To add to what you wrote about the fine line, slavery as punishment is permitted by the 13th amendment:
Neither slavery nor involuntary servitude, except as a punishment for crime whereof the party shall have been duly convicted, shall exist within the United States, or any place subject to their jurisdiction.
While being able to read a financial statement is a step in understanding a business, I feel this comment needs to be knocked down a few pegs, so...
As an actual CFA charterholder, I can tell you any analyst I work with would have laughed out loud at someone bragging about passing level 1. It means you have roughly an undergrad level understanding of finance.
As an actual CFA charterholder, I can tell you any analyst I work with would have laughed out loud at someone bragging about passing level 1
Can you tell me what IT certification tests you have passed? You may have missed the fact that I've been in IT for 20 years, remain in IT and will always be in IT.
I'm sure a native Spanish speaker wouldn't be too impressed with my ability to speak Spanish either. But I would hope they would have more class than to "laugh out loud" at a native English speaker putting forth significant effort at learning their language.
Not laughing at the effort, I rather encourage it and congratulate you passing level one. Everyone has to start there obviously. Its the attitude that rubbed everyone the wrong way.
As far as I know HN doesn't allow downvoting by default (I think you need sufficient posting experience to do so). So having +100 is not in any way a reliable metric of overall opinion towards your comments.
For example, I think your attitude and condescension is at best odd and out of place here, and I personally would downvote you if I had the ability.
A quick note (since I'm on my phone) until someone posts a better reply: ev/fcf is a financial ratio you can use to compare how much you are paying for various companies (idea being that similar companies should sell for roughly similar ratios). DCF takes all the cash a company will ever make and tells you how much you should pay for that now. Basically, there are a lot of ways to value a company and some methods are better suited for a given stage in a company's life than others (for example, many methods fall apart when a company has no earnings or has negative cash flows).
Paragraph 1 is a non sequitur in the purest sense of the term.
Paragraph 2 mentions US critics, but unless the link changed, the article is a link to the BBC which: 1. is British and 2. a reporting of fact with no judgement expressed. In any case, your comment reveals more than any op-ed ever could.
Paragraph 3 is again bizarre assuming we're reading the same article (I double checked as I've read this story before- the news here seems to be the nationalization part).
So I'll conclude with this: there's a lot of criticism of the US sharedand discussed on this site, but I never notice anyone get so defensive about it, whether they agree with it or not. Why is this article so troubling to you? Especially if it's something you claim is so insignificant.
Paragraph 1: The Foreign Policy article decries "the Venezuelan economic model of excessive meddling". The Happiness Index report puts this in perspective.
Furthermore, the CEPR link points out: "It is perhaps not surprising that media outlets that regularly try to convince their audiences that the social democratic policies being pursued in countries in Scandinavia, South America and elsewhere are a failure don’t want to report the contentment of citizens living in these countries."
So, there is a propaganda aspect to such weird articles about... toilet paper. Particularly since Venezuela is such an enemy nation that Jimmy Carter publicly claims the US was "likely behind" the Venezuelan coup. (http://en.wikinews.org/wiki/Carter:_US_%22likely_behind%22_V...)
Paragraph 2 responded to a post which merely quoted Foreign Policy, a US magazine owned by a mass media company.
My point is not to argue- my parents are both from (different) Spanish-speaking countries, one born under an extreme right wing government, the other an extreme left wing government. One country improved while the other languishes near the bottom of all countries by any measure. The one that improved did so not by blaming others (even if others were to blame! and they were!) or by defending a clearly terrible government, which Venezuela clearly has.
You don't need to be accredited. The debt of a company is higher in the capital structure than its equity (creditors come before shareholders in bankruptcy), so it's a more conservative investment. That's not to say that any bond is safer than any stock, and there are plenty of bonds that are very risky (companies have credit ratings just like individuals and countries). Keep in mind also that bonds tend to have a minimum purchase size (usually $10k face value) and minimum increments thereafter ($1k usually).
