That’d have driven me bonkers. My take on my short nVidia story is to play with a small % of my portfolio and basically never sell.
Hey at least that’s not crypto, I have a friend who became a millionaire…for a few months…with LUNA…
I’m buying since a while the (1st) european version of SMH + SCHG in additon to VT.
Some recommend to recover the cost by selling half of the position, and to keep the other half running for free.
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Of course, but I got jittery holding single stocks. Had shunned “taking profits” concept as more of a WallStreetBets/crypto lingo/concept. Regardless, this stock paid for our Christmas holidays so used it to make a point to my wife that it is beyond “looking at numbers”.
I see FOMO and greed kicking in even here - time to GTFO 
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Glass half empty view: I did not buy SMCI
Glass half full view: if other people are betting on long shots it increases my chances to beat the market with my extremely boring Quality stocks, no play money strategy…
I’ll get my coat this time 
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Thanks for the hint of SMH, it is always interesting to see what a company like VanEck thinks are good stocks in the semi business and discover knew ones I never heard about.
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Read again the subject title of this thread 
I finally invested in gold yesterday: selling TLT and buying GLD, GOLD and NEM.
GLD price seems very high, but what the heck.
If you want to gamble: would LETFs like UPRO or TQQQ be a safer bet than individual stocks?
In my mind LETFs are not gambling, they are just amplified risk. Gambling inherently refers to playing something without any indication of the outcome.
We know that stocks go up over time, we know low fees and diversification are important, we don’t know what number the ball will sit on in the roulette, or what is the next card in the dealer’s hand. That’s gambling.
I have UPRO by the way, done great, am about to shoot it though because I don’t like holding it. To me LETFs and the like are worse than single stocks because they go against the logic of freeriding the market. They are very expensive and risky, with little control from our side. Think of a normal passenger on a 747 plane vs one paying fives times the price of a ticket to ride on a remote-controlled F35. At least with single stocks one can put in the time to do the research that’ll satisfy them.
I am sure you’ve read parts of the original Boglehead HFEA post, 2022 was the perfect storm predicted in the original post to wreck the strategy. In that sense I think something like that makes more sense, but as I said I don’t like LETFs, also sideways markets are bad for them, volatility decay is a real thing.
Ultimately, even the fund managers state that they are not meant to be held long term (and they shouldn’t care really, they’ll collect their fees anyway). I wouldn’t ever put a lot of money in one, my UPRO bet was just 500CHF, grown to 750, big effing deal for the mental grief it causes me to hold it.
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of those 3 MMM I own (and losing money on!). CSCO has been on all my screeners, but I could never bring myself to buy it (for purely irrational reasons). INMD I used to own and made money off it, but actually suspect it is a fraudulent/snake oil kind of company so am not going to touch it further.
| Previous | Nov.01.2023 | Feb 2024 |
|---|---|---|
| Bonds | Bonds | BTI |
| BTI | Short SPY | Bonds |
| VIRT | BTI | AWE.L |
| MMM | VIRT | MPW |
| MPW | MMM | MMM |
| KAP.IL | KAP.IL | VDY.TO |
| AWE.L | O | ENB |
| LNC | MPW | URNM |
| VDY.TO | MO | AMLP |
| AMLP | AWE.L | WDS.L |
My bond allocation is now down to 11% all of which are more speculative bonds. The liquid bond portfolio has now been used up.
Part of it was finally (and a little reluctantly) pulling the trigger on gold and gold stocks. More into Uranium (at the wrong time - another reminder to be patient). Some on REITs, and a little on growth/turnaround stocks (mainly SABR).
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For the record: I bought this option back today for $25 plus a mindblowing $5.45 fee (sic! … actually, let me correct myself: sick!) for Swissquote.
I had a hard time making up my mind between
- holding this option to expiry, making another $25 on it with somewhat little risk (?) but stretched out over half a year, i.e. making about 13 cents per day but “sticking it to the man” by not paying that outrageous $5.45 fee to Swissquote
- shelling out the $5.45 to Swissquote and telling myself that the realized annualized rate of return of 18.58% is enough.
Grudgingly, chose the second option.
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What? how do you sell a put with a $42 strike price for $160?! That makes no sense?
Maybe you’re not familiar with options.*
The contract size is 100, so for $160 I sold on January 22 my obligation to buy 100 shares of ADM at $42 (total: $4200) anytime between selling the option and its expiry (in this case: 3rd Friday in September 2024).
I sold the option on the day after ADM announced that their CFO would leave because of “irregularities” in their books. Internal volatility in the pricing of the option spiked because investors panicked, the price of the option went through the roof.
Luckily, the market relatively quickly came to the conclusion that the company’s books weren’t that cooked and the price of this option quickly came down.
Here’s an excerpt of the transaction statement (by the way also documenting that the Swissquote fee for buying/selling options was less than two bucks at the time):
* Or, even better: I am not familiar with options despite me trading them, which would be hilarious. 
This funnier conclusion would be in line with the opinion of Bloomberg financial markets commentator Matt Levine, who somewhat cynically states that the funniest outcome is the most likely one in financial transactions.
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1 option contract corresponds to the “price difference” for 100 shares of the underlying stock.
So you sold for $1.60 not $160! Although the lot size is 100 (not always!), it is customary to refer to the price for a single option!
I remember. After I reviewed the situation and saw that the market over-reacted, I bought 500 shares. I’m still holding them.
Correct.
Sorry if I confused you. I’m just a retail trader, not adjusted to the pro pricing terms and lot sizes (even though I assumed that the $1.60 contract translates to a 100 lot size for American style options. Anyhow, it can be confusing).
From my simplistic retail perspecitve, I got $160 for selling this option, and I bought it back for about a fifth ot that two months afterwards.
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