Category Archives: Articles

I am definitely not a gold bug.

I definitely do hate bugs, though and I do like gold.

With the latter, only in moderation, but I’m liking gold more and more.

For each of my son’s college graduations they received some one ounce gold coins, representing the first time I had ever purchased gold in any form, other than jewelry.

Those turned out to have been good investments and some of those coins have already been cashed in and turned into other good investments.

But what I have really come to enjoy have been the gold miners. read more

In the final 30 minutes of trading today, as the monthly option cycle was coming to its end, I made one last trade for the day.

I had already surprised myself by not paying attention to the strategy I was planning to execute this morning with Marathon Oil.

I further complicated matters by actually opening 2 new positions today, something I don’t do very often to end the week, unless one of those shares is going ex-dividend to start the coming week.

I also ate into my cash reserves.

Confusing.

Add to that the final trade.

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Just a few hours ago I made a pretty good case for breaking one of my rules.

That rule was to treat individual lots of shares in a given stock as individual positions.

Doing that means selling calls on each position based upon its own strike price and profit goals.

I had my eyes on adding more shares of Marathon Oil today if it tested the $15.50 level.

With a $16.50 strike expiring this afternoon on shares that had a $15.60 break even, the idea was that if I did add more shares of Marathon Oil I would just combine the 2 lots, which happened to be of equal size and then look to sell $16 strikes on Monday. read more

Does anyone remember this song from Mary MacGregor?

It raised a few eyebrows when it came out almost 41 years ago.

Putting fantasies aside for a moment, I’m torn between two loves at the very same moment, sitting here wondering what comes next.

That wonderment isn’t unusual. There isn;yt a day, and I don’t think there hasn’t been a day that I can recall when that wonder wasn’t in abundance.

Now that rates have risen for the second time in 3 months and as it seems that there is some ambivalence about continuing that post-election rally, I’m torn between the financing goals that appeal to me the most. read more

About 5 years ago, maybe a little less, but at this point I don’t feel a sense of obligation to go through my data, I was way over invested in retail.

As someone who really does believe in diversity, I wasn’t too happy about carrying that much retail liability, especially as those shares weren’t faring too well.

Like just about everything else, there are periodic ups and downs.

Individual stocks behave that way, as do sectors.

Markets, too.

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