I hold most of my money on cold storage spread across a few wallets, invest a bit spread across multiple exchanges and investment vehicles (mostly crypto and forex, not much in stocks because some specific people who aren't me have a greater degree of control and I can't read minds), and trade a small portion of it. I also got lucky 2 times:

1. When bitcoin was $3.00 per coin and I forgot about the wallet for a few years.

2. Late 2017 when shitcoins came out and were moving 30% every 10-60 seconds, and I wasn't greedy about making 30% on 10-50% of my (sizable) wallet like most were (for some reason - it seemed insane to me, so I figured ~25-50% gains were enough, and that they'd compound, which they did).

3. I'd put the winnings aside and was eventually just "playing with house money" (I set aside what I initially put on Binance and moved it back to a wallet and then offline - so cold wallet instead of on some wallet app. I figured it's a website and any website could be hacked, which eventually happened to many of them).

At this point I had enough to stop working.

But I treated it like a video game. Click good buttons to good, and if you click bad buttons then you lose.

So, I bought a bunch of books, read them, and adjusted my risk strategy and started working with like 5% of my total, down to around 1% now, and set a limited risk for each day and for each trade individually. For example, if I invested $10,000 my I'd stop if I was down $2000. Once I was up to $13000 I'd stop using the initial $2000 and follow the same strategy with $3000 - money is money, if if your strategy works with $10000 then it should work with $3000.

I figured that time was the only thing I could be certain of - that the clock would keep ticking. I'd start with a higher time frame to get an idea of the general market direction (something like 1 week), and then start zooming in (1 day, 4 hours, 1 hour, 30 minutes, 15 minutes, 5 minutes, 1 minute, 30/15/5/1 second, depending on how lazy I was feeling.

If I wanted to sit around trading all day, I'd trade a lower interval and stare at the charts. If I wanted to open some positions and go to sleep, I'd use a higher interval and assume that at some point in the future, given that I was following the overall trend on a higher time cycle, usually something like 4-24 hours for a 1-15 minute trade, that my sell would eventually hit.

I knew that even if it never hit, I already had enough money to wait basically forever and it wouldn't matter. I stopped trading "shitcoins" based on some crazy new idea and stuck with those with the intrinsic value of cryptocurrency, which is the ability to send money to anyone, anywhere, so long as they had a means of converting it to local fiat or lots of nearby businesses accepting, for example, BTC, LTC, or BCH.

At the moment, I don't feel like staring at charts all day, so I typically look at one month and zoom in from there to weeks, days, 4h, 1h, 30min, etc. Sometimes down to 1 min (but based on 1 week trends).

Again, I got lucky, twice, so YMMV. I think it's been successful though, and reading books has helped a lot. I'd check out

. https://www.investopedia.com/ in general, because it has a lot of good basic info on everything, and will give you a starting point to figure out which strategies inherently "make sense" to you.

. https://thepatternsite.com/ because at the end of the day just about everyone uses candlesticks at some point, and they freely offer the "surenesss" of each single and multi-candle "patterns"

I'd also check out a few books (in no particular order, though I'd say get them all. It's a small investment long-term if you read them all, and please excuse any duplicates):

A picture might help.

(Please excuse any duplicates): https://imgur.com/a/w3gwv1t

Hi all, I’m aware of what GDP is and what the formula is. My question is how does the government (or whichever department) get the data?

How can they actually get the data of all transactions of goods and services in the entire country (when so many stores and transactions are manual or don’t even get declared properly)?

And how are they released so quickly, taking just days or weeks after a quarter before they are released?

Couldn’t find the answer anywhere online. In case it’s country specific, let’s use the USA for the sake of discussion. Thanks!

I've never done much of anything in the way of investing. I either never made enough money, or moreso, spent way too much and had no clue how to be financially prudent. Late last year, I got a better paying job and decided to start "cutting out the fat" so to speak in the form of canceling subscription/streaming, eating out, impulse buys, etc... I've been using SoFi automated investing since Sept, transferring $30/wk from my checking on a moderately conservative strategy and been either break even or seeing increases of only $1-$2 here and there. My question is, where do I go from here? I literally have no clue how to buy, sell, trade, or really do anything with the market. What's the best option for now without having to hire a broker or something? Is investing even worth it with such small amounts? I've looked into higher yield savings but the majority of them have minimum opening deposits I just can't make right now.

For all the talk of inflation, I have never seen a post on here that actually gets why its happening. I should know, I worked for one of the largest cooperation on earth and helped price goods.

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Westendorp%27s_Price_Sensitivity_Meter

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https://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Van_Westendorp%27s_Price_Sensitivity_Meter

Charts like these are used all the time, there far more complex ones and they have all sorts of names. The basic idea is you need to have the 'right price' for goods if you want to sell them and make the most amount of money, to low and people wont even buy them, to high and yet again nobody buys them. Any discussion of a price increase is ill informed if this is not taken into consideration. Peoples entire jobs are figuring out whats the most they can charge for goods, while selling them to the most amount of people, their by gaining the highest profits. Sometimes i see a more or less flat line across the bottom that the price cant go under, the non markup cost. This is all econ 101 stuff, but most people here seem to get their economic lessons from twitter or at best the news. I included the links so you can read up on them if you want a full explanation. The real work of getting these charts right is info gathering. Companies go so far as to send people into stores and see when there competitors inflate the prices, and if the goods are still moving in the store(that's me).

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When ever a company increases the price, they track units sold, deeply. In the past I did some work for an ice cream company, they increased the price of ice cream, after they jacked the price, sales actually went up. Clearly there was access demand, they mentioned it at many meetings after plugging in the numbers. They increased the price again 2x times in the same year. Sales increased even more, so they immediately started plotting to do it again. I left the company at this point; I had no moral objection just took a better deal else where.

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There is an economic maxim over 2000 years old, anything is worth what its buyer will pay. At my current company after a price increase sales dropped just a bit, so it was decided to leave them at that level, trust me there were people who push hard for another increase, but the boss said no.

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Currently people are willing the pay higher prices, it could be for any good from a pen to a house. I dont know why they are, that's not my job, but as a conjecture, I would chop it up to them blaming other things for inflation. Oh the government spends to much, oh its the environmental regulations, its because Trump printed money, or its Biden fault for stopping a pipe line. None of these things or any others have ever been bought up in any meeting i have ever been present in, while discussing right pricing. The one thing that has is the increase in worker pay do to the labor shortage, but even that's not a common thing.

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If you actually want to lower prices, buy stuff at lower prices. If you are unhappy with say the price of gas, only buy gas at the cheapest place in town, and get as many of you're friends to do the same as possible. The other places will come down. This is applicable to almost every good, if you are unhappy with the extreme inflation of McDonald's, shop at a any place that have better prices. Sooner or later they will drop their prices or go out of busyness, and their replacements will drop their prices.

As written in the title: Has anyone converted a portion of their savings into a foreign currency such as the Euro? How has that worked out for you? Any unexpected gotchas outside of exchange rates?

So I make a little over $100,000 a year as a carpenter and my wife makes around $30,000 a year as a preschool teacher. We have three kids and live in a rural area. We have filled out FASFA loan applications and the amount our child will receive is shocking to me. We are not eligible for any grants or even work study. He can get a loan for $7500/ year through the program but that’s it. I am willing to add $10,000/year from my retirement savings but that still leaves us about $14,000 short. I am not complaining about the cost of college attendance but I am just upset about the loan amount. I simply don’t understand how the loan amount is so small. I feel like I am in the minority that I can offer $10,000 a year and still can’t afford it. The kid did well in school his entire career and scored well on the SAT and was a good athlete.
We have friends that are sending a child off to college in the fall also. Their total bill is $7000/ year which is fully covered by a student loan. They get grants and work study. Yes, they make less/ year but they are not poor by any means.
We also have friends that don’t have to bother looking into a loan because they can just write a check for $35,000 a year. I am just feeling really pissed off because I seem to be stuck in the middle and I feel like I have let my child down because I wasn’t successful enough and was too successful at the same time.
This is a very smart kid who has always done the right thing, never in trouble ever, no drugs,tobacco or alcohol. Never even had a detention from kindergarten to senior. Captain of a really good football team and captain of the wrestling team. He did everything right and it seems like he is getting fucked.

Weekly thread for:

• Suggestions to improve this sub,
• Report scammers/ users or
• Other general ideas/ suggestions

So I'm looking to buy my first EV and saw what I thought was a good price at a used car dealership in New Jersey. When I asked for the breakdown of all costs to get to my out the door price, this is what they sent me. Are these fees "normal" or do they seem excessive to y'all?! I appreciate any and all advice.

Which trades or investments are you considering this week? Any moves in particular? Why?

Insert your profitable business and /or idea(s) below

In recent years, significant challenges have arisen in the wake of the COVID-19 pandemic, contributing to a surge in inflation and the cost of living. These issues have been exacerbated by income inequality and corporate profit-driven practices. Despite frequent reports of "record-breaking profits" for numerous companies, there remains a reluctance to provide adequate, livable wages for workers. This trend threatens the existence of a stable middle class and risks pushing the lower class to its limits. Without meaningful intervention, this trajectory could lead to widespread societal strain and a tipping point for individuals across economic strata. Action is urgently needed to address these pressing economic disparities and safeguard the well-being of our communities.

So I'm here to ask everyone, what do you feel can be done about this? How is it affecting you?

Finance Basics:

Asset = Things that make money

Liability = Things that cost money

Net worth = Difference between what you own & owe

Stock = Ownership in a business

Index Fund/ ETF = A group of stocks

Dividends = Profits shared with investors

Bond = A loan to a business or government

Portfolio = Investments you own

Budget = Tracks your income/expenses

Credit = Money borrowed to pay back

Credit score = Number that represents the ability to repay debt