sleepydragon

Wondering what people’s advice on how much to contribute to 529? I can get state tax deduction up to 10k, but I could contribute up to 30k without triggering gift tax recording. It’s seems a good way to leave money for kids (and grandkids), and nowaday private college is becoming very expensive.

how about amzn?

Not only that, it’s pretty high transaction costs to buy and rebalance 4500 equal weighted and mostly illiquid stocks

I'd bet that is because of massive account closings, more so than their exposure to GME. They really destroyed their relationship with their core userbase today. I don't know why they'd need cash to close accounts. All those investors need to wait 1-3 days for whatever trades to settle to withdraw. No need for capital at RH to be impacted. Now - if they're sitting in a hole from margin loan losses, that's a different story.... IBKR chairman on CNBC today: https://www.cnbc.com/2021/01/28/interactive-brokers-restricted-gamestop-trading-to-protect-the-market-says-chairman-peterffy.html He is very worried about a broker or clearinghouse failure. He doesn't mention which counter-party he is worried about, but RH says they are restricting long stock purchases due to CAPITAL requirements. This suggests RH is thinly capitalized. I know RH investors aren't sophisticated enough to understand this, but if I was sitting on $20M paper gains at RH, I'd be very worried about the viability of my broker. Disclosure: long IBKR Edit to add: When you say that IBKR should permit bear call spreads, you are saying that IBKR should accept the counter-party risk on both legs of that trade. The trade might be low-risk for you, but very high risk for IBKR. That is an angle I hadn't considered. Thanks! But my understanding was that the OCC clears every options trade. So IBKR's counterparty on my options trades is always the OCC. If the OCC went down that would be a systemic risk, and I think there is a 100% chance the US government would bail them out. And IBKR reducing GME volume probably doesn't make any difference to OCC's solvency. These aren't OTC derivatives with a specific counterparty like the Bear/Lehman issues. IBKR CEO estimates gains/losses are $10-15B from GameStop options alone. Someone made, and someone lost, $10-15B. As of this time, its not clear who those parties are and if they can sustain those losses - but relying on the US govt to backstop a counterparty so you're business can run as usual is a very poor form of risk management IMO. Citadel securities’s last 13F shows they long the stock, call, and puts of GME. I bet they have been long the GME and its options, made a ton of money at the expense of the short sellers

I live in suburb CT. Met a few new people in our town recently. All moved from NYC. It’s driving our local real estate mkt to a bull market. Many houses that haven’t been sold for a couple of years are sold at top prices. Some NYCers who were renting and couldn’t buy anything at NYC came here and bought a house in a month.

, and basically all others ending by : ? I think that is a very interesting point John. Might have to do with the International/Japanese time difference...or could mean something more. I dont know. Maybe written by someone in the Japanese office

https://metro.co.uk/2020/05/14/west-wing-predict-pandemic-fans-freak-scene-similar-coronavirus-12701514/?ito=cbshare

and I think these masks are sold out online. The ones selling on Amazon is a knockoff (without a byd brand icon on the front). I did see my dentist wearing a real one though

NYC has too much tax! So people have been moving to nearby suburbs and Covid-19 accelerated it. And they tax out of state residents as NYC residents if they keep an apt there.

Not allowed to have a Roth IRA so it doesn't matter. Also, i think it would not make sense to contribute to a after-tax regular IRA, cuz at withdraw time your tax is based on the ratio of your entire before tax/after tax IRA. So you will have to pay a bit tax again on your after tax IRA contributions.

Good question. I'd like her to be nurtured around nice people, but they need to have common sense. There’s two kind of private schools. The catholic ones. And the none catholic ones. The none catholic ones can be a lot more liberal than the public ones. The catholic ones have their problems too, like half of the kids don’t have immunizations. I noticed some schools are called Catholic and some schools are called Christian. I wonder if they are different? Generally speaking a "Catholic" school is operated by Catholics, and a "Christian" school is operated by Protestants. If you have a religious preference between the two presumably you'd go that way. If you don't, I doubt the differences would be meaningful. You also have to get a certificate/sign off from your church to attend these schools. Your kids have to be baptized.

My kids went to good public schools in Massachusetts and New Hampshire, but If I had to do it over again, I think I would have put them in a Montessori type school in the younger grades. Kindergarten for sure. Forcing young kids into desks for hours on end had got to be the most unnatural thing we do to them. Sex education of any type at 5 years old is insane as well. Let kids be kids. By the time high school comes around any good school private or good public will do. My kids used to come home from school and tell me how their teachers or administrators were trying to brainwash them. Simply being raised right by you should be enough of an immunity to that type of nonsense. agree. Financial wise, I would say if one could save $1m or even half a million, and put that the stock market, earning 5-7% annually, you have an "endowment" for your kid's education. Actually, if you put $100k in TSLA a couple years back, now you would have $1m, and you can put that $1m in BRK earning 7% per year, you are all set. :)

You can also move to Singapore. The public schools there are so much better. In fact, the private schools in US use their textbook for math.

Good question. I'd like her to be nurtured around nice people, but they need to have common sense. There’s two kind of private schools. The catholic ones. And the none catholic ones. The none catholic ones can be a lot more liberal than the public ones. The catholic ones have their problems too, like half of the kids don’t have immunizations.

Do you want your kid be ultra competitive and a “survivor”, or you want your kid be nurtured, around nice people, learning because of curiosity and do things that she likes to do? If I am poor and I want my kids to be rich, I will send them to boarding school. I myself lived in boarding school the year before college. Came to USA alone to attend college when I was 17. Now i have a bit of money and I want my daughter to do what she likes and definitely not boarding school. But I heard sometimes the kids are the ones who requested it. :)

yeah, to get into Ivy League it will be easier if one moves to Ohio or Wisconsin 2 years before graduation. Or even overseas. Much higher odd to get into Ivy League. But a lot of kids in Private schools don’t even want to go to Ivy leagues( maybe other than Yale and Harvard). Small liberal arts colleges are much more fun to attend. Ivy leagues are known for long study hours and high suicide rates. If you are rich already, no need to go Ivy League.

In Westchester County in NY, the property tax is maybe 30k for a 800k house and the local private school (Rye Country, attended by Bush’s wife and Point72/SAC boss Cohen’s daughter) cost 40ks for pre-schools. Some of the top 5 private school in NYC not only charge very high tuition, they “fire” 10% of the students each year - not just based on the kids’s academic. “They don’t like kids who gave teachers trouble” is what I heard.

If the employer portion is vested, there is no problem. For a large sum, expect the check takes 1-1.5 week to clear after the broker has received it.

Good insight! My wife went to a all girl school and said the same

If you are going to private school, that doesn’t mean you shall buy a house where the tax is lower. The kids would only play with the kids (and parents will only network with other parents, who have similar sized houses or at least located in the nearby towns :) And most good private schools are located in good school districts. So you might end up with paying high tax and high tuition.

This is a good topic. Although I think the private schools can be even more liberal, unless you are going to a religious school. In fact, it’s better for kids to learn about these earlier in the classroom. It’s more dangerous for them to learn from peers or by themselves. And I think the private schools are better than the best public ones, mainly due to lower student to teacher ratios.

Brkb

I am extremely (honestly!) curious how one would hedge an IPO allocation of a stock? How about shorting a basket of public companies in the same industry but are more over valued? I.e CRM? Or maybe they just have some insights that you don’t have? Maybe they have used SNOW’s product and found it’s extremely useful and have huge scalability? What insights you have that others don’t have so you have the confidence to discredit their investment decision?

If buying SNOW a profitable trade, why complaining? I would bet this is a short term trade, properly hedged. The rational of this trade has more to do market structure and supply and demand than value investing.

Maybe not, but I will need to register it with local govt as a rental and be ready to show tax returns and rent checks. Since it’s rented to my parents, it may attract suspicious that I am trying to get around the rules. One way I am thinking is just to gift the money to my parents and they buy it. But I would much prefer to own it since I paid for it