750. Received an unexpected cashiers check for over $2K from another state - is this some scam?
This is a variation of a very common scam. The principle of the scam is this: I give you a check for a huge amount of money which you pay in your account. Then I ask you to pay some money from your account into a third account. Two months later the bank detects that my check was forged / stolen / cancelled / whatever and takes the huge amount of money away from your account. But you paid the money from your account, and that money is gone from your account and irrevocably ended up in my account.

751. Does it make any sense to directly contribute to reducing the US national debt?
No. Unless you are ten Bill Gates rolled into one man, you can not possibly hope to make a dent in the 14 trillion debt. Even if you were and paid off whole debt in one payment, budget deficits would restore it to old glory in a short time. If you have some extra money, I'd advise to either choose a charity and donate to somebody who needs your help directly or if you are so inclined, support a campaign of a financially conservative politician (only if you are sure he is a financial conservative and doesn't just tell this to get elected - I have no idea how you could do it :).

752. How can people have such high credit card debts?
In the United States, when applying for credit cards, proof of income is on an honor system. You can make $15k a year and write on your application that you make $150k a year. They don't check that value other than to have their computer systems figure out risk and you get a yes or no. It was traditionally easy to attain credit, but that got tightened in 2008/2009 with the housing crisis. This is starting to change again and credit is flowing much more easily.

753. Do any publically available documents from IR or SEC include all patents the company holds?
It appears as others have said that companies are not required to state this on as any sort of Asset. I remembered a friend of mine is a lawyer specializing in Intellectual Property Rights so asked him and confirmed that there's no document companies are required to file which states all patent holdings as assets. There are two ways he suggested for finding out. Once you find a company you're interested in can search patents by company using one of the two following: US Patent Office website's advanced search: http://patft.uspto.gov/netahtml/PTO/search-adv.htm aanm/company for example entering into the textarea, "aanm/google" without the quotation marks will find patents by Google. The other is a Google Patent Search: http://www.google.com/patents/

754. What are “trailing 12-month total returns”?
Total Return is the percent change in value (including andy dividends) of an instrument.  The "trailing 12-month" means that your starting point is the value 12 months ago.  So the formula is: where V is the value of the instrument on the reference date, V0 is the value of the instrument 12 months prior to the reference date, and D is the amount of dividends paid between the two dates.

755. How are the $1 salaries that CEOs sometimes take considered legal?
Taxable fringe benefits are included in taxable wages for the purpose of FLSA. So when those executives get to use company cars or company jets that value is "wage" even if it isn't salary.

756. What's the purpose of having separate checking and savings accounts?
For some people, it's easier to stick to a budget if they have separate checking and savings accounts because they can deposit funds directly into their savings account and not have those funds accessible by debit/credit card, checks, etc. This allows people to pay themselves first and accumulate savings, while making it slightly more difficult to spend those savings on a whim. One a more technical/legal note, one key difference in the United States comes from Regulation D. §204.2(d)(2) of the law limits you to six withdrawals from savings and money market accounts. No such limit exists for checking accounts. Regulation D also forbids banks from paying interest on business checking accounts.  In the simplest case, checking accounts and savings accounts are a tradeoff between liquidity and return. Checking accounts are much more liquid, but won't necessarily earn interest, while savings accounts are less liquid because of the withdrawal limits, but earn interest. Nowadays, however, sweep accounts blur this line somewhat because they function like checking accounts, in that you can write an unlimited number of checks, make an unlimited number of withdrawals, etc. but you can also earn interest on your account balance because some or all of the funds are "swept" into an investment account when not in use. The definition of "in use" can vary from business to business and bank to bank.

757. still have mortgage on old house to be torn down- want to build new house
I could be wrong, but I doubt you're going to be able to roll the current mortgage into a new one. The problem is that the bank is going to require that the new loan is fully collateralized by the new house.  So the only way that you can ensure that is if you can construct the house cheaply enough that the difference between the construction cost and the end market value is enough to cover the current loan AND keep the loan-to-value (LTV) low enough that the bank is secured. So say you currently owe $40k on your mortgage, and you want to build a house that will be worth $200k. In order to avoid PMI, you're going to have to have an LTV of 80% or less, which means that you can spend no more than $160k to build the house.  If you want to roll the existing loan in, now you have to build for less than $120k, and there's no way that you can build a $200k house for $120k unless you live in an area with very high land value and hire the builders directly (and even then it may not be possible). Otherwise you're going to have to make up the difference in cash. When you tear down a house, you are essentially throwing away the value of the house - when you have a mortgage on the house, you throw away that value plus you still owe the money, which is a difficult hole to climb out of. A better solution might be to try and sell the house as-is, perhaps to someone else who can tear down the house and rebuild with cash. If that is not a viable option (or you don't want to move) then you might consider a home equity loan to renovate parts of the house, provided that they increase the market value enough to justify the cost (e.g. modernize the kitchen, add on a room, remodel bathrooms, etc. So it all depends on what the house is worth today as-is, how much it will cost you to rebuild, and what the value of the new house will be.

758. Are the “debt reduction” company useful?
No. Not in the Uk anyway, they are just an extra person/company that you have to pay.

759. Highest market cap for a company from historical data
In common with many companies, Microsoft has been engaging in share buyback programmes, where it buys its own shares in the market and then cancels them. It's often a more tax-efficient way to distribute profits to the shareholders than paying a dividend. So there were more Microsoft shares in circulation in 1999 than there are now. See here for information.

760. I carelessly invested in a stock on a spike near the peak price. How can I salvage my investment?
I am very surprised no one mentioned the Stock Repair Option Strategy which has real benefits and is one of the mainstream Option Strategies. Quote: Who Should Consider Using the Stock Repair Strategy? In a nutshell, you are buying call options with current strike price (at-the-money) and sell call options with higher strike price (out-of-the-money), all with the same expiry dates.  The only reason to also sell call options here is to recover your premium paid for the other call options. If you are comfortable paying that premium, you just buy the call options without selling the others. In case your stock will rise moderately to a price between the two strike prices, your call option will rise together with your stock, so you will be faster to recover your money. This is the main reason it is called Repair. If you have sold any call options, as the price rises, you have to be careful when it reaches the strike price of the options sold, as from there on you will begin incurring losses. It is however exactly the lucky outcome you were hoping for, your stock is higher, and you can buy back those loss making options - then or shortly before. If you didn't sell any options and payed your premium, you don't need to worry at all at this stage. WARNING It should be noted that the Stock Repair Strategy offers no protection for your stock price further falling down. In that case all those options will expire worthless or you can sell back the ones your bought but likely not for much. In order to have the downside protection for your stock, there are other strategies, the simplest one being buying a Put Option at-the-money or slightly lower. That will effectively cut your possible losses to the Option Premium (which is the main use of that option).  Again, if you hate to pay that premium, you can offset it by selling other options that you either hope won't be exercised or take steps to protect you against those.

761. Is keeping old credit cards and opening new credit cards with high limits and never using an ideal way to boost credit scores?
Problems with your plan (in no particular order) there is a limit, once they have decided that you have enough credit they won't offer any more. If the economy changes (like it did in 2008) they can reduce the limit on existing accounts. If you don't use them, they may decide to close them. Using existing cards will encourage the bank to increase the limit on that card. opening cards can make some lenders nervous. Having a new card close to when you are applying for a mortgage or a car loan can make them less likely to lend you the max. You have to decide: Are you trying to buildup your credit limit? or your credit score?

762. In general, is it financially better to buy or to rent a house?
I just read through all of the answers to this question and there is an important point that no one has mentioned yet: Oftentimes, buying a house is actually cheaper than renting the identical house. I'm looking around my area (suburbs of Chicago, IL) in 2017 and seeing some houses that are both for sale and for rent, which makes for an easy comparison. If I buy the house with $0 down (you can't actually put $0 down but it makes the numerical comparison more accurate if you do), my monthly payment including mortgage (P+I), taxes, insurance, and HOA, is still $400 less than the monthly rent payment. (If I put 20% down it's an even bigger savings.) So, in addition to the the tax advantages of owning a home, the locked in price that helps you in an economy that experiences inflation, and the accumulated equity, you may even have extra cash flow too. If you were on the fence when you would have had to pay more per month in order to purchase, it should be a no-brainer to buy if your monthly cost is lower. From the original question: Get a loan and buy a house, or I can live for the rest of my life in rent and save the extra money (investing and stuff). Well, you may be able to buy a house and save even more money than if you rent. Of course, this is highly dependent on your location.

763. Do I even need credit cards?
Credits are expensive, so it's a great advantage to pay in cash. Obviously, it's even more an advantage to pay in cash for a house or a car, of course if you can afford it. But, as annoying as it could be, there are some services, where you're out of option to pay in cash, or even to pay by bank transfer. One of the most prominent examples, Google Play (OK, as I've learned, there are prepaid cards. But Groundspeak, for example, has none.). With the further expansion of Internet and E-Economy there will be more cases like that, where paying in cash is no more an option. Booking of hotels or hostels is already mentioned. There are some that provide no other booking option that giving your credit card number. However, even if the do, for example bank transfer of, say, 20% as reservation fee, please note that international money transfer can be very expensive, and credit card is usually given only for security in case you don't come, and if you do come and pay in cash, no money is taken = no expensive fee for international money transfer and/or disadvantaging currency exchange rate.

764. Companies that use their cash to buy back stock, issue dividends, etc. — how does this this typically affect share price?
If a company is valued correctly, then paying dividends should lower the share price, and buying back shares should leave the share price unchanged.  If the share price is $100, and the company pays a $10 dividend, then either its cash goes down by $10 per share, it is has to borrow money for the same amount, or some mixture. Either way, the value of the company has gone down by $10 per share.  If the share price is $100, and the company buys back 10 percent of its shares, then it also has to find the money, just as for the dividend, and the value of the company goes down by 10 percent. However, the number of shares also goes down by 10 percent, so the amount of value per share is the same, and the share price should stay unchanged.  Now there are psychological effects. Many people like getting paid dividends, so they will want to own shares of a company paying dividends, so the share price goes up. Similar with a share buyback; the fact that someone buys huge amounts of shares drives the price up. Both effects are purely psychological.  A buyback has another effect if the shares are not valued correctly. If the company is worth $100 per share but for some reason the shareprice is down to $50, then after the buyback the value per share has even gone up. Basically the company buys from stupid investors, which increases the value for clever investors holding on to their shares. If the shareprice were $200, then buying back shares would be a stupid move for the company.

765. What does it mean “sell on ask” , “sell on bid” in stocks?
Honestly, I wonder if the other answerers aren't overthinking it. Their answers are detailed and correct, but what your coach may be saying is this: When you have bought a stock, on cash or margin, and you are watching it rise you are evaluating when you sell on the price of the stock you are seeing. In reality, you should look at the bid (price buyers will give you for the stock) and ask (price sellers will charge you for the stock) prices. If the stock is going up, odds are the price of the stock is very close to the ask price because it is purchases that are driving it up, but that's not what you're going to get when you sell. You're going to get something around the bid price. If the spread between the two is large (i.e. a volatile stock) this could be many cents or more lower than the ask price. Therefore, what your coach may mean by "Selling on Ask" is you're using the stock price when it's equal or close to the ask price to decide when to sell, instead of letting the stock peak and drop (when its price will approach the bid price) or letting the trailing bid offers catch up to your desired sell point and selling then (i.e. letting the stock point grow PAST your sell point, dragging the bid price up with it). Just a thought, but that sounds like a term a coach would come up with to mean selling and getting less than you thought you were going to from the sale. (I know it's a necro reply, but the Interwebs are immortal and people come via Google... I did)

766. Ideas for patenting/selling a trading strategy
If you have a great technical trading system that gets you winning trading 80-85% of the time in backtesting, the question should be why are you not trading it? To get a better idea of how good your trading system is you should work out your expectancy per trade. This will tell you how much you should make on average for every trade you take. Expectancy not only considers your win rate but also you win size to loss size ratio. For example if you are getting winning trades 80% of the time but your average win size is $100, and your 20% of losses average $500, then you will still be losing money. You should be aiming for an average win size of at least 2.5 to 3 times you average loss size. This will provide you a profitable trading system even if your win rate is 50%. If your trading system is really that good and provides a win size of at least 2.5 times your loss size then you should be actively trading it. Also, if you put your trading system out there in the public domain together with your trading results you will actually find that, quite opposite to what the consensus above is, your results from your trading plan should actually improve further. The more people acting on the outcome of a signal in the same direction the higher the probability that the movement in the desired direction will actually occur. If you are looking to make money from your trading ideas, no one will pay anything unless you have real results to back it up. So if you are so confident about your system you should start trading it with real money. Of course you should start off small and build it up over time as your results eventuate as per your simulations.
