Go For Broke

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.

Friday, September 16, 2022 -- $24,227.18 (-$3,274.21, -11.90%) Well it has been a little over three months since I have posted and the portfolio has continued its death spiral.  But, today there is news on the Portfolio.  I sold 1,018+ shares of KIND, the KIND call options expired worthless, and, in keeping with the seek-out-risk-at-all-costs nature of this Portfolio, I purchased 10 GWH call option contracts with an exercise price of $2.50 expiring in March, 2023.  I paid $2.70 per share for these options so, in order to break even, GWH will have to go up to $5.20 by the expiration date of these options.  At present GWH is selling for $4.86/share.  GWH is a utility-scale battery development company specializing in iron chemistry batteries.  Though much more bulky that lithium-ion batteries, the iron chemistry batteries, if the technology can be worked out, have the potential to be much much less expensive and longer lasting.  In combination with altern...

Wednesday, June 8, 2022 -- $27,501.39 (+830.16, +3.11%) KIND went up a little and the portfolio followed suit.  Let's hope for lots more of these non-negative but relatively uneventful days in the coming months!