The Very-Many-Questions-Not-Worth-Their-Own-Thread Thread XLII

[Synobun]

Which would you choose, if you could have only one: A small spaceship with a crew of plucky misfits (e.g. the Millennium Falcon; Serenity; the Rocinante; the Milano) or a giant space-cruiser with a crew of thousands and a lot of amenities (e.g. USS Enterprise; a Colonial Battlestar; the Space Battleship Yamato; an Imperial Star Destroyer)?

Am I guaranteed to like those plucky misfits?

Is there a proven way to pay somebody else's phone bill without me having to log into their payment portal thingy? I can use my online banking, probably, right? All I have is their full name and phone number, is that enough?

I would love to use my credit card to make the payment though, but haven't bothered to call the provider yet to ask them if I can do that over the phone. Has anyone ever tried anything like this? It's supposed to be a birthday gift. I understand it probably comes down to the carrier or whatever (it's Koodo), but maybe this sort of thing is not possible due to privacy laws or whatever, which would be good to know. I tried to google it, but all the pages that come up just help me pay my own bill.

The short answer is no. The long answer is that some businesses have direct banking info (or Interac e-Transfer now) and you may be able to arrange something if you can get that person's account number. The likelihood of that being successful is pretty slim, though.

If the provider is one of those booth providers, then maybe they have a prepaid card you can buy and give to the person. But there's nothing preventing them from reselling it if you're worried about feeding into a habit.

 

[Birdjaguar]

@warpus Perhaps buy them food.

 

[warpus]

@warpus Perhaps buy them food.

I offered to buy a gift card for a restaurant this person frequents for breakfast/coffee/other food but the idea was shot down.

The short answer is no. The long answer is that some businesses have direct banking info (or Interac e-Transfer now) and you may be able to arrange something if you can get that person's account number. The likelihood of that being successful is pretty slim, though.

I wonder if I could do that just by knowing their phone number? Maybe online banking will allow me to pay their bill if i just type in their phone number hmm. I have no idea but am going to look this up

 

[Synobun]

No, account numbers are different from phone numbers.

 

[Birdjaguar]

I offered to buy a gift card for a restaurant this person frequents for breakfast/coffee/other food but the idea was shot down.

Skip the gift card and take them shopping at the grocery store or order meals (pizza!) delivered.

 

[warpus]

Skip the gift card and take them shopping at the grocery store or order meals (pizza!) delivered.

Ordering him a meal is a great idea, I might do this instead! Not pizza though cause he's from an Italian household and his parents probably hate north american style italian food, and the less friction between him & his parents the better

 

[Cutlass]

Which would you choose, if you could have only one: A small spaceship with a crew of plucky misfits (e.g. the Millennium Falcon; Serenity; the Rocinante; the Milano) or a giant space-cruiser with a crew of thousands and a lot of amenities (e.g. USS Enterprise; a Colonial Battlestar; the Space Battleship Yamato; an Imperial Star Destroyer)?

Enterprise D could actually be run by a small band of misfits. So best of both worlds.

 

[Gori the Grey]

I wonder if I could do that just by knowing their phone number?

Just send a money order with their number in the memo line. The phone company won't know what else to do but credit it to that account.

 

[Valka D'Ur]

Which would you choose, if you could have only one: A small spaceship with a crew of plucky misfits (e.g. the Millennium Falcon; Serenity; the Rocinante; the Milano) or a giant space-cruiser with a crew of thousands and a lot of amenities (e.g. USS Enterprise; a Colonial Battlestar; the Space Battleship Yamato; an Imperial Star Destroyer)?

First of all: This needs to be its own thread. Think of the possibilities!

Second of all: Why am I being asked to choose? If it's for a specific purpose, bigger is not always better.

A TARDIS obviously. It can be bigger and have more amenities than all those combined, while still being small enough to park in my living room.

I actually had some notion of decorating my basement in 4th Doctor-era TARDIS roundels, back when I had a house.

This is obviously the most practical solution to the question. Bigger on the inside, and always captained by a misfit.

If you had a TARDIS, why would you need a living room to park it in?

Convenience, privacy, security, practicality...

Enterprise D could actually be run by a small band of misfits. So best of both worlds.

It was, in one episode. The Ferengi had taken over, not knowing that Picard, Keiko, Guinan, and Ro had accidentally become de-aged so they were 12 years old.

 

[warpus]

I got set up on an app via a reference which gave both me and the referrer some $$ to spend on stocks. Free money, so why not.

I am trying to find a place where I can see all TSX (Toronto) stocks in existence, so I can sort by price, price change, etc. and find something to spend a couple bucks on, just to learn how all of this works.

But such a list seems hard to find? How do I do that? The app itself only allows me to type in a stock name that it will search for, instead of giving me a comprehensive list. Other sites seem to be the same. I found lists clumped together by letter, so you could click on L and see all the stocks that begin with L, but the page didn't let you sort by any column, meaning I'd have to import it into excel manually and go from there.

Where should I be looking for a comprehensive list of stocks that is easily sortable? Who provides such a service? Do I have to pay for something like that, is that why I'm having trouble finding something?

edit: The TSX seems to have 2,231 stocks listed on it, which seems like a number that would be easy to display on a master list somewhere. But why is such a list so hard to find? I just want like a master list with different headings I can sort, or a way to download all that data all at once, so I can do my thing in Excel. What am I missing?

 

[Birdjaguar]

I got set up on an app via a reference which gave both me and the referrer some $$ to spend on stocks. Free money, so why not.

I am trying to find a place where I can see all TSX (Toronto) stocks in existence, so I can sort by price, price change, etc. and find something to spend a couple bucks on, just to learn how all of this works.

But such a list seems hard to find? How do I do that? The app itself only allows me to type in a stock name that it will search for, instead of giving me a comprehensive list. Other sites seem to be the same. I found lists clumped together by letter, so you could click on L and see all the stocks that begin with L, but the page didn't let you sort by any column, meaning I'd have to import it into excel manually and go from there.

Where should I be looking for a comprehensive list of stocks that is easily sortable? Who provides such a service? Do I have to pay for something like that, is that why I'm having trouble finding something?

edit: The TSX seems to have 2,231 stocks listed on it, which seems like a number that would be easy to display on a master list somewhere. But why is such a list so hard to find? I just want like a master list with different headings I can sort, or a way to download all that data all at once, so I can do my thing in Excel. What am I missing?

https://www.ceomarkets.com/tsx-listings

Try that.

 

[warpus]

https://www.ceomarkets.com/tsx-listings

Try that.

Oh, nice! Thanks for that, it's the best one I've seen so far.

I'm curious why this listing has 1,500 entries though, while the TSX claims that it has 2,200 or so stocks listed? Seems like there's a big chunk missing from this list, but it's a very useful sortable list nevertheless. Other lists I've found so far weren't this comprehensive (and sortable)

I also wonder why some of the price has no data, maybe that's a sign that it's a new stock that they don't have data for yet? Or maybe it means something else completely.

edit: This list also seems to be up to date as of September or so. Which isn't bad, but it does seem like there should be something more up to date out here.

Is this not a common thing that investors look for? I'm new to stocks, obviously. I'm a numbers guy so my first instinct is to look at eeeeeverything and its data and analyze that, and research individual companies from that starting point.

Somebody told me that I'm "supposed to" read through investment magazines and find out about companies that way, then type them into a search and see what they go for. This seems like the super crazy long way of finding what you want. Plus it seems that such magazines would be far more likely to mention currently well performing stocks. What if your strategy is to try to find diamonds in the rough? That's why I want the raw numbers for everything, but it seems impossible to find (in an up to date and complete version)

 

[Birdjaguar]

I do not know why the stock counts are different. No data or zero prices seem to mean no longer trading for whatever reason. The date for that listing is Sept 13 2021 so it is not a current price.

 

[Cutlass]

I got set up on an app via a reference which gave both me and the referrer some $$ to spend on stocks. Free money, so why not.

I am trying to find a place where I can see all TSX (Toronto) stocks in existence, so I can sort by price, price change, etc. and find something to spend a couple bucks on, just to learn how all of this works.

But such a list seems hard to find? How do I do that? The app itself only allows me to type in a stock name that it will search for, instead of giving me a comprehensive list. Other sites seem to be the same. I found lists clumped together by letter, so you could click on L and see all the stocks that begin with L, but the page didn't let you sort by any column, meaning I'd have to import it into excel manually and go from there.

Where should I be looking for a comprehensive list of stocks that is easily sortable? Who provides such a service? Do I have to pay for something like that, is that why I'm having trouble finding something?

edit: The TSX seems to have 2,231 stocks listed on it, which seems like a number that would be easy to display on a master list somewhere. But why is such a list so hard to find? I just want like a master list with different headings I can sort, or a way to download all that data all at once, so I can do my thing in Excel. What am I missing?

Index funds tend to have better total performance than managing stock pics. Buy and forget.

 

[EgonSpengler]

Am I guaranteed to like those plucky misfits?

I dunno. You tell me. How do you feel about plucky misfits, generally?

Enterprise D could actually be run by a small band of misfits. So best of both worlds.

I was thinking of Moya. Big ship; small band of plucky misfits. You could, like, go for a run on Moya and not see anybody.

Second of all: Why am I being asked to choose? If it's for a specific purpose, bigger is not always better.

If we knew what to expect, it wouldn't be an adventure.

 

[warpus]

Index funds tend to have better total performance than managing stock pics. Buy and forget.

This was free money I had to invest in whatever, so I wanted to sift through the data and pick out some stocks on my own, for fun. But they don't seem to make it very easy

I did stumble on index funds, but those seem less risky, and I wanted to throw this free money at something in the "who knows" category that I researched myself. Something nobody is talking about, flying under the radar (or just sucking, who knows, that's the risk factor). If I had more of my own money to invest index funds seem less risky and the better option for an investment like that. (but correct me if I'm wrong)

 

[Birdjaguar]

@warpus "Fun" money like that is useful as a learning tool. Try things and don't be sad if you lose it all. Depending upon how much you have to spend, put 80% in stock picks and 20% in index funds and compare quarterly.

 

[warpus]

I still don't understand why the TSX doesn't have a list of all the stocks they have on offer, in a table you can look through or export. It's like they don't want you to know, or something. Do other exchanges work the same way?

 

[Synobun]

I dunno. You tell me. How do you feel about plucky misfits, generally?

I've never really fit in anywhere. A band of plucky misfits that I belong with would be the best-case scenario.

In all likelihood though, it'd be safer to go with a situation where I can just be one of many, invisible. It's self-deprecating, but in a Star Trek setting, I'd be far more likely to be a Barclay than a crewmember of the Defiant.

 

[MaryKB]

I still don't understand why the TSX doesn't have a list of all the stocks they have on offer, in a table you can look through or export. It's like they don't want you to know, or something. Do other exchanges work the same way?

You can't buy directly from a stock exchange. If you really want to invest this way (not recommended), find a broker and they can show you what you can purchase.

Here is the TSX's full listing of stocks. You can research companies you are interested in.

https://www.tsx.com/listings/listing-with-us/listed-company-directory