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livinincali
Participant[quote=moneymaker]I’m just amazed when I see people I consider really smart, leasing vehicles.[/quote]
Well if they have a small business it can make a lot of sense to lease a vehicle because of the tax treatment. You can actually come out ahead vs buying new depending on the terms of the lease and expected depreciation. You can argue it might be better to buy used but these days you aren’t getting that much of a discount buying lightly used.
ParticipantIt completely depends on what your renting. Rent to own is a stupid idea but renting a jackhammer to break up some concrete patio in your back yard makes a lot more sense than buying a new jackhammer. Renting a home when you’re on a 12-24 month contract where you’re pretty sure your next work assignment won’t be in that same city makes sense. Renting when the cost of ownership is higher than the cost of renting makes sense.
How many people that get suckered into to owning their vacation (i.e. timeshare) wish they would have just rented their vacations. I.e. pay for them when you take them.
Now certainly people renting items out make money but it isn’t necessarily the person renting that’s taking the hit, it could very well be the manufacturer of the product being rented. If everybody went out and bought a new jackhammer every time they needed one the manufacturers of jackhammers would be doing great. Instead the people renting jackhammers do pretty well and the people that occasionally need a jackhammer save money by not having to buy a new jackhammer.
Participant[quote=FlyerInHi]
I think corruption (like work or working harder) has something to do with impressing and providing for your family/friends.[/quote]Corruption starts with minor indiscretions. It’s easy to award a contract to a family member or buddy that you’ve known all these years. It’s much more difficult to be impartial and hire the best bid. All of us do it to some extent. How many hired a family member or family friend to be their Realtor even though they sucked at the job.
How many people try to claim disability, unemployment insureance, welfare, when they know they really shouldn’t be eligible. It’s all the same thing where we rationalize bad behavior because somebody else did it or somebody else did worse.
Participant[quote=HenryPP]Anyone have any idea what’s going on?[/quote]
Zillow doesn’t like you. Or mostly likely their algorithm for estimating home prices just isn’t that good.
Participant[quote=CA renter]As you can see, there are very legitimate arguments against these tax breaks. I do find it funny when other states use taxpayer money to try to lure companies from California (or somewhere else) and then claim that they are “creating jobs.” Idiots.
Governments are going broke (blaming the unions, of course) while shoveling money at these companies in a race to spend the most money possible on these ventures that often backfire in their faces. All too often, the companies take the money, do business in the state for as long as necessary, and then leave town after using all the resources and demanding taxpayer-funded infrastructure for their businesses that ends up going to waste.[/quote]
In states with high income tax it might make sense to offer corporate tax breaks. For example Facebook made about 1.5 billion last year and CA corporate tax is 8.84% so CA got $126 million in corporate tax from Facebook barring some kind of tax break that I don’t want to investigate. Facebook spent 6.4 billion to generate that 1.4 billion in profits and let’s just guess that at least 75% of that expense is in labor costs. So 4.8 billion but let’s just round to $5 billion in labor to make the math easier. Income tax in CA is 9% and for many people at Facebook it’s higher than that. So let’s just assume a blended rate of 8% on that $5 billion in labor. So CA collected 5.0*0.08 = $400 million in income tax from the Facebook employees. So CA get’s 3+ times the amount of revenue from Facebook employee incomes vs corporate tax rates. So keeping those jobs is far more of a revenue benefit than losing them because of a couple of percentage points in corporate tax breaks.
Participant[quote=northparkbuyer]
Despite this revelation, I’m holding. Insane valuations are not uncommon for story stocks.[/quote]The problem is this stock doesn’t have anything. If you’re a biotech with an insane valuation because you’re researching a drug that’s hopefully going to profitable you have your IPO cash sitting in the bank slowly being burned until you hopefully get approval. This company has less than $1 million in cash on it’s balance sheet. The reality is everybody wants to invest in marijuana and there aren’t any good investments right now and so people are jumping into this one without understanding what it is.
Is this company going to open a bunch of dispensaries and sell marijuana where it’s legal. I certainly don’t get that impression from the SEC filings and they don’t have any cash on hand to do it even if that was the goal.
Is this company going to grow marijuana and distribute it to dispensaries? Again they aren’t in that business now and have no cash to get into it.
Do they have some join ventures with other questionable partners to somehow make marijuana products (i.e. some kind of THC consumable without smoking it)? Are they going to sell hundreds of millions of shares of stock to investors at $0.03 to raise a few million dollars to pursue this. Yes, but those investors are likely to cash out the minute they can to unwitting fools that don’t understand what this company does. It’s going to have an f’ing market cap of over a billion dollars for a company that that has $5 million to do some r&d in coming up with the next weed brownie.
If the company had 400 million in the bank and was planning to open dispensaries all over the states as they legalize weed it might be a worthwhile investment. Or if it was going to start a major marijuana farm it might be an investment. But it’s not. It’s none of those things. It’s going to be a pump and dump that extracts money from people desperate to invest in the legalization of weed.
ParticipantIf anybody is actually curious about the real value of this company read this.
If you’re just hoping that some idiot is going to buy this stock from you at higher prices because it’s related to canibus, carry on.
Participant[quote=flu][quote=SK in CV][quote=flu]
I’m getting killed absolutely at taxable income… Ever since companies switched over from stock options to RSU’s, I’m absolutely getting reamed. Shares that vest that I don’t sell end up getting counted as taxable income.. [/quote]Any logical reason that RSU’s shouldn’t be treated this way? It’s yours. It can’t be taken back. It has value. You have to pay tax on it just like everyone else who gets cash in their paycheck.[/quote]
(Waiting at the airport.)
How is that different from in-the-money vested stock options?
Suppose I had 1000 shares of ISO stock options that with strike price of $50/share that vested today when the FMV of QCOM stock is $77/share, for which I exercise but don’t sell.
How is this any different than if I had 350 shares of RSU’s that vested today @ $77/share, but don’t sell?[/quote]
It’s not different but one is deffer-able and the other one isn’t. Some tax breaks are better than just being able to deffer the taxes. I.e. primary homestead cap gains exemption versus a 1031 exchange.
Above average to high W2-income is the easiest minority group with deep pockets to go after. Expect it to get worse so maybe you’re better off with the RSU that get taxed right away than deferring it into the future.
Your only choice is to work less and live with less.
Participant[quote=SK in CV][quote=flu]52 week high… Anyone getting out?
I think I’ll hold until it either goes to $0, or goes to whatever…
[/quote]
It traded a few times over $.70 this morning. I’m in at an average cost of about $.225. I thought about selling half. But made the same decision you did. Originally I had a GTC order into sell at $.420, but now I’m waiting for it to hit $4.20. Or at least until they offer free samples. Just like the ’70’s. Smoke away all my profits.[/quote]
Now I know why this stock has gone up so much. People don’t understand what this company sells or how they generate revenue. This should be a fun bubble stock to watch pop although it wouldn’t surprise me to see $4.20 before people realize it was kind of dumb to put a market cap of 3+ billion on a company that grosses < $5 million in revenue.
ParticipantFor the S&P there 3 big ones are
SH – 1x short S&P daily
SDS – 2x short S&P daily
SPXU – 3x short S&P dailyreturns for these are generated using derivatives. I.e. short term index puts and calls. They theoretically could go to zero but it’s unlikely. The market as a whole would have to move more than it’s ever done in a single day to the upside.
Basically suppose you had the following scenario in the S&P
day 1 = -1.0%
day 2 = -0.5%
day 3 = +0.7%
day 4 = -1.5%
day 5 = -1.0%If you used Sh and the shares were $20 when you bought them you would end up with the following.
day 1 = $20.20
day 2 = $20.30
day 3 = $20.16
day 4 = $20.46
day 5 = $20.67Participant[quote=all][quote=flu]Ok… Name your most speculative MJ/weed stocks you are buying…
I bought 3000 shares of PHOT for fun @$0.35/share
Anything else interesting out there?[/quote]
Thank you, FLU.[/quote]
Be careful with this one. It’s not a profit until you cash out. PHOT sells for over 100 times sales. 379 million market cap and on track to make a little over 3 million in sales for the year. As far as I can tell they aren’t a dispensary. They only sell hydroponic equipment which in some respects should be negatively impacted if weed is legalized. You don’t need to buy indoor growing equipment if weed is legal right?
There’s all kinds of silly speculative stocks that are going bonkers in this market right now. Reminds me of 1999. I think we’re close to seeing the air come out. Look at PLUG or FCEL today. The speculative bubbles are popping all over the place.
Participant[quote=CA renter]They end up with lower graduation rates because they start out at a severe disadvantage. As you know, most Asians and many/most whites in the UC system have very supportive families who have always made sure their kids had the resources to succeed.
It doesn’t hurt them, but it won’t guarantee that they will succeed in schools as well as the Asian and white populations do, either.
IMO, most of the “exceptional” students will succeed anyway. The quota system is there to give others a fighting chance.
And note that the black student population has also gone down since they eliminated AA at the universities. Asians, OTOH, seem to have fared about the same before and after Prop 209. But we also have to look at the population increases of various groups, and Hispanics have grown in number far faster than any of the other groups which might explain their increasing numbers. Whites, as a percentage of the population, have been decreasing (as have blacks, IIRC). Asians have been increasing, so the fact that their percentages at the universities are the same might mean there’s a slight decline as a percentage of the population. Not sure about any of that, though.[/quote]
I really don’t get this mindset that somehow giving people that are already at a significant disadvantage an opportunity is worthwhile. They already have a system in place that allows these students to prove themselves in Community Colleges and earn their way in UC or Cal State schools. Why are we allowing disadvantaged groups to run up a bunch of debt in a 4 year college that they’re likely to fail at? Get a part time job, and go to a community college. If you figure out you can hack it then transfer.
Participant[quote=flu]
+1000 well said…Extreme governments stink…I guess we should all prepare this being a supreme court issue…[/quote]Unfortunately I don’t know that this issue gets that far in the court system. Affirmative action no matter whom it effects has legal precedent already. Do the courts really want to overturn Bakke vs Board of Regents? I think you’d have more luck winning this with political pressure or another referendum like 209.
Personally I think Bakke v Board of Regents goes against the constitution, but it’s far easier for the courts to hide behind established legal precedent.
Participant[quote=CA renter]
I am opposed to racial quotas and voted for Prop 209 (and have signed this petition, as well). But if you think this is the biggest threat to your kid’s future, you’re not looking at the big picture. What I’m talking about is the greatest threat to future generations of Americans of all races. Our economic system being manipulated against most working people, and it’s very much by design. If people don’t start to wake up (and soon!), getting into college will be the least of our worries.I’m interested in hearing what you think is the biggest threat to equality since you seem to think it’s staring us in the face.[/quote]
The supreme court case
Regents of the University of California v. Bakke
confirmed Affirmative Action but explicitly ruled against quotas.The reality is life is a competition and it’s not a fair competition. Some are blessed with natural abilities and/or luck that allow them to succeed more so than others. The problem is that we constantly have people trying meddle in that evolutionary process in the name of fairness. No person or group of people can successfully create policy that ensures a fair outcome for all. All we can do is put in place a rule of law that applies to everyone equally and let people end up where they end up.
Evolution is smarter than those looking for fairness. Admiral goal but one destined for failure and unintended consequences.
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