Go For Broke

Tuesday, September 30, 2025 -- $411,756.57 (+$4,878.71, +1.20%) Despite the portfolio dropping below $384,000 earlier in the day, it made a nice recovery to finish more than one percent up.  The market appears to be not too concerned about the looming government shutdown that would begin at midnight tonight.  In any event, tomorrow, whether or not there is a shutdown, we can expect some fireworks in the market.  If the recovery from this morning is indicative, I would guess that the market will push upwards tomorrow, even if there is a shutdown. I did not make any moves in the portfolio today.

Monday, September 29, 2025 -- $406,877.86 (+$26,038.21, +6.84%) If you last looked at the portfolio on Tuesday, four market days ago, you would notice that the portfolio has dropped a small amount, about 0.60%, since then.  But time has a way of smoothing out the bumps in portfolios, and in life.  This has actually been a wild ride. In two days, the portfolio dropped about 10.4% and then went up 10.9%.  That it is still down is just how math works--the 10.4% drop applied to a larger portfolio and the 10.9% increase to a smaller portfolio so even though it increased, percentage-wise, more than it decreased, it is still down.  For a more intuitive understanding, consider if you have $100 and it were to increase 50% and then decrease 50%, you would have $75 (you can also switch the order and have it decrease first with the same result), so be aware that examining just percentage changes and not also portfolio values could be a little misleading. Today, I used more of th...

Friday, September 26, 2025 -- $380,839.65 (+$14,125.14, +3.85 %) Just to keep things fresh, I am trying out Robinhood's app appearance light background setting. Today there was a little bit of a recovery from the last two days which had the portfolio down over 10%.  I did not make any trades.  All of the portfolio holdings either had an up day or were down a nominal amount.  Let's hope this sets the stage for next week!

Thursday, September 25, 2025 -- $366,714.51 (-$23,788.66, -6.09 %) Well, MU worked out spectacularly bad.  To avoid a margin call I sold all 595 MU shares for $156.28 for a loss of $6,847.16 for the position.  This loss was just from a single day!  This provides another clear example of the risks of day- or short-term-trading.  I still like MU and so I reduced my exposure, but increased my risk by using the proceeds, still on margin, to purchase  20 contracts of MU $150 call options that expire on 11/21/25.  Each share was $15.60, so in order to make a profit at the expiration date, MU will need to increase from its present price of $156.36 to $165.60, and if it closes below $150 at the expiration I could lose my entire investment if I still hold that position.   My MU trades are shown below. Over all the portfolio had another very down day losing over 6% of its total value.  Today the big loser was QBTS which was down over 5% and it didn't h...

Wednesday, September 24, 2025 -- $390,503.17 (-$18,821.71, -4.60 %) Yesterday MU reported earnings and revenues that beat estimates and even the whisper numbers.  They also revised their forward guidance upwards.  Numerous analysts upgraded their price targets for MU.  This sounds pretty positive, right!?  So, in the pre-market hours, I used every last bit of my margin buying power to purchase 595 shares of MU at $167.79/share.  Of course, promptly when the market opened this morning MU dropped like a stone, dropping to, at one point, $158.30.  I don't know whether this was a buy the hope, sell the news event or just simple profit taking because MU was already up over 60% in the past two months.  This is a not-uncommon phenomena and something that you should understand when making investment decisions after a company reports earnings. INOD also decided to have a significantly down day--it closed down 6% though it was down over 9% at one point.  IN...

Tuesday, September 23, 2025 -- $409,324.88 (+$24,836.89, +6.46 %) Yet another strong up day!  It is easy to get complacent in this type of market.  It feels like every move you make, even the bad ones, will work out well.  DON'T be deceived!  Throughout the day I had the nagging feeling that I should be taking a short position with some of my remaining margin purchasing power, but as things seemed so positive, I could not bring myself to do it.  The day-to-day market performance feels like it is highly predictive of where the market will move in the next few days, weeks, or even months.  But we get so caught up with the present that we sometimes have a difficult time seeing a future that looks much different.  Today the market was up, but it can turn on a dime.  As an investor it important to understand how your emotions make get in the way of logical decision making.

Monday, September 22, 2025 -- $384,487.99 (-$8,104.75, -2.06 %) Finally!  A down day.  Every market day since the portfolio hit a relative low of $127,255.97  on September 3rd--12 consecutive days--it has gone up.  Today's drop was more than just due--it was overdue.  You can see the 400 INTC shares in the portfolio as a result of the 4 INTC contracts, that were not sold on Friday, being executed.  With about a 200 percent increase in 2 1/2 weeks, the smart move would be to go conservative.  I am not smart.  Now that the I have substantial margin buying power I am considering whether to put it to use.  Given how lofty market valuations are, it may be time to take a short position or, as some analysts say that there is still room for the market to run, maybe I should acquire another long position.  Decisions, decisions!

Friday, September 19, 2025 -- $392,592.74 (+21,039.74, +5.66 %) Options expired today and my emotional (and nonsensical) INTC option purchase demonstrated the folly of poorly thought-out trades.  The 25 INTC $30 call options expired worthless for a complete loss of $4,250.  As for the remaining 60 INTC $24 options, I was business between 12:30pm (Pacific Time) and Robinhood sold me out of 55 of them because I did not have sufficient equity to cover the purchase of 6,000 shares of INTC.  At a few seconds before 1:00pm I got out of my meeting and tried to sell the remaining 5 options but only 1 executed before the market closed.  Because they are "in the money" they will auto exercise and the portfolio will show 400 shares of INTC.  The account history shows this. Although it shows both the INTC $24 and INTC $30 call options as pending, the $30 expired worthless because INTC closed at $29.58.  Only the remaining 4 INTC $24 call option contracts, 100 shares ea...

Thursday, September 18, 2025 -- $371,553.00 (+$58,097.13, +18.53%) Today was another extraordinary day!  The portfolio was up a record amount--over $58,000!  Not only did INTC have some good news (NVDA invested $5 billion) but INOD and QBTS each went up about 4%.  Strong positive market and portfolio moves can cause you to become giddy ( i.e. , irrational) and I succumbed to that and purchased 25  INTC $30 call options that expire on Friday (tomorrow) for $1.69 per share or a total of $4,225. Given that INTC was already up over $6 per share at the time, this was probably a bad move, and in hindsight it has been, so far, as that trade has cost the portfolio $1,975.  Also, please note that I am pushing the limits of margin investing.  I have borrowed $101,345.98 and only have $176.99 margin remaining.  If the portfolio goes down tomorrow and I don't sell anything I could have a margin call.  However, both of my INTC option positions expire tomorrow ...

Wednesday, September 17, 2025 -- $313,459.87 (+61,968.15, + 26.64%) After two more up days, the portfolio is up about 142% in exactly two weeks.  Using the long term average of the S&P 500 being around 11%, this would normally take on the order of 9 years.  So, I don't expect this trend to continue.  In fact, I expect that two weeks from now the portfolio value will likely be down from today.  But it might not!  As they say, hope springs eternal. Yesterday I purchased 60 INTC $24 call options that expire on Friday for $1.12 per share or a total of $6,720.  Today they went down in value to $1.00 per share so I am down $720 in this position and I will have to close it by Friday, two days from now.  Fortunately this misstep was more than make up for by QBTS which went up $4.13 per share for a portfolio value increase of $37,185 today!

Sunday, September 14, 2025 -- $251,491.72 (+$31,869.38, +14.51%) In a little less than two weeks, the portfolio has more than doubled!!!  This is not something you should ever expect to happen.  It’s more a sign of reckless investing than of intelligent, strategic decisions.  As they say, I’d rather be good than lucky, but in this case, I’ll take the luck. As for Thursday’s gamble—AAPL had to close above $231 for me to profit, and below $230 I’d lose the entire $2,000—I got lucky. AAPL went up, and I made $5,620. Things are going spectacularly well. I should be celebrating. But I know I’m just a hop, skip, and a jump away from crushing depression, like when the portfolio sank under $10,000.  So perhaps I should count my blessings and not get too happy.  Or maybe, since these high points come so infrequently, they deserve a little excessive happiness.  A life spent steeling oneself from both lows and highs is likely to be one filled with regret. I’d love to ...

Thursday, September 11, 2025 -- $219,622.34 (+$45,825.81, +26.37%) I am breaking with my usual end-of-day posts since I am busy tonight.  The big news is that the portfolio just hit a new all-time high of $219,622.34!  This is up over 26% from my previous post.  What you don't see is that the portfolio had plummeted recently, hitting a low of $122,953.19 on September 2nd, a staggering 43 percent drop from its previous high of $217,359.86 less than six weeks prior.  The graph below shows that recent, gut-wrenching low.  This volativity is not for the faint of heart! So, what fueled this recovery?  I made an extremely risky move that I neglected to post about earlier. On August 13th, I sold my entire INOD position of 1,580 shares for $43.04/share.  I then used a large portion of the proceeds ($40,300) to purchase 50 INOD call options with a $43 exercise price expiring on November 21, 2025.  Each contract cost $806.  This was a massive gamble....