<p>I’m throwing tomatoes at the first commentator to mention Europe tonight.</p>
<p>Well NJres…I counted my stocks and I am long 25 issues. :)</p>
<p>But mine are in different fields…and I own some biotechs and they aren’t that correlated over time.</p>
<p>Why does the number of issues bother you?</p>
<p>Even if you could buy a div fund or an S&P fund…I would rather own the individual stocks…because I hate the fees. And it is so cheap to trade these days. Ok…maybe 500 stocks would be a bit much.:)</p>
<p>I used to carry 60 positions. Now I typically carry about 6 to 10. Much easier to watch and I don’t trade anywhere near as much as I used to. Also more relaxing as I don’t have to keep up with as many news reports.</p>
<p>I prefer individual stocks too - I just have to answer the question: can I trust management to take good care of my money?</p>
<p>“I just have to answer the question: can I trust management to take good care of my money?”</p>
<p>:)</p>
<p>
</p>
<p>I see the calls hit $0.60, did you sell? Do you mainly do very short term trades? Do you think selling the June 28 calls are too much of a risk? I’ve sold INTC covered calls in the past, but the stock’s been so strong I’d hate to lose it.</p>
<p>I got greedy and moved them up to .65 when they were .55. I should have taken .60.</p>
<p>If I get assigned, I make 5% for two months. That’s not so bad. My downside protection is then $1.35 from $27.90. These are shares that I’m just experimenting with on options. I have plenty of other LTBH INTC shares in other accounts.</p>
<p>I have talked about ratio spreads…</p>
<p>They are incredibly dangerous…</p>
<p>My boss and good friend…</p>
<p>Bought 10 amazon apr 200 calls and sold 110 apr 210 calls…so they expire tomorrow…</p>
<p>A 1 to 11 ratio…</p>
<p>Breakeven is around 221…</p>
<p>And the stock is a little above that…223.7 as I type this…</p>
<p>That would be a pretty good loss for a trade that can only make a couple of grand…</p>
<p>[News</a> Headlines](<a href=“Amazon Stunned Shorts, Forced Covering: Pros”>Amazon Stunned Shorts, Forced Covering: Pros)</p>
<p>What is Amzn working on that gives it this valuation?</p>
<p>How to spend more money to build a bigger empire while not making much in profits. They are building a brand and it is impressive. I don’t know how I’d feel about it as an investor but I like it as a consumer.</p>
<p>I hope it is more than that…because retailers eventually sell for meager valuations…</p>
<p>Maybe this…</p>
<p>[Amazon.com</a> (AMZN): The 800 Pound Gorilla in the Cloud | Breakout - Yahoo! Finance](<a href=“http://finance.yahoo.com/blogs/breakout/amazon-amzn-800-pound-gorilla-cloud-191511530.html]Amazon.com”>Amazon.com (AMZN): The 800 Pound Gorilla in the Cloud)</p>
<p>Someday…the cloud will be monetized in a big way?</p>
<p>Oh yeah, I forgot about that.</p>
<p>I don’t know about the cloud business. You make all of these investments in hardware to sell computing power and space and Intel makes a new CPU next year that’s faster and uses less electricity and your old stuff loses value. I can see the value-added of professional management if your company is very, very small but I could see more mature companies getting their own hardware and expertise to run their cloud.</p>
<p>I don’t particularly get the idea of putting all of your most critical data on hardware that you don’t control.</p>
<p>I appreciate that…</p>
<p>I don’t get AMZN…but I know they are involved in activities that I don’t know or don’t understand.</p>
<p>This tech field is a pretty amazing field…the valuations can get very high…and sometimes there is a payoff…</p>
<p>Sometimes…the crash and burning is incredible too…</p>
<p>There should almost be a discount for tech because of all the creative destruction in that field…</p>
<p>In 10 years…today’s iphone is going to be a joke…</p>
<p>I remember when the commodore 64 was a hot item.</p>
<p>That stock, Commodore, almost blew up my career…</p>
<p>That was probably the closest I came to blowing up…</p>
<p>But that is an old story…</p>
<p>I remember when computer games were text…no pictures…You typed in all the commands…the games were fun too…</p>
<p>Maybe…by putting your info in the cloud…you don’t have to worry about technological obsolescence? Like you mentioned…</p>
<p>My website is in the cloud - professionally managed. They have to deal with backup, hacker attacks, updating the software, etc. They charge me $9/month for many gigabytes of storage and unlimited bandwidth and the ability to log into my server and do Linux things on it. Apparently they are quite profitable too. There must have a huge number of customers out there paying $9/month.</p>
<p>But I don’t put any really sensitive stuff there unless it is in encrypted form or in my private storage and even then I don’t leave it around for very long.</p>
<p>The problem with putting your information in the cloud is if your vendor wants to take a peek at it or if a sysadmin with privs feels like looking around. There have been cases of this on clouds where a sysadmin wants to show his friends how much power he has or goes and stalks someone that may have annoyed him on a forum.</p>
<p>You also may have no control.</p>
<p>Amazon had an outage a few years ago where customers couldn’t get back up for several days to a week. Pretty frustrating when you are down and you can’t get an answer as to when you will be back up. It’s like a store getting flooded or having the road in front of them torn up for a few weeks for construction.</p>
<p>Ok…so overall…is the cloud hyped?</p>
<p>No. I think that the cloud is fantastic for consumer applications. I think that it’s great for some business applications too. I wouldn’t put company secrets or my bank access information in it though. A company can build their own cloud and lots of companies do that.</p>
<p>All of these apps on smartphones run on the cloud. Most people could live without those apps for a few days if the cloud went down. I use gmail which is a cloud app. I realize that there are people that can read the whole thing and I’m careful as to what I store in it.</p>
<p>Ok thanks…I like that info.</p>
<p>I don’t get amzn. Why do they deserve such a higher pe multiple than aapl? I find it interesting that the doomsayers on aapl were out in full force today, how aapl can’t keep it up, everybody is going to be eating their lunch. Either they’re intentionally throwing out this garbage or they’re incapable of having any flexibility in their thinking. Was it Keynes who said " when the facts change, I change my mind, what do you do sir?" That being said and having read the Steve Jobs biography, I must say in a few years, maybe five, aapl may have some difficulty. Jobs was unique and irreplaceable.</p>
<p>Ok…Doct, BCEagle91, others,…what do you think of Pay ( VeriFone) and Nxpi?</p>
<p>Which firms are going to benefit when people use phones instead of credit cards to buy things?</p>