Search found 2577 matches
- Mon Mar 18, 2024 10:32 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Vanguard invites clients to lend securities
- Replies: 21
- Views: 1290
Re: Fully Paid Lending Program
You would get substitute dividends on any dividend-paying stocks/ETFs that are lent out. Substitute dividends don't get qualified dividend tax treatment, so in taxable accounts there could be a high tax cost.
- Sun Mar 17, 2024 11:36 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
Side note, question for those who might know. If AI has actually evolved emergent understanding and is improving at such a rapid pace, why do AI-generated images still have such trouble counting fingers and legs? Why haven't they learned from Wikipedia that The human hand usually has five digits and learned how to apply this fact? They are supposed to be able to write code, why can't they write "Do hand = new object. Draw(hand). If digits(hand)=5 then exit else repeat." The biological growth and development process, presumably without intelligence, is able to get this right about 99.8% of the time, why can't AI? Me: "Show me a picture of six people waving their hands enthusiastically." Microsoft Bing Copilot: https://im...
- Sun Mar 17, 2024 11:14 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
One similarity between the dot-com era and the AI era is the unhinged, extreme, rhetoric of some fans. Who was the guy who yammered in WIRED back in the late 1990s that old measures like earnings and profit were irrelevant because we were leaving the age of scarcity and entering an age of abundance? Nowadays charismatic AI promoters are arguing, apparently not as a joke, that... uh... let me find the exact quotation: We believe any deceleration of AI will cost lives. Deaths that were preventable by the AI that was prevented from existing is a form of murder. Of course this is a characteristic of many bubbles and fads. Usually the new technology is supposed to bring about world peace. Are they saying that about AI currently, I'm not sure. S...
- Sun Mar 17, 2024 10:59 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
The big picture is that the per capita productivity of the economy grows continuously. This leads to the same positive real returns that index investors can profit from. Historically, this continuous upward (productivity of capital) curve has been called progress . At the same time, that productivity gain has improved the human condition. Over the span of centuries, the amount of progress has been enormous, and hard for us moderns to wrap our heads around. We live lives that would have be that of royalty a few centuries ago! So the essential questions are (1) how much longer can this continue? and (2) is the trend speeding up, slowing down, or is it exponential? Question (1) is nobody knows. Clearly it can't go to infinity, right? Question...
- Sun Mar 17, 2024 9:18 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
In investing, there's a thing called "good enough". The comments I posted were clear enough for the purposes of this thread (that is, the "Investing" category and the OP's interests). In addition, your rewordings weren't any clearer than what I already said, rendering that line of questioning no better than a rat hole. You should reconsider your inquiry in terms of what it has to do with investing, in order to bring it back on-topic. OK, I'll try to just respond directly to "we'll keep getting saturated with conjectures about the future.... That's the #1 output (by volume) of the AI revolution (and has been for 50 years)." and perhaps we will see in retrospect whether clarification was needed: AI outputs are a...
- Sun Mar 17, 2024 6:53 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
I hadn't thought of including such indirect effects. Unsuccessful attempts to gain clarification of skeptical views regarding AI are in some sense an effect of AI, but I doubt they are the main effect. Most people would give up on getting clarification much sooner than I would.
- Sun Mar 17, 2024 5:38 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
I am interested in accurate negative statements as well. Could you craft some of those? Done already: we'll keep getting saturated with conjectures about the future.... That's the #1 output (by volume) of the AI revolution (and has been for 50 years). Which (if any) of the following fairly represents your intended meaning? 1) The #1 output (by volume) related to AI, including human discussion of AI, is (and has been for 50 years) conjectures about the future, with volume meaning a general assessment of importance/significance/attention. 2) The #1 output (by volume) related to AI, including human discussion of AI, is (and has been for 50 years) conjectures about the future, with volume meaning a literal count of the number of words. 3) The ...
- Sat Mar 16, 2024 3:53 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: What is the appeal of Robinhood
- Replies: 85
- Views: 5938
Re: What is the appeal of Robinhood
Hmmm, what kind of people both (1) have a fair amount of money and (2) have little reason to worry about the PFOF complaints? Sounds like bogleheads to me. Those who don't believe in frequent trading shouldn't care that much if their execution prices are 0.05% worse.
- Sat Mar 16, 2024 3:37 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: M1 adding monthly fee for users under $10k assets
- Replies: 13
- Views: 1875
Re: M1 adding monthly fee for users under $10k assets
I only open new accounts when there is a transfer bonus. In other words, I demand fees less than zero!JustGotScammed wrote: ↑Sat Mar 16, 2024 12:21 am Complaining about...being charged $3 a month...to hold your money??
Sheesh, people have gotten spoiled the past 10 years.
- Sat Mar 16, 2024 2:54 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
I however have a lot invested in finding accurate statements about what AI can (or will be able to) do. I don't. Crafting AI marketing slogans (or hype, as the case may be) is not within my professional or personal interests. I am interested in accurate negative statements as well. Could you craft some of those? For now, I'm only interested in investment implications (as this is the "Investing" category), and I commented already. Investing implications depend on what happens. For example: 1) Some say AI will do far less than its proponents claim. If correct, AI-related stocks will likely experience severe losses once more people realize its limits. You should avoid AI stocks, perhaps by sticking to a value index. If you want to b...
- Sat Mar 16, 2024 6:58 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
Human expert lawyers make more than zero errors. You showed that GPT makes more than zero errors. How is that a counterexample? Wow. Just, wow. The above demonstrates a failure to appreciate the magnitude or egregiousness of the error. I'm not a lawyer, but I might guess that if a lawyer makes an error like saying "1978" instead of "1987", the judge won't be too bothered about it, as long as the error gets corrected in the record, but presenting case histories that are fabricated can (and did) get a lawyer formally reprimanded. You can regard them as being the same if you like, but I don't. If you're still unclear on this point, I suggest you ask a judge and then get back to us. Human lawyers also sometimes make errors ...
- Fri Mar 15, 2024 2:22 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
I do not agree that one example is an effective demonstration. You're free to disagree, but the fact remains that one counterexample is enough to disprove an absolutist assertion. Human expert lawyers make more than zero errors. You showed that GPT makes more than zero errors. How is that a counterexample? Again, you're free to interpret what you want. Since they were asserted without qualification, and used words like "everything" and "nothing", they are absolutist by definition, regardless of your chosen interpretation. What we have are two absolutist (or call them "unqualified" if you prefer) assertions about AI that are not established as factual (I'd call them "hype"), yet some people believe th...
- Fri Mar 15, 2024 12:19 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
I looked back through the posts upthread to search for the effective refutation, but the only arguments I see are that (1) current AI lacks agency, (2) there was an incident of recent AI giving very bad information about law, and (3) some people in the past made forecasts about AI capabilities that turned out to be overestimates, with the implication that forecasts being made now will also turn out to have overestimated future AI capabilities. There were more than those (given by various people, I don't remember them all, one of them said something about bearing children, and there were several other equally good counterexamples, not sure how you missed all of them)... I didn't miss the part about bearing children, but thought it was humor...
- Fri Mar 15, 2024 12:52 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
I don't know what your case is. If you've got a specific example of something, then either I can tell you why you're wrong, or it'll be an interesting problem (for someone involved in ML) to work on. None of the above is needed. When false statements are made, it's fair game to point it out, so I did (and, separately, so did other people in the thread). Aside from that, the main point is how to deal with this topic (i.e., AI and associated hype) from an investment point of view, so I did that too. Summary: The leap from GPT to expert lawyer is nothing. (effective refutation of above assertion omitted for brevity; see quoted posts and their replies upthread for details) Better to simply acknowledge that the quoted assertion was false. Hard ...
- Thu Mar 14, 2024 5:08 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: Rent and utility payment for reward points (Bilt World Elite Mastercard?)
- Replies: 5
- Views: 682
Re: Rent and utility payment for reward points (Bilt World Elite Mastercard?)
I have paid rentd it successfully using Bilt with no fee. This did mean using their routing number for an ACH payment, which is not quite a credit card transaction and does not use the credit card number.
Their rules seem to only allow utility payments by ACH when they are part of the rent, not when paying the utility company separately. You may or may not be able to get away with breaking this rule.
Their rules seem to only allow utility payments by ACH when they are part of the rent, not when paying the utility company separately. You may or may not be able to get away with breaking this rule.
- Thu Mar 14, 2024 12:28 pm
- Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
- Topic: Do you need to carry your health insurance card?
- Replies: 75
- Views: 7344
Re: Do you need to carry your health insurance card?
I carry the physical card because I don't want to become uninsured if the battery runs out.
- Tue Mar 12, 2024 11:04 am
- Forum: Personal Investments
- Topic: How is a broker going to make money off me?
- Replies: 62
- Views: 5791
Re: How is a broker going to make money off me?
According to https://www.kalzumeus.com/2019/6/26/how ... ake-money/ the biggest source of income to discount brokerages is (or at least was) net interest on cash balances.
Fidelity defaults cash to money market funds so they won't make piles of money that way. They still do get the expense ratio of the money market fund, though if you don't keep much in cash they won't get very much from you.
Fidelity doesn't use payment for order flow on stocks, but they do use it on options.
My best guess is they don't make much (or any) money off you if you buy and hold low-cost funds, but they hope to make money off you later by selling advisor services and/or higher-cost funds.
Fidelity defaults cash to money market funds so they won't make piles of money that way. They still do get the expense ratio of the money market fund, though if you don't keep much in cash they won't get very much from you.
Fidelity doesn't use payment for order flow on stocks, but they do use it on options.
My best guess is they don't make much (or any) money off you if you buy and hold low-cost funds, but they hope to make money off you later by selling advisor services and/or higher-cost funds.
- Fri Mar 08, 2024 6:30 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: Bank bill pay: takes a week and only sends paper checks?
- Replies: 14
- Views: 1326
Re: Bank bill pay: takes a week and only sends paper checks?
A third-party system that is sold to small banks ought to be able to send payments electronically. At least the major billers should be set up to receive the payments electronically.
As an alternative, you could probably make the payments through the biller's web site instead. If the biller doesn't support that, I'd suspect the biller may also be unable to receive any online billpay payments electronically and switching to a bigger bank wouldn't help in that case.
As an alternative, you could probably make the payments through the biller's web site instead. If the biller doesn't support that, I'd suspect the biller may also be unable to receive any online billpay payments electronically and switching to a bigger bank wouldn't help in that case.
- Fri Mar 08, 2024 6:06 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
Those predictions are from before GPT-4 was developed, and before any version of GPT was open to public use. I'm not sure if those authors have changed their minds since, but some people have.jacksprat wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 8:37 am Perfect questions to just ask a chatbot. I did and the answers were what I expected.
Here's what some real life forms think ::
https://www.pewresearch.org/internet/20 ... ng-itself/
.
.It’s Difficult to Make Predictions, Especially About the Future
.
- Fri Mar 08, 2024 6:04 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
I've found many examples (in this thread and elsewhere) of one-sided predictions about AI (no mention of detriment). I don't see that sort of thing, but perhaps I skipped a few posts, or interpret them differently. I read most of the predictions here as being mostly about earnings rather than general impact, and when the latter is mentioned they don't seem to be confidently predict only good outcomes. Looking for "AI can" and "AI will" in the thread reveals many that are talking about capabilities (not just cost-cutting effects), and, excluding my posts, the small minority give a balanced take (to expect positive and negative effects). I almost wonder if we are reading the same thread, because I don't see that when sear...
- Fri Mar 08, 2024 5:01 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
Sounds like we agree, there will be cost-cutting benefits to the company (regardless of effect on the customer). I was not mainly thinking of cost-cutting to the company, bur rather delivering better results (at least for the more visible uses of AI). Using AI for a web search isn't cheaper, but is better from the customer's point of view. The extra profit to the company isn't from cost-cutting, but from the user being more likely to keep using the search engine (and seeing associated ads) because the results seem more relevant. AI social media recommendations also are better, in the sense of being more likely to keep the user on the site. If you think social media is harmful, the problem isn't that AI cuts costs, but rather that it gives ...
- Fri Mar 08, 2024 2:42 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
Not exactly a disagreement, but if you're going to use AI for customer service, you might as well use AI to replace the menus too. Given low menu quality, it should be easy to improve the status quo on that front. At least some financial institutions have taken the first step by asking the caller to describe the problem in a few words which are processed by voice recognition, though I think they still mainly use explicit lists of keywords to decide what to do next. I don't personally know how much of the current customer service systems are "AI" vs. "conventional automation", but the point remains the same, that the results so far are a mixed bag, and therefore, it's reasonable to expect more of that (particularly since...
- Fri Mar 08, 2024 1:26 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
When we have customer service interactions involving automated menus with no options relevant to the purpose of the call, and then when they get a human (if ever), the human doesn't know much about the business they work for, but instead just types the customer question into a search engine (often not leading to a correct resolution), then I suppose some people might consider that an improvement over pre-automation customer service, while some people don't. Compared to the current approach of a human who doesn't know much about the business they work for reading from a prepared script, it is not that hard to be an improvement. As long as the customer was subjected to a useless series of automated menus before reaching the human (assuming t...
- Fri Mar 08, 2024 12:32 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
Compared to the current approach of a human who doesn't know much about the business they work for reading from a prepared script, it is not that hard to be an improvement.HanSolo wrote: ↑Fri Mar 08, 2024 9:44 am When we have customer service interactions involving automated menus with no options relevant to the purpose of the call, and then when they get a human (if ever), the human doesn't know much about the business they work for, but instead just types the customer question into a search engine (often not leading to a correct resolution), then I suppose some people might consider that an improvement over pre-automation customer service, while some people don't.
- Thu Mar 07, 2024 6:31 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
- Replies: 302
- Views: 27433
Re: Dot.Com Era/AI Era?
AI (everyone's using the term – Machine Learning) is there every time you visit Amazon or Youtube, search something on Google, predictive text, ask a smart speaker to play music, it controls the next video on Tiktok .. And it's part of why these things drive the world's largest businesses – and as it gets smarter, all you'll notice is that you find things more engaging and make better purchasing decisions. I haven't noticed because I hardly buy anything anymore. And I've chosen not to "be the product" on a lot of the above. Even if you pay for Netflix in order to not "be the product" on YouTube, you still have AI recommendations. Even if you shop only in person, AI still screens your card transactions for fraud. Even if...
- Sun Mar 03, 2024 11:09 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Municipal bonds vs treasury bonds -- just a matter of after tax yield?
- Replies: 18
- Views: 1378
Re: Municipal bonds vs treasury bonds -- just a matter of after tax yield?
In both cases inflation is the main risk.
- Sun Mar 03, 2024 6:51 am
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Robinhood 3% IRA Match
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 110303
Re: Robinhood 3% IRA Match
It is mostly that easy if transferring from another IRA, but note you have to pay the (fairly small) monthly fee for gold. Transfers from a 401k would be slightly harder since they involve contacting the 401k provider and mailing a check.spacecadet610 wrote: ↑Sat Mar 02, 2024 2:55 pm Can someone help walk me through this?
I currently have a RH brokerage account.
I'd like to move my Roth IRA (~$142k) from Merrill Edge to a RH Roth IRA to get the 3% match bonus.
1. Sign up for RH gold
2. Open a RH Roth IRA account and submit ACAT transfer request from Merrill Edge Roth IRA to RH Roth IRA
3. Wait for the bonus. I should get about $4252 deposited to my RH roth IRA account.
Is it that easy?
- Fri Mar 01, 2024 12:45 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
- Replies: 603
- Views: 89378
Re: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
Seems like PayPal removed many (most?) payees for PayPal Bill Pay. So while I have some company bills listed, and can still pay them, I cannot add more bills for the same companies that I am still able to pay. I'm trying to find out what's going on. Is PayPal deprecating this service? I haven't seen any official statement but I get the same results. Among credit cards, it looks like Amex/BoA/Citi/Discover are still there, while Chase/USBank are gone. However I can still pay the USBank cards I previously added. And it looks like I spoke too soon. My saved US Bank cards are now gone too. I opened up the "Upgrade Rewards Checking Account" for a sign up bonus - https://www.upgrade.com/rewards-checking-plus/ This debit card supposedly...
- Fri Mar 01, 2024 12:01 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
- Replies: 603
- Views: 89378
Re: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
And it looks like I spoke too soon. My saved US Bank cards are now gone too.patrick wrote: ↑Tue Feb 13, 2024 12:54 pmI haven't seen any official statement but I get the same results. Among credit cards, it looks like Amex/BoA/Citi/Discover are still there, while Chase/USBank are gone. However I can still pay the USBank cards I previously added.ExGingi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2024 4:08 pm Seems like PayPal removed many (most?) payees for PayPal Bill Pay. So while I have some company bills listed, and can still pay them, I cannot add more bills for the same companies that I am still able to pay.
I'm trying to find out what's going on. Is PayPal deprecating this service?
- Tue Feb 27, 2024 5:04 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: Zelle Questions: safety, speed, uses?
- Replies: 57
- Views: 5492
Re: Zelle Questions: safety, speed, uses?
I left out one downside in my last comment:
Zelle transfers are often erroneously blocked as potential fraud even when legitimate. At least that has been my experience. I have had to call in several times to unlock the account after attempting Zelle transfers.
Zelle transfers are often erroneously blocked as potential fraud even when legitimate. At least that has been my experience. I have had to call in several times to unlock the account after attempting Zelle transfers.
- Tue Feb 27, 2024 3:03 pm
- Forum: Personal Investments
- Topic: Feel like I won the "game" at 41---Thoughts on Future Asset Allocation
- Replies: 21
- Views: 3934
Re: Feel like I won the "game" at 41---Thoughts on Future Asset Allocation
Don't forget inflation risk.
- Tue Feb 27, 2024 1:21 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: Time and Place for HYSA over MMF?
- Replies: 7
- Views: 584
Re: Time and Place for HYSA over MMF?
Other HYSAs pay up to 5.5%, see https://www.doctorofcredit.com/high-int ... gs-to-get/ for an extensive list.
- Tue Feb 27, 2024 11:56 am
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: Zelle Questions: safety, speed, uses?
- Replies: 57
- Views: 5492
Re: Zelle Questions: safety, speed, uses?
From my experience, it seems to complete in less than 20 seconds (which I guess is fast enough to call "instant") whether or not it is supported natively by your bank.
I agree that the fraud concerns are highly exaggerated based on people who were tricked into submitting at transfer to the fraudster.
There are however some extra restrictions if using the Zelle app. You are limited to sending $500 per week and you can't send to business accounts unless you have Zelle integrated with your bank. Even if it is integrated in your bank there is still a limit which varies by bank and may not be that high.
I agree that the fraud concerns are highly exaggerated based on people who were tricked into submitting at transfer to the fraudster.
There are however some extra restrictions if using the Zelle app. You are limited to sending $500 per week and you can't send to business accounts unless you have Zelle integrated with your bank. Even if it is integrated in your bank there is still a limit which varies by bank and may not be that high.
- Sun Feb 25, 2024 2:48 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: Why Emergency Fund?
- Replies: 80
- Views: 8445
Re: Why Emergency Fund?
I have long been sceptical of the conventional EF wisdom, for a few reasons: Immediate cash withdrawal is rarely needed. The time to withdraw from an investment account is much shorter than the grace period of a credit card. Medical bills add a further delay since the bill often isn't even sent for a month. Credit cards could be closed by the issuer, but that never happened to me know except with cards that were unused for more than a year. If you have good credit and high limit cards from several issues, it seems very unlikely they will all get closed simultaneously. The concern about selling stocks in a down market is more an issue of how much you have in stocks, not whether there is a cash emergency fund. Note also that selling after a d...
- Wed Feb 14, 2024 6:26 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
- Replies: 603
- Views: 89378
Re: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
As of late I've used PPBP solely to pay CC companies using rewards debit cards, in some recent months putting around $3000 through it. My account wasn't closed so I guess I don't qualify as a heavy hitter doing that. Which makes me feel mildly insulted. If it is any consolation I wasn't a heavy hitter either. If you were doing $3k/month you weren't even the rounding error of what qualified as a heavy hitter. Now that makes me curious: what were the heavy hitters up to? I already had my bills going to credit cards that were then paid by PPBP. I suppose I could have tried to open 30 Affinity debit cards instead of 3, and then vastly overpaid all my CC bills and then requested credit balance refunds. But if I did that I'd have to worry not on...
- Wed Feb 14, 2024 1:10 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
- Replies: 603
- Views: 89378
Re: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
Seems like PayPal removed many (most?) payees for PayPal Bill Pay. So while I have some company bills listed, and can still pay them, I cannot add more bills for the same companies that I am still able to pay. I'm trying to find out what's going on. Is PayPal deprecating this service? You won't see much discussion in open forums on this but it appears PP is reacting to folks who were using PPBP as part of their manufacture spend strategy. They seem to have killed a lot of payees (including some CC companies popular with MSers) though if you have them saved as a target already they generally still work. They followed up this change on payees by closing a large number of heavy hitters. It is possible things will return when PP feels things h...
- Wed Feb 14, 2024 12:50 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
- Replies: 603
- Views: 89378
Re: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
Seems like PayPal removed many (most?) payees for PayPal Bill Pay. So while I have some company bills listed, and can still pay them, I cannot add more bills for the same companies that I am still able to pay. I'm trying to find out what's going on. Is PayPal deprecating this service? You won't see much discussion in open forums on this but it appears PP is reacting to folks who were using PPBP as part of their manufacture spend strategy. They seem to have killed a lot of payees (including some CC companies popular with MSers) though if you have them saved as a target already they generally still work. They followed up this change on payees by closing a large number of heavy hitters. It is possible things will return when PP feels things h...
- Tue Feb 13, 2024 7:30 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Robinhood 3% IRA Match
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 110303
Re: Robinhood 3% IRA Match
The RH excess SIPC coverage is described here : https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHF%20SIPC%20and%20Account%20Protection.pdf This additional insurance policy provides protection for securities and cash up to an aggregate of $1 billion, and is limited to a combined return to any customer of $50 million in securities, including $1.9 million in cash. Oooh! One beeelion dollars! Robinhood has 23 million accounts. You do the math. Well, okay I'll do it for you. That's $43 per account. Don't spend it all in one place. And $50 million per customer? That billion dollars would cover exactly 20 of them. Looking closer, there is more math to do. From their latest results at https://investors.robinhood.com/news/news-details/2024/Robinh...
- Tue Feb 13, 2024 5:46 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Robinhood 3% IRA Match
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 110303
Re: Robinhood 3% IRA Match
The RH excess SIPC coverage is described here : https://cdn.robinhood.com/assets/robinhood/legal/RHF%20SIPC%20and%20Account%20Protection.pdf This additional insurance policy provides protection for securities and cash up to an aggregate of $1 billion, and is limited to a combined return to any customer of $50 million in securities, including $1.9 million in cash. Oooh! One beeelion dollars! Robinhood has 23 million accounts. You do the math. Well, okay I'll do it for you. That's $43 per account. Don't spend it all in one place. And $50 million per customer? That billion dollars would cover exactly 20 of them. I presume most of their accounts are below the SIPC limit and thus would not use the additional insurance. Dividing instead by the n...
- Tue Feb 13, 2024 12:54 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
- Replies: 603
- Views: 89378
Re: [Using PayPal to pay bills and earn 5% on credit cards]
I haven't seen any official statement but I get the same results. Among credit cards, it looks like Amex/BoA/Citi/Discover are still there, while Chase/USBank are gone. However I can still pay the USBank cards I previously added.ExGingi wrote: ↑Mon Feb 12, 2024 4:08 pm Seems like PayPal removed many (most?) payees for PayPal Bill Pay. So while I have some company bills listed, and can still pay them, I cannot add more bills for the same companies that I am still able to pay.
I'm trying to find out what's going on. Is PayPal deprecating this service?
- Mon Feb 12, 2024 9:43 am
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: dumb computer security question
- Replies: 50
- Views: 4216
Re: dumb computer security question
This is called a man in the browser attack and can defeat 2 factor authentication because the attacker gets control of a session that the user authenticated. Sometimes this is mitigated by verifying specific transactions -- you might get a second text message asking if you want to send of money to a new destination. If the attacker only controls the browser you would still see the confirmation. I'm not sure how common such attacks are against consumers. I've certainly read much more about other ways of defeating 2FA, such as social engineering (tricking you into revealing the 2FA code by contacting you and pretending to be the bank) or SIM swaps (tricking phone companies into switching your phone number to another phone, so the attacker rec...
- Sat Feb 03, 2024 9:32 am
- Forum: Personal Investments
- Topic: Sell I bonds to buy a CD ?
- Replies: 13
- Views: 2150
Re: Sell I bonds to buy a CD ?
I would consider I bonds better in terms of reducing inflation risk, though an I bond with the 0% fixed rate looks quite a bit worse than marketable TIPS. If you are considering CDs take a look at https://www.depositaccounts.com/cd/5-year-cd-rates.html for some better rates -- you can currently get 4.89% on 5-year CDs.
- Thu Feb 01, 2024 4:58 pm
- Forum: Personal Consumer Issues
- Topic: Perplexity AI tool discussed in New York Times
- Replies: 15
- Views: 1396
Re: Perplexity AI tool
These tools are great as long as you stay in the realm of vague, humanities, non-quantitative questions that have already been answered on the Internet, but.... ...Here is the answers I received when putting your questions into my workplace’s ChatGPT 4.0 enterprise account:... (Shrug) I tried out "Perplexity" because it was billed as being "one of the most buzzed-about products in the tech world. Tech insiders rave about it on social media, and investors like Jeff Bezos — who was also an early investor in Google — have showered it with cash." As for your example, I don't know what to say, because Microsoft Copilot (formerly Bing Chat) claims to be using GPT-4 and to have real-time access to the Internet, and it routinel...
- Mon Jan 29, 2024 8:51 am
- Forum: Personal Investments
- Topic: CD Strategy
- Replies: 15
- Views: 1296
Re: CD Strategy
Direct CDs are available with significantly higher rates than you listed. https://www.depositaccounts.com/cd/ has an extensive list, currently including:
5.70% for 9 months - NASA FCU
5.61% for 12 to 17 months - Library of Congress FCU
5.27% for 2 years - Monesty
5.70% for 9 months - NASA FCU
5.61% for 12 to 17 months - Library of Congress FCU
5.27% for 2 years - Monesty
- Sun Jan 28, 2024 10:17 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: HYSA (FDIC) vs Money Market (Sipc) - which is better?
- Replies: 14
- Views: 1702
Re: HYSA (FDIC) vs Money Market (Sipc) - which is better?
5.5% on HYSA is available -- https://www.doctorofcredit.com/high-int ... gs-to-get/
- Wed Jan 24, 2024 12:27 am
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: Banking questions: is your savings at the same bank, and moving assets to avoid fees?
- Replies: 14
- Views: 1224
Re: Banking questions: is your savings at the same bank, and moving assets to avoid fees?
I consider the checking vs savings distinction to be rather arbitrary. You can usually transact directly from a savings account, and sometimes checking accounts pay decent interest. I wouldn't keep much money in a low-interest account.
- Mon Jan 22, 2024 5:15 pm
- Forum: Personal Finance (Not Investing)
- Topic: High interest savings or money market
- Replies: 7
- Views: 1008
Re: High interest savings or money market
https://www.doctorofcredit.com/high-int ... gs-to-get/ lists several higher yield options.
- Mon Jan 22, 2024 3:21 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Do Bond Funds Really Make Sense for the Long Run?
- Replies: 399
- Views: 38710
Re: Do Bond Funds Really Make Sense for the Long Run?
I doubt that nominal bonds, in funds or otherwise, make sense for the long run. Nominal bonds aren't safe for the long run, mainly due to inflation risk, which we got some taste of recently but which hit much harder in the 1940s and 1970s. McQuarrie's paper shows a smaller equity premium for the US than earlier publications, but there is still some equity premium. Non-US data shows plenty of examples of stocks doing worse than US investors are used to, but also plenty of examples of bonds doing worse than US investors are used to. With stocks and nominal bonds both being risky, why not favor the stocks which at least will probably (but of course not certainly) return more? Inflation-indexed bonds however could make sense. Stocks would also ...
- Mon Jan 22, 2024 2:23 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Robinhood 3% IRA Match
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 110303
Re: 3% IRA transfer bonus at Robinhood: Worth it?
Why are BH posters concerned that Robinhood is a fraud? Is it just groupthink? I think the bonus terms raise some eyebrows. “What’s the catch?” “Too good to be true” Even better deals have been available subject to some limits. Public used to offer 2% if your deposit amount was $25,000 or $100,000, and they only required a six month holding period. Tastytrade still offers that, but with a one year holding period. These are much better on annual basis than Robinhood's offer of 0.6% per year. Then again, most other transfer offers out there are lower. Most (including Public/Tastytrade) are tiered so you get a lower rate if not at the bottom of a tier, and tiers above $100,000 tend to be worse. This makes it unclear if repeatedly transferring...
- Mon Jan 22, 2024 1:53 pm
- Forum: Investing - Theory, News & General
- Topic: Robinhood 3% IRA Match
- Replies: 1459
- Views: 110303
Re: 3% IRA transfer bonus at Robinhood: Worth it?
:arrow: Why are BH posters concerned that Robinhood is a fraud? Is it just groupthink? It's been bizarre reading through this thread. I'm not sure what Robinhood has done to deserve this level of, seemingly unfounded unless I'm missing something , conjecture. Especially given how most bogleheads will use these accounts. What you may be missing is that Robinhood was already cited for securities fraud. They were stealing from their customers and lying about it on their web site. I find it astonishing that when Robinhood tells you exactly who they are, that they are crooks and will steal your money any way they can, that people blithely go on and say no big deal. They interviewed some of the Bernie Madoff customers and a lot of them said that...