<p>Interesting. I have done similar things as you did in csco and jdsu. </p>
<p>If we sell puts in blue chips we wont usually get in too much trouble. Usually. it is when that usually doesnt happen… :)</p>
<p>When enron was blowing up, some company made a takeover bid for enron. The company started with a d.</p>
<p>I told my future boss… With this takeover bid in enron… I sold 500 otm puts in enron that expire in two weeks. Enron had to be stable for two weeks… So… My future boss sold 800 puts.</p>
<p>Then in a day or two or three…those otm puts were at the money. The puts should not have been atm with a takeover bid. So… I did not roll them. I closed them out. I lost $40,000. That was a good loss.</p>
<p>My future boss said he liked my original thinking so he did not touch the position. </p>
<p>He lost $500,000 or $600,000. Sometimes… We just have to get out.
Especially if a stock isnt a blue chip… Or the company is a financial company. :)</p>
<p>I was short many ddd puts. Risky as heck. Glad we weren’t tested. :)</p>
<p>Condos are a lot less stress. Tenants can be a bit annoying when they do stupid things, but it’s pretty minor. I have never had a tenant issue keep me up at night. But then again, we end up with pretty good people, so we have been lucky so far. It’s just the possibility of a small loss, not a major one.</p>
<p>I am tired of the losses. I am a net winner,</p>
<p>But I am tired of the losses. </p>
<p>The real estate market around here never makes sense to me so I never pull the trigger.</p>
<p>A guy told me the numbers dont work in the present. You have to look at the future. (I am talking about stuff around here). Well, I live in the present. :)</p>
<p>The problem is, if the numbers didn’t look good to you two or three years ago, they look a lot worse right now. Maybe it’s just not worth it, if it’s a negative cash flow.</p>
<p>I had a covered call on DDD but I pulled out on Monday. I profited on the call but not the stock --lost about $350 overal but I don’t want to play right now. When I logged on today to my Roth IRA account after market close to assess the damage from today, I was down $58. I can live with that. </p>
<p>And Busdriver… I’m not playing the same high stakes game. I had 100 shares of DDD with a covered call that I had sold for about $190 and bought back for $40. So I’m not losing sleep over it at all. </p>
<p>"I had a covered call on DDD but I pulled out on Monday. I profited on the call but not the stock --lost about $350 overal but I don’t want to play right now. When I logged on today to my Roth IRA account after market close to assess the damage from today, I was down $58. I can live with that.</p>
<p>And Busdriver… I’m not playing the same high stakes game. I had 100 shares of DDD with a covered call that I had sold for about $190 and bought back for $40. So I’m not losing sleep over it at all."</p>
<p>I guess if I was making quintuple profits and only lost $58 today, I’d be sleeping well too. Unfortunately, I think I’m down about 25K, but I don’t want to look.</p>
<p>“The cash flow is small positive if there is no debt. 3 percent… Maybe”</p>
<p>So for example, if this condo cost you 200K and you paid cash for it, after HOA, insurance, property taxes, maintenance and figuring it won’t be rented for one month out of the year…you’d get a 6K cash flow? That’s not bad if it’s appreciating well and not a pain in the butt to manage.</p>
<p>I don’t know where you get the quintuple profits? Were you referring to the profit I made on the single call I sold? I think you missed the point of what I said – it was a covered call. I sold the call when I bought the underlying stock. The stock was down and things looked to be getting worse on Monday, so I closed the whole position – the net loss was about $350. If I hadn’t sold the call and simply sold the stock, then my net loss would have been closer to $500. So I lost money overall on the transaction, but the fact that I sold the call mitigated my loss somewhat. </p>
<p>I’m not talking about figures that are fractions – that is, I was posting about a single option contract. It’s one trade that I “made” $150 on. One trade. That is not a pattern or an expectation. If you sell calls, you win if the stock goes down,but not by too much. You don’t want the stock to go down lower than your breakeven point. I was right to close out the option when I did, but if the market had been up yesterday I would have felt like a fool for closing out the underlying. But I was feeling skittish on Monday. I didn’t bail on everything, but DDD felt iffy. </p>
<p>I’ve been in and out of DDD several times over the past year or so-- it’s fairly volatile. I think that in general, I’ve come out ahead with covered calls, but I would have done even better if I had simply traded the stock, buying lower, selling higher. In any case, that was today’s loss for 1 account – I’ve got other accounts and didn’t do the math there, but those are buy-and-hold type of investments, except that I’ve got fairly tight stop limits on most of holdings. Nothing has been sold this week so it means that the overall percentage of loss for me there is still limited - but those holdings are mostly blue chips and fairly conservative ETF funds. I’ve pretty much pulled out of all of the risky stuff for now. </p>
<p>My point is simply that I’m part of this thread but I’m a small potatoes investor/trader. It’s interesting for me to learn stuff but it wouldn’t be possible for me to retire on my investments. </p>
<p>“Condos are a lot less stress.” Interesting point of view. I have a house near a beach that I rent out to college students during the school year. We planned on staying there during the summers but have not spent much time there because we travel, so we rent it out even during those times. I am much more nervous with the house than the market. I’m more emotionally attached to the house, so much so that when tenants move out and we go to check it out, I have my wife drop me off at the beach first. She goes in first and if it’s ok which it usually is, she picks me up and I also go in. With the market, I have to some degree been successful in not being emotionally attached. I look at the money in the market like I would poker chips.</p>
<p>Since there are so many words I can’t understand in this thread, I usually don’t bother to ask but What is jucax? Sounds like a cousin of jurassic</p>
it is when that usually doesnt happen… :)</p>