Does the uptick rule apply to all stocks/ETFs and other securities, or only specific ones?
The uptick rule is gone, but it was weakly reintroduced in 2010, applied to all publicly traded equities: Under the terms of the rule, a circuit breaker would be triggered if a stock falls by 10% or more in a single day. At that point, short selling would only be allowed if the price is above the current national best bid, a restriction that would apply for the rest of the day and the whole of the following day. Derivatives are not yet restricted in such ways because of their spontaneous nature, requiring a short to increase supply; however, this latest rule widens options spreads during collapses because the exemption for hedging is now gone, and what's more a tool used by options market makers, shorting the underlying to offset positive delta, now has to go to the back of the selling line during a panic. Bonds are not restricted because for one there isn't much interest in shorting because bonds usually don't have enough variance to exceed the cost of borrowing, and many do not trade frequently enough because even the cost to trade bonds is expensive, so arranging a short in its entirety will be expensive.  The preferred method to short a bond is with swaps, swaptions, etc.
"According to page 56 of the 2015 IRS Publication 550 on Investment Income and Expenses: Wash sales. Your holding period for substantially identical stock or securities you acquire in a wash sale includes the period you held the old stock or securities. It looks like the rule applies to stocks and other securities, including options. It seems like the key is ""substantially identical"". For your brokerage / trading platform to handle these periods correctly for reporting to IRS, it seems best to trade the same security instead of trying to use something substantially identical." "In general, yes. If interest rates go higher, then any existing fixed-rate bonds - and hence ETFs holding those bonds - become less valuable. The further each bond is from maturity, the larger the impact. As you suggest, once the bonds do mature, the fund can replace them at a market price, so the effect tails off. The bond market has a concept known as ""duration"" that helps reason about this effect. Roughly, it measures the average time from now to each payout of the bond, weighted by the payout. The longer the duration, the more the price will change for a given change in interest rates. The concept is just an approximation, and there are various slightly different ways of calculating it; but very roughly the price of a bond will reduce by a percentage equal to the duration times the increase in interest rates. So a bond with a duration of 5 years will lose 5% of its value for a 1% rise in interest rates (and of course vice-versa). For your second question, it really depends on what you're trying to achieve by diversifying - this might be best as a different question that gives more detail, as it's not very related to your first question. Short-term bonds are less risky. But both will lose value if the underlying company is in trouble. Gilts (government bonds) are less risky than corporate bonds." I normally just do a buy limit at the price I want to buy it at. Then it executes when it's that price or lower, but there's still a chance you might purchase some shares at a larger price. But since we're small fry and using brokerages, there's not much we can do about it. Fund rebalancing typically refers to changing the investment mix to stay within the guidelines of the mutual fund objective.  For example, lets say a fund is supposed to have at least 20% in bonds.  Because of a dramatic increase in stock price and decrease in bond values it finds itself with only 19.9% in bonds at the end of the trading day.  The fund manager would sell sufficient equities to reduce its equity holdings and buy more bonds.   Rebalancing is not always preferential because it could cause capital gain distribution, typically once per year, without selling the fund.  And really any trading within the fun could do the same. In the case you cite the verbiage is confusing.  Often times I wonder if the author knows less then the reader.  It might also be a bit of a rush to get the article out, and the author did not write correctly. I agree that the ETFs cited are suitable for short term traders.  However, that is because, traditionaly, the market has increased in value over the long term.  If you bet it will go down over the long term, you are almost certain to lose money. Like you, I cannot figure out how rebalancing makes this suitable only for short term traders.  If the ETFs distribute capital gains events much more frequently then once per year, that is worth mentioning, but does not provide a case for short versus long term traders.   Secondly, I don't think these funds are doing true rebalancing.  They might change investments daily for the most likely profitable outcome, but that really isn't rebalancing.   It seems the author is confused. It may be true for a bond fund.  But it is not true for bond etf.  Bond etf will drop by the same amount when it distribute dividend on ex-dividend date. IESC has a one-time, non-repeatable event in its operating income stream.  It magnifies operating income by about a factor of five.  It impacts both the numerator and the denominator.  Without knowing exactly how the adjustments are made it would take too much work for me to calculate it exactly, but I did get close to their number using a relatively crude adjustment rule. Basically, Yahoo is excluding one-time events from its definitions since, although they are classified as operating events, they distort the financial record.  I teach securities analysis and have done it as a profession.  If I had to choose between Yahoo and Marketwatch, at least for this security, I would clearly choose Yahoo. "Well, everyone knows that a lot of funds have a strict policy to own a market-cap based part of shares from all listed companies above a certain threshold.    Now, if I would go and inflate my share price and market cap, they would be forced to buy in; you can argue that this is ""just exploiting a weakness of the market"", but for me that's simply fraud." "So you're basically saying that average market fluctuations have an affect on individual stocks, because individual stocks are often priced in relation to the growth of the market as a whole?  Also, what kinds of investments would be considered ""risk free"" in this nomenclature?" Thanks for your reply. I’m not familiar with the term “Held-For-Trading Security”. My securities are generally held as collateral against my shorts. To clarify, I am just trying to track the “money in” and “money out” entries in my account for the shorts I write. The transaction is relatively straight forward, except there is a ton of information attached! In simple terms, for the ticker CSR and short contract CSRUQ8, the relevant entries look something like this: There are no entries for expiries. I need to ensure that funds are available for future margin calls and assignments. The sale side using covered calls is as involved. "Funds which track the same index may have different nominal prices.  From an investors point of view, this is not important.  What is important is that when the underlying index moves by a given percentage, the price of the tracking funds also move by an equal percentage.  In other words, if the S&P500 rises by 5%, then the price of those funds tracking the S&P500 will also rise by 5%.  Therefore, investing a given amount in any of the tracking funds will produce the same profit or loss, regardless of the nominal prices at which the individual funds are trading. To see this, use the ""compare"" function available on the popular online charting services. For example, in Google finance call up a chart of the S&P500 index, then use the compare textbox to enter the codes for the various ETFs tracking the S&P500.  You will see that they all track the S&P500 equally so that your relative returns will be equal from each of the tracking funds.  Any small difference in total returns will be attributable to management fees and expenses, which is why low fees are so important in passive investing." For ESPP, the discount that you get is taxed as ordinary income. Capital gains is taxed at the appropriate rate, which is different based on how long you hold it. So, yes, if the stock is going up, "The T+3 ""rule"" relates only to accounting and not to trading.  It does not prevent you from day trading.  It simply means that the postings in you cash account will not appear until three business days after you have executed a trade.  When you execute a trade and the order has been filled, you have all of the information you need to know the cash amounts that will hit your account three business days later. In a cash account, cash postings that arise from trading are treated as unsettled (for three days), but this does not mean that these funds are available for further trading.  If you have $25,000 in your account on day 1, this does not mean that you will be able to trade more than $25,000 because your cash account has not yet been debited.  Most cash accounts will include an item detailing ""Cash available for trading"".  This will net out any unsettled business transacted. For example, if you have a cash account balance of $25,000 on day one, and on the same day you purchase $10,000 worth of shares, then pending settlement in your cash account you will only have $15,000 ""Cash available for trading"". Similarly, if you have a cash balance of $25,000 on day one, and on the same day you ""day trade"", purchasing $15,000 and selling $10,000 worth of shares, then you will have the net of $20,000 ""Cash available for trading"" ($20,000 = $25,000 - $15,000 + $10,000). If by ""prop account"" you mean an account where you give discretion to a broker to trade on your behalf, then I think the issues of accounting will be the least of your worries.  You will need to be worried about not being fleeced out of your hard earned savings by someone far more interested in lining their own pockets than making money for you." That's up to you. If you instruct your broker to sell shares purchased in specific lots, they can do that -- but doing so requires that you and/or they track specific fractional lots forever afterwards so you know what is still there to be sold. FIFO simplifies the bookkeeping. And I am not convinced selecting specific lots makes much difference; the government gets its share of your profits sooner or later. Yes, it depends on the fund it's trying to mirror.  The ETF for the S&P that's best known (in my opinion) is SPY and you see the breakdown of its holdings.  Clearly, it's not an equal weighted index. Exactly. There's not unlimited points out there. Classic innovation cycle where at the end the returns are ultimately directly correlated to capital and it is not particularly profitable for most market participants.   Incidentally, never understood why retail investors care about HFT. IF they squeeze a few basis points out of you getting in and out of a position, it's still way less than what brokers are taking you for. And if you're wearing it for years, should be basically noise relative to the overall performance.