17. Does bull/bear market actually make a difference?
If you know what you are doing, bear markets offer fantastic trading opportunities. I'm a futures and futures options trader, and am equally comfortable trading long or short, although I have a slight preference for the short side, in that moves are typically much quicker to the down side.

18. Does Tennessee have anything like a principal residence exemption?
There's no homestead property tax exemption in TN. According to the TN comptroller site: Exemptions Exemptions are available for religious, charitable, scientific, and   nonprofit educational uses, governmental property, and cemeteries.   Most nongovernmental exemptions require a one-time application and   approval by the State Board of Equalization (615/401-7883) and there   is a May 20 application deadline. There is no "homestead" exemption,   but low income elderly and disabled persons and disabled veterans may   qualify for a rebate of taxes on a specified portion of the value of   property used as their residence. Business inventories held for sale   or exchange by merchants subject to the business gross receipts tax,   are not assessable. Farm and residential tangible personal property   are not assessable.

19. How can it be possible that only ~10% of options expire worthless, and only ~10% are exercised?
Consider the futures market. Traders buy and sell gold futures, but very few contracts, relatively speaking, result in delivery. The contracts are sold, and "Open interest" dwindles to near zero most months as the final date approaches. The seller buys back his short position, the buyer sells off his longs.  When I own a call, and am 'winning,' say the option that cost me $1 is now worth $2, I'd rather sell that option for even $1.95 than to buy 100 shares of a $148 stock. The punchline is that very few option buyers actually hope to own the stock in the end. Just like the futures, open interest falls as expiration approaches.

20. Will capital gains affect my tax bracket?
I'm not sure where you are, but in the United States capital gains are taxed at a lower rate than other types of income. On the 1040, captial gains income is separated from earned income, and income tax is calculated just on earned income. Then capital gains tax is calculated on capital gains income, and then added to income tax afterward.

21. Can I sell a stock immediately?
You can*, if the market is open, in a normal trading phase (no auction phase), works, and there is an existing bid or offer on the product you want to trade, at the time the market learns of your order. Keep in mind there are 2 prices: bid and offer. If the current bid and current offer were the same, it would immediately result in a trade, and thus the bid and offer are no longer the same. Market Makers are paid / given lower fees in order to maintain buy and sell prices (called quotes) at most times. These conditions are usually all true, but commonly fail for these reasons: Most markets have an order type of market order that says buy/sell at any price. There are still sanity checks put in place on the price, with the exact rules for valid prices depending on the stock, so unless it's a penny stock you won't suddenly pay ten times a stock's value. *The amount you can buy sell is limited by the quantity that exists on the bid and offer. If there is a bid or offer, the quantity is always at least 1.

22. What can a CPA do that an EA cannot, and vice versa?
Enrolled Agents typically specialize only in tax matters.  Their status allows them to represent clients before the IRS (which a CPA can also do) See the IRS site regarding Enrolled Agents Their focus is much narrower than a CPA and you would only hire them for advice or representation with tax related matters.  (e.g. you'd not hire an enrolled agent to do an external audit)  A CPA is a much broader certification, covering accounting in general, of which taxes are only a portion. A CPA may or may not specialize in tax matters, so if you have a tax related issue, especially an audit, review or appeal, you may want to query a prospective CPA as to their experience with tax matters and representing clients, appeals, etc. You would likely be better off with an EA than a CPA who eschews tax work and specializes in other things such as financial auditsOn the other hand if you have need of advice that is more generalized to accounting, audits, etc then you'd want to talk with a CPA as opposed to an EA

23. Is my stock gone forever from a reverse split / bought by another company?
GT BIOPHARMA, INC. ANNOUNCES REVERSE STOCK SPILT AS PART OF OXIS-GEORGETOWN PLANNED MERGER LOS ANGELES, CA / ACCESSWIRE / August 21, 2017 / GT Biopharma Inc.   (formerly known as Oxis International, Inc.) announced today a   1-for-300 reverse stock split. Shareholders of GT Biopharma Inc.   (OTCQB: OXIS and Euronext Paris: OXI.PA) will be issued 1 share of   common stock for every 300 shares common stock that they owned. If you owned fewer than 300 shares, they cashed you out.

24. Why does quantitative easing negatively affect stocks?
Can you isolate the market impact to just the Fed's quantitative easing?  Can you rule out the future economic predictions of low growth and that there are reasons why the Fed has kept rates low and is trying its best to stimulate the economy?  Just something to consider here. The key is to understand what is the greater picture here as well as the question of which stock market index are you looking at that has done so badly.  Some stocks may be down and others may be up so it isn't necessarily bad for all equally.

25. How to calculate how much a large stock position is really worth?
Something like cost = a × avg_spreadb + c × volatilityd × (order_size/avg_volume)e. Different brokers have different formulas, and different trading patterns will have different coefficients.

26. $700 guaranteed to not be touched for 15 years+, should I put it anywhere other than a savings account?
Well, I understand this forum is about money but I think you would be far better off if you invest the money in your daughters education or something similar that can bring much more significant future gains. I am a big fan of compound interest and investing in stocks but $700 sitting until she's 21 wont grow into a significant amount. When she's 21, what would you "hope" she'd spend the money on? something valuable like education right? so why don't you take the first step now so she will get a much bigger return than the monitory value. If I were you I'd invest in a home library or something similar.

27. What are the implications of a corporate stock repurchase or share buyback program?
A board authorizes the repurchase of shares because they feel the stock in undervalued. The hope is that the stocks will rise either directly by their repurchase, or in the near term due to the realization that the company is in better shape then the market thought. Eventually those shares will be resold back into the market thus bring in more cash at a later date.  They will set limits on them maximum they will pay, they will also spread the repurchases out over a time period so they don't overwhelm the market.

28. How much time should be spent on Penny Stocks Trading a day?
How long is a piece of string?  This will depend on many variables. How many trades will you make in a day? What income would you be expecting to make? What expectancy do you need to achieve? Which markets you will choose to trade?  Your first step should be to develop a Trading Plan, then develop your trading rules and your risk management. Then you should back test your strategy and then use a virtual account to practice losing on. Because one thing you will get is many losses. You have to learn to take a loss when the market moves against you. And you need to let your profits run and keep your losses small. A good book to start with is Trade Your Way to Financial Freedom by Van Tharp. It will teach you about Expectancy, Money Management, Risk Management and the Phycology of Trading. Two thing I can recommend are: 1) to look into position and trend trading and other types of short term trading instead of day trading. You would usually place your trades after market close together with your stops and avoid being in front of the screen all day trying to chase the market. You need to take your emotion out of your trading if you want to succeed; 2) don't trade penny stocks, trade commodities, FX or standard stocks, but keep away from penny stocks. Just because you can buy them for a penny does not mean they are cheap.

29. Is short selling a good hedging strategy during overzealous market conditions?
Short selling can be a good strategy to hedge, but you have almost unlimited downside.  If a stock price skyrockets, you may be forced to cover your short by the brokerage before you want to or put up more capital. A smarter strategy to hedge, that limits your potential downside is to buy puts if you think the market is going down.  Your downside is limited to the total amount that you purchased the put for and no more. Another way to hedge is to SELL calls that are covered because you own the shares the calls refer to.  You might do this if you thought your stock was going to go down but you didn't want to sell your shares right now.  That way the only downside if the price goes up is you give up your shares at a predetermined price and you miss out on the upside, but your downside is now diminished by the premium you were paid for the option. (You'd still lose money if the shares went down since you still own them, but you got paid the option premium so that helps offset that).

30. How to decide on split between large/mid/small cap on 401(k) and how often rebalance
It's a trade-off. The answer depends on your risk tolerance. Seeking higher rewards demands higher risk. If you want advice, I would recommend hiring an expert to design a plan which meets your needs. As a sample point, NOT necessarily right for anyone else...I'm considered an aggressive investor, and my own spread is still more conservative than many folks. I'm entirely in low-cost index funds, distributed as ... with the money tied up in a "quiesced" defined-contribution pension fund being treated as a low-yield bond. Some of these have beaten the indexes they're tracking, some haven't. My average yield since I started investing has been a bit over 10%/year (not including the company match on part of the 401k), which I consider Good Enough -- certainly good enough for something that requires near-zero attention from me. Past results are not a guarantee of future performance. This may be completely wrong for someone at a different point in their career and/or life and/or finances. I'm posting it only as an example, NOT a recommendation.  Regarding when to rebalance: Set some threshhold at which things have drifted too far from your preferred distribution (value of a fund being 5% off its target percentage in the mix is one rule I've sometimes used), and/or pick some reasonable (usually fairly low) frequency at which you'll actively rebalance (once a year, 4x/year, whenever you change your car's oil, something like that), and/or rebalance by selecting which funds you deposit additional money into whenever you're adding to the investments. Note that that last option avoids having to take capital gains, which is generally a good thing; you want as much of your profit to be long-term as possible, and to avoid triggering the "wash sales" rule. Generally, you do not have to rebalance very frequently unless you are doing something that I'd consider unreasonably risky, or unless you're managing such huge sums that a tiny fraction of a percent still adds up to real money.

31. Buying from an aggressive salesperson
I often spend weeks or months (and sometimes even years) deciding whether to buy something. Certainly the dealer should recognize you by now if you take a third opportunity to look at the same instrument. You could politely remind him that you've twice declined his excellent prices. From there you can assert that you will purchase only when you are ready.

32. What are some signs that the stock market might crash?
There are some economic signs as there are in all economic and business cycles, such as interest rates rising. However, a more effective way is to actually look at price action itself. The definition of an uptrend is higher highs followed by higher lows. The definition of a downtrend is lower lows followed by lower highs. So if you are looking to invest for the long term you can look at the weekly or even the monthly chart of the market say over the past 10, 15 or 20 years. Using these definitions on say the S&P500 if the price continues to make higher highs and higher lows then stay in the market. If the price makes a lower high than the previous high, then this is a warning sign that the trend may be about to end. The trend has not broken yet but it is a warning sign that it could be ending soon. If the price makes a higher low next followed by a higher high, then the trend continues and you just need to keep an eye on things. If, however, the price makes a lower low after the lower high this is a signal that the uptrend is over and you should get out of the market. If the price makes a lower low directly after a higher high, then be cautious and wait for confirmation that the uptrend is over. If you then get a lower high this is confirmation that the uptrend is over, you would then sell if prices drop below the previous low. If you invest in individual shares then you should keep an eye on the charts for the index and individual shares as well. The index chart will give you an indication if the uptrend is over for the whole market, then you can be more cautious in regards to the individual shares. You can then plan exit points on each individual share if their trends are broken too. If you have stop losses employed and the trend reverses on the index, this would be a good time to tighten your stop losses on individual shares. You can then buy back into the market when you determine that the downtrend is broken and prices start to show higher highs and higher lows again. Will there be occasions when the uptrend reverses and then after a short period starts trending up again, yes there might be, but the worse that will happen is that you pay a bit of extra brokerage to get out and then back into the market, and you might have to pay some capital gains tax on any profits made. But remember no one ever went broke making a profit. The most important thing to remember when investing is to conserve and protect your capital. I would rather pay some extra brokerage and some capital gains tax than see my portfolio drop by 50% or more, then take 5 years or more to recover. And remember, paying tax is a good thing, it means you made money. If you don't want to pay any tax it means you will never make any profits, because if you make profits you will have to pay tax one day.

33. Recent college grad. Down payment on a house or car?
Buy a car. Unless you definitely know you are living in the area for a good long time, avoid buying a house and get a car instead.
