admin: monday post, january 10, 2011 - january 16, 2011

[seperis]

I forgot to email jamethiel to tell her it's her turn. Sorry!

This is the Monday post for the week of January 10-16. All transactions and questions should go here. The last one will be closed; if you have anything you want to change in that one, post here with a link to it.

Announcements

Er, none. Second part of the market tutorial goes up this week. I'm working on my grocery store metaphors. If anyone wants to contribute a post about anything, contact one of the mods. We like posts!

Reminders

1.) January is still no-transaction fee month.

There is no fee for buying or selling. If anyone wants to sell as well as buy, this would be a good time to do it. I'd suggest any day when a major announcement is scheduled to come out and you can watch stock prices rise and fall. We haven't talked about short selling yet, but I'm wondering now if I should set a month later in the year as transaction-free and see what everyone does with it when they know how to do it.

2.) February will be a no-transaction fee except for selling month. Selling fees are the same as real-time fees.

3.) March will see the introduction of the ETF and mutual fund. One of the drawbacks of mutual funds usually is that they require a starter amount from $1000 to $10,000 dollars to even begin. Most self-service brokers, however, have ways around this, so we'll be introducing both items for trade after there's been a short tutorial over them and what they do.

Conversion Data

All future currency conversion data is on the sheet labeled ConversionData here. I checked against yahoo and msn and googlefinancial's historical conversion data is accurate to three to five decimal places, which for our purposes is perfect, so it updates automatically for everyone.

Transaction Format

We'll probably just keep posting this in every Monday post for easy reference.
Format

Buying - Real Time

Format of Declaration to Buy:
Subject Line: "Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: 5
Country: Your Country

Buying - Automatic

Format of Declaration to Buy, Automatic:
Subject Line: "Automatic Buy: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Amount: Amount you wish to invest in this stock
Country: Your Country

Selling

Format of Declaration to Sell:
Subject Line: "Sell: {Ticker}"
Name: Your Name
Company: Company Name
Ticker: Ticker
Time: In Your Time Zone or in GMT (say which one you're using)
Price: In Your Country's Currency
Shares: How many shares.
Country: Your Country

Markets

Also will now be listed on every Monday post:

Eligible Exchanges:

1.) NYSE, any version.
2.) Euronext, any version
3.) ASX - Australian Stock Exchange
4.) LSE - London Stock Exchange
5.) TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
6.) Hong Kong Stock Exchange
7.) Shanghai Stock Exchange
8.) Toronto Stock Exchange
9.) Deutsche Börse
10.) NASDAQ
11.) Any stock listed in your local market.

You may buy from any of these exchanges no matter where you are or what country you are in, as well as your home country exchanges and any they are allied/list.

Transaction Alpha Test

To make things easier, I'm trying out a googledocs form to record transactions. It also automatically timestamps.

Transaction Form



If anyone can tell me how to make it imbed, please do so, because it totally will not.

This page should show you your transaction afterward.

Tell me if this works or not. I hope it will be slightly more convenient than posting here, though you're welcome to do both. Eventually, anything recorded here will automatically update your individual spreadsheet. I got that working on one set, but I also got import data working on one set and not on anything else, so go googledocs.

Final

Happy buying!

info: you and the stock exchanges of the world, part 2

[seperis]

I worked way too much yesterday and perhaps a little this morning and so. Time for one of very few things that isn't making me grumpy. Or like, homicidal.

This is you and the stock market.

From earlier:

Stock Exchange - a company or entity that facilitates the buying and trading of securities (such as stock). It is located in a place, but it is not a place. It is a company.

Listing - companies that can sell securities on an exchange. They do not do this themselves as a rule. They get a member of the exchange to do it.

Membership - companies that do the buying and the selling. Sometimes, they cause the Great Depression. Sometimes, they don't.

( this is like your grocery store )

HKEX has their site in both English and Chinese; they also have a glossary. The site is split up categorically; if you know what you're looking for, it's not too hard to find what you need. Then again, even when you know, have downloaded, and highlighting bits, you can be surprised.

List of Stock Codes was where I ended up looking for listed companies. "Equity Securities" looked right, so there I went, which is the listed companies of Hong Kong that sell stock in the exchange.

Equity Securities

I missed these:

Under GEM: Equity Securities (for more information)

Under Pilot Program Securities: Equity Securities

Which explained why Cisco and Dell had shown up on my cross-referencing of stock codes.

Companies listed on GEM do not fulfill, for whatever reason, the listing requirements for the HKEX. A fuller explanation is here, but you could think of it as a starter list for companies; they aren't qualified to be in the main listings, but this gives them a chance to be seen and hopefully raise capital as well as their profile.

The Pilot Program explanation is here. Yes, that's eleven years old; if there's a more recent version, I can't find it in English.

Convenient link to the Shanghai and Shenzhen Exchanges for searching.

So that gives you an idea, when looking up stocks to buy, where you should look for a full listing. Look at everything. You don't have to understand what you're reading; just be familiar with your exchange's site and where everything is.



And Now

So you may wonder why, when we're not using market rules, when everyone can buy from the top exchanges or their own local exchanges, why on earth they should care if Cisco is listed in Hong Kong. You can buy anywhere! Well, mostly. So why verify this sort of thing?

China Telecom:

HKEX: HK$4.14
NYSE: USD$52.98
Buenos Aires: PhP100.90

Banco Santander Central Hispano SA:

NYSE: USD$9.68
LSE: 621.50p
Amsterdam: €7.43 (Euronext)
Mexico: PhP119.00

The exchange makes a difference. Come April, it will be vital; you will still be able to buy from any of the top markets:

1.) NYSE, any version.
2.) Euronext, any version
3.) ASX - Australian Stock Exchange
4.) LSE - London Stock Exchange
5.) TSE - Tokyo Stock Exchange
6.) Hong Kong Stock Exchange
7.) Shanghai Stock Exchange
8.) Toronto Stock Exchange
9.) Deutsche Börse
10.) NASDAQ
11.) Any stock listed in your local market.

But you have to verify it's not available in your home market first. If it's there but you want to buy from Singapore anyway, there will be a fee for it. But it may be worth it. That's how a lot of people got really rich on the Royal Bank of Scotland.

Challenge

First answer wins for the value of $25 (convert to your currency) added to this month. That's a lot of shares of South Sea Pearls:

China Telecom

HKEX: HK$ 4.14
NYSE: USD$52.98
Buenos Aires: PhP100.90

Does anyone know why it's this expensive at NYSE? This is findable on Yahoo Financial, all versions that I checked.

Update

New link to stock list. You may not know this, but google has a 1,000 formula limit per spreadsheet. The stock list tipped us way over that. I have a yahoo import that will also do it, but it will only work when the moon is full or on a single page I'm not using for this, so go figure. Currently, only the US stocks have prices; the rest are being added as soon as yahoo financial stops screwing with me on importing prices.

Note: Anything for Germany should be double checked. I couldn't find relaible translations for some of what I was reading. That's why it's not complete on this page and if the price seems too dramatically different, that's why.

Note 2: Japan is a work in progress. This is mostly because I didn't realize when I started that there was an English version to the Tokyo stock market and was doing this with a dictionary and a sense I was going to die. Singapore, Hong Kong, and Dubai all benefited from me working out how to find the link enabling English or I'd seriously have my Arabic to English dictionary out and scy on the phone with me. She like, ran away last time I suggested it, but it's not like I don't have her phone number and address.

Dubai has no crossover I can find wtih any other market outside the Middle East. I'm still reading on them.

Note 3: Other Tickers are markets I was using as a baseline, and because Mexico and Buenos Aires were in Spanish and I can get through Spanish, and because I was familiar with their currency so I could convert it in my head quickly when checking markets.

Right. Done now. Use this as your link to the stock page.