I’m tired of looking at my stupid broken hand on my site. And now that its 75% healed and I can type without pain, I’m posting an update:

Right now I am bearish but not too heavy. My SPY weighted delta is -1500, my theta is 1800 and my gamma is slightly too low for comfort at -800. I’m mostly bearish on financials with a healthy mix of bulls and bears on internet and china.

My most exciting play is a $5000 bet I made on a financials crash before Feb expiration. With just 4 trading days left, odds are slim, but I’m having fun imaging it happen. It is sort of like a lottery ticket. The hours before the drawing are the most fun, planning what you’ll do with the winnings.

Now this bet won’t net millions, but if FAZ can hit 150 – 200 ( I said “crash”), I’ll add 500k to my net worth.

This week I’ll be slowly moving out of my positions. I have about 16 right now and all but a couple involve sold options (thus the low gamma).

I will be gearing up my March positions over the next couple weeks and will be sure to share them, most likely on twitter / stocktwits

(fyi cast is off, and hand should be 100% in 2 weeks….snowboarding here i come!!!)

As a basketball player, I’ve experienced a lot of bad ref calls. Yesterday set an all time new record for me.

I was hacked while taking the ball up for a shot under the basket. No call, and here is the result:

Broken hand. Since its a spiral break I will need surgery. Early estimate is 6 weeks.

It was the league championship game and we won by the way

I have to end this post now, its really hard to type 100% left handed. Try it.

Since drunk Landon on NYE had the courage to send these goals to family and friends, I guess I’ll post them here as well:

I really am going to try to do all of these in 09….no matter how lofty they may seem to a now sober Landon:

•  Learn to snowboard. I bought myself a new board for xmas. Time to gogo!
• Get in the best shape of my life
  • potential measurements (things I’ve done):
    • Run 3 miles in 20 minutes (done once in 1998, pretty darn hard)
    • Complete a 2/2/2 basketball sprint drill (done once in 2002, extremely difficult
• Dunk a basketball (last done in 2001 after 1 knee surgery. 3 major knee injuries since)
• Continue to learn piano
  • I made a good run this summer but got bored/frustrated when I was required to move my hands lol
• SWIM AMTD stock over $15 $40 in part due to mytrade‘s huge success
• Complete an “Olympic” triathlon in respectable time without drowning or dying (never attempted)
  • This may kill two birds with one stone (best shape of my life)
• Compete in an amateur boxing match, regardless of win / lose. (I’m not 100% sold on trying for this goal)
• Have the most fun of my life (this one has stiff competition)
• Love more

FAZ is a 3x bear fund on financials.

It moves fast and hard (t.w.s.s.) but I still think the options on it are way overpriced.

This month I did a covered call on FAZ.

Bought 1500 shares and sold 5 options at 3 difference strikes.

At the moment, I’m up on all 4 legs of the trade–I’m telling you, this stock was MADE for covered calls.

Here’s my screenshot from the thinkorswim software:

With a big run in the markets today, I’m calling the top

Obviously I’m happy with the move so far, because I have a covered call on SP Emini, but I think the good times are over, or at least will stall…

I entered a bear vertical on SPY:

Sold DEC 92Call
Bought DEC 94 Call
———–
Credit 1.00

So right now I’m already at max profit, with SPY at 92.00. My goal is for SPY to hold or go lower over the next two weeks, but I do have a “free” 1% cushion, as my breakeven is 93. This is why I love verticals.

Most people do not know this, and I’m sure most children are not taught this in school.

As taken from freedomkeys and the Liberator online archive, here is the real story of Thanksgiving:

”

Did you know that the first Thanksgiving was a celebration of the triumph of private property and individual initiative?

William Bradford was the governor of the original Pilgrim colony, founded at Plymouth in 1621. The colony was first organized on a communal basis, as their financiers required. Land was owned in common. The Pilgrims farmed communally, too, following the “from each according to his abilities, to each according to his needs” precept.

The results were disastrous. Communism didn’t work any better 400 years ago than it does today. By 1623, the colony had suffered serious losses. Starvation was imminent.

Bradford realized that the communal system encouraged and rewarded waste and laziness and inefficiency, and destroyed individual initiative. Desperate, he abolished it. He distributed private plots of land among the surviving Pilgrims, encouraging them to plant early and farm as individuals, not collectively.

The results: a bountiful early harvest that saved the colonies. After the harvest, the Pilgrims celebrated with a day of Thanksgiving — on August 9th.

Unfortunately, William Bradford’s diaries — in which he recorded the failure of the collectivist system and the triumph of private enterprise — were lost for many years. When Thanksgiving was later made a national holiday, the present November date was chosen. And the lesson the Pilgrims so painfully learned was, alas, not made a part of the holiday.

Happily, Bradford’s diaries were later rediscovered. They’re available today in paperback. They tell the real story of Thanksgiving — how private property and individual initiative saved the Pilgrims.

.”

I love this story and wish it was taught in public schools. If you want a more detailed version, check out a transcript from Rush.

• The hand I was dealt in life
• How I’ve been able to play it so far
• The help and support I’ve received
• A year without injury
• Almost a whole year without illness
• All the opportunities I have, have had, and will have, missed or taken
• Friends
• Family
• The luxury of living in the best country the world has ever seen
• Knowing not what the future holds, but that I will determine my own

• Initial story how my external hard drive (with 5k picture) failed
• Selection of data recovery company
  
• Result of data recovery: FAIL

After ECO failed, I tried Drive Savers. They too failed.

Fuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuuudge

So I lost 5k pictures and have almost no hope of recovery.

The good news?

I’m restarting my picture collection, one snap at a time, and I’ll be backing up externally and online this time. Also–I just discovered that for some reason I saved about 250 superbowl pictures on flickr.com!

This is key, as I use these pictures each year to create a giant banner that guests sign at my annual superbowl party. So….there is hope.

I also found about 200 pictures on facebook/myspace, and I remembered that I posted about 1,000 on my old photo album site. So….all is not lost.

Live and learn.

Last month I bought ES at 884.50 and sold the Nov 900 calls at 35. With the market downturn, those obviously expired worthless, making my base price 849.50

I wanted to sell another call against the position, but decided to wait until a big pop in the markets to do so. Today I got that pop and I’ve sold the Dec 900 calls for 25, lowering my base to 824.50.

IMO today is a great time to enter a covered call on the broad markets.

Look for opportunities…

I’ll keep you posted on this position…

My external hard drive failed and I lost about 5 years of pictures.

After looking at several companies, I decided to go with the least expensive, ECO Data Recovery and after 2 weeks they called today to tell me they were unable to recovery my data. They’ll be charging me $175 for the effort.

So I called Drive Savers, the most expensive and I’ll be trying them next.

As they explained the first time I talked to them, the first recovery attempt is always the best. So my chances of a recovery are slim, but I have to give it a try.

Obviously I would NOT recommend ECO Data Recovery. Drive Savers is about 3x as expensive. I hope they prove to me why. If so, I’ll be singing their praises for years to come.