Getting Ahead for the Little Guy
Debt sucks.
Consumer debt – bad debt – is pretty much the evil arch-nemesis of getting richer. It has a black cape, and twirls a waxes mustache, and says stuff like, “You MUST pay the rent!” It’s an insidious monster that attacks you on two fronts at once: On the one hand, you have a monthly [...]
I did a stupid thing yesterday.
I bought an option on Google stock.
Ya gotta realize, I’m still learning options trading with a very small account. With Google’s stock in the $500+ range, an option – for 100 contracts – which is close to the current stock price costs somewhere around $2000. When a mere 1% price [...]
These girls, neither yet 10 years old, decided to protest the skyrocketing oil prices that forced their mother to cancel their cable TV (and their cartoons) to make ends meet.
Angry kids protest gas prices after losing cable TV
Now, these kids can be excused in not understanding how the world really works. But it’s a good [...]
I was explaining to my mother – the option trader – about a particular investment we’re seriously considering. The principle is secured by real estate. Even though the real estate market is still in a world of hurt, it is unlikely that the price of homes is going to drop a lot more in this [...]
I am a hands-on learner, I guess.
Before I ever placed my first option trade with real money, I studied up on rules, classic mistakes, and strategies. In my mind, I knew exactly what the critical mistakes were, and I laughed. “Man, how could people make these kinds of mistakes?” I asked myself. Then I answered, [...]
This has been a pretty brutal month for my mutual funds and options trading accounts. But I’m grinning today.
First of all, I pulled a bunch of my positions out of mutual funds into cash reserves just in the nick of time. Tough to do when there’s a random delay of 1-3 days in moving money [...]
I met with an acquaintance last night – a gentleman whom I think of as a pretty successful professional investor. After introducing him to my wife, I asked my usual conversation-opener question, “So how is life treating you?”
He hesitated a moment, looking at me, before answering very carefully, “I am treating life very well.”
I understood [...]
A portion of my meager portfolio is set aside (now) for trading stock options.I consider options trading to be part of my investment strategy, but I don’t really consider it “investing.” It does resemble investing in several ways:
#1 – It is putting money to work for you to earn more money.
#2 – It requires discipline [...]
Last week, I was in a meeting with some professional investors and entrepreneurs. I was talking about my recent headaches with bounced paychecks (yes, plural, there were actually two, but both have been taken care of now) with one friend there who has been “out of the rat race” for about four years now. When [...]