<p>More places for you to visit, doct.</p>
<p>BC - A manager with technical ability? Heaven. I was running a $1M/year software service. One day my manager came in and said “We’re changing computer systems to XXX.” I said “XXX doesn’t have the capability to handle the work required by our contract.” The manager says “Well the decision has been made. Find a way.” I did find a way … I passed the contract over to a different non-technical manager (who was thrilled at the prospect of adding a big revenue-generator). The rest of this story you can guess.</p>
<p>Nike reported - 7% higher earnings on 15% higher revenue. Gross Margins dropped 2% due to higher material costs. North American revenue growth: 17%, China 25%, Western Europe 4%, Japan 3%.</p>
<p>Nike sells descretionary income stuff. It isn’t cheap. It isn’t the most expensive but it’s not far away. They did well where you’d expect and weak where you’d expect. I think that this says that there are a of people in North American that can afford Nike stuff which implies some decent confidence out there.</p>
<p>I was a definite part of their 15% higher revenue…</p>
<p>Me too. 11 shirts, a few pairs of shorts. My introduction to pricey fitness clothes.</p>
<p>I wear Nike DriFit or Pro Combat T-shirts to the office when I’m not wearing dress shirts. I’d like a few more too but only in interesting colors - I’m trying to round out my collection.</p>
<p>The numbers on soft-drinks that came out a week ago were interesting - lower consumption of sodas - maybe there’s hope for America’s waistline. In a down economy, exercise is one thing that you can enjoy that doesn’t cost much and it provides returns for the effort. When the economy recovers, you can buy clothes that better fit the new you.</p>
<p>XRT (retailer index)</p>
<p>[XRT</a> - SharpCharts Workbench - StockCharts.com](<a href=“XRT | SharpCharts | StockCharts.com”>XRT | SharpCharts | StockCharts.com)</p>
<p>A bunch of consumer discretionary stocks (to put it mildly) charts from an old friend of mine.</p>
<p>[The</a> New CS Board: The “Resilient Consumer” Rocket Index](<a href=“Error | InvestorsHub”>Error | InvestorsHub)</p>
<p>Interesting charts - I think that aapl may have a rough day tomorrow.</p>
<p>It amazes me that the retail auto parts stocks have been such a great place to invest! I’ve missed the move because I never go into those stores and saw all the sales.</p>
<p>Brad Smith, director of loyalty marketing at Southfield, Mich., automotive research firm Polk, said data show people are keeping their cars longer than ever.</p>
<p>Owners who bought their cars new kept them an average of 71.4 months – nearly six years – according to vehicle registration data collected by Polk in the third quarter of 2011. That’s up from 49.8 months, or slightly more than four years, in the first quarter of 2003.</p>
<p>“It used to be as a vehicle approached 100,000 miles, people were looking to get rid of it as quickly as possible,” he said. “Now people are not afraid to drive past 100,000, 200,000 or even 300,000 miles.”</p>
<p>Read more: [Cars</a> getting older as owners opt to keep them longer](<a href=“http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/cars-getting-older-as-owners-opt-to-keep-them-longer/article_8e2431d9-5b9f-5da6-923f-a518c9daaafe.html#ixzz1q9CEvTZG]Cars”>http://siouxcityjournal.com/news/local/cars-getting-older-as-owners-opt-to-keep-them-longer/article_8e2431d9-5b9f-5da6-923f-a518c9daaafe.html#ixzz1q9CEvTZG)</p>
<p>I have a buyer for my 22 year old car that has less than 50,000 miles! It scoots around the narrow roads of my city, gets up keep, passes road tests for old cars and soon will be an antique with the original paint job, insides and doing fine.</p>
<p>My daughter in law wants me to take over her car which is less than a year old when I return to the states and I will if it will help my kids out. I can’t imagine driving a new car! whoopee.</p>
<p>That AAPL option that I sold this week (Tuesday I think) for $9.60 is now down to $3.80. The guy that recommended the option suggested I roll it out to May 2012.</p>
<p>Ummm…that means you have lost money, right?</p>
<p>I guess it’s a little confusing when you sell something first and then buy it back later. Most are used to buying first and selling later. I’m selling at $9.60 and buying at $3.80.</p>
<p>Oh, so you’re MAKING money…</p>
<p>The options stuff is an experiment - I’ve heard about them for a decade and some people that I know make it sound so easy. Of course I’ve heard of other people getting wiped out playing with options. So after many years, I thought that I’d try the simplest of options - selling covered calls. My understanding is that those that sell calls “win” 90% of the time and those that buy them lose 90% of the time. But the buyers can win really big - kind of like a lottery ticket. So you can kind of “rent” your stock out there and make some money while holding it for the long term.</p>
<p>I guess that selling covered calls on your stock is a little like shorting it.</p>
<p>A few of the folks on this thread seem to do this sort of thing (and more complex stuff) regularly. There are some stocks that I’ve held for quite some time that I should have been selling covered calls on.</p>
<p>Options stuff is still interesting. The Apr 21 $650 calls are less than half of what I sold them for. The Apr 21 INTC $28 calls are higher than what I sold them for by 11 cents. The AAPL May 19 $640 calls are a little higher than what I sold them for.</p>
<p>The INTC transaction: bought $1,000 INTC at $27.90, wrote covered call for $0.61 for Apr 21. I do expect the stock price to be close to $28 on Apr 21. INTC has been bouncing around below and above $28 lately - mostly a little above in the last week. If it closes around $28 or I get called out, I believe that I make about 2.4% for the month on the transactions. Certainly something that I could get used to. I did this as an experiment to get called out as I wanted to see what this was like.</p>
<p>Spoke to another tenant at my son’s apartment last night - very interesting person - he works for one of the big companies in Cambridge and grew up in Europe in one of the distressed companies and has lived in several big cities in the US. He has his choice of where to work and live but he’s bought a place in Boston. Basically his rent went up 30% over three years. He explained the process at the place for rent negotiations (which I found interesting because I own a bunch of shares in the place) and it made sense to me as a means to maximize profits. I had read about the company greatly improving rental prices but I was surprised at how aggressive they are - I guess that I shouldn’t be. Occupancy is 97% at the buildings and it appears that they can push prices higher. He also commented that these apartments are relatively inexpensive compared to other places like the old buildings on Beacon Hill. It’s truly amazing to me to see what people pay to live in the big cities. But I’m cheap.</p>
<p>The Bruce Springsteen thread has some nice comments on the economy.</p>
<p>INTC is a good company to write covered calls - I prefer not to lose it so I go farther out in strike price - 29. The premium plus the dividend can get you close to 10% per year. Another good stock for this is msft.</p>
<p>I have lots of INTC stock that I’ve held for quite a while (mostly) so this is just an experiment. MSFT has had quite the runup.</p>
<p>Dropped my daughter off at a job fair this morning. There were about 80 people in line and the state DOT put out a tweet that this job fair could cause traffic backups on the highway. There were about 80 people in line ahead of her waiting for the place to open. I was really surprised that almost everyone in line was casually dressed.</p>
<p>10% a year is great!</p>
<p>BCEagle91… I am glad to see you are having fun.
30% rent increases are quite large…but like you said…the increases come from a lower base…</p>
<p>The way selling calls works…you will make money most of the time…</p>
<p>The major issues are… You can give up large moves in your favor…like the issue you owned that was taken over earlier this year…if you had sold calls…you would not have participated in a large part of the gain…</p>
<p>And the other major issue is when an issue drops a lot.
I buy a stock at 28 and sell the 28 calls for .50.</p>
<p>And the stock drops to 22.</p>
<p>Which calls are you going to sell now that the stock is 22?</p>
<p>You can sell longer dated options…But it can take a long time to get the money back…</p>
<p>You can sell the near term week or month…but…what are you really
going to get for them…if the stock is 22… Call prices will probably be in the pennies…for strikes above the market…</p>
<p>If you sell the 22 calls…after the stock drops to 22… Let’s say you get a buck for them…and the stock rallies to 24…, where are u? You have a
built in loss…</p>
<p>And you can say so what…i would have lost more without options…
Buy you do cap your upside…</p>
<p>Selling calls…you are going for small gains and trying to avoid large losses thar can wipe out those gains…</p>
<p>Here are a couple of etfs that sell covered calls compared to the S&P…</p>
<p>[PBP</a> Basic Chart | PowerShares S&P 500 BuyWrite Po Stock - Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“PBP Interactive Stock Chart | Invesco S&P 500 BuyWrite ETF Stock - Yahoo Finance”>PBP Interactive Stock Chart | Invesco S&P 500 BuyWrite ETF Stock - Yahoo Finance)</p>
<p>One did better…than the S&P…</p>