Ask MetaFilter questions tagged with markets

It's not all Ben Franklyn and ENRON is it?

Anonymous — Wed, 21 Oct 2009 08:56:36 -0800

Tell me all you know about electricity markets. I am looking to learn as much as possible about electricity markets (specifically the UK/Europe) for an interview that I have coming up. I understand the technical aspects of the job that I am going for but I am a bit unsure about some of the Political Economic Social Technological (PEST) factors that are having an effect on the industry at the moment and I would like to have greater insight. There seems to be a whole raft of information about the long-term energy supply issues that the world will face in the next 30-50 years but there is not so much on how that will impact on the next 6 months to 5 years.

What is the strategy for utilties at the moment? Are there any regulations on the horizon that will impact on these companies? Is there anything else that I should consider?

*It's anon because a few people at my current employment know my username here*

Thanks

Ideas for our Luna de Miel

Deathalicious — Thu, 07 May 2009 11:11:26 -0800

The soon-to-be Ms. Deathalicious and I are planning to honeymoon in Mexico...in August. What are some out of the way, cool (as in tempurature), and romantic places to visit? I'm aware that most of the country can be very very hot, so we're thinking that it would be better to stay inland and higher up (in the Central Mexican Plateau, say). We have a little over a week to visit, and we're not fast travelers, so ideally we'd stick to just 2-3 locations maximum.

Our original plan was just to chill in Mexico City. We've already bought the plane tickets. But now we're concerned that it won't be relaxing enough for a honeymoon, so we were thinking to stay somewhere outside of the city but in the general area (that is, no more than a 4-6 hour trip by bus).

I'm opening this up to pretty much any and all Mexico-related travel recommendations (cool towns, hotels, restaurants, sights, things to buy), keeping the general region in mind. I'm particularly interested in recommendations of small-to-medium towns or cities that would make a nice long term (4-5 day) base. As an example, a friend of ours recommended Mikulov when we traveled in the Czech Republic and it was great -- almost no tourists, friendly people, a few good restaurants, some nice hills to hike through, a nearby cave system, and a few nice winding roads. In France through a happy accident we ended up in Pau, which had a lovely castle/fort, excellent food, beautiful views, another nearby cave, and decent transport to other nearby attractions.

Here are things that I like. Not all are necesary but any or all would be awesome:

Markets: I love, love, love both street and covered markets. I love seeing beautiful produce piled up but also dig piles of fish, cheese, bread, and even the occasional offal. The future Ms. D is into arts & crafts, so those markets are key too.
Plenty of street food, and good food in general: I like all kinds of Mexican food and expect I would eat well anywhere, but areas particularly known for the cuisine would be great. Ideally no matter where we were in the city, we'd never be more than a 10 or 15 minute walk from tasty food. Only drawback is I don't eat pork but for my own sanity I'm going to be avoiding the meat only and pretending they cook with vegetable oil. Other than that, I'll eat chicken, beef, and goat and we both really love fish.
Variety of beautiful architecture: I like everything from ruins to modern architecture, especially made of materials like stone, concrete, and wood (in other words I'm slightly less into metal buildings, i.e. glass skyscrapers)
Walkable neighborhoods brimming with life: While some solitary walks will be fun, I also love walking right into the mix of things with crowds of people all living together. I'm thinking here of my experiences living in Cairo and visiting some of the more working class areas where everyone is kind of pushed up next to one another
Crooked streets and winding alleyways: I love wandering aimlessly through a city especially on cobblestone streets.
Sweeping vistas: I love being up on a mountain and looking out over rolling hills and such.
Quieter evenings: I'm not huge into nightlife, and although we will definitely go out dancing a few nights of our honeymoon, we'd ideally like to avoid somewhere that is loud and raucous late into the night.
Caves or other cave-like attractions (catacombs, crypts, etc): Going underground is awesome.
Good live music: Ideally we'd like to go to a performance of live music. Doesn't have to be a concert, in fact just some players in the corner of a bar, cafe, or restaurant would be even better.

I'd say we are leaning more towards "luxury" budget traveler. We're not interested in staying in hostels or seedy run-down hotels but anywhere clean and homey is fine (and that includes hotels with smaller rooms and shared bathrooms). For food we're perfectly happy with street food most of the time, but would like to go to where the locals eat out (not sure if that is a custom in Mexico or not) once or twice.

Neither of us is fluent in Spanish but we hopefully would know enough to get around. I always bring a phrasebook with me when I travel and try to pick up a bit of the language.

Car Rental and Social Capital: Help!

Maias — Sun, 26 Apr 2009 18:15:14 -0800

Looking for source of an anecdote about social capital and trust. It involves renting a car: and apparently, in some developing countries (or possibly rural China?) where there are low levels of trust of outsiders, people at first found even the idea of renting a car implausible because they can't see why you would let a stranger drive away with your car or why you would return the car to a stranger you will never see again. Google has provided no answer. The anecdote was used to illustrate the way modern market societies rely on trust between strangers in numerous ways (with obvious checks and balances, like a credit card!)... does anyone have any idea where this might have come from?

How to hedge personal finances against currency exchange (Euro/AuD) upheavals?

kandinski — Wed, 04 Mar 2009 19:04:05 -0800

Please help me calculate the risks and likelyhoods of the Euro rising or falling against the Australian Dollar in the next twelve months. I live in Australia, but derive most of my income from my Spanish clients, so I get paid in euros. In the past year this has meant that my income has grown by almost 25% without me doing anything. Yeah, I can't believe my luck either. In fact the idiot who paid me 10k euros a year late has ended up doing me a favour. But this is random blind luck, and one doesn't feel comfortable having to trust on luck, hence this question.

We are having a baby and we plan to go visit the Spanish family in the next 12 months, and I travel there for work now and then, so it also makes sense to keep some money in Spain. But we don't know when, or how much to keep or transfer. Obviously getting all our money here now is not very smart if the AuD is going to drop further. But neither is keeping it in Europe if the AuD is going to rise.

Does any mefite have a clue of what is the optimal strategy for benefiting from the possible currency ups and downs, or at least not suffering from them? Purely theoretical talk just for the purpose of education also appreciated.

Is trading round lots tradition or good practice?

Deep Dish — Wed, 28 Jan 2009 16:31:10 -0800

I have started dabbling in the stock market again, and I've been trying to figure out why conventional wisdom suggests that trading in round lots (usually of 100) is better than trading odd lots (<100). Can you help? I bought a couple of equities today in lots of 50 and 65, and didn't seem to take any penalty on either the trading fee or stock price. Nor did I encounter what seemed to be delayed trades (maybe I did, but it didn't look like it). I've also read that the practice of trading in round lots, essentially predates Internet trading and no longer needs to apply, as long as the trading fees don't become an issue. These were just brief blurbs and I am looking for solid information here. All my equities are from the New York or Toronto exchanges.

Going up with the down market

Rafaelloello — Wed, 22 Oct 2008 22:30:57 -0800

Short-the-market-filter:I have been adding to my QID position for 14 months. I've only "lost" (made less) when I got comfortable writing calls every month on half my position (Did not like getting relieved of shares at 59 at October expiration). Bought back at 65 and 75. Anyway, Am I crazy to think that the VIX (or maybe VXN?) is the best indication that it's "safe" to stay in QID? I mean, the VIX is hovering miles above where it's never been before.

Why the security spending spree?

cgfoz — Wed, 15 Oct 2008 14:00:57 -0800

Coming across this, it looks like the UK has over the past year bought $220bn in US Treasury Securities. I'm curious. Can anyone explain the reason? (or connect this to a specific political decision made by the UK government) Because I'm struggling...

I'll gladly pay you Monday for a gigantic profit on Friday.

sophist — Mon, 22 Sep 2008 21:15:28 -0800

Why do the lenders give short sellers the stock? So there has been much talk over the past week or two about short selling. As I understand it, two parties are involved, provided we are talking about regular short selling and not naked short selling. Person A (Andy), calls up Person B (Bill) and asks to borrow some stock for the week. No problem says Bill, just pay me $5 and have the stock back on my desk by Friday. Andy goes out and sells the stock right away, getting $100. Friday rolls around and sure enough, partly due to Andy selling his share(s) and driving down confidence in others, the stock is only worth $20. Andy buys back the stock and delivers it back to Bill's desk, along with the $5 he agreed to pay for borrowing it. He sold it for $100 and bought it back for $20 so he makes $80 - $5 in commission for a total of $75 profit.

My question then is, why on earth would Bill lend out this stock in the first place. After all, he ends up holding a stock on Friday worth much less than it was worth on Monday. When he saw the price dropping on Wednesday, he couldn't do anything about it because he didn't even have the stock to sell if he wanted to. In particular, I have heard that many of the people lending out stocks are mutual fund managers who have large portfolios of many stocks. It seems like there is a huge conflict of interest here because the manager should want to see his fund go up and by lending out his stock to shorters he is driving down the price of the very stocks he is supposed to be managing when some hedge fund borrows thousands of his shares, screams "Sell, sell, sell" on the open market and the shares tank.

Figure out target markets for new software?

UMDirector — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:54:22 -0800

What's the best way to find the best target markets for a new software product for consumers? We have a software product that has not launched yet and are trying to determine our initial target markets. The money for research is really not present, we have no users currently so we can't research current users.

Ideally I would love to find out who might use our product, but also find out who would be good demographics to pursue, how much they make, etc. A lot of stuff that Claritas could probably help with, but without paying them!

I have done this before, but in the past only after a product has been used for a while, so I could examine the current users, see what was working and what wasn't. Starting from nothing is proving to be a challenge.

Carnac the Magnificent

netbros — Tue, 06 May 2008 11:27:30 -0800

Can gasoline futures be used to predict the price we will pay for fuel at the local pump? Used to be a gasoline price jump at the pump would be just a penny or two, hardly noticeable. Lately, the price seems to increase 12-15 cents at a time. By studying gas futures, can we know which days are likely to have the next price increase, enabling us to top off the tank the day before?

Help me get acquainted with the North American teeth whitening business

JaySunSee — Wed, 26 Sep 2007 15:11:27 -0800

Help me find the latest information on Rembrandt's key competitors and market share in both the toothpaste and teeth whitener categories. The North American toothpaste market is saturated and air-tight, this I know, but I have no idea who the players are in the teeth whitening categories, or where I might find the latest free, non-proprietary data on these markets. Help and direction would be appreciated. Thanks hive mind!

Good streaming charts of market prices

chef_boyardee — Wed, 12 Sep 2007 10:17:30 -0800

Finance: Where can I find streaming charts showing market indexes, plus currencies and NYMEX commodities/futures? Delayed data is ok; I'd just like good charts that update and which show the commodities/metals too. A lot of the charts I found don't update or don't have NYMEX.

Whaddya mean we dropped a zero from it?

richter_x — Sun, 09 Sep 2007 22:03:04 -0800

WhatIf Filter - What would happen if the dollar 3/4ths of it's value? For all you economic MeFites out there?

I remember someone talking about this a long time ago, and he mentioned something about debt you hold being cheaper because things cost more, and (eventually) you might make more because of the change. Would this hold true? What other dire consequences would come about from such a thing happening? Additionally, would there be any bright spots in this, where if properly planned, you might actually come out better than you would otherwise?

Where can I buy fresh seafood in DC?

borkingchikapa — Mon, 20 Aug 2007 19:43:03 -0800

Where can I buy really fresh raw seafood in DC? I mean, come on, we're not that far from the Atlantic. There's absolutely no reason I should be relegated to eating beheaded, deveined shrimp and frozen crab from Whole Foods.

Is there a metro or bus accessible market or store somewhere in this beautiful city where I can buy shrimp, crabs, clams etc.? Fish a plus, but ain't too big a'deal.

Is the bear already in the house?

Funmonkey1 — Fri, 10 Aug 2007 09:35:36 -0800

I have just spent the afternoon watching stocks around the world decline partially based on sub prime market fallout. My question is how can things be so great when the Fed is handing out stacks of cash to keep things stable (34 Billion USD and counting, not including the international bail out)?

Map of US media markets?

blueshammer — Wed, 20 Jun 2007 07:58:36 -0800

Can anyone help me find a bigger, cleaner version of this map? I'd like a higher-resolution image (or vector image) of the 210 US media markets. The other common image out there for this is this one, which includes county lines and makes the map a little busy. Free is best, of course.

Oh how refreshing. A question about travelling to France.

Deathalicious — Wed, 02 May 2007 13:20:33 -0800

TravelinginFranceFilter: I know there have been loads of questions about France. We're looking for beautiful places in the countryside, great cheap food and reasonable accommodations. I'd love to have the perfect trip that matches my favorite things: We're spending 18 days in France during June. We're planning around a week in Paris which leaves another 10 days or so for just traveling the countryside.

We're both really into food. I love open air markets. I'm crazy for fruits and vegetables, so places where those are particularly fresh or delicious would be great (I'm sure that's all over France, but there must be some markets that knock you flat).

Also I love cheese. What are some places famous for their cheeses, especially cheeses which, for legal or logistical reasons, are difficult to get anywhere else?

I love cooking, so if anyone has a suggestion of a good place you can stay that has a kitchen -- or even, dare I say it, cooking lessons? -- that would be fantastic.

Speaking of food, I've heard that a lot of dishes are cooked with bacon or lard in France. As a non-pork eater, is there any way for me to make sure that there isn't pig in my food?

My friend is a music lover, both punk/indie and world music, so if there are any towns that are small but known for their music scene, that would be great too.

I'm quite into stuff that is underground, so suggestions of catacombs and caves and other underground areas would be great. We also like hiking so that would be very cool too.

Neither of us is that into wine. Don't worry, I will be drinking it with meals, it's just visiting a vineyard for its own sake does not appeal to me.

Also, we are not planning on renting a car so ideally the place would be accessible by train or other forms of public transportation.

Outside of Paris, we'd like to stick to a budget of $50-60 per person, per day (that is, $100-120 total). Is that at all possible? We care a lot more about the quality of our food than the quality of our room.

Sorry this post is so long, and I realize this is really a bunch of questions (although all of them are really the same question: What should we see and do in France? just made a little more specific). Thanks all!

Commodity Markets For Dummies

Alvy Ampersand — Fri, 20 Apr 2007 06:04:27 -0800

I don't know much about commodity markets. Please help me rectify that. What books or sites give a good overview of how the markets work and how to interpret data? Suggestions for n00b, intermediate, and advanced reading would be much appreciated, as well as anything that focused on the North American foodstuffs/livestock markets and explored the relationship between the markets and NA agribusinesses (The impact of GMO, globalization, et al.).
Much thanks!

If the market hits 12K do I get a bonus?

Funmonkey1 — Thu, 19 Oct 2006 13:20:07 -0800

EconomyFilter: I have a difficult time figuring out why the Dow Index breaking 12,000 translates into anything good for the average person on the street. Help me understand! I don't know any better way to say this - but even if the market is doing really well, that doesn't necessarily mean people are the direct beneficiaries of company profit or growth. Companies record profit and distribute back those gains into their own chosen vehicles whether employees, debt, savings etc...

Following that logic - no matter how great the market is doing it has no reflection on what (pardon the 80s lingo) what "trickles down" to the average Joe or Jane.

Also, the Dow Index is now labelled as "psychological" indicator which to me means it has no relevance. Is this the case?

Can anyone give me a quick market lesson?

TradeSports.com Legal in America?

sebrenner — Fri, 16 Jun 2006 13:37:37 -0800

Is it against the law for US citizens or residents to trade on overseas futures markets such as TradeSports.com? Many view these types of prediction markets as gambling or betting. Does anyone have any experience with the US legal system's view of US residents and citizens participating in these sorts of prediction markets?

This question is longer than most of my fiction.

aebaxter — Thu, 26 Jan 2006 11:03:22 -0800

What's the best way (non-spam) way to market a flash/micro fiction publication and community? (no, there are no gratuitous self-links inside) I've recently started an online flash fiction publication, and I set up forums so that flash and micro fiction writers could have a place to congregate.

I've already emailed the list owners of several Yahoo and Google groups with the information to pass on to their members if they choose, and I've bookmarked the links under relevant tags in del.icio.us. I'm also going to make a post in MeFi Projects.

What are some other non-spam ways to market this type of publication/community?

Where to shop in San Francisco?

meerkatty — Sun, 25 Dec 2005 16:53:57 -0800

I'm going to be in San Francisco for three days at the end of the month - looking for specific shopping advice. Where to find stores that sell Original Penguin, great bookshops (apart from City Lights), neat boutique stores like Newbury St. in Boston, antiques, any great markets...

Understanding Stock Investing

Ironwolf — Thu, 03 Feb 2005 14:16:17 -0800

As a fledgling investor, I'm confused about a fundamental idea behind stock investing: When I buy a stock, unless I buy it during a company's Initial Public Offering (IPO), I'm actually buying it from another investor who's willing to part with it for some price. So although I'm paying good money for those shares of company ownership, none of it ends up providing working capital for the company itself-- the money they got in the IPO is all they'll ever get from the stock market. So my questions are: What are the market forces that are supposed to keep the company's market capitalization (current share price X number of outstanding shares) in line with a company's actual value (assets - liabilities)? Why are high (or low) stock prices important to companies? Why do companies care so much about "creating shareholder value?"