Saturday 27 September 2014

Odds of winning the jackpot in EuroMillions

1 in 116,531,800 chance, it seems, sounds just terrific for millions of those who play. If they actually knew the numbers they would probably stop playing at all.

 

EuroMillions Online Buy Lottery Tickets and Win

The Winning Odds Every draw there are 13 levels of winnings possible. For the lowest tier you have to correctly guess 2 of 5 drawn numbers. However, as there are balls with numbers up to 50 the odds of you winning it are 1 in 23. A chance to get right 2 main balls and one of the Lucky Stars is 1 in 46 whereas a chance to get right 1 main ball and both of the Lucky Stars is 1 in 157. The last tier with odds less than 1 in 1000 is 8th (3 +1 Lucky Star). The one higher up already reaches a 1 in 11,771 for 3+2. Certainly, you care about the big cash but how does a 1 in 116,531,800 chance sound? That’s how lucky you have to be to win the jackpot. But don’t worry, because an overall chance of winning anything in EuroMillions is 1 in 13 which is one of the best amongst the biggest lotteries’ in the business.

Friday 26 September 2014

Wednesday 24 September 2014

Irrational exuberance down under

Irrational Exuberance Down Under | Bloomberg View http://goldstocksforex.com/2014/09/22/irrational-exuberance-down-under-bloomberg-view

Friday 19 September 2014

Stages in a Bubble

One more chart of the stages in a market cycle or, as named here, a bubble.

Stages in a Bubble

7 Sins of Investing

A timeless piece on behavioral finance.

 

7 sins of investing - Morningstar.com.au

 

Sunday 7 September 2014

Import Yahoo stock prices into Quicken

Quicken allows importing security prices from a .csv files. Therefore, nowadays it is relatively simple to import your own portfolio prices from the web.
I use Yahoo! Finance portfolio as they have most of the securities from all over the world. Their portfolios feature is available to everyone and is quite fast and convenient. You can even create a separate view that includes only the symbol and price, which would perfectly match the export process.
Yahoo Finance - Business Finance, Stock Market, Quotes, News
To import prices into Quicken, do the following:
  1. Open your Yahoo portfolio
  2. Select and copy the table into clipboard (Ctrl+C)
  3. Open a Google spreadsheet
  4. Paste the table into an empty sheet
  5. Do some preparation here:
    1. Delete all columns except the security symbol and price if you are not using a custom view.
    2. Customize the symbols - remove extensions with Find/Replace, etc.
  6. Use "File -> Download as..." option to download a .csv file
  7. In Quicken, use File -> File Import -> Import security prices from .csv file
  8. In the pop-up dialog, select the date for the prices. I have not found the correct date format for the date so it is safer to simply select it in the dialog itself.
That's it. The prices should now be imported for all the securities in the portfolio. This can save a significant amount of time and effort.
Note that the instructions refer to Quicken 2014 for Windows. The other software involved is pretty generic or online so should be available on all platforms.

Use own quotes in Quicken

http://www.splitcycle.com/Products/Netstock