What happens when they run out of letters?
"The 3-letter tickers are from a different era.... Nowadays the usage of tickers is more of a ""legacy"" tradition rather than a current necessity. As such they're no longer limited to 3 characters. And the characters don't have to be related to the actual name. For example a company named Alphabet is trading on NASDAQ under the ticker ""GOOGL"". It has 5 characters, not 3, and (almost) none of them appear in the name of the company (used to, but not anymore)." NYSE started allowing four letter tickers around 2009.  NASDAQ allows 4-5 letter tickers.  I guess they'll keep increasing when / if needed.  Companies are allowed to change tickers, although there are costs.  Tickers in the US are assigned through a single entity.  Companies that are new need to take something that's open. http://www.wsj.com/articles/SB124296050986346159 I see that you're in Australia, but, since there aren't really that many options to deal with the problem that you mentioned, I'd guess that you'll ultimately do the same.  Not sure about how tickers are assigned there though.
You should examine the letter more closely.  Most letters in this area are ones which inform you of a proposed settlement of a class action (not the initiation of a class action), and that you may be a member of the class.  A main point of such a letter is normally that if you take no action, you will be included in the settlement class.   Usually there are no major consequences to not opting out of the class other than you will lose the ability to get a lawyer and sue the defendants for the actions in question. To obtain benefits from the settlement, you will typically be required to submit documentation of the nature of your membership in the class.  This may be easy or hard.  The benefits are described in the materials, and could be substantial but usually are close to trivial, such as a coupon for $10 off when purchasing another product from the defendant. "After looking at the comments, and your replies it seems that your mind is made up: ""You will always be able to obtain 0% credit, and nothing bad will ever happen"". Credit cards that offer 0% on balance transfers are very rare.  Most have a transfer fee of some kind, which acts like an interest rate.  This is a change that probably happened 10 years ago without much fanfare.  From this you can draw a lesson: what changes will come in the future? This site and others a full of ""tales of woe"" where people were playing musical chairs with credit, and when the music stopped, there was no chairs in sight.  Job loss, medical expenses, unexpected taxes, natural disasters can all effect one's ability to make payments on time and happen.  Once payments start being missed or are late, things tend to avalanche from there.  It has happened to me, and loved ones. The pain and suffering is not worth it.  Get out of debt. You claim that you are investing the money instead of paying on the debt, and you are making the delta between your prevailing investment rate 7%.  Did you include the balance transfer fee in your calculations?    First off your investments could lose money.  While 2015 was mostly flat, we have not had a correction in a long time.  Some say we are long overdue.   Secondly, how much money are we really talking about here?  Say there is not a balance transfer fee, you could be guaranteed 7%, and you are floating $10K.  Congratulations in this mythical scenario you just made $700. If $700 changes your life dramatically perhaps it is time for a second job.  This way you can earn that every two weeks (working part time) rather than every year.  Now that will really change your life.  By applying this amount of mental energy to make $700, what opportunities are you missing?   Pay off the debt, you will be much better off in the long run." "Most folks would loan out money for the purpose of being re-loaned.  Depositing money in the bank, is loaning the bank money who will re-loan it.  Buying bond based mutual funds is another way that it could be viewed that people are loaning money for the purpose of the money being re-loaned.  The reason why banks always have money available for withdrawal, is because of the reserve.  Fractional reserve banking in its simplest explanation, is that banks are allowed to take deposits and loan them out so long as they keep a set reserve.  If the reserve rate is 10% (it's really much lower), and somebody deposits $100, then the bank is allowed to loan out $90, keeping $10 as a reserve.  Now even with a reserve, a bank does run some risk of the deposits being withdrawn faster than the loans are paid back, this is called a run.  What protects banks most from this, is that deposits, withdrawals, loans, and loan repayments, all happen at a fairly steady and predictable rate (short term), so banks are able to judge how many loans they should give out.  Even when banks do see their reserve depleting, they have options.  The first and most common, is simply getting a loan from another bank.  The rule with the reserve, is that banks need to meet it at the end of the day, so banks will loan each other money overnight for the purpose of making up for the slight fluctuations that occur in a normal business day.  If you have ever heard the Fed talking about the ""overnight rate"" they are talking about the rate banks loan each other money for the night.  Another common way for banks to make up for a deficit in deposits, in a longer term solution,is to sell assets.  Fairly rare for a bank to sell actual physical assets, but the loans they hold are assets, and they can sell them to other banks.  Most banks will also hold some bonds that are available to sell.  The major functions that allow a bank to be profitable would still apply to the OP's idea.  The only real difference would be that commercial banks have direct access to the central banks, and the OP's idea would need to have a commercial bank to act as the middle man between the central bank." Cool. In that case, shooting for the publication on the thesis might not be the best thing to focus on due to the timing etc. If you do shoot for a publication with it, you might want to try for the ABS 3 range or higher. Either way, you'll still want to do really well on the thesis so your advisor can write a good letter and speak to your research capabilities. That's great to mention it as part of your research interest and background as well.   The top comment on here is really spot-on. It's not too early to start to dive into some of the finance research (ABS 4* journals and then the journals cited in these journals would be good to start) to be able to identify/discuss your potential research agenda when you apply, and to also hit the ground running with your research. A top pub in doc school and ongoing pipeline would basically be a requirement to land at one of those schools fresh out of your program. It's good to keep in mind that you can move up after your initial placement, but it is difficult. Ideally you'll want to place at the flagship level initially after your program. "It depends on whether the loan is written as a non-recourse debt and what collateral was pledged. ""Non-recourse"" debt means that the issuer is limited to seizing the pledged collateral but cannot extend beyond those pledged assets. A ""recourse debt"" allows the issuer to seize the collateral and potentially other assets of those signed to the loan. In your example, a non-recourse loan would stop the issuer at seizing the property pledged as collateral (for instance the land remaining after the golden condor took your house), and it would stop there if that was the entirety of the collateral pledged. In the case of a recourse debt, each of you who signed loan are most likely going to be held responsible for the rest of the debt. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Nonrecourse_debt http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Recourse_debt" haha, what now? They are constrained by Panasonic. If Panasonic can give them more batteries, they can make more cars. Their NUMMI plant is 370 acres and most of it is currently sitting empty. I suspect that they worked in some language with their new battery factory deal with Panasonic that also included Panasonic getting off their ass and making more batteries right now. Right, but the union as in favor of it when it passed.  It had the broad support of the democratic members of congress and the letter carriers union.  They didn't anticipate that the losses would be used as an excuse to kill the post-office.  Rather that just say that they are trying to re-write history. They won't survive. If it looks like they will, the right wing will pass more laws that only aim to bankrupt the postal service. They'll keep hammering until it's dead, hand it over to some ridiculously inefficient monopoly, and then hold it up as an example of how awful government run servhices are. And in a decade or so it'll cost a dollar to send a letter, you'll have to go to the past office to pick up your mail because there's no money in service to your door, and service will take weeks.  Another decade, probably less, and the postal service will be a distant memory, and your only option for physical goods will be FedEx or ... well, nothing, because by then FedEx will have a monopoly. And it'll cost two dollars to send a letter, you'll have to pick it up wherever they decide to send it, and if you don't like it, too bad! Because there will be laws in place making it impossible to start up a competitor.  They'll make billions, delivering worse service for higher prices, and all we'll ever hear about is how awful it was when the government ran the show and incompetently bankrupted the agency.