You're human like the rest of us....

You live in a whole different country over there. People always tell me they can't wait to get out, but I've seen many become wealthy from business and real estate over there and cash out to a different economy. 1.1 gets you a nice spread over here. That's over 4 times the median price of a house in Southern Nevada.

You talked me into it once again Greg... Thanks!!

I had some free time this afternoon so I finally made a spreadsheet up tracking all of my initial buys, divvies received, growth and earnings %s.

I had always tracked my investments inside Quicken, but it adds each dividend reinvestment to the initial cost basis which really skews the numbers. By figuring the earnings back against the initial investment, it gives a MUCH clearer picture of the results...and lets one make more intelligent trading decisions. With everything else going on in my life, I've let this stuff just sit and ride and while that hasn't really hurt me (thanks to Dividend Growth Investing strategy) it can be optimized which I'll be doing shortly.

I'd be interested to hear a few details to everyone's approach to screening stocks. Over the past few days I've taken a few minutes here and there to play with the stock screener provided by my online brokerage house. My criteria were as follows:

Dividend > 4%
Stock Price > $5 (just to weed out the penny stocks)
growth > or = to the S&P 500 (I'm not entirely sure how the screener is applying this)

It narrows things down to 200-300 stocks, which is a pretty good chunk. Out of those remaining, I only see a handful that I recognize, and none that look to consistently beat the S&P over the past several years. So Even with a 4%-5% dividend, I would be better off with an index fund that's returning 12% or so.

It's likely I'm overlooking something, or didn't setup my charts to show what I think they're showing. I didn't have more than a few minutes to play around with it.

Is there something obvious that I'm missing? I'm looking for the first pass to get things down to a reasonable number of stocks to look through to find good candidates.

Do some more reading here..... otherwise I'm just repeating and repeating everything that's been asked - exactly what you're asking - has been discussed a zillion times.

In a nutshell though --- the 5% rule is going to have you invested in 20 names TOPS - if you have 100K to invest -- if you have 10K to invest - I'd go with less than 10 names.

Rather than look at every stock in the market - most of which you'd have ZERO clue who they are or what they do.... ask yourself a few questions - where do you shop -- where do you buy gas - where do you bank - where do you buy building materials etc. IN OTHER WORDS ---- BUSINESSES YOU FREQUENT.

Then start comparing them against their competitors. i.e., Do you shop at Home Depot or Lowes - compare them.... Cost basis - dividend - growth - total return.... and go with what you feel or not.

Use a cell phone? Your provider is? Compare them against the others?

Who's your power provider?

Then once you gather a few names ---- names of businesses you know and trust and frequent..... start to diversify them by their category.... "financial" - "energy" - "retail" - etc.... so you don't end up with 5 names in the retail space etc.

Investing is NOT about when things are going great and everything is going up -- investing is about making money when things aren't going well in the markets -- and being able to ADD to your holdings when they're "on sale" -- so the only way most people are comfortable doing that is by starting out with businesses they know and understand and frequent.... Don't forget that you become a part owner in those businesses. Best to actually like them to begin with.

Now --- nobody can tell you who to invest in - and we don't do that in this thread -- this is about teaching you to fish - not catching you a fish.... everyone is different - everyone's finances are different - everyone's age is different.... So it's up to you to figure out how much TIME you have -- how much risk you're willing to accept - and what you're guts are going to feel like when your account is DOWN 20%.... because at some point it will be. Like about a week after you make your first buys... LOL

GOOD!!! This is not a sit on your hands game -- you (not YOU but everyone is you) need to pay attention - reassess where you're at - plan your next moves... plan what you're going to do and how you stack up WHEN the market takes a dump.... it's too late to start raising cash AFTER the market sucks - so if you're going to want to have some cash - best to do that when the market is hot not when it's not!

LOL

Thanks for taking the time to reply to everyone’s questions. I know the same questions get asked over and over.

That said, I’m through the first hundred or so pages and haven’t run across my particular question. At least not that I recognized, anyway.

Let me try again. It looks like the average dividend yield across the market is between 2% and 3%. Take Home Depot for example. It’s current dividend yield is 2.13%, which isn’t enough to warrant a buy on the dividend alone. It is however benefiting from the current housing growth and the stock price has been on a steady climb.

Another example is Ford. It pays a dividend of almost 5%, but the stock price has been on a decline since 2014. So again, it doesn’t fit the criteria.

Verizon has a nearly 6% dividend, but the stock has been mostly flat for the past five years. So it’s beating inflation, but still well behind the market.

I suppose what I’m saying is so far the intersection of stocks with a 5% dividend and a flat to increasing share price has been a bit like finding a unicorn for me :) Based on my difficulties so far, I’m wondering if I’m misunderstanding some of the terminology, or if these stocks are just difficult to find.

Thanks again! Just trying to put all the pieces together here :)

Keep reading.....


The entire thread is only about things to think about - ways to look at things - it's not about what to do or what you should or shouldn't invest in. It isn't math class -- it's more about critical thinking. That's the problem with investing / investments.... if you understand the basics - then you can begin to look at them with your own criteria and understanding. That's all this thread is about.

You asked about narrowing down the choices you found using your search criteria -- I responded with some ways to think about how to begin to help narrow the choices down. There's no magic bullet for selection. There ARE guidelines to help - such as don't put too much in one basket - diversify - know and understand the business you're investing in etc. Investing isn't just about numbers - it's much more about understanding WHY you invested in what you did -- perhaps applying what and how you feel about that particular investment going forward... at some point - you can only trust your own judgement because it's YOUR money.

My suggestion was to just simply look around you - where you live - what you do for a living - start to look up companies you personally do business with.... sometimes just thinking and starting with that - will lead you to look at competitors and start doing comparisons - and one thing leads to another.... and triggers your brain to look at some other company that popped into your brain.... start making lists of the things you've looked up - the more you poke around the more you'll learn, the more questions you'll ask yourself....

This is investing 102 - beginners investing... you can pull up all manor of "criteria" -- and tape the list on the wall - close your eyes and throw a dart - and put money in whatever the dart landed on..... OR you can start with businesses you actually know their names - might do business with.... places that you might actually want to be a partner with. Do you want a rental house in a neighborhood you've never driven thru and know nothing about? Or would you sleep better at night with a rental in a place you kind of are familiar with and you've known the neighborhood since you were 10?

Here's something --- I've just been checking certain stocks this morning and thought of this -- or "found" this and thought it useful..... it's something that would never come up in any "criteria" search.... and as my favorite saying is -- Better LUCKY than smart....


Cisco (CSCO) in July 2011 began paying a dividend -- it paid .06 a share per quarter.... PALTRY by any standard (.35%)... but here we are 6 years later -- and it now pays .29 cents per quarter.

Had you been lucky enough to have bought it - and held it - your cost would be $15.74 a share.... you'd be UP 126% and you'd be earning 7.36% dividend on your original investment.

OH BUDDY --- yeah that's what TIME and a little bit of luck gets you.

What you are describing is normal. In most cases, the stocks that pay the higher dividends have slower stock price appreciation. It is going to be difficult to find a stock with a 5.0% dividend that is a "growth" stock. There is usually a trade off between the dividend rate and growth or appreciation rate of a stock.

What is best (high dividend vs. high growth) is very dependent on your particular situation. If you are not retired and don't need the dividends to live on, I believe total return is the most important thing to concentrate on.
If on the other hand you are retired and need the dividend income, finding the stocks with higher dividend rates may be more important.

Another thing to consider is the dividend growth rate of a stock. For example, AT&T (T) pays a current yield of 5.65%. Over the last ten years, it has had an average dividend increase of 3.8% per year and more recently has been closer to 2.5%. Johnson and Johnson (JNJ) pays a current yield of 2.42%, but its dividend has increased an average of 8.0% over the last ten years. JNJ currently pays a much lower dividend than T, but it has grown its dividend at a much faster pace. Additionally JNJ stock appreciation has been much greater than T's stock price appreciation.

Total return for T over the last 10 years was 7.93% per year, while total return for JNJ was 13.2% per year. As you can see T's current yield is much higher than JNJ, but its total return has been much lower.

If you are a young investor trying to grow your money at the fastest rate possible, I believe a stock like JNJ would be a better choice. If you are retired and needed to live off of your dividends, a stock like T would probably make more sense.

The stocks I selected are just real life examples and are not recommendations, but you should be able to research stocks that interest you and make similar comparisons.

@Woody, that’s exactly what I’m getting at. The market averages about a 12% return. So I tend to use that as a quick check for various investment opportunities. In this case, I would want my stocks to provide a 12% return whether that be through straight growth or a combination of growth and dividend yield.

I ran across this article a day or two ago, and it's talking about exactly what you're asking. And its something that we've discussed here on the thread too. So I felt it warranted me sharing it. :P

Anyhow, this may also help answer your question(s) about %, total return, etc.

https://www.kiplinger.com/article/in...-strategy.html

It won't make ME rething my strategy because its the strategy that our good friend Greg here has taught me already. ;)

PS Hey guys - long time to see. hope you all are doing well!

I'm not sure if this helps or not, but you mentioned spreadsheets.. this is an example of the spreadsheet I made to track my stuff... not sure if it would help anyone here or not, but it certainly helps me!

Link: https://docs.google.com/spreadsheets...it?usp=sharing

let me know if you have any questions or comments - or if its useful enough to want a copy of it!

Essentially, i track my purchases and dividend payments on the ticker tab, and that reports back to the summary tab and auto calc's total returns, yield on cost, etc.

Wow!! That is WAY more elaborate than mine!! Thanks for sharing... I might have to sleep on that for a bit to see if I want that much detail or not. Very nice though...



So...I have a holding that has been beaten up a bit in share price (down 47.99%) but still pays a great dividend. I just ran the calcs and the net asset value of those shares in that particular holding now represent just 4% of my total holdings, but the dividend represents 15% of my total annual dividend.

This is where I struggle with this type of investing. If I decide I can't stomach this company any longer, I'm not sure I can replace the dividend dollars that this stock currently pays. One is going to have to hope the replacement stock I pick has enough growth in it to make some of that 48% loss back to supplement the lower dividend it'll most likely pay.

Is this a good metric to use (% of total dividend earned vs % of total net asset value)? Or should it be more about Growth and Dividend %s not necessarily about dividend dollars? This is all in my retirement accounts so no tax implications and I do not expect to be pulling money from these accounts any time soon.

In my opinion if you are trying to grow your account and are not living off of the dividends, I think you should be looking for stocks that will produce the highest total return, not the highest current dividends. Once you are retired and living off of the dividends you would probably change your priorities to concentrate more on dividends.

I think the earlier referenced Klipinger article explains it pretty well that the highest dividend rate paying stocks tend to have the lowest dividend growth rates. They also tend to have the lowest stock price appreciation. In the stocks that I have looked at AT&T is a good example of a stock with a high dividend, low dividend growth rate and low stock price appreciation. You can find many examples of stocks with a 2.0% to 3.0% dividend that have much higher dividend growth rates, and stock price appreciation. Use a spreadsheet and you can figure out how long it will take the dividend for a stock with a 3.0% dividend rate and a 7.0% dividend growth rate to surpass the dividend of a stock with a 5.5% dividend and a 2.5% dividend growth rate. If your time in the market is long enough, the dividend paid on the stock with the current lower yield will be higher and stock price appreciation will also be higher. The combination of which produces the higher total return.

I've never understood why people advise CHANGING what has gotten them to the pot of gold....

It doesn't matter what the strategy is.... The key is that it works for the individuals needs and tastes and how he sleeps best at night.... but I don't know why - if you had a good enough portfolio to get you to retirement - that you'd suddenly dump that and go in to something else.

I've been retired damn near 25 years now... and I'm only going to be 65 this summer. I've been investing the same way for all these years and manage to do pretty damn well at making a living off it.

Dividend investing is for one reason and one reason only ---- it's so you have income to either reinvest - or income to live off of... NOT while the market is good --- but for when it SUCKS! Don't ever confuse this issue. It's the one thing that will KEEP YOU FROM LIQUIDATING your assets when everything is going to hell in a handbasket.

What you're BLENDED return looks like -- growth - dividends - stocks - real estate all has to be considered for one goal --- growth, that over time, beats inflation - and that it creates enough cash flow for you to live on. End of story.

Some investments pay 2% but have growth -- some are steady eddies and they just plod along -- they don't go up much - they also tend to not go down much either.... some are rocket ships to the moon and you just hope they don't blow up in your face.... The key is diversity in all of your investments -- not just diversity in the stock market -- and the real key is TIME --- and TOTAL RETURN..... all else is mumbo jumbo big stuff wannabe talk.

Crypto currency
 

Several of the young guys I work with have been into Bitcoin and a few other currencies

One is up 800k yeah that’s not a typo they tell me it’s going to hit 10 k then level off at 6 for a while... so tempting but I know nothing about it Anyone have any insight?

I have some money that I definitely could afford to gamble with

It’s definitely a gamble. I’d say it’s reasonable to believe it will be around for a long time to come. It’s probably the most main stream way to pay for something if you don’t want It tracked, which is of course why it’s used for some shady transactions. That said, it’s anyone’s guess as to what the price will do.

The underlying technology (blockchain) has some potential outside of Bitcoin as well, but it’s so young it’s still a guess as to who will make a profitable venture of it.

All I really update is dividend payouts an any buy/sells. Then I can just pop it open, and see within a few seconds my total return, real gains, yield on cost, etc. it's not perfect, but it tells me the info that most sites I've seen don't.

Sent from my Moto G (5) Plus using Tapatalk

Lance ---


Your question is legitimate and real --- and I suffer from this in a couple investments (oils) as well....

There will never be a "right" answer to the dilemma. Here's the metric (mental masturbation) I use.... "how long will it take me in income - to cover the loss" and does it have any chance of closing that gap during that particular time span?

So let's say I have a 50K paper loss (remember - it's never a loss until you make it a loss!).... but the shares pay me 22K dividend.... so figure 2+ years of income to get even. Will the shares have ANY chance of recovery --- or is the company so broken it hasn't a chance.

Who knows? It's just a risk you take.... and what you REALLY HOPE -- is that they don't cut the dividend --- and THERE IS WHERE YOU HAVE TO LOOK AT THE PARTICULARS OF THEIR BUSINESS. Are they hemorrhaging cash - top line and bottom line suck? Or are they doing okay in a bad industry?

There are VALUE TRAPS -- where the relative dividend looks very appealing -- but the reason the dividend % is "high" is because the stock has sunk.... What we need to understand is WHY the stock is in the tank.

So ---- many times I'll cut my shares by 25% at a time (my is all taxable - so I offset gains (sales) with losses...) and that gives me time to wait and see what's happening. In the meantime I'm still collecting the dividend --- but I'm also cutting my "odds" of getting killed even more (no different than taking a huge gain!).

This is where I say ----- it's easy when everything is going up, up, up..... This is when it pays to look a lot deeper in to the holding.... What's the dividend payout as a percentage (ratio) to earnings.... What is the company saying about it's future going forward (they're obligated to say if they suck!).... is it a secular decline (oil) or is it bad operations (GE)....

Thanks Greg, nice to know others are dealing with this as well.

Usually an up economy is good for the oil industry, the rules as changed with fracking though it appears so who knows now. It's not a huge part of my portfolio and my biggest fear is a dividend cut...which would be bad, real bad...

So I'll probably start trimming away and most likely just add to my holdings that I feel a lot better about. I'm at 12 now anyway and should pull it back to 10 or less.

Bitcoin
 

I figure some of you are interested or perhaps IN Bitcoin or similar....

Here's my take.... the higher this thing goes -- the more hackers are going to want to figure out a way to steal it.

Another story this morning about another hack attack... and most of you are unfamiliar with the Mt Gox theft and subsequent closure a couple years back...

This mornings article.

I don't care if you're in to it -- not my money - not my job to say yeah or nay... just a "buyer beware". To me - it reminds me of the tulip bulb.... LOL


https://www.bloomberg.com/gadfly/art...n-trader-s-day

Interesting graphic
 

Here's what $1,000 invested in 2007 ---- a lousy 10 years ago ---- would be worth today.



LOL ---- Oh yeah..... dream on! Woulda, shoulda, coulda comes to mind.




https://lateral-g.net/forums/attachme...1&d=1511969691

I have a new book that lays out all the stock market crashes. I just finished the 2008 segment. This 30 year old kid had his horse blinders on and should've been investing MORE. Of course the real estate market sucked and I had too many shiny new parts to buy for an old beater. The Dow got down to 7 or 8k just 10 years ago. WOW

What led to that crash:

In 1981, Option Arms were approved by the government. That meant a homeowner could pay less than the minimum and add to the mortgage balance EVERY MONTH vs. paying it down.

In the early 90's, lending became much more flexible with little to NO down payments which led to ever increasing subprime loans. This was to help BROKE people buy houses. How could that go wrong?

About this time, banks figured out a way to keep less assets on the shelf buying insurance against losses letting them lend more. GREED AIG was the biggest insurer.

Next, banks started assembling caches of mortgages and selling them to big investment companies like Lehman and Bear Sterns and creating stock funds. Most of them subprime with a high likelihood of default. Nobody thought houses would go down in value.

Pension funds had stayed away from risky investments until banks found a way to rate these caches of mortgages favorably. Then the pensions bought these toxic assets.

Lastly, Greenspan kept the interest rates low for way to long as he didn't see much inflation in the market. He missed the HUGE INFLATION in the housing market.

Nice, I'm in two of those.. the Ex-Date is tomorrow for one of them :D

I just looked again.. looks like this does not include dividends.

7600 the day I wrote this post.. over 11K now... :drowninga:

Bitcoin is a phenomenon for certain --- Personally --- I can't afford the losses that will come with the meteoric rise. Sure.... it might run some more - and maybe it never crashes.... but when "everyone" is talking about something - and the money they've made - and you start to hear the grocery store clerk telling you about it.... It's time to run as fast as you can. Like the housing market -- like the Dot.com -- like flippers -- like in the 80's the apartment investments for tax shelters....

I HOPE it doesn't and that I'm the only idiot that missed making a fortune....

For me - Amazon (AMZN) and NetFlix (NFLX) and a couple others of their ilk are risky enough and they're actual real businesses. I think Bitcoin has turned in to nothing but speculation. It went from being a currency (one I never did understand) to now just going up because it's going up. I read today that one exchange opened 100,000 new accounts for trading it in one day.... that tells me there are 100,000 people that probably don't have a f'n clue about investing - or even what Bitcoin is... To me -- that's scary.

And to those that got in early -- and have taken their gains and recovered the money they initially put in - lucky you! I'm happy as hell for ya!

I made a small fortune buying apartments in Scottsdale right after the Savings and Loan crash.... you could buy them for 50 cents on the dollar. It was instant equity.

For the people that lost money on the house flipping craziness -- there's a ton of people that have made a killing buying those losses and holding them. One side was a fad driven by cheap money and non-existent credit scores -- the other side is brilliance.

Personally -- I think the FED has completely missed the inflation rate once again. I hope it doesn't end badly. I was in business in the late 70's and early 80's when interest rates rose to 15 and 18%.... and you couldn't print a price list fast enough to keep ahead. It was ugly.

I used to make huge money almost daily flipping Microsoft - Cisco - Intel - Dell.... and the only thing that saved my bacon (day trading 3 million dollars) was that I decided to pay all cash for a new house (2 million) and then gut and remodel it (600K). Right when we were in the midst of the remodel -- the DOT.COM bust happened --- and I'd stopped flipping stocks because I was too busy with the house remodel. My favorite saying --- Better lucky, than smart.


Check the PRICE and TAX history section for that house! Lucky me!


https://www.zillow.com/homes/for_sal...59_rect/17_zm/


Having been an investor thru most of what you describe in the crash scenarios is what led me to believe in the dividend stocks. I've lived thru or been involved in many of those episodes you describe in the book. Making CASH is KING.... and when others are wringing their hands or frozen out --- it's the cash that allows you to take advantage of their mistakes.

Exact same boat..

I got lucky along the way myself. While it sucked selling real estate in 2008-2012, I did take advantage on the real estate investing side and certainly in the rising market twice in the last decade in my real estate business. The recession forced me to be a much better business man and those skills will serve me for life.

Next time the stock market looks BAD, I"m in. :D

Was reading some more about BitCoin this morning and found this in a "pro" article about how to buy them etc...... It's like - to me - "are you kidding!?!?!"








If you leave your money on deposit with the exchange, the risk is that the exchange itself will lose your bitcoins due to hacking, mismanagement, or fraud. In 2014, the then-biggest Bitcoin exchange, called Mt. Gox, declared bankruptcy after millions of dollars in bitcoins were stolen by hackers. Other early Bitcoin services simply disappeared from the web, taking customers' bitcoins with them The Bitcoin economy doesn't have anything resembling FDIC insurance, so if your exchange loses your bitcoins or goes bankrupt, you might be out of luck.

On the other hand, exchanges have matured significantly since 2014, and holding bitcoins yourself is risky, too. If your hard drive crashes and you don't have backups, your bitcoins could be lost forever. If you print out your bitcoins and then lose the paper, your bitcoins will be gone forever. If you put the bitcoins in a Web wallet and forget the password, your bitcoins will be lost forever. If someone puts bitcoin-stealing malware on your computer, you could lose your bitcoin regardless of how you store them.

In short, there's no completely safe way to hold on to bitcoins, and technical newbies are at particular risk. Investors in Bitcoin are at much greater risk of losing their investments to accidents or thefts than investors in conventional assets like stocks and bonds.


Here's where I copy and pasted the above info:


https://arstechnica.com/tech-policy/...ginners-guide/

Our small company had a Defined Benefit Pension Plan for the 3 of us back in the late 90s. We were very aggressive in the early years with the contributions and investments in it and had done VERY well...so well in fact that our actuary that took care of the plan explained to us that if we earned ANY more money in the plan, the Government would take the extra in taxes. So we sold everything and put 100% in treasuries. The Dot com bust happened about 3 months later. :D

The distribution from that Plan after it's 10 year life was the seed money for my current retirement plan. #Lucky

Another big bitcoin hack.

https://www.theguardian.com/technolo...hash-passwords

Whats interesting is seeing the rise in the bot trading for bitcoin.

www.Cryptotrader.org

Essentially you're paying someone a percentage who wrote a script to buy/sell/short/hedge etc.

I've got a few friends heavily into it and I've been tempted a few times but looking over how everything is shaking out seems like more and more risk everyday.

I think Bitcoin prices are going to come down. Whether that is soon or after another 10%, 100%, 1000% run is anybody’s guess. Sooner or later governments are going to decide they need a piece of the pie and they’re going to start regulating it (I don’t know how, but I’m sure they’ll figure it out). That will put a damper on things for sure.

Now if you’re an optimist, you might consider that the total value of bitcoin at the moment is only around $200 billion US. That’s what you’d be worth if you owned ALL of the Bitcoins currently available. Companies like Apple and Amazon are worth two, three, four times that. So if you think Bitcoin is intended to be a currency to replace whatever currency your country uses, then its WAY undervalued.

I have another question about tracking investments...

Once you sell a holding, do you track the gains or losses of the holding and continue to track it's performance?

Or are you a sell and don't look back investor?

I realize sells have to be recorded for income tax purposes but I'm mainly just referring to investor research with this question.

I personally like to continue to look at some of them -- not all.... but it's mostly to see if I was "right" on the sale. Sales are like buying -- you just don't get them all right -- it's okay - we just need to get about 50% right.

I keep an eye on them to see if the price does something that makes them attractive again. The stocks I own, I bought for the company behind them. I only sell them when I feel like they become overvalued (e.g., they suddenly become trendy), or the business takes a turn I don't like. If I see what looks like an overcorrection I might reinvest in those companies if I still like them.

I don't track any of that in a spreadsheet or anything formal like that, though.

DITTO

This last little uptick has been good to help me rid myself of some stragglers...A few more to go before I start deciding where to reinvest now.

Most likely I'll just add to my holdings I already have and like, even though it'll be at higher prices than current cost basis.

It is NOT a bad thing that you have to raise your cost basis! Far better than when you have to lower your cost basis! LOL

I've never understood the problem people have when their stocks GO UP! LOL


Keep in mind ------ the FED is raising rates -- therefore when looking for DIVIDEND payers - you might want to raise the bar - and always keep in mind that TOTAL RETURN. Right now - we're in growth mode so the growth stocks are in favor -- it's easy to fall in line and then if things don't go perfectly as planned - you end up sitting on losers that don't pay you to hold them. So in periods like this -- I try to be a LOT more on top of what's going on. I don't want to be complacent. If I start to sprinkle in some of the growers - I do so with more or a "temporary and be prepared to take some gains" kind of thought process.

So ---- I buy a 1000 shares of "X" growth stock - pays 0 dividend - but I have a 10% gain (I want to hold for a year plus 1 day - to make it long term - but this doesn't matter so much if they're in retirement accounts)..... a 10% gain would be a terrific dividend wouldn't it! So I might sell off 100 shares and think of that as my "dividend". IF they run more than that --- I take a larger % off the top and so on.

Bitcoin
 

And another exchange bites the dust.... leaving it's wealthy Bitcoin holders in the tank.....




On Monday, a Youbit spokeswoman told Reuters the company had not been targeted by North Korean hackers, and on Tuesday the company announced it had suffered another cyber attack that cost it 17 percent of its assets, forcing the exchange to halt operations and file for bankruptcy.