My bad. "???" apparently doesn't imply "/SARC" like I intended.

That was the joke. In parentheses I put the actual story. Came home early because golf got cancelled. And no, old school was a gang bang.

Forgot I am dealing with pilots here.

10 inches though?!

That would be cumulative. A seven inch toy for warm up , followed by 3 inches of schnitzel. Might have reversed the order in the interest of satisfaction?

And APC discourse has reached a new low

I've seen lower. Any good tips on a side hustle while you are here?

my side hustle is pretty niche, but developing a difficult and rare skill can be a rewarding way to make a side income out of a hobby.

or read Thoreau and forget about it all.

I read Thoreau most days. And remind my wife that the easiest way to keep the house clean is to get rid of most of this ****. I’ve been home for a month and have another three weeks of MBL to go. I think she’s surreptitiously checking open time.

I run a classic hedge fund. Not my best account, but it is up over 10%. I have another account that is up 87%, but not a hedge-style program. cha-ching

Do you run the hedge fund on the 2 and 20 model? How the heck did you get into that? And WTH are you still doing here while running a fund?

I think he was joking. To only be up 10% in a hedge fund account and be up 87% in “another” account. I think he was throwing a little shade towards the investment community while subtly letting us know he has an 87% return this year on his personal trading account. Well done, JB.

I'm sure he was, but it's fun to play along. We have a few pilots putting together real estate syndications, running a hedge fund isn't much of a step from there.

There are some interesting side hustles, especially when you get into the WB categories. One FO I ran into was the VP of Sales for a software company. He took Friday afternoons off and flew a few 3 day Europe trips each month. I've run into several mortgage brokers, one or two that own car dealerships, a couple aspiring politicians, a few attorneys, a vineyard owner and lots of real estate investors.

Has anyone rented their property through AirBnB? Pros/Cons for vacation locations on part time basis? Thanks!

I haven’t, they can be very lucrative but also a pain if you don’t have someone to do the cleaning and organizing for you.

I’ve been researching, but I think I’ll stay out of it.

I believe there was an alternate to Airbnb that is suppose to be way better. And be careful of what state you are considering, seen many issues with state of CA.

Pros - Good ROI for certain properties. Buy the right ones and you make some good coin.

Cons - Many HOAs are taking a stand against short term rentals. One change to the DCCRs and you are out of business. We just voted to eliminate short term rentals (except sale, leaseback) in our neighborhood after the lone VRBO in our subdivision drew some unwanted attention. Some cities and municipalities are also adding restrictions and regulations on short term rentals. DYODD on pending legislation before making any big financial commitments.

Converting huge McMansions into assisted living facilities was a hot niche a few months ago too. Buy a big old house, hire a nurse and cook for daily visits and charge premium rents. I'm glad I dodged that bullet...

I agree, it is interesting to see what others are doing on the side. I always wanted to own rental properties when I was younger. I never had the money at the regionals, but when I got hired at Delta, I started saving for my first investment, but then 9/11 hit right when I got off probation. I never made enough money while furloughed to spare some on a rental. By the time I returned, I had met my wife and we started a family. I ended up getting into trading currencies and futures, which led to automated trading. Last night I wrote a mean reversion program for certain futures markets. (It was actually a couple modifications to a strategy I wrote a couple weeks ago to improve the position exits and make a more reliable stop loss.). It’s been fun, and it’s nice to have a plan B. I admire those of you that have large positions of real estate and know you’ll experience a level of wealth in retirement most could only dream of. I’m hoping to be there too, but I’m traveling a different path.

Good luck to you. Although you don’t need it. (“Losers are always whining about luck, winners go home and f##& the prom queen!”) :)

Some cities are getting wise to it as well, because it impacts hotels, which are massively taxed for revenue.

Some towns are imposing very stiff fees on leases less than a few weeks. You can try to dodge it, but it only takes one cranky neighbor to drop dime to the man and now you’re in a world of hurt.

I actually stumbled into real estate on accident. I bought a duplex to cheapen my expenses because I saw orders drying up and I had thrown my apps in at the regionals. Going from 10 yr O-3 to $21/hr makes you evaluate your spending lol. Luck/timing worked out that a buddy wanted to rent my current house (for 2 yesrs) as I was about to buy the duplex. 8 years later, they're both rentals for me. Very fortunate to have been able to make it work...better lucky than good!

Dabbled in the market stuff a few years ago, fun but I just didn't find the right niche. Starting think about trying it again. Whats platform do you use?

I just switched to TradeStation. It is the best move I’ve ever made. They use Easylanguage, for their programming. It’s easy to learn after a 5 hour online course. I used to use Ninjatrader as an interface to my broker. It was good but if I ever had an idea for an automated system, I had to hire a programmer, pay money, and hope that it was profitable. TradeStation is an all in one broker, platform that’s easy to use.

I'd start with "The Simple Path to Wealth" by JL Collins. It's a great read and I highly recommend the strategy. Personally, I trade with Ally, Fidelity, and Vanguard.

By "trade" do you mean day trade? Can we even do that with Fidelity?

As an aside, I'm disappointed we can't buy digital currency in our Fidelity accounts.

Yes you can day trade at Fidelity. You can also do options and leveraged ETF’s

If you want some exposure to bitcoin and others, look into GBTC. It’s a bitcoin investment trust. I owned it in my Fidelity brokeragelink account. Sadly I missed this run up. I sold it several months ago but did own it during the previous run up.

The only options you can trade are covered calls. I wish they’d allow us to trade “cash secured naked puts”.

Let’s say you want to own FB (Facebook) stock, but because it’s been on a good run, you don’t want to buy it at $271 a share, but at $230 or $250, you’d love to own it. As long as you have $23000 ($230x100 shares) or $25000 available ($250x100 shares) you could sell a FB $250 put option today and collect the premium. If FB drops to $250, your put option gets exercised and you’re the happy owner of FB stock at the price you wanted. If FB doesn’t drop to $250, the option expires worthless and you keep the premium. You do that every month, and continue collecting the premium until the stock drops to the level you want to buy it at, in the mean time, you’re making money on FB without even owning it. It’s a pretty riskless strategy that even Warren Buffett uses to not only get a great price on good stocks he wants to own, but to make money off those stocks while he’s waiting for his price.

I get that it’s not for everyone, but I’d be using this strategy in my 401K a lot if it was available to us.

Edit: I should say it is a pretty riskless strategy, as long as you do, in fact, want to own that particular stock.

Right now, the January 15 $250 put is trading at $460
$230 put is $182

The December options don’t expire till next week so this isn’t a great comparison because if you did it every month you wouldn’t quite get those prices because you’d have to wait until your option expired next week until you sold another option, Unless you had another $25K laying around, so let’s say you could get $380. You’d be making $380 a month on your $25K cash position. You’d earn $4560 in a year (assuming FB stock didn’t move and you kept your $250 price. $4560/$25000= .1824 or 18.24% return. If FB goes up, you wouldn’t collect the same premium every month but you could adjust your option to one closer to the money.

The two strategies have nearly identical outcomes. There may be some limited arbitrage opportunity, but traders keep the options premiums very close. The commission efficiency by writing out of the money naked puts (one option sale) vs in the money covered calls (buy stock, sell call, sell stock) may give you a slight edge. The interest earned by keeping cash in your account vs buying the stock is negligible at today's interest rates. The opposite is true if you are looking at out of the money covered calls vs in the money puts when looking at trading cost efficiency.

I too wish we could sell cash secured naked puts.

Thanks.

Niall Ferguson recently recommended Bitcoin in Barron's. Even though it's up and likely to tank again, with each run it bottoms out higher and higher. I intend to buy and hold.

I'd expect more of this from HOA's.

People who buy homes in their neighborhoods, who pay $$$ into their HOA's for amenities, didn't do it so 10% of the owners can run a time share on the backs of everyone else. It's monetizing the community capital of the many for the sake of the few.

Yeah, "It's 'muh property, I can do what I want with it"...I get it. Zoning laws exist for a reason, and there's a good chance your property isn't zoned for an unlicensed hotel/short term rental which isn't properly insured for fires, escape routes, transient traffic, any personal injuries that occur when you submit a claim and your insurance company realizes your "guests" were short term renters, etc. There's an outside risk enforcement might come a-knock'n, depending on the neighborhood, and shutting your down, hard.

Some exceptions, of course (beach front comes to mind..in a certain price range, they're pretty much all rented and everyone knows it).

---------

Specific suggestions if you go down this road:

1. Leave extra batteries. There's a reason hotels make their TV remotes darn near unopenable.
2. Cameras. Cameras in non-private areas (no bathrooms, bedrooms) are allowed if disclosed upfront. Have a friend who's >$1 million property was trashed by a AirBnB renter who sent their teenager (and many, many friends) up to have a LAN gaming party. They couldn't prove it, and had to pay a bunch out of pocket -- quickly, because more "guests" were coming.
3. Hot tubs are a nice amenity. Try not to think about what's going on in them.
4. An "owners closet" that's really secure is a good idea.

You don't have to let the options expire before entering another trade. You can buy your puts back at a profit.

Options trading is a great side hustle, but definitely not for everyone.

There are lot of misconceptions out there about the risk/reward of options, and I don’t believe (if you’re serious about it) you should attempt to dispel those myths on an airline pilot forum.

My recommendation, if anyone is serious about options trading, is to start learning the tastytrade methodology. It’s a probability based method that requires you trade small and often. It’s commissions are capped at $1 to open (per contract) and $0 to close. Their platform is top notch, uptime far exceeds think or swim, interactive brokers and fidelity (I’ve used them all). Tastyworks is everything you could want for trading.

Best of all, their programming is head and shoulders better than the crap you see on CNBC. It’s educational and entertaining. They’re underdogs in options trading but they blow the competition away in every aspect. Their favorite customer are the small fish like us.

If you want to trade options with fidelity you can, you can open a margin account, but be warned their desktop platform sucks and trading via the web interface is clunky and annoyingly difficult.

Always happy to discuss options and creating your own wealth through investing be it with options or straight equities. Don’t leave it to “the experts”. You’ll probably do “ok” but it may not create the generational wealth you have in mind, if that’s a goal of yours.

EDIT;

tastyworks is the platform www.tastyworks.com
tastytrade is their “media” and education network www.tastytrade.com

I agree, options are far less risky than people think. I like to use wide iron condors for the limited down side. Naked puts and calls can empty out your account if you get it wrong. Three or four percent per month is doable if you are knowledgeable and pay attention to details. Tasty Trade is definitely a good place to start.

You make over 100k a year trading options? Because if you've been doing that with consistency you probably have built a substantial pool of capital. I've always thought options was more of a small sum game and the law of large numbers eventually catches up to you

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

Yes, I’ve been able to build enough capital in my trading account where I can increase trade size while keeping risk roughly the same on a percentage basis. However, I spend a lot of time managing trades. But it doesn’t have to be that way. You can simply sell a put spread, enter a good til cancelled order to close at a profit target and check back at 21 days until expiration. It can really be as complex or as simple as you want.

It is a common misconception that options trading is a zero sum game, it’s not. You can cap your risk and trade probabilities (tastyworks makes it very easy to understand probability of profit on a given trade). The key is to make these high probability trades often so the probabilities can work themselves out in your favor.

Inside of my brokerage link, I also purchase LEAPS calls on my favorite investments. This is arguably the riskiest type as you are BUYING premium and time decay works against you, slowly eroding the value of the contract. Yes, I’ve lost 100% of my premium doing this. But I’ve also seen my largest returns.

All that being said, your best bet to last in options trading is selling premium on high probability spreads or naked puts.

Very nice. It's always intriguing to hear the different investing strategies out there. Sounds like you've built a nice system for investing

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

The investing part is what has really propelled my wealth. Long term, buy, hold and never sell. Winners you hold are what really gives your PF a leg up. Losers wither up and die and become an insignificant part of your PF. Ignore metrics like p/e, p/s, EPS and look more at the business you’re investing in. Companies like AMZN, TSLA, NFLX etc get missed when these screens bias them out. Those are the true gems.

As for options, that’s been generating income (albeit not consistently month to month). It’s been used to pay bills, pay down debt and save. I’ve definitely fallen into the category of closing out a position and opening a new position with the spoils of the previous one vs sweeping profits into savings and to pay taxes (which suck when you’re doing this, tough check to write quarterly). But, these are good problems to have.

I tell folks investing is like Turkey recipes, many different techniques make a delicious Turkey. Find a style that fits you and stick with it. For me I was attracted to value investing after reading the Intelligent investor by Ben Graham. I search around the globe looking for stocks that trade at least 25% below their Liquidation value(Margin of Safety).

These type of stocks are commonly known as Net Nets or Cigar Butts(usually companies that trade at these depressed valuations are poor businesses so you're getting one last puff out of them) . I hold the stock until they reach their Liquidation value, sell them(unless in the rare case I can project the company's long term earnings with conviction), Rinse and Repeat. With this strategy I expect at least a 25%+ annual returns over the long term and right now averaging 30%+. Warren Buffet averaged 50%+ using this strategy in the early days of the Investing Partnership he ran but several of the Net Nets he invested in he was able to obtain a board seat and drive shareholder returns.

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

Interesting! That’s certainly one way of doing it, and sounds like it works quite well. We have roughly the same performance numbers using two very different methods (I’ve been tracking annualized return aka XIRR since 2008).

Is there a service you use to identify these companies?

For domestic stocks I just use a stock screener thru Finbox and check that at least weekly. Slim pickings these days compared to March. I also follow other Net Net investors on Twitter to identify under the radar/beyond screens ideas.

For international Net Nets I'm focused on Japan and use kenkyoinvesting.com's free screener to identify and KaijiNet/JapanExpress evaluate the Balance sheet and cashflow statements.

Sent from my SM-N986U using Tapatalk

Y'all are talking about a market that has tripled in a short period of time, I'm not sure I would count on that kind of performance in the future, especially with the coming economy.(Diminished tax base, job loss,etc.)

Options, when traded properly, have little to do with the relative performance of the stock market. Properly built spreads make money up or down as long as the movements are within reasonable limits. Usually 1 to 2 standard deviations. I am not for selling naked options but in up markets you sell puts on down moves, down markets you sell calls in rallys. Down markets usually pay more profits.