Yesterday, Tesla [(NASDAQ:TSLA)]([https://www.google.com/finance?q=NASDAQ:TSLA) reported earnings for Q2 2015. Tesla beat revenue and earnings estimates of -$1.17 billion (non-GAAP loss per share of $0.60) by posting results non-GAAP revenue of -$1.20 Billion (non-GAAP loss per share of $0.48 cent). That’s approximately triple the loss of Q2 2014, fueled by the company’s aggressive growth initiatives and spending around the oft-delayed Model X and the Nevada battery factory, which the company hopes to open in 2016.

Additionally, Tesla lowered its guidance on vehicle sales for this year. The original estimates were put at 55,000 Model S and Model X deliveries for 2015. Yesterday, that number was cautiously lowered to 50,000 to 55,000 total cars, adding that gross margin may decline. Consumers are still waiting for the first Model X delivery, which has been multiple times since its...

With Google’s (NASDAQ: GOOG) stock up more than 20% in the last month, there probably aren’t too many investors complaining. That being said, prior to the company’s last earnings report, the stock had been essentially flat for 2015. In addition, since the spike in the stock, it has given back just over 6% of the initial gain. Long-term investors need to constantly reassess what Google can do to improve its fortunes. At this point, there are three specific actions the company could take to further reward shareholders:

Increase Segment Transparency.
The first way Google could enhance shareholder value is by breaking out the value of its “Other” businesses. This division generated $1.7 billion in revenue, which represents an increase of 17% annually. Google’s CFO Ruth Porat said on the conference call that the company witnessed “substantial growth in [Google] Play.” The challenge is...

Current financial investing options are riddled with hefty minimums, management fees, high commissions and an unfriendly user experience. And I’m being nice.

Want to work with a financial advisor? Great, you’ll need at least $500,000 to get someone’s attention. Got your advisor on the phone? Congrats – that’ll be 2% of your assets (even if she loses your money).

Wanna do-it-yourself? You could join a discount brokerage and source your investments from the thousands of financial sites on the Internet. Be careful though, the authors get paid per article – and have no skin in the game. What’s worse – because your commissions are 10 bucks a trade, picking up 100 shares at $10 each puts you in the hole 1% immediately. Yikes.

Still interested but only have $20 stashed away? Consider going down the “zero commission” route where you can even invest on your shiny new Apple Watch (I...

Many of us avoid investing in the stock market because we fear investing catastrophe. Most people likely define catastrophe as “losing all of our money in the stock market.” So we choose to sit on the sidelines.

No more. Of course individuals can learn to invest in the stock market. And it turns out many investment decisions are within our control. We can all make solid, practical decisions – those investments that have a “margin of safety” – to help avoid catastrophe. While certainly there are no guarantees, the framework below can help you avoid disaster.

Invest Only the Money You May Not Need for A While. Do not invest the money you need to buy food this week. In other words, decide what your cash needs are and then only invest extra money that you will not need for a while. This frees you up to make sound, long-term decisions.

Set Rules for Position Size - And Follow...

My name is Matt Greenstein and I spent over $5,000 - and didn’t get a single customer out of it.

To provide some background, I’ve used Adwords and other common tools such as Facebook ads, a significant amount in the past 2-3 years, and quite successfully. The difference is, previously, I helped launch the Adwords initiative at GoDaddy where we were selling Adwords to small and medium businesses (SMBs) hosted on our servers. GoDaddy is an established brand with 13 million customers – but the experience of working with a variety of SMBs yielded a number of insights that I’ll elaborate on below.

However, it was difficult to apply these lessons in the context of an early stage start up – I recently joined Instavest, a YCombinator fintech start up based in Mountain View, CA. It’s a different game all together.

For the benefit of others that may be in a similar situation, here are some...

“Hedge funds are for suckers,” Bloomberg proclaimed in a headline in 2013.

According to the article, one reason they’re “for suckers” is they are expensive. The industry standard for the management of these funds is known as the “2 & 20” rule: firms take 20% of the earnings on the money they manage, and a 2% “management fee” of the total assets. Once it was set up, this incentive structure was kept to attract top management and analytical talent to a firm.

“Hedge funds offered would-be financial hotshots a faster and more glamorous path to obscene wealth,” the journalist writes. “Yet this once hugely lucrative model has proven unsustainable.”

The industry made the fortunes of some of the wealthiest, most influential, and most infamous financiers ever to have lived: George Soros, James Simons, John Paulson, Philip Falcone, Kenneth Griffin. And yet, even some of these luminaries are...

Twitter (NASDAQ: TWTR) released Q2 2015 earnings on 7/28/15. The stock was up approximately 6% after hours until the company’s earnings call when CFO Anthony Noto admitted that Twitter’s user growth was not expected to improve anytime soon. After that comment, Twitter’s stock took a nosedive - losing more than 13% of its value - and is now trading at $31.54, a new 52-week low.

With the help of our friends, we dissected the reasons behind Twitter’s fail-whale performance. Let’s get to it.

People around the world spent over $10 billion on beverages at Starbucks last year. In 2015, Starbucks Corporation (NASDAQ: SBUX) is up almost 40% and hit an all time high. We did the work to help you put all those lattes into perspective. Drink up!

Replicate The World’s Best Investments at Instavest.

Earn profits. No guesswork. Hassle-free.

The root problem with conventional currency is all the trust that’s required to make it work. The central bank must be trusted not to debase the currency, but the history of fiat currencies is full of breaches of that trust. Banks must be trusted to hold our money and transfer it electronically, but they lend it out in waves of credit bubbles with barely a fraction in reserve. We have to trust them with our privacy, trust them not to let identity thieves drain our accounts. Their massive overhead costs make micropayments impossible.

A generation ago, multi-user time-sharing computer systems had a similar problem. Before strong encryption, users had to rely on password protection to secure their files, placing trust in the system administrator to keep their information private. Privacy could always be overridden by the admin based on his judgment call weighing the principle of privacy...