Go For Broke

Friday, October 3, 2025, -- $589,191.02 (+$34,914.67, +6.30%) This was another day capping a spectacular week (+54.71%) and month (+361.63%). The saying "15 minutes of fame" refers to a brief, brilliant moment of success that almost everyone experiences sometime in their life.  This past month was likely this portfolio's 15 minutes of fame—a performance unlikely to be repeated, at least not while its value is over $10,000.  Here is the graph for the past month: We human beings have a habit of normalizing our situation, perhaps because we are so adaptable.  That situation may be great or may be terrible, but we adapt.  As a result, a positive change in a poor situation may inspire joy in us and a negative change in a great situation may cause us angst and depression.   This feeling carries into investing.  While a month ago, when the portfolio was sitting just over $127,000, I would have been ecstatic to finish the year at $250,000.  Now, given the...

Thursday, October 2, 2025, -- $554,276.35 (+$84,342.77, +17.95%) In a bull market everyone is a genius!  That is how I feel now.  But life is fickle--tomorrow I could be the idiot who did not sell my overpriced positions and is wallowing in the depths of despair while my ultra-leveraged portfolio crashes and burns.  Clearly w hen the market seems to be a one-way street going up, it helps to be leveraged to the hilt and taking a long position in options which is adding more leverage on top of leverage.  But any significant downturn could crush this portfolio, as it has done in the past. I have changed the portfolio image that I am including each day to show each position's gain (loss) rather than the overall gain (loss) for that position.  This will allow you to better see what happened on that day.  My biggest positions, INOD and QBTS provided most of the gain, TSLA finally showing weakness (because of concern about future sales now that the EV tax credit i...

Wednesday, October 1, 2025 -- $469,933.58 (+$58,177.01, +14.13%) All major newspapers ran headlines about the government shutting down at 12:01am EST this morning.  This is big news, or so I thought it was.  But the market not only did not seem to care, it appeared to embrace the shutdown.  As I noted yesterday, my guess was that the market would go up whether or not the government shut down.  So this morning I maxed out my margin borrowing (you can see I only have $31.06 margin borrowing left) and purchased 27 QBTS $23 call options expiring in two days on October 3rd.  Fortunately, so far at least, the market is doing what I had hoped and I am up about $2,241. The portfolio has again hit an all-time high.  Today it rose a little over $58,000 in a single day, also a record increase for a single day, just eclipsing its $58,000 gain from less than two weeks ago.  This 14% increase is the amount of increase you should expect to see in a well-diversified p...

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....

Monday, August 4, 2025 -- $173,796.53 (-$19,777.52, -10.22%) "Margin Call"  These are two of the most dreaded words in the english language for an aggressive investor.  With the market concerned about the July jobs report and the downward revisions for May and June and with President Trump firing the head of the BLS, the market is losing confidence that the economy is on the right track and even whether future politically-driven appointments are going to present unbiased economic and jobs data.  As a result the market dropped.  And, top top it all off for me, INOD, the company I had just purchased additional shares in reported earnings in which EPS beat estimates but revenues were a miss.  INOD promptly plummeted almost 20%.  My recent purchase of 580 shares of INOD at $50.00 per share promptly plummeted, losing almost $6,000.00  Additionally, since I purchased these shares "on margin"--meaning I borrowed money secured by my stock portfolio--when INOD ...

Thursday, July 31, 2025 -- $193,574.05 (-$23,785.81, -10.94%) With the portfolio down for five straight sessions since my last update, I decided to shake things up by purchasing 580 additional shares of INOD on margin. INOD reported Q2 2025 earnings after today’s close: earnings exceeded expectations by $0.08 per share ($0.20 vs. $0.12), but revenue came in $1.02 million short ($58.40M vs. $59.42M). Despite the earnings beat, the stock appears to have followed a “buy the rumor, sell the news” pattern—climbing $6.41 during the day, only to fall $6.90 in after-hours trading. The thin volume in post-market trading tends to exaggerate moves, so tomorrow’s regular session should give a clearer picture of how the market digests the results.

  Wednesday, July 23, 2025 -- $217,359.86 (+$199,528.39, +1,118.97%) Nearly three years have passed since my last update—and those years nearly wiped me out.  Please note that the gains and percentage gains shown are since the last blog entry, which was almost three years ago! Life got busy, and chronicling my portfolio blunders became exhausting. I hit rock bottom on May Day, 2024 (May 1st), when my account dropped below $8,500. From a starting point of $100,000, that loss was devastating—though not surprising, given my insatiable risk appetite. One of my many flaws is that when things go badly, I shut down.  I lose motivation.  And I definitely don’t want to broadcast my failures to the world.  That mindset clashes with the whole idea of an honest, for-better-or-worse investing blog.  So I failed miserably, hid under a rock, and didn’t come out until things got better. Things did turn around, but not thanks to any skill or strategy.  Just dumb luck....

Friday, October 7, 2022 -- $17,831.47 (-$3,579.00, -16.72%) The most likely scenario occurred and the SPY put options expired worthless.  Combined with KIND plummeting, the portfolio continues to flail helplessly!

Wednesday, October 5, 2022 -- $21,410.47 (-$2,816.71, -11.63%) Since we are down almost another 12% since our last update, I thought it was time to make a low probability bet and purchased $1,100 worth of SPY put options that expire on Friday.  If the S&P drops about 7% over the course of the next two days then that position will make money, otherwise it will expire worthless.  Such a drop would require a notoriously unpredictable black-swan-type of event.  Well, we seem to have one possibly queued up.  If Russia were to use a tactical nuke in Ukraine, to which I assign about a 2% chance of this happening in the next 48 hours, then the broad market could plunge 10% in which case this position will go up in value almost 100x.  Still, the most likely scenario is that this position expires worthless in two days.