What are Reddit's favorite Business Intelligence Apps?

Well Sony should then be sued for the maximum statutory damages, $150,000 per instance. Media reports say that the movie has been viewed (legally) on YouTube more than 77.5 million times. So, Sony should be liable for $11,625,000,000,000. That's over $11 trillion, just for the YouTube views alone.

Edited to add citation for the number of views on YouTube. And gold...thanks!

Edited to also add that in Sony BMG Music Entertainment et al. v Tenenbaum, the recording industry sued over 30 songs and sought the maximum statutory damages because they asserted that the copyright infringement was willful and wanted the $4.5 million maximum. The jury didn't award the maximum--they got $675,000 but still higher than the statutory minimum of $22,500 and likely still much higher than actual damages.

Edited yet again to add that while my post was mostly made in jest, there are a lot of replies asserting that the movie is a single infringement and each showing are not separate infringements. /u/dbbo pointed out that in the Lime Wire case (Arista Records LLC v. Lime Group LLC), the plaintiff did indeed try to argue that each download was a separate infringement and initially asked for a total of $72 trillion in damages.

Still better than some cancer charities. The following list collectively spent less than 3% of the donated funds on cancer patients, according to the complaint. All 50 states and D.C. joined the Federal Trade Commission in filing the charge — one of the largest charity fraud cases to date, according to the FTC.

1. Cancer Fund of America
2. The Breast Cancer Society
3. Cancer Support Services Inc
   
4. Children's Cancer Fund of America

Employers will try to get away with putting employees on "1099", meaning instead of withholding taxes, paying FICA, unemployment insurance, etc. they just issue them a check and let the employee be responsible for all the taxes themselves as if they're an "independent contractor".

The Department of Labor and IRS look down harshly, because there are very specific rules when it comes to classifying one truly as an independent contractor and reporting their income on a 1099 versus a full-blown employee who receives a W2 at the end of the year.

For example, if you work a fixed shift (dictated by the employer), OR if you use company equipment rather than your own, OR if you work at the employer facility you're generally going to be seen as a W2 "employee" and not an independent contractor.

So...employers who incorrectly try to go this route end up not filing W3 employee wage reports, Federal form 940 withholding taxes, etc. and get FUCKED BIG TIME BY THE IRS with not only the back taxes but also the interest and huge penalties/fines.

NOT FUCK AROUND WITH EMPLOYEE TAX WITHHOLDING. All it takes is 1 disgruntled employee (or former employee) to report you and you can go belly up as a business owner with the IRS climbing right up your ass, as evidenced by this salon incident. I've seen it happen more than once - they do not play.

EDIT: I've posted this link elsewhere in this thread, but here's a good place to get started.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-to-do-if-your-1099-should-have-been-a-w-2-2015-03-04

You can file a form SS-8 to get your 1099 earnings reclassified as W2 earnings, and file amended tax returns for TY 2012, 2013, and 2014 to get your money back. Hurry up on TY2012, because I believe the window closes on April 15th of this year to file that amended return. Contact a tax professional for help on all this!

Papa John's grossed $454 million in 2011. After SG&A expenses which includes executive pay and "Other Operating Expenses" it's net income after taxes was $55 million.

Really can't afford to make your employee's lives a little better now can you Papa? He should really ask himself why he's paying 6 executives a total of $8.2 million a year instead of worrying about cutting the hours of his little serfs. Greed is really disheartening to me :(

Oh man, I'm not looking forward to the USD to CAD rate on ~~Monday~~ err, Tuesday. Not at all.

Edit: #USDtoSAD

Edit edit: Probably won't be much forex trading tomorrow - http://www.marketwatch.com/story/what-markets-are-open-on-mlk-day-2015-01-16 - TIL.

> blackfish was out at a maximum of 100 theaters and has made about 2 million in half a year

Yea, but it is now on Netflix and the story has received a lot of media and social media attention that extends the information to millions more people.

As of December 30 it has been viewed over 490,000 times on Netflix.

> seaworld owns 11 parks and reports a record year of revenue and attendance

They have only released Q3 financial statements that cover the period following the release of the documentary (July 2013), but this is before it began to receive real attention on media/social media due to its Neflix release (Dec 13, 2013).

Netflix Revenue 4.37 Billion (2013)

CBS Revenue - 15.2 Billion (2013)

This whole "worth more" argument is based on irrational investment and super inflated stock prices. Investors are pumping up its value based on future promise. It is meaningless.

Read this article. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/a-possible-netflix-horror-story-in-4-charts-2015-04-16

The rule is that you can now legally bring back $100 worth from Cuba. They are not yet legal to export.

Some figures to put things in perspective:

---Moto 360 sold 500K in all of 2014

---Pebble sold 700K in all of 2014

---LG sold 420K in all of 2014

---Samsung sold 1.2M in all of 2014

Apple has so far sold over 7M since release

http://www.smartwatchgroup.com/top-10-smartwatch-companies-sales-2014/

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-has-sold-7-million-watches-concludes-tech-analyst-2015-06-01

Edit: added sources

That's kind of just it: Whenever people say, "You don't want Comcast run like your electric and water utilities, DO YOU???" I respond, "Not ideally but it would actually make Comcast better than it is right now." Because in reality, even hated utility companies have higher customer satisfaction ratings than Comcast and TWC:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-most-hated-cable-company-in-america-is-2014-05-20

For once, an understatement in the headline. They have been charged with worse crimes than that:

SAN FRANCISCO (MarketWatch) -- Federal authorities unsealed an indictment Friday against the founders of the three largest internet poker companies operating in the U.S. The indictment charges eleven defendants, including the founders of PokerStars, Full Tilt Poker, and Absolute Poker, with bank fraud, money laundering, and illegal gambling offenses, according to Federal authorities in New York. Restraining orders were issued against more than 75 bank accounts used by the poker companies and their payment processors, while five Internet domain names used by the companies to host poker games were seized, federal authorities added in a statement.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/doj-indicts-founders-of-top-us-online-poker-sites-2011-04-15-1358350?link=MW_latest_news

Ahh the old "Time in the market vs. time the market"

Unless you're Warren Buffett et al, you are statistically better off by passively investing in the market as a whole, and sticking it out for the long haul... https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Passive_management

Edit: In fact, Buffett himself endorses index funds here: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffett-to-heirs-put-my-estate-in-index-funds-2014-03-13

Not this shit again.

Let's get the title right:

"Some random cybersecurity company who was not involved with the Sony case questions the FBIs findings"

"Norse" isnt even mentioned as one of the top 20 cybersecurity companies by marketwatch.

Theres so much misinformation these days...but is anyone paying attention to the sources?

Norse sits in probably 3 office spaces in a building shared by 30 other businesses, and they have only been in business since 2010, next door to a video store.

From Marketwatch

>It is a little-known fact in the West, but Putin has been stocking up on gold bullion for years. In five years he has doubled Russia’s bullion reserves to just over a thousand tons, one of the largest holdings in the world, valued at $44 billion.

>Why? What possible reason could the Russian government have for holding gold, an “unproductive” asset, instead of, say, U.S. Treasury bonds or other financial assets? It isn’t to make jewelry. Gold is the only currency in the world controlled by nobody else. It’s something you buy when you want to have complete freedom, if needed, to defy the rest of the world.

Well, it's like this for many of us. Graduate high school, go to college, exit college to face a tanking economy, can't find a full time job, move back home to live with parents and work part time job, economy slowly pulls itself out of the toilet, get better job and are able to move into own place but still paying student loans so living paycheck to paycheck.

TL;DR The Great Recession was a bitch.

Costco's a great company, treats people well, offers a fun/novel experience where - for better or worse - product selection changes fairly often.

That said: ultimately Costco wasn't really for me after a while; prices aren't always the best and I didn't need to be buying the amount I was buying. That doesn't mean it isn't a good company, but I do think that it serves some people extremely well and isn't quite as useful for others.

The stock has always seemed fundamentally rather expensive to me, but I think people do value the company's quality and consistency over the years. However, when it's valued the way it is and they miss, it's a fairly decent decline when something doesn't deliver.

I definitely don't think Costco is going anywhere, but I do see Amazon Prime eating into some of Costco's business. Costco has admitted that they are not Amazon proof. (http://seekingalpha.com/article/4009628-costco-amazon-proof). Costco has never seemed very concerned about technology in any regard - the website isn't great and it wasn't that long ago that they moved from that coupon book to an app.

As for the fee increase, it's not really surprising. Costco has extremely thin margins; the membership is where the money is at. They also want/rely on people buying things aside from just coming in there for paper goods and some groceries.

Holy crap, fire this adviser.

>Cash out the traditional IRA paying the penalty

>Combine the cashed out IRA with the Roth IRA into a Variable Annuity (Roth IRA)

If the goal was to combine the IRAs, you could simply convert the traditional to a Roth and only pay taxes, not the penalty. It is shocking he suggested you cash out the IRA and eat the 10% penalty. It's borderline negligent.

As far as variable annuities, they are complicated, expensive products that generally are not very useful, especially for young people. They can offer some nice guarantees but you pay a premium for it, and a good chunk or of you money actually goes to paying adviser commissions, which is why advisers love selling them. It can take years to recoup.

Edit: And an annuity/Roth IRA combo makes almost 0 sense: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/just-say-no-to-an-annuity-in-your-roth-ira-2015-01-23

A study just came out today that United Airlines is the third most hated company in America behind Time Warner Cable and Comcast.

Looks like they are not content with the bronze.

That is why they are developing an encapsulated device that allows the cells to not be detected from the immune system, but can still respond to sugar levels and release insulin. The overall effect would essentially be a functional pancreas located in the host body but outside of the immune system - it has been described as acting like a teabag where small things can go in and out (sugar/insulin) but cells cannot penetrate. The same strategy is already going to be used by Viacyte in their upcoming clinical trial in type 1 diabetes. Therefore, the technology to do this is already available, although it is likely that Dr. Melton's group won't be using the same exact device as Viacyte. Whether or not these encapsulated devices will hold up long term in humans is yet to be seen, I believe. This study is very important in the field and I truly believe that T1 diabetes may be effectively cured as a result.

source: i'm a stem cell biologist, you can read more where I posted this in /r/science over here

also, as a general note when reading through this thread: it's important to keep in mind that obviously scientists have thought about this problem guys, we're not stupid and it's not exactly hard to conclude that putting in new cells in a person who likely has an autoimmune disorder will result in those cells being attacked. Of course they have thought of this... way before you did :)

By request, I updated the "More Cows Than People?" map to show pigs instead. Interactive version here - find your county! Thanks for all the positive response yesterday.

Tool: Tableau

Source: 2012 Agricultural Census (dataset for Iron Viz competition)

The people who can manage 1.3 million properly aren't playing the lottery.

Edit: OK, people, yes, this is a generalization. Anyone can play the lottery including people who do it for "entertainment" but the fact of the matter is that studies show lotteries are clearly played at a disproportionately higher rate by poor people. One source of many: http://consumerist.com/2010/05/26/poor-people-spend-9-of-income-on-lottery-tickets/

And yes, people could hire a financial manager if they won the lottery, but again, the type of people playing in the first place do not end up doing so.

>Their findings, published last fall in The Review of Economics and Statistics, show that a big lottery score does little to reduce the likelihood of bankruptcy.

>More than 1,900 winners went bankrupt within five years. That number implies that 1% of Florida lottery players (winners and losers) go bankrupt in any given year, about double the rate for the broader population during the study period.

Source: http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-lottery-winners-go-bankrupt-1301002181742

There are exceptions but by and large, the people playing and winning lotteries do not have the fiscal sense or inclination to manage their money properly.

Why the fuck is this blogspam hitting the front page? I don't even know why anyone reads this circlejerk subreddit anymore, much less the 13-year-olds upvoting this trash.

This blogger is a profiteering idiot who is making money off of reddit's recent anti-apple circlejerk, and is a mouth-breathing teenager who doesn't know how anything works in big engineering project. There is absolutely no reason any of you should be giving this moron page clicks and ad revenue.

Prices can change due to a variety of reasons. Considering they are quoting an unnamed source, this article could be a flat out fabrication, or a result of the lawsuits, but we will never know the exact reason. It could be supply chain issues, currency fluctuations, manufacturing challenges, or a thousand other things.

> And the contract that Apple and Samsung have, it doesn’t expire until 2014.

That's not even a goddamn sentence!

Here is the actual article for those that are interested.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/samsung-hits-apple-with-20-price-hike-report-2012-11-11

Fuck you Stefan, go outside and play.

Let's say Alexion cut the price in half. Hypothetically speaking, of course.

It would still be about $260,000/yr.

It would still be insanely expensive, except now Alexion goes out of business, too.

This company isn't "big pharma". They exclusively develop drugs for rare diseases.

The rarity of the diseases doesn't reduce the R&D costs at all. Governments actually try and help companies develop drugs for rare diseases by reducing regulatory burdens to help mitigate costs.

Alexion has a significantly larger profit margin than other pharmaceutical companies. Most have profit margins of between 10-15%. Alexion is at 29%.

They're not making nearly as much as you might think. Meanwhile, the patent is also expiring in 2021. After that, generics come online.

You people are acting like they're making 90% profit margins.

Alexion's financials

You guys really need to learn the difference between profit and revenue.

Apparently they face $17.6 billion fine for the spill and another $4.5 billion for lying to congress and manslaughter charges (source).

They make about 20-30 billion per year (source). So it's not really a slap on the wrist, however it's not the end of the world for them either.

It sounds like the EU is threatening economic sanctions. I know that, on its face, economic sanctions sound toothless but the EU is Russia's top trade partner. Add in the plunge the Russian stock market has taken and the big hit the Ruble has taken as a result of the Ukraine crisis, and economic sanctions could have some real bite.

Edit: Economic fallout in Russia.

> While Russian troops amassed on the Crimean border, investors dumped the Russian ruble and stocks, following a weekend of tensions over Ukraine.

> The selling — including an 11% plunge in the local market index — was such that the Russian central bank decided to “temporarily” hike interest rates to 7% from 5.5% on Monday, though the policy move hasn’t turned the tide.

> The ruble sank more than 1.8% against the dollar, to uncharted territory, and also 1.8% against the European single currency...

> Reuters reported the Russian Central Bank reportedly spent $10 billion trying to prop up its currency on Monday...

> Even with manufacturing automated to such an extent, I just assumed they'd be built in China due to the concentration of suppliers and logistics.

It seems that China will be less and less attractive in future.

Made in the U.S.A. is hot again, and the number of manufacturing jobs that are returning to the U.S. — or coming to the U.S. for the first time — from overseas has hit a record level.

I believe his quote was: "Never invest in a business you cannot understand."

Arguably, understanding the business is different from understanding how to use the individual products.

• Discounts on newspapers/news magazines ($4/month for NYT is what I pay); Washington Post gives you a FREE digital subscription.
• $4.99/month Spotify
• $4.99/month Apple Music
• Free 6 month trial Amazon Prime; after that, half-priced ($49)
• If your school has it, free Microsoft 365
• You can get Apple product discounts (usually like $200 of a Mac)
• A lot of stores will offer student discounts with any ID — somewhere between 5–15% usually. Check your local collegetown stores too.
• Tableau is free for students
• A lot of museums will give you discounts with student ID
• Adobe software discount

Free market, baby!

See how competition drives better service!!

You wouldn't get service this dedicated to getting to a patient in a single-payer health care system.

That's why health care delivery is so much cheaper in America and life expediency is so much longer than the communist models of health care found in Canada, France and Germany.

source:

“Compared with some other G-7 countries, the U.S. spends around twice as much on health care per person as Germany, Canada and France,” said the OECD.

But regardless of the billions spent on health care and drugs, the U.S.’s life expectancy at 78.8 years trails those of less developed countries like Greece and Slovenia.

(http://www.marketwatch.com/story/american-health-care-spending-is-double-that-of-most-other-wealthy-nations-2015-11-04)

...Oppps, awkward . . .

George Soros: The EU ought to borrow money to pay for ‘surge funding’ for refugees

From the earnings statement:

"Activision Publishing, along with its partners at Bungie, expects to bring a large new expansion to Destiny in 2016 and to release a full game sequel in 2017""

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/activision-blizzard-announces-fourth-quarter-and-full-year-2015-financial-results-2016-02-11

Looks like a classic pump and dump scheme to me. See this SA article for a good breakdown. If you're willing to make risky bets OP, I'd get out IF the stock pops.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3245496-sunvault-energy-late-filings-arent-the-only-problems

As far as I can tell, Trump's fiscal plan is the rich get richer, especially my family. Which yes, does translate to "fuck the minorities" for many of the lovely folks supporting him.

A major hedge fund manager working for a Singapore firm in Shanghai could top that. JP Morgan used to have a guy in his own little office/house in Vermont who was making somewhere around 60 million USD per year after bonuses.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hedge-fund-managers-pay-slashed-to-211538-an-hour-2015-05-05 source for general size of income within the industry.

/u/Hoogles isn't wrong. Tractor trailers have huge blind spots. Seriously, you don't want one behind you or to your left. To your right is even dangerous. Driving around a vehicle with an unladen Class 8 trailer that weighs an average of 40,000 lbs moving at 55mph (realistically 65mph) is no joke. Your little Honda or "massive" SUV will not win. Let alone the guy and kid on the bike in this video.

edit - adding weight source: http://seekingalpha.com/instablog/227454-john-petersen/2323012-data-on-class-8-tractor-trailer-combination-weights

Could be. Here's Musk on the quarterly call:

> ...we’re going to unveil the Tesla home battery [indiscernible] consumer battery that will be for use in and people’s houses or businesses, fairly soon. We have the design done and it should start going into production probably about six months or so. We probably got a date to have sort of product unveiling, it’s probably in the next month or two. It’s really great. I’m really excited about it.

It is fair to say that.

We have a plan in place, but perhaps the most interesting thing that has happened is that I discovered PowerBI (I had no idea this existed before) and have been mining our data to understand where we stand on bugs.

The tool is just simply amazing, and free!

https://powerbi.microsoft.com/en-us/

It works better in Windows, but you can also use it on the web.

I disagree. The people who buy mechanical watches don't use the accuracy of the time as the primary measure of its worth (as illogical as it sounds to someone who isn't into mechanical watches). They look at things like the history, the craftsmanship, the details of the finish, the innovations, the complications, and of course, the brand itself.

As someone who works closely with the watches industry and attended the world's most prominent watch show (Baselworld), I see first hand how it's a thriving multi billion dollar industry. In fact, sale for mechanical watches is actually rising. There has been a slowdown in sales the last year but that's more due economic slowdowns in Europe and China (two of the watch industry's biggest regions).

> I would not judge someone professionally based on their height.

Whether you think you would do it or not, it absolutely does play a role.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/height-bias-found-in-us-hiring-promotion-practices

I'm not sure what a normal percentage is for R&D, but 45% of their expenses were from R&D. http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/tsla/financials

To your point, it's not just the cars; It's the battery tech.

I'm wrapping up this series of livestock maps with a quick summary of the most common livestock by county, per the 2012 agricultural census. Interactive version here.

Everything I've posted will be part of my entry for Tableau's Iron Viz feeder competition on agricultural data. Thanks again for the feedback over the last few days. I know this is imperfect data, especially for chickens, but it's still been fun to see how people have found the stories in the maps. I'll post the final project that I submit for the competition when it's done.

​

Source: 2012 Agricultural Census (Iron Viz competition data file)

Tool: Tableau

The CBO projects that raising the minimum wage to $10.10 per hour by 2016 would eliminate 500,000 jobs compared to not raising it.

However, the US economy has been adding 100-200k jobs per month over the last few years. Meaning that in the same time period, if nothing changes, the US is expected to add, conservatively, 3.6 million jobs (from the 2013 estimate). Meaning there would still be a net increase of 3.1 million jobs, not a rise in unemployment.

https://www.cbo.gov/publication/44995

Very surprised that the conservative media hasn't done that math. /s

EDIT: For those complaining about my estimate of job growth, I assumed 100k jobs created per month. In Q1 2015 we averaged 197k jobs per month and in Q4 2014 we averaged 289k jobs per month.

This wasn't in the article but still quite interesting. Boom!

Lisa Su : >In terms of long-term roadmap we are extremely committed to high performance x86 CPUs. And there should be no confusion on that point. Mark Papermaster is currently directly engaging with the team on that execution and we’ll have more details to come. But overall pleased with the execution and it continues to be our number one priority for the company.

>As we stated in the Financial Analyst Day we had a target of 40% IPC performance of Zen over our previous generation. We believe we’re on track for that. Relative to process technology we've tapped out multiple products to multiple fabs in FinFET, and we believe that they are also on track in terms of overall ramp. So we continue to focus on both of those aspects, both the architecture of the process technology but so far so good.

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3576726-advanced-micro-devices-amd-ceo-lisa-t-su-on-q3-2015-results-earnings-call-transcript?page=2

That's what they spend. This is from 2013, 2014 was $7.4 billion. Of course, Comcast is the only possible source for what Comcast is spending, but they are a public company with audited financials.

No source on the 10 million to make one episode of MP (though that wouldn't surprise me), but Netflix could ABSOLUTELY give them a 10mil/year budget. And likely then some. Per the link below, 2014 revenues were 5.5billion and gross income was 1.75billion. They're not hurting for cash.

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/nflx/financials

I'm here, yet again, to debunk the myth that corporations are sitting on tons of cash:

> As you can see, the total cash (in green) for the top 50 companies is $3.71 trillion, which sure sounds like a hell of a lot of cash, and it would be were it not for the debt (in red) totaling $4.45 trillion.

Another source:

> A look at the facts shows that companies only have "record amounts of cash" in the way that Subprime Suzy was flush with cash after that big refi back in 2005. So long as you don't look at the liabilities, the picture looks great. Hey, why not buy a Jacuzzi?

> According to the Federal Reserve, nonfinancial firms borrowed another $289 billion in the first quarter, taking their total domestic debts to $7.2 trillion, the highest level ever. That's up by $1.1 trillion since the first quarter of 2007; it's twice the level seen in the late 1990s.

It's mildly amusing that whenever there is a problem, in Krugman's opinion, it is always the fault of the Republicans.

Obama's stimulus bill passed without a single House Republican vote and only 3 Republican votes in the Senate (Snowe, Collins, and Specter).

0 Republican votes were actually required, which means that whatever was in the bill was completely up to the prerogative of the Democrats, and if it ended up being a bad and ineffective bill...it's the fault of the Democrats.

Furthermore, Krugman is dead wrong his "Excuse No. 2: Fear the bond market" point. We have already had several failed Treasury auctions, and the only reason why interest rates are "low" is because the Federal Reserve is printing money and using that money to buy Treasuries...a rather "crafty" slight of demand to hide the fact that at current interest rates, there simply isn't market demand to satisfy all of the debt requirements of the U.S.

So I've kept saying that I think the ETF will be approved given multiple indicators, the most compelling of which is detailed here - http://seekingalpha.com/article/4053177-betting-sec-will-approve-coin

Look at the names & titles of the attendees. Why on earth would they invite the people that they did to deny the ETF? Is it typical to hold meetings with high level officials to relay denial notices? -

" John DiBacco, Global Head, Equities Trading, KCG Holdings; Laura Morrison, Senior Vice President, Global Head of Exchange Traded Products, Bats Global Markets; Kyle Murray, Assistant General Counsel, Bats Global Markets; Phil Nanof, ETF Product Specialist, State Street Global Services; Eric Noll, President and Chief Executive Officer, Convergex Group, LLC; Damon Walvoord, Head of ETF Capital Markets and Global Portfolio Trading, Susquehanna International Group, LLP; Edward Baer, Ropes & Gray LLP; and David G. Tittsworth, Ropes & Gray LLP."

If denial were the case, then why not just notify the twins and offer withdrawal? Why the delay of announcing the meeting 8 days after it took place? Why the lack of withdrawal after 3 days into the final week of the deadline?

Price action from 14th to now (vertical line of crosshair marks Feb 14th) - http://imgur.com/a/938OH - Note that the 22nd (day of memo release) is also the day we made new ATH's.

Maybe I have been smoking a bit too much hopium (#ConfirmationBias), but I still see more indications in favor of approval than not. If you have any facts or indications to the contrary please share them.

EDIT: Oh and the PBOC about face on exchange regulations and margin trading/fake volume (specific concerns of the SEC) out of the blue is another large factor in my sentiment.

I think if you look at the data from the last 30 years, it's very clear which party practices fiscal restraint. Hint: it's not the ones who talk about restraint and cutbacks all the time.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/obama-spending-binge-never-happened-2012-05-22?fb_action_ids=4520396577147&fb_action_types=og.likes&fb_source=other_multiline&action_object_map=%7B%224520396577147%22%3A10150832078872199%7D&action_t...

You know, I was going to refute that by saying Twitter is more or less a giant of a company, but its marketwatch seems to show a massive nearly 66% decrease in stock prices over the last year.

Gold is not a great investment generally speaking; there's been a rise in gold prices due to people hoarding it as an investment, but that's unusual. Here's a chart with year-by-year comparisons of S&P index funds, gold, and silver.

It's a reasonable investment if you think the stock market and government are going to collapse without Mad-Max style anarchy ensuing (the value of gold depends entirely on rich people; if there are no rich people, you definitely should have invested in some means of producing food instead).

That's the problem though. Both Sony and Microsoft are making a very slight profit on day 1 with this generation. Microsoft makes $28 a console and Sony makes $18 a console. I know that doesn't sound like much, but let's take a trip back to 2005/2006.

Microsoft launches the Xbox 360 at $399. It cost Microsoft roughly $525 per unit. They were losing $126 a console. That seems bad right? Sony on the other hand launched the PS3 at $599. They were estimated losing almost $300 a console! The increased cost of including an expensive Blu-ray drive drove their cost up.

Now I felt the previous generation consoles were actually ground breaking, the graphics were really good, and this generation you can REALLY tell it's all about the money. They are making a profit on consoles from day one where it took YEARS for them to even out previously, because they wanted to push something CUTTING EDGE to their players.

EDIT: I'm obviously just talking about the parts and not the labor and shipping and all of the overhead, so technically they are selling at a loss, but not NEARLY as much as they were losing in the previous generation.

Sources: http://www.cnet.com/news/microsoft-squeezes-little-profit-out-of-each-xbox-one/

http://seekingalpha.com/article/34357-game-console-wars-ii-nintendo-shaves-off-profits-leaving-competition-scruffy

Ron Paul's return on investments. Professional investors don't even come close to the returns Dr. Paul has made in the last decade.

One more by request, here's a gradient of the ratio of chickens to people. The data available is based on meat chickens sold. Interactive version here.

All three posts in this series are part of my work on an entry for Tableau's Iron Viz competition. There are a lot of talented folks from around the world who will enter, so my chances aren't great, but it'll be fun to try!

I wanted to thank everyone on here for responding so well to the first couple maps I shared. Your questions, comments, and critiques have helped me find the stories in the data. The final project will be better because of all of you!

Also, the highest raw number of meat chickens sold was Sussex County, DE, but the highest ratio of meat chickens sold to people is in Hickman County, KY.

Tool: Tableau

Source: 2012 Agricultural Census (Iron Viz competition source data)

Actually, the wall street journal still has it here.

It is copyrighted so I don't want to paste the whole text in. Here are a few interesting parts: > NEW YORK, Oct. 25, 2012 /PRNewswire via COMTEX/ -- Spire Law Group, LLP's national home owners' lawsuit, pending in the venue where the "Banksters" control their $43 trillion racketeering scheme (New York) - known as the largest money laundering and racketeering lawsuit in United States History and identifying $43 trillion ($43,000,000,000,000.00) of laundered money by the "Banksters" and their U.S. racketeering partners and joint venturers - now pinpoints the identities of the key racketeering partners of the "Banksters" located in the highest offices of government and acting for their own self-interests.

and

> The complaint - which has now been fully served on thousands of the "Banksters and their Co-Conspirators" - makes it irrefutable that the epicenter of this laundering and racketeering enterprise has been and continues to be Wall Street and continues to involve the very "Banksters" located there who have repeatedly asked in the past to be "bailed out" and to be "bailed out" in the future.

> has called for auditing the Fed

Letting congress decide the fate of our monetary policy is a fucking horrible idea

>Trump supports reinstating Glass-Steagall

http://www.morningstar.com/advisor/t/107546891/reinstating-glass-steagall-is-a-really-really-bad-idea.htm

First of all, congrats on your gains. But I would say that this is a "picking up pennies in front of steamrollers" strategy.

Charles DeMuth had a great article on XIV over at SeekingAlpha: http://seekingalpha.com/article/3242146-the-1-stock-in-the-world

I almost bought in, but I realized that the risk of going to 0 on any given day is too high. I wonder, what would XIV have done on September 11th, or in 2008?

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/google-wireless-service-aims-to-switch-between-carriers-sources-say-2015-01-25-201031227

> Still, Google’s entry into the wireless market would bring ~~un~~welcome uncertainty to carriers already dealing with an intensifying price war

FTFY

>So in USD terms it's stagnating a bit but certainly not dropping.

Remember, USD is up 20% over the last 12 months vs other currencies, because the chart is denominated in USD it appears to be stagnating. If the chart was in EUR or any other currency the uptrend would appear much stronger.

I'm starting to fear that nothing is keeping this from moving sub $40 and possibly into the mid to lower $30's - there's a significant glut of supply - and any idea of a turnaround is just being pushed further and further out. If oil goes sub $40 for a considerable period, you're going to see way more distress in the energy sector.

Honestly, I've just gone with CME (which has a delightful dividend policy) and ICE (which has done very well) and betting on the financial/commodities casinos instead, with much more focus on ICE than CME. I'm not going to be investing in oil production companies going forward. Pipelines and infrastructure companies yes, but probably no more than I already have and will probably not add further to what I have.

I have to say I'm increasingly of this philosophy:

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3667996-buy-the-exchange-not-what-is-traded-there

Visa had an investment in Square very early on, around 5 years ago. I'm guessing this is a reveal of the existing investment now that Square is public, but it becomes whether Visa has added since the early investment and perhaps they have as the stock has gone down since IPO.

Edited to add: as I thought was probably the case, this is just Visa now having to disclose the stake it purchased years ago. (http://seekingalpha.com/news/3106116-square-strongly-visa-disclosure-stake-stems-2011-investment. "Of note: Visa only has a 9.99% stake in Square's Class A shares. Its total stake in the company is estimated to be around 1.1%.") Again, wouldn't be buying Square because of this, although a lot of the financial media is acting like this is a big thing and that Visa recently bought. Visa did not recently buy, this is just Visa filing the investment it made years ago.

Visa also famously had an investment in a UK company called Monitise. Monitise also attracted the likes of famed hedge fund manager Leon Cooperman, Doug Kass (Kass: http://www.thestreet.com/story/13019858/1/doug-kass-analyzes-a-failed-trade-a-requiem-for-monitise.html), large banks, Mastercard, Visa Europe and others. Visa even installed a Visa executive as a co-CEO of Monitise. Visa then sold their investment believing that it could do things in-house instead. Monitise then proceeded to go down 97% or so since. Visa left and that was it.

I'm not saying that's going to happen here, but I will say that I'd much rather suggest investing in Visa (which will get you some exposure to Square, plus a dividend) than Square.

Direct content for mobile users:

Question: >Tim Willi - Wells Fargo

>Wanted to get your thoughts, if you could, around Bitcoin. Obviously, that’s sort of the new rage. We get a lot of questions from investors. I’m sure you do as well. But can you just talk about how you think about it, whether it is something that potentially could be a broad consumer application, or if it’s more of a niche around cross-border business? Or just how how you might think about that, and how Visa might interact or support that, or not at all.

Answer: >Charlie Scharf - Chief Executive Officer

>I guess I would start with, it’s early days in terms of what Bitcoin is, and what it will be. We’re certainly paying attention to it. It’s very early to understand exactly what all of the implications are for it.

>We will say, when we look at our network and the people that we compete with in terms of what people think of as a traditional network, the established network rules we have, the understanding of how things operate, understanding who the participants are, the fact that business that we do has financial institutions on either side of the transaction, you know, the success of our payment system and our primary competitors is that for a reason.

>And there’s certainly some interesting things about Bitcoin and other things like it, but there’s also a great deal of complexity. People talk about things like frictionless and things like that, and when you actually dig through it, it’s really not the case. It’s far more complex than that. And we feel very comfortable with the business that we have here.

Link to single page view (full transcript): http://seekingalpha.com/article/1980641-visas-ceo-discusses-f1q-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single

Pastebin mirror (full transcript): http://pastebin.com/a48FHKJJ

http://rt.com/business/mystery-investor-russian-gold--313/

They probably have more than that in secret too.

Edit: Or so the Russian government claims (RT is propaganda, remember)

Also, these kinds of articles are buried on google by the Olympics (appropriately): http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-is-putin-stockpiling-gold-2012-09-05

Morningstar has published a 2017 "HSA Landscape" whitepaper that is freely available (just need to provide your email address). It's a good summary of the options out there.

Not that it is a great fund USA Mutuals Vice Fund. I put $2000 in it right after college, before I learned to lose money trading.

"The Vice Fund is a mutual fund investing in companies that have significant involvement in, or derive a substantial portion of their revenues from the tobacco, gambling, defense/aerospace, and alcohol industries."

http://www.morningstar.com/funds/XNAS/VICEX/quote.html

I've been using Power BI this summer to create dashboards with custom R visuals using ggplot2 and custom R/HTML visuals using plotly and I've found the R integration really useful in creating some custom plots that my clients have found pretty impressive so I'm happy to see Microsoft expand this into python too.

There's a blog post to accompany this announcement with some demo Power BI dashboards with python visuals.

J.C. Penny tried "everyday low pricing" back in 2013. Their stock slid 60% before they fired the CEO. That year revenue dropped 24%.

http://abcnews.go.com/Business/jc-penney-admits-marking-prices-order-customers-discounted/story?id=19323843

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/jcp/financials

The S&P 500 has a compound rate of return of 9.8% over its history (1928–present). The comment being referenced mentioned 8% over 40 years. The worst performing 40-year period in the history of the S&P 500 still had a compound rate of return of 8.9%.

Source: Understanding performance: The S&P 500 Index

Good luck with that. His show is on HBO. The parent organization of HBO is Time Warner, who also owns CNN. Time Warner has donated $591,524 to Hillary Clinton's campaign. You know what's also convenient? George Soros is heavily invested in Time Warner. The more I learn about him, the more he is starting to look like the real life version of Hydra, or Gideon Malick.

Yes kinda like how people say Walmart makes 450 billion dollars a year. The don't even comprehend that that is revenue. It is just laughable at how uneducated people are.

Their net profit was 15 billion last year. They have 2 million employees. That is an extra $7500 for each employee if they gave away all their profit.

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/wmt/financials

American tipping culture is an interesting example of something that almost everyone hates, but can't easily be gotten rid of.

Fun fact: The custom of "required" tipping, like so many other evils, is the legacy of Prohibition. Under-the-table cash payments for alcohol, or to make up the revenue lost by its absence, were rationalized as "tips" -- a practice that hitherto had been considered undemocratic and, ironically, too European.

AMD as a company is actually not doing too hot at the moment. They have let their RND go to crap so intel and NVidia are totally dominating in the PC market right now.

http://www.marketwatch.com/investing/stock/amd

The point is that that's just upkeep. The spending patterns of people who suddenly get hold of a lot of money are bizarre, and my point was that it's much easier than a lot of people think to spend a bizarre amount of money.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/why-lottery-winners-go-bankrupt-1301002181742

https://ca.finance.yahoo.com/news/riches-rags-why-most-lottery-winners-end-broke-180227163.html

The Buffett worship is a little absurd at times and ignores some of the double-speak. Buffett has often bashed gold ("Buy stocks, America is always going to be wonderful forever and ever and ever" as he always says when on CNBC.)

No one brings up the idea that he tried to corner the silver market not that long ago.

"I repeat: There is substantial evidence that Warren Buffett cornered the silver market. Cornered, as in manipulated. Yes, Saint Warren was almost certainly a manipulator.

The story in a broad outline. Beginning on 25 July, 1997, Buffett began to accumulate large quantities of silver via Phibro, a subsidiary of Salomon Brothers, an investment bank in which Buffett had a big stake, and which he had saved from extinction when Salomon traders cornered the Two Year Treasury note market in 1991. He eventually acquired nearly 130 million ounces of silver.

He stood for big deliveries in February, 1998. The market went nuts. All of the inidicia of a corner were present. Nearby prices skyrocketed relative to prices for delivery in the spring."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/376711-evidence-that-warren-buffett-manipulated-the-silver-market-in-late-1990s

Buffett bashes gold to the public and would also buy the fucking shit out of it if he thought it would benefit himself and/or Berkshire shareholders.

Buffett is an enormous example of "watch what I do not what I say."

I've never done this for TSLA. I'll do it now:

G Finance: what stands out are $27.5 bn market cap, -$6.90 EPS. I extended the chart to 10 years, WOW the stock exploded in value in mid-2013.

Financials: quarterly income statement doesn't tell a clear picture, going yearly. Now i see the reason for the share price explosion, revenue exploded in 2013. Rate of growth has slowed down a lot since. Still growing pretty fast. Losses are accelerating rapidly, I'd like to see the opposite.

Balance sheet looks neither bad, nor good. It's about a wash on cash/investments to debt.

Back to Summary: they are valued at about 6:1 on revenue. If they were turning a 10% profit, that would be a PE of about 60:1. That's not all that crazy for a fast growing tech company.

Not ready to dismiss this one. Digging deeper:

On SeekingAlpha, this article catches my eye. He links to this article which also looks interesting.

After reading both of these articles, it seems some important levers that move this stock are things that are out of my comfort zone technically. I know dick about batteries and all of this stuff they are talking about.

I'm going to assume a lot of other important levers are the same. For that reason, I'm stopping here. I need to be able to deeply understand a business and their products to invest in it.

I think you're starting to see this already with how Hearthstone, Heroes of the Storm, and Overwatch are or are shaping up to be. I believe someone mathed it out that Hearthstone's pulled in around a half a billion dollars or so for Blizzard to date. The earnings call http://seekingalpha.com/article/2891046-activision-blizzard-atvi-q4-2014-results-earnings-call-transcript?part=single (start listening at 6:30 or so) gives you some numbers to construe the data.

On the contrary....obviously the UC system needs to hire 500 more Diversity Directors of all different types.

I mean can you believe, in 2016, each & every school doesn't have Administrator of 12th Century GenderFluid Transracial bisexual poetry?

It's a human right!

Pay your taxes (the 55% of you that do), lots of people depend on them!

The U.S Government owns a lot of its own debt and it works nothing like how personal finance or personal debt works.

http://www.nytimes.com/2012/01/02/opinion/krugman-nobody-understands-debt.html

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/buffett-us-debt-on-its-own-not-a-problem-2013-01-20

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/hackers-threaten-to-expose-secrets-of-37-million-ashley-madison-users-2015-07-20

Ashley Madison is currently in the news because a security breach allowed a group to access the confidential personal information of the users on the site. They're holding the site hostage saying "pay us, or we'll dox all your users".

What are your thoughts on this incident?

Was security lax?

The news is reporting that it was likely an employee. Were employees treated poorly there? Why do you think they'd do this?

Do you have any idea who it might be?

on the other hand...

>Japan’s gross domestic product shrank 1.6% on an annualized basis in the April-June quarter, according to data released on Monday by the Cabinet Office. That compared with a 1.9% contraction forecast by economists surveyed by The Wall Street Journal.

>The data show that a sustainable recovery in the world’s third-largest economy has been elusive, despite efforts by Prime Minister Shinzo Abe and the Bank of Japan to stimulate growth. Japan’s economy expanded the previous two quarters, but that growth followed two quarters of contraction.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/japanese-economy-shrinks-in-the-second-quarter-2015-08-17

I'm guessing this was a 529 educational plan. It works like this:

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/4-things-to-know-about-529-plan-withdrawals-2013-09-09

What seems to have happened is that the account custodian got a withdrawal, but did it in the name of the daughter, so the tax consequences followed her instead of him. That's identity theft and fraud.

EDIT: I see the poster has said it was an UTMA account, but I don't think it makes much difference. The only way this situation could come about is if the father committed some sort of fraud. Money in an UTMA account is owned by the daughter, not the father. It's fraud and theft.

Oil companies actually have peculiar finances, but that seems to be about their gross revenue number.

Marketwatch shows BP as having gross income of $24 billion in 2013, and net income of $15 billion in the same year "net income" wold be their true profit, but there are accounting devices built into net income that make it smaller.

You'll note on the source above, that in 2010, their gross income for 2010, the year of the spill was $29 billion and their net income was -$2.43 billion, (with "$27B in "unusual expenses") which was directly attributable to the deepwater horizon spill. They actually set aside more than $40 billion total.

SO realistically, the Deepwater Horizon spill wiped out BP's profits for that year, and once all the costs are said and done, will probably wipe out 2-3 years net profits.

To my mind, that's not unreasonable as a punishment. We'll never really know the full scope of the damage of course, but we need articulable legal standards to award damages and impose fines, and that's being done according to the rules we do have.

I couldn't agree more! Market watch shows their income tax at 13.12 billion dollars last year when obviously this guy's small business isn't capable of that.

There are so many numbers and rules that factor into this but people simply look at revenue and strike a company as evil if they don't pay their "fair share".

Edit: Forgot how to make words Edit 2: Corrected by Prinsn. Thanks!

I'm not sure if Tim Cook is a reliable source, but he is the CEO of Apple so I assume he knows what he's talking about.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/apple-repurchases-14b-of-own-shares-in-2-weeks-2014-02-06-20449947

> Apple Inc. has bought $14 billion of its own shares in the two weeks since reporting financial results that disappointed Wall Street, Chief Executive Tim Cook said in an interview.

Edit: What do I think? It's part of the buyback plan announced last year. The buyback itself isn't news, the timing of it is, and it already happened. So there's really nothing to react to.

Just out of curiosity...

I see a lot of talk about Chinese people spending beyond their means on luxury purchases. I know from personal experience in China that it definitely happens. However, the Chinese household saving rate is high and getting higher. Any observations on how these seemingly opposed trends can coexist? By the statistics, Chinese are much more financially responsible than people in the US.

I don't know where those above statistics come from but I think they're wrong (possibly counting net worth?) The average savings of an American are less than $1000

Alternately, they could just force Western Union and the like to help enforce current law.

^( https://www.ice.gov/bulk-cash-smuggling-center/faq)
^(http://seekingalpha.com/article/4038618-western-union-bigger-problems-586-million-settlement)

Here's Merill Lynch's guess from 4 years ago

The question is also what the percentages are and how much they adjust those percentages on a regular basis.

Verizon asking Netflix for money because Verizon customers are streaming video is comparable to paying to fill your car in CityA so you can drive to CityB - and once you get there then CityA asking CityB pay them because you used the gas you bought to get there.

And if that's not enough, think about the following:

In 2013, Verizon posted a <strong>pretax income of $29.28B on revenues of $120.55B</strong> <em>(24.8%)</em> and paid <strong>$5.73B in taxes</strong>, or 19.6%.

In 2013, Netflix posted a <strong>pretax income of $192.2M on revenues of $4.37B</strong> <em>(3.9%)</em> and paid <strong>$58.7M in taxes</strong>, or 34.3%.

Is there is a Verizon lawyer out there who would be willing to explain why Verizon thinks Netflix owes it money, in terms I can understand? Because from where I'm sitting, it looks like Verizon owes everybody some money...

This jump may explain why smear articles are circulating again. Every time Bernie gains in the polls, the mainstream pundits and "journalists" come out and attack.

So by the study linked in this article being born in the 90th percentile for income (parents are making 150,000 a year as a household is about average for this range) on average make 200% more than those born in the 10th percentile and 75% more than those born in the 50th percentile.

So basically being born into a wealthy family you can expect to earn 75% more than the average person.

Contrast this with attractiveness which has been found to account for 4-9% increase in wages.

So the conclusion from research is pretty clear that having rich parents is better than being pretty.

That ship has already sailed.

Jeb released his Guac bowl in August 2015.

Within a month Calavo (a major avocado producer) saw a SUDDEN 40% drop in its stock value, despite a steady upward trend in the previous 6 months.

I'll keep posting Warren Buffett's instructions for what happens to his wife's inheritance until the end of my days:

"My advice to the trustee couldn't be more simple: Put 10% of the cash in short-term government bonds and 90% in a very low-cost S&P 500 index fund. (I suggest Vanguard's.) I believe the trust's long-term results from this policy will be superior to those attained by most investors — whether pension funds, institutions or individuals — who employ high-fee managers."

If you're not Warren Buffett himself, you better listen to his advice.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/warren-buffett-to-heirs-put-my-estate-in-index-funds-2014-03-13

Ebola takes more than walking through an airport with an infected person to catch. You have to have contact with bodily fluids and as long as they don't sneeze right into your face you're probably fine breathing the same air as a patient.

Since they're only contagious when symptomatic don't fucking grope sick people and unless you're a doctor exposed to many sick people the odds of getting sick are low.

The reason the guy in the U.S. died is he went untreated for too long. If you get sick go to the fucking hospital you're going to be in pain and it's going to suck but survival rates are higher in the developed world by a large margin.

It doesn't sit in your bloodstream letting you infect people you come in contact with for a long-ass time before you get really sick like HIV does. Once symptoms manifest themselves it's pretty obvious in a country with decent medicine and appropriate steps to quarantine you can be taken.

Every one of these fucking posts is so full of ignorant shitdicks spreading Fox News level fear over an illness that means less than the current respiratory virus that last I checked has made 600 people, mostly kids, sick. They are still sorting out why it's causing temporary paralysis in some patients the last I heard.

News story. http://www.marketwatch.com/story/never-mind-ebola-be-scared-of-this-virus-that-has-paralyzed-and-killed-children-2014-10-07

Cool-headed informational piece. http://www.cdc.gov/non-polio-enterovirus/about/ev-d68.html

I think they did have lots of great ideas planned but their development budget got cut whilst their marketing budget increased dramatically.

"I believe this apparent lack of quality stems directly from Activision Blizzard's cuts to its Product Development budget. Instead, the company is filling the void with mass marketing through its Marketing budget in order to juice anticipation for games. In the long run, what will make or break the company is quality games, not a billion dollar marketing budget."

http://seekingalpha.com/article/3186766-activision-blizzard-setting-up-for-a-tumble

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/major-banks-governmental-officials-and-their-comrade-capitalists-targets-of-spire-law-group-llps-racketeering-and-money-laundering-lawsuit-seeking-return-of-43-trillion-to-the-united-states-treasury-2012-10-25

For those interested more in our company, last month we set a new service record for made-to-order prescription glasses where we reduced the average time from order placement by the customer to shipment to 0.7 days.

Our eyeglasses manufacturing facility operates 24/7 and is one of the most technologically advanced labs in North America.

link

>It turns out Manning has done this casual-mention-of-specific-beers-thing before, such as after the Broncos beat the Chargers in the AFC Championship game in 2014. One would guess that he’s now back to the full-calorie Budweiser brew as he answered a question about retirement with this: “What’s weighing on my mind is how soon I can get a Bud Light in my mouth after this win.”

>After that 2014 comment, it emerged from Beer Business Daily that Manning has a stake in two Louisiana Anheuser-Busch distributors. Manning’s marketing agent could not be reached to confirm that report.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/peyton-manning-handed-budweiser-32-million-in-free-ads-after-the-super-bowl-2016-02-08

IF Russia has the goal of crashing the US economy, this is a brilliant move. It would destabilize the dollar significantly, while buying time to transition completely to the ruble or yuan or some compromise between those two countries.

The reason this would hurt the United States significantly is because, since 1972, every barrel of oil worldwide (exception of Iran) is priced and sold in US dollars. This requires every single oil importing nation to stockpile USD, and also stabilizes the value of the dollar in relation to oil demand and supply.

Removing the demand for the US dollar among a significant demographic ('asians') would lead to those dollars being sent back to the US, causing inflation, and would clash pretty bad with the current policy of quantitative easing. The money supply would have to contract, the dollar would weaken.

Because of the precarious nature of the economy and various banking institutions at the moment, this could truly be a 'collapse' scenario for the dollar and much of the world economy. The failure of a couple major financial institutions could be a domino effect, because of the nature of the web of risky financial transactions, the most important being derivatives, the market of which was valued at $700 trillion in 2009.

http://www.marketwatch.com/story/the-700-trillion-elephant-room-theres

There are more factors, of course. But these are many of the big ones.

Because we refuse to pass a law to prevent this. The same thing happened with Goldman sachs. The only thing the president could do was become outraged about it.