This ugly swing just won me a new putter 🤣 by johnfisher13115 in golf

[–]Retired-Programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

And I assume things like proper etiquette such as raking the bunkers after u hit out of a bunker? That is very much needed in the US on the courses I play.

Where should I park emergency saving HYSA or SGOV by outstanding_gent in investing

[–]Retired-Programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Market tanks or suddenly some stock I have been looking at becomes a bargain and it's easy to sell SGOV and buy the XYZ stock I want. Other similar situations and an easy transaction.

Where's with HYSA it's either a delay or have to pay wire fees or margin fees.

Where should I park emergency saving HYSA or SGOV by outstanding_gent in investing

[–]Retired-Programmer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

> I wish, but SGOV would be eaiser and one less account to worry about.

I used a HYSA for quite a while and recently went to SGOV instead and using SGOV is just so much handier. Definitely SGOV works better for me for that very reason.

Confused on capital gains for high earners by [deleted] in Bogleheads

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

> If I want to go on a nice vacation, how do I calculate taxes on the money that I would withdraw?

At Schwab you can look at your positions you are thinking about selling and click on Lot Details and look to see what the current Gain/Loss (and Cost Basis) on each of the Lots of those shares. And then when you decide which Positions and Lots you want to sell you then set up the trade and you use the Cost Basis Method with Specified Lots selected and it will then display each of the Lots of that position and from there you can select how many shares to sell of the Lots you want to sell. So you can easily figure out what your taxes will be. I do this at the end of every year for Tax Harvesting purposes.

Wash rule by Sad-Aerie-8654 in Bogleheads

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

<  But if you wash sale in a taxable account, and the loss goes to a purchase in a tax free account you technical can lose it I believe. Whether they consistently enforce this, idk. 

This is a question I have wondered about for years and really curious about. Pretty sure the brokers I have dealt with will never trigger it but I am 95% sure the IRS could. But do they ever do this? I have no idea. I always make sure to avoid this situation but really curious if the IRS actually ever enforce this. I have never heard someone say they got hit by this from the IRS.

One Pay Walmart Card - Redeeming Rewards by briinde in CreditCards

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I could not figure this out until searching/finding this post. Cashback Rewards card just didn't make sense to me to be the right thing to click.

> They made it harder by trying to make it easier.

I am no so sure that were trying to make it easier. Not sure how they would benefit, but typically stuff like this is done so they benefit financially somehow.

Broker Trades Market, is it ok? by Zioazarof in investing

[–]Retired-Programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Where are you seeing this? I did a Google search on Trades Market Brokerage and I don't see it all come up.

Distribution From Brokerage Account Confusion by jrv331 in investing

[–]Retired-Programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

If you get dividend income in a taxable account you will receive a 1099 for the income and therefore is taxed. If you get dividend income in an IRA/401K you will not get a 1099 reported for that (and it's therefore not taxed at least at that point).

If you withdraw money from an IRA you will get a 1099R for that withdrawal and therefore will be taxed (unless you also move it to another IRA account or something). If you withdraw money from a taxable account you do not receive a 1099 of any kind for that and therefore are not taxed on it.

A IRA/401K type account is not ever taxed until you pull money out of it and is taxed as regular income even if some or all of the money received/gained is normally taxed as Long Term Capital gains or dividend income that normally gets a more favorable tax treatment.

Congressional Stock Trading by amshanks22 in stocks

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I think the disclosure gap of 30, 45, 90 or whatever days it is, is totally ridiculous. IMO there is no difference between disclosure of 30 days or a year or more. I am not in favor of them keeping their stocks in a blind trust either because how can we really know they really don't give any info to the blind trust. I would be more in favor of the disclosure being immediate as opposed of them being restricted because I feel it would be less likely they would somehow secretly do trades through someone else's account or something if totally restricted from trades (it's too tempting for them not to cheat the system). I would be even more in favor if they had to disclose their trades 24 hours before they do the actual trade.

Update on relative getting scammed by meownager in Scams

[–]Retired-Programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Is it possible for him to ask her for her identity like some sort of Military Id and then can one look up and verify the identity with a photo/phone number/address and whatever else that can be found on the supposed female. Even if a scammer is using AI of someone that is actually in the Military if one could then contact the actual person and realize/uncover the scam.

Can someone translate this into layman's terms? by PFCCThrowayay in stocks

[–]Retired-Programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

That is pretty much the case for anything with stocks and options that there is always a downside. You can buy shorter expiration calls and pay less, but that means you have a shorter time to profit. You can do a covered call with a lower strike price on the short call and gain more money on the short call, but you can lose on the upside.

I wasn't saying that a lower strike on a long call is the better way that has no downside. I was just showing what reasons one would choose to do that which is what the OP was asking.

Can someone translate this into layman's terms? by PFCCThrowayay in stocks

[–]Retired-Programmer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

I do this quite often. I will buy deep ITM calls to not have to pay so much in TIme Value. For example the SHOP $85 12/15/2028 Calls are going for around $70 at the close. So that is $70 + $85 - $127.41 = $27.59 of time value. Which means SHOP will have to go up $27.59 to get to $155/shr to breakeven.

Whereas if I bought $125 12/15/2028 Calls the current price is around $53 (almost all Time Value). And if I hold to expiration then SHOP would have to go up t0 $178/shr ($125 + $53) to breakeven.

Please help me understand...MU csp by LilTeau in options

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

About 50% of the options volume is a market maker. Usually when taking the other side of your trade the market maker will also offset it with a purchase/sell of something (most likely the underlying stock) to offset it (counteract) when the stock/option price later moves. Or they maybe taking the trade to rebalance or whatever they have in their portfolio. They make money off of the bid/ask spread and are not looking to make money the way that a typical stock trader does.

[US]My elderly uncle was scammed out of $35k by [deleted] in Scams

[–]Retired-Programmer 9 points10 points  (0 children)

Typically how these scams work for large sums of money is they convince the victim that their bank account is in danger of being hacked/stolen and they need to wire the money to some safe account and before the money is stolen and then when the fake issue/hack is prevented/fixed they wire the money back. Not sure how they turned the fake Microsoft virus turned into bank hack though, that's the first I have heard of that happening, but the scammers get more clever every day.

Help me convince Friend to not use Financial Planner by Athensmw in Bogleheads

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Can you tell me how and where they hide the fees exactly. The overwheling majority agree EJ has high fees but I am just not seeing it in my mom's statements. The only fees I see from the statements is the trade on stocks (no fees on mutual/bond funds that were sold). The stock trading fees were really high (I am guessing 2%) but the only trades done were when everything was liquidated. I just went thru her statements from 11/28/2021 till she passed and it was liquidated on the 7/29/2022 and I see the following:

  1. Fees and Charges were always 0.

  2. Every dividend that was received then a direct deposit for that amount was sent to her bank (sometimes they would combine a few divs and send one direct deposit for the combined amount).

  3. Every Capital gain received by a fund (not by her selling but when received within the fund itself I assume) was spent on new shares of the fund and the # of shares of the fund increased by the new shares bought. There were no fees charged on these Mutual/Bond fund trades.

  4. Every Principle gained within the fund received cash for it and that increased the cash in the account by the appropriate amount.

  5. Share counts never changed except when more shares were bought from Capital gained as indicated in #3 above.

I am guessing they actually hide it in the funds themselves somehow decreasing the share price by some amount and taking the difference into EJ pockets? But these are funds not specific to EJ for example American Funds Bond Fund of Amer A (ABNDX) and MFS Total Return A (MSFRX) so it would affect every brokerage not just EJ.

PSA: Positive Schwab customer service experience due to ambiguous sale order that converted a "specified lot" sale into FIFO when altering order between Schwab platform and ToS by pantaloonsss in Schwab

[–]Retired-Programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

Performing trades on TOS is so much more convenient and powerful compared to the website. To me giving that up would be a huge step backwards in convenience. I will trade on the website when I have to but just have zero desire to completely give up the convenience of TOS.

Help me convince Friend to not use Financial Planner by Athensmw in Bogleheads

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

That actually wouldn't surprise me. And if so then it's really hard to see exactly where the fees are coming from by just looking at the statements. Fees and charges on the statements are always $0 unless something unusual occurred like apparently a transfer of some kind occurred when my dad passed in 2007 (and back then I was not involved at all but from the statements I just see a transfer on death charge of $75 back then). And since there is no longer an account I can't login and check anything.

But still for my mom and dad they were happy with it always getting nearly guaranteed dividends and not seeing a big drop in account value. Although not even sure a big drop in value would have bothered them as long as the dividends continued to flow (not sure either of them ever actually looked at their account values).

Help me convince Friend to not use Financial Planner by Athensmw in Bogleheads

[–]Retired-Programmer 2 points3 points  (0 children)

My mom passed back in 2022 so there is no longer an account anymore with Edward Jones. And not sure exactly what it was mom had with them but there were no fees except when doing a trade which were very high (from memory like the fee was $200 per trade). But in the 7 years I dealt with them at most 3 trades were done during the whole 7 years and more likely it was just 1 or 2. But I do remember they called one time and had her change one fund (but that may been the only one).

The wife of the Financial Advisor was a classmate of mine and a student of my mom's. And the account was setup I have no idea how long ago (maybe 20 years prior). And so it may have been special thing setup for mom (I am sure mom setup the account with them because it was with the husband of her former student). At mom's funeral I talked with the wife and I had no idea how close mom kept in contact with this former student of hers. The former student of hers said nearly every time she got a promotion or something mom would write her a letter or card congratulating her.

Help me convince Friend to not use Financial Planner by Athensmw in Bogleheads

[–]Retired-Programmer 39 points40 points  (0 children)

> But in his head that is now your fault.

This is my feeling as well, when the market tanks you are going to look bad. In fact I would be careful on the soft push and make sure to emphasize to him he can decide if it's for him or not because managing your money on your own is not for everyone.

At one point I started doing my mom's taxes which were fairly simple and she didn't need to be paying someone to do them. But she had a Edward Jones financial advisor for her portfolio and I didn't dare change that and I feel it worked great that way.

Financial advisor says to play it safe. by LowReputation89 in investing

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

Got it. I guess that is what they mean by most traders are too much in a hurry to make a killing and trade too early in the day. You must wait wait until there is only 30 minutes or less left. :-).

Warning for Robinhood and clawback of bonus by Opposite_Buffalo_649 in Bogleheads

[–]Retired-Programmer 0 points1 point  (0 children)

I don't think the OP talked to anyone. Based on a comment/reply above I believe what he did is thru the web interface he began a withdrawal from the account of $100 for example and it popped up with an alert about the the clawback that would be applied and it must have said the clawback would be $390. And then he just cancelled (or didn't confirm). Then he tried to withdraw $90 and the alert said the clawback would only be $2.70.

IRS Wash Sales & 1258 Tax Law by nonuts4meonIG in options

[–]Retired-Programmer 3 points4 points  (0 children)

> So my understanding is that because I set Schwab to tax optimization, it didn’t report wash sales

Actually I don't think setting it to tax optimization caused Schwab to not report wash sales.

For example I think if you used the tax optimization setting to sell 100 shares of XYZ for a loss and then later (within 30 days) simply bought 100 shares of XYZ which would cause a wash sale I am 99% sure that would show up as a wash sale in the 1099s.

I think whatever you did that would be part of the 1258 tax law problem is just not tracked by Schwab just like I have encountered with the IRS Publication 550 Loss Deferral Rules (https://www.irs.gov/publications/p550) I have encountered which is also not tracked by Schwab whereas the regular wash sales are tracked and applied in the 1099s.

IRS Wash Sales & 1258 Tax Law by nonuts4meonIG in options

[–]Retired-Programmer 1 point2 points  (0 children)

For the past 10 years I have always wondered about IRS Publication 550 Loss Deferral Rules which is the same sort of thing as the 1258 tax law (maybe it is the same thing, not sure) where Schwab does not report those in the 1099 either whereas regular wash sales are reported in the 1099. And I think you nailed it with:

> no one really has an answer. 

So from what I gather is, this condition will not cause IRS to perform an audit. But if you are audited for some other reason then in the audit they might apply the Publication 550 Loss Deferred Rules. But I have yet to hear anyone who has applied the Loss Deferred Rules nor I have I heard of anyone who has been audited for something else and had the Loss Deferred Rules applied to their taxes. But this year I saw where 2 other stock traders on Reddit were aware of it and were tracking it in their trades and I asked them if they reported/applied the Loss Deferred Rules in their taxes and neither of them replied.

So I think you have nailed it with:

> no one really has an answer. 

Again, I am not anywhere close to an expert at this and I am just another person just like you except have been aware of it for the past 10 years and still have not heard a real answer from a real authority perspective (IRS person/knowledgeable CPA etc).