just so I can save on commissions and fees? James Why not just buy an SP index fund? I've read in the Wall Street Journal that exchange-traded funds are a better deal than index mutual funds if you have $30,000. If you are able to accumulate $30,000 in cash every month, then mutual funds don't make sense. Why would index mutual funds not make sense? Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
Re: Why do people pick stocks?
--- William Dickens [EMAIL PROTECTED] wrote: There is another reason howevr. Even the lowest cost index mutual funds have more overhead then you are going to have if you use a discount broker and buy and hold ... But it is not wise to just buy and hold. Firms can decline and collapse, as we have observed, and stocks need to be closely watched. In contrast, index funds can be held passively, and one only needs to rebalance occasionally. Individual stocks will need to be sold occasionally, and replaced, which costs fees, aside from the monitoring costs. Even indexes replace firms from time to time. Fred Foldvary = [EMAIL PROTECTED] __ Do You Yahoo!? Yahoo! Autos - Get free new car price quotes http://autos.yahoo.com
