is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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That bike falls into a somewhat unfortunate category like the similar CB175 that was being sold by the family friend from whom I bought one of my 64 Honda 305 Dreams and my 75 BMW R75/5. I told him that, as a collector, I could only see my way clear to paying $500 for the bike and that though I really did like the bike on a visceral level, not enough to pay more but that he should be able to get $750 from someone else who simply wanted a good, solid beginner's ride.
Personally, I'd put only a little more value on the CB125. It's rarer because it and the 175 were being sold at the same time as the CB350 twin which didn't cost a whole lot more.
To the collector, a bike needs to be either personally appealing or rare and desirable.
The CB125 is rare but will likely never be considered desirable. Usually for that to happen, a bike has to have been not rare at one time, but rare now.
The CB125 does have some personal value to me because even though I was riding much bigger bikes when that one was out, I've always had an affinity for solid little bikes that could reach highway speed, though not easily. And my affinity included that specific machine.
You can't break the thing. It's amazing the abuse that particular engine design can take.
Judging by the pictures, the purchase price and a weekend of serious elbow grease (I'd personally go so far as to bead-blast that engine) would yield essentially a brand-new bike. If it were mine, it'd become part of the game I play with the neighbors where I ride up on something and say "Guess how old this one is."
If it were close to me, I'd probably put a max bid of around $600 on it. Something like $606.51 (a little bit of snipe insurance). For collecting, it's not very likely to appreciate or depreciate. Ever. For riding, $600 would be a good price for a bike that'll be around forever and require very little fiddling with.
It might go for more money, though. Someone who (like I sometimes do) is willing to overpay to get a bike they owned or loved when they were young. Or a "collector" who gets the rarity part of the equation but not the desirability part. Or one who wants it only to fill out a Honda CB collection.
Oh, and if you get it, you'll be happy to know that commonly-used parts are readily available at the dealership. That engine has been around forever and used in many bikes and ATV's.
For comparison's sake, I think I paid about $750 for the 76 Suzuki GT185 I bought for my daughter that was in similar mechanical but better cosmetic condition. The GT185 is both rare and desirable, but only desirable to a few people. Those who need it to complete their GT collection. The other models are comparatively easy to come by (though pricey), but not the 185. Mainly because miles were very unkind to it and because it was competing with much larger siblings. The GT185's engine was only good for 30k miles between rebuilds. Though mine has (I think) fewer than 10k miles, it actually needs a rebuild. I think it seized at some point. And parts are NOT easy to find for mine. Especially the parts I need, since they were pretty sorely needed while the bike was comparatively young.
I don't know if co-founder Bill Martin is as disgusted, but he contacted me shortly after we acquired Silicon Investor to congratulate me and wish me luck, and we've been in on-and-off contact since, with him occasionally advertising his new company here.
I do know that he hasn't been happy with what his baby has become. And when I told him that we were interested in acquiring RB and couldn't get a response from anyone at Lycos, he expressed a hope that we'd find a way to rescue it, but, if memory serves, he also had no idea who we should contact at the company.
We were finally able to make indirect contact with the new Korean owners shortly after they acquired it and their response back indicated that they placed such a high value on RB as a key component of their acquisition that we didn't pursue it any further.
At this point, we don't want or need it. Both Investors Hub and Silicon Investor are gobbling up marketshare unrestrained. In Silicon Investor's case, we're taking it from Yahoo, who doesn't allow penny stock discussion. People who get tired of having to wade through hundreds of posts to find a few that're on-topic and worth reading are moving to SI. Similarly, RB users have been in exodus en masse for a long time and they're coming to iHub. And the pace quickens every month. To such an extent that a project/challenge looming on the not-too-distant horizon is making changes to iHub to keep it performing well under the load.
Rather than buying RB, we're getting its marketshare handed to us without spending a cent or lifting a finger. In SI's case, we've recently decided to spend a little money to nudge the process along a little since it's far earlier in its growth phase than iHub and I'd like to see it catch up this year.
We were also getting SI's marketshare handed to us, but Motley Fool was getting a pretty big piece of it, too. Our decision to buy SI was to keep and grow its marketshare for ourselves and to preserve its immensely valuable history.
At one time, I would've been interested in preserving RB's history, but it's become so diluted and polluted that I really don't see that being a reason to spend money and effort on it.
In SI's case, it didn't have the traffic to generate the income to offset the cost of keeping it running. The cost was relatively low but not inconsequential. It was on a path to the grave GNET and INSP had inadvertently dug for it with a shovel of incompetence. At least INSP had the wisdom to recognize that they are really good at a few thing but that SI wasn't one of them so it needed to be sold or shut down.
In RB's case, there's an infinite supply of people who will gladly use their platform for nothing more than flamewars. And these same people will probably shoot plenty of virtual monkeys for a chance to win an iPod, at 20 cents a shot to RB for providing the click. Likely enough to keep the lights on forever. And as long as it can pay its own way (it can if the only expense is corporate bandwidth and they never look at the value of how much of it RB consumes), it'll be around.
Meanwhile, the people who want to talk shop without flamewars will continue to come over here because for small/micro-cap discussion at the 800-lb gorilla level, we're the only other monkey around.
It's a nice position to be in. Strong dominance of a particular market and the rest of it belonging to either far smaller and therefore less attractive sites, or RB who apparently has no problem with spoonfeeding us their marketshare.
It's not so cut and dry and easy for SI. It's got 2 large gorillas for competition (Motley Fool and Yahoo), and the Fool ain't no fool and we're not going to get any of their marketshare easily, if at all (we don't need it -- the pie is huge) and though Yahoo's signal/noise ratio is awful, there's some awfully good signal there. Heck, even I participate.
Did I call ELN or what? hehe
I didn't realize markets would be closed Monday, though. Glad Matt reminded me since I was expecting red today and Monday on ELN followed by very strong green Tuesday. Without Monday to flush out a lot of shares, I'm not really sure what to expect Tuesday. Let's just say I expect it to reach $17.50 at some point Tuesday or Wednesday. Sound like a really optimistic projection when it's barely at $16 right now? Just check out what it did the 3rd week of November and December.
I wasn't planning to pick up ELN trading shares until Monday, but since the market will be closed, I went ahead and got them today. Leaving just barely enough dry powder to pick up some more on Tuesday if it does then what I expect it would do Monday if the markets were open. Bought at 16.06. That was my only trade today. Nothing looked particularly attractive and even my ELN purchase is one I consider real iffy. I'll bail out of it if it shows weakness Tuesday morning and just wait for a better opportunity to load up for my expected mid-week run.
I'm steering clear of SANM now for a while except for any scalping opportunities I happen to see. It solidly broke the upper B-band and though it weakened at a level lower than I expected, it very solidly weakened. I do still have a lot of Apr5 calls on it, though. But the ones in my Ameritrade account have a GTC sell order on them at 50 cents. The ones in my Scottrade account I'll just wait a while and see what happens. My basis on them is 27.5 cents, and I've got plenty of opportunity left to sell them at 35 cents if I feel the need to. The ones in my Ameritrade account have a 40-cent basis, so I'll take a dime profit on them anytime someone offers it to me. 25% is 25%.
Portfolio value: Down 2.0%, Cash -56.0%
Flipped a bunch of SANM and panicked out for a loss. Would've been a profitable trade later, but it looked like it was in trouble so I cut my losses. I take losses as mercilessly as I do profits.
Profited on 2 ELN trades. Still have my core position and options. Flipped a big batch of ENMD profitably.
Portfolio value: Up 4.7%, cash +19.6%
Finally ended the day with my cash position more to my liking. A little bit of AM firepower if needed.
You and I both got out too early on our last ELN trades of the day. Don't think you told me your cost, but remember you sold at $16.15. I bought trading shares at $16.00 and sold them at $16.14.
Closed at $16.19 but was very active afterhours with a high print of $16.40 and a last of $16.34.
I expect a gappa, but am not betting any trading money on it. I've learned this one's patterns. Not to perfection, but well enough to consistently make money on it. And its past patterns would have it down tomorrow and Monday, and making a run Tuesday-Thursday that'll make the past few days look like penny moves.
Lucky day for moi. Sold half of my remaining ELN Jan15 calls at 0.85. Traded ELN a lot and ended the day with my whole core position intact, even though I traded even my "cold dead fingers" shares today. I still have what most people would consider a pretty large number of those calls, and am holding them until at least a week from today. And strongly suspect that I may end up exercising them rather than selling them. Why? Because I firmly believe ELN is a $20 stock in March. I bought my initial Feb17.5 call position today at 60 cents (they closed up 50% from there), but can't find quotes anywhere for March. I want to start loading up on March 20 calls.
Portfolio value: Up 13.1%, Cash: +1.1%
I'm too conservative to purposely shoot for a day like today and consider it a fluke. I do NOT swing for the fences. I take profits ruthlessly and often. If I make 1% on my money in a day, I consider that amazing. What I think has been happening, though, is that I've picked some really good stocks and options to trade and have gotten mostly lucky and a little bit good at dealing with them.
I was very disappointed that they weren't driving the car on public roads while wearing a cheesehead helmet.
Is there any reason why you don't think SANM is going much higher?
Oh, I think it's going higher. The Bollinger Bands recently got extremely tight, and it's shown us which direction it decided to break out of them. Upwards. I don't think it's done.
However, it can have a really tough time with $5 before options expiration this month. Round number. Becomes more marginable and shortable. Open options interest for this month is another huge overhang. Nearly 10k $5.00 calls open and 5k puts. Max Pain is actually at $2.50, but that ain't happening. I think it's going to gravitate very strongly toward exactly $5 by the end of next week. At which point I'll probably sell half of my April calls since they'd probably be in the 60-70 cent area.
I can see it maybe getting a little over $5 after options expiration, but I think more than half of the upward movement it's going to get over the next couple of months will be accomplished over the next couple of weeks. After which I consider it dead money unless we get an earnings surprise. The good kind.
I like it as a trading vehicle, but I'm not fond of them as a company. They don't execute well and are losing marketshare to much better competitors. And, at the helm, you've got a CEO who is among the most obscenely overpaid (versus performance) execs in the world. Shaddup, Matt.
Short-term, me likey. Likey much! Long-term? Well, I'm a Missourian and they've got a lot to "show me" before I like them enough again to make them a core holding.
Well, in November and December, it performed in such a way that even the remaining 8 trading days would be enough. But I don't make bets like that.
Today was such a weird day for me. SFCC tanked big time with me holding a bunch of it. I ended up selling it well below the high, but even further above the low, and my timing was such that I tripled my ELN position at $14.26. Sold, rebought, and sold some of those and ended the day with double my normal position in that stock and hanging in there for a while.
That $14.26 buy was nothing but pure dumb luck! When I sold my SFCC, I simply dumped the money into ELN at market before heading to the office. When I pulled up quotes at the office, I was very pleasantly surprised. It closed at $14.80.
Also sold half of my ELN calls at 45 cents. I told Dave I thought another ride from 40 to 45 cents was do-able (12.5% gain before commission), but I didn't put my money where my mouth was. Too bad, as it turned out I was right. But that trade would've kept my puckerometer pegged nearly all day. Always mindful of how risky options are.
I also bought a small keeper batch of ENMD at $2.23 (close $2.27) and doubled my SANM at $4.82 (close $4.87).
The additional SANM is strictly a trading position.
Before I left the house, my portfolio value was down real big. Along the lines of 10%. Not only was SFCC killing me, ELN was way below my average basis and the calls had printed 25 cents. Looks like pure, dumb luck saved the day, though.
Portfolio value: Up 5.4%, cash -48.5%. Still a lot more margin than I like to use, but it's heading in the right direction, and I plan to be down to 30% by the end of the week.
Traded a little ELN and SFCC today, flip-flopping both a couple of times and ended the day with larger positions of both. Nearly doubled my ELN Jan15 calls at 35 cents. Doubled SANM at $4.87, taking my basis to $4.885 according to Scottrade.
Portfolio value: Down 1.9% / Cash -68.1% margin (substantially over my comfort level, which will be taken care of by Wednesday, even if I have to take losses to bring it down)
Most of my drop in value due to ELN calls closing 10 cents lower today. Little gain in my SANM and respectable gain in my SANM calls.
My ELN calls expire this month. I haven't started buying February's yet. I usually (but not always) wait until a contract becomes front-month before getting into it unless I'm buying more than 2 months out.
Since the last time I posted, I've done just a little bit of trading in SANM, SFCC, and ELN and have added to my ELN Jan15 calls. A little more than doubled them.
Portfolio value: Up 7.0% Cash: -35% margin
Scariest position: I'm long quite a bit of SFCC. Got pre-occupied when I should've been selling.
Position that makes others worry most for my sake: ELN calls. I'm planning to get rid of half of them this week, though. Still have a lot I paid 15 cents for and the additional ones have cost 40-55 cents.
Did you see the thing on Discovery channel recently about the current-day AC company making sports cars again but putting V8's in them themselves? The whole body is carbon fiber.
The one they were using for most of the footage was painted identically to yours, down to the stripes.
Haven't been terribly active for over a week except for some flip-flop ELN trades. I'm a bit of a stuckholder right now, though. Tanked pretty good after I'd bought a lot of it today. No worries. Like SANM, it seems that no matter what price I pay, I can sell for more. Just have to wait sometimes.
Very, VERY glad to have gotten out of all of my PFE puts profitably. Turned right around and headed up.
Until yesterday afternoon, I had no stock at all. Not even my ELN core position, having gotten out of it on a spike. Just the ELN and SANM calls. Now I've got more of the ELN calls and a boatload of ELN stock.
If it does a repeat of it's activity over the past two months related to options strike prices, it should break $15 at some point before expiration. Although I'll sell most of my calls if the stock gets to the upper 14's.
If you don't have Flash installed on your machine, that's the ActiveX control it's trying to install. To my knowledge, that's the only ActiveX control any of our ad agencies could possibly use.
I thought we did and I'll look through my emails for login info. If not, I'll subscribe. In either event, I'll pass the info along to you and Dave.
I'm pretty sure the owner's club's motto was "Zero to 60. In the same day."
We tried a "Who's Online" thing a long time ago.
Not workable at this scale. Way too much overhead to keep tabs on the comings and goings of tens of thousands of people at a time.
We weren't discussing field names in the db (SQL Server) and giving the names of ASP files is not a security risk as far as I know. Besides, anyone can look at their URL to determine what ASP module is in use at the time. For example, as I'm writing this, I can look up and see I'm using post_reply.asp and the querystring that was passed to it.
That's gonna move a LOT of water.
Can't wait to see what my son comes up with for me. Said it should be a couple of weeks. He's got some program that I think is called "Rhino" and quickly showed me with it what he's got in mind. And my understanding is that he's got the equipment at his disposal to make things directly from his Rhino files.
If I didn't mention it, it turns out the copper coil isn't wrapped around the stainless steel interior rod. He'll wrap the coils around a much thicker pipe, remove it, then put in the much smaller stainless rod. After painting the coils flat black.
Really looking forward to testing. Especially to see how it performs on days that're sunny but cold. If it works out, it really wouldn't be the end of the world to cut big kerfs in the most frequently-used part of the workshop floor (maybe 500 square feet) and put tubing in to warm at least that part of the floor, which would gradually warm other parts of it.
I'm planning a trip to the store today to pick up a bunch of 16' tarps (about 1000 total square feet) and two more 150k BTU kerosone heaters and a thermostat for them. Going to seal off the front half of the building since the rest doesn't need heat. Am expecting it to make a huge difference. Not much R value to tarp, but it'll be a lot better than just leaving the unused back half of the shop wide open.
The old 150k heater was having a problem with frequently blowing out clouds of smoke. Finally determined the cause this weekend. Gotta quit burning diesel in it. Found the ignitor and it was fouled like a too-rich spark plug. Cleaned the whole assembly, put it back together, and it's working perfectly.
You know, it's never particularly endearing to have any of my hard work referred to as a "Blunder".
Only activity today was selling my CIEN puts at $2.00 ($1.90 basis).
Portfolio value: Up 0.4%. Cash: 14.2%
Cost vs efficiency doesn't really become a factor until further increases in efficiency are very small with the cost of those increases very high. This (to me) is all about extracting as much heat as possible. The cost is spent only once. The energy extraction is forever.
Hose on the roof is definitely good, though. Anytime I drain and refill the pool, I run the water through several hundred feet of black hose run around the pool and a lot of heat gets gained that way. In fact, this whole project started with pumping pool water through a bunch of black hose.
In my particular situation, there isn't a sun-facing large roof anywhere near close enough to the pool to make it worthwhile to drag the hose up to the roof.
Edit: If I took my son's variation and made it very large panels covering the roof, I bet the water flow would need to be really high. Even with my comparatively inefficient prototype, if it were roof-sized, the output might very well be steam at the volumes I was dealing with. It would at least be extremely hot.
Why not? Can't figure out why you'd even ask a question like that.
FWIW, no, we're not in the same office, city, or state.
Too late for me to edit my previous post.
A separate 158-volt generator wouldn't be needed. That's what the Honda's electric motor is. If I had diesel torque to work with, I'd just change the profile of the programming that governs when the motor becomes a generator.
Actually sitting here talking to my son about your project.
I drew him something last night asking if he'd be able to do it. Forming a bunch of nearly full circles in the copper plate through which the copper pipe would have to pushed. The idea being to put the copper plate in as much contact with the tubing as possible. I don't think simply soldering the pipe to a flat sheet is as efficient as you can get. Too little contact with the copper sheet.
What he said was that it'd be better to press half-circle shapes into two sheets of thin copper and sandwich the pipe grid between them. Full contact all around the pipe. And a heckuva lot easier to do. Then just screw the sheets of copper together so the assembly could be taken apart if necessary later.
I suggested a 4x8x1/2" "tank" but he doesn't like that idea because the amount of water touching the heated surface is such a small fraction of the total volume.
He just showed me a drawing it'd be hard to describe in writing. But I'll try. A rectangular box like we're talking about, but more like 4' tall and about 6" wide and deep. Inside the box, a curved sheet of polished aluminum. Bent nearly into a semi-circle. Then a piece of round stock of any material that doesn't transfer heat well (so it doesn't suck out much heat), then copper tubing tightly wrapped around the stock. I'd assume wound so that there are no spaces between coils. This would be suspended above the curved aluminum "mirror" so that the light coming in would hit ALL of the coil. And hooking up an array of these.
I like this idea.
He said he'll consult his physics professor to see what shape the mirror should be and the optimum positioning of the coil, which he's currently assuming is the center of the imaginary circle of which the mirror is part.
He just clarified. The stock around which the tubing is wound is stainless steel not only because it wouldn't suck the heat out of the coils but also so it'll reflect some light onto parts of the coil not directly facing the sun. Also, he said the coil would not be wound tightly. There'd be about 1/4" gap between winds so the inside stock has some surface to reflect light onto.
The idea for the mirror isn't only to reflect and focus light all over the coil but to increase the number of hours during which it's capturing the most heat energy it can without repositioning it.
I told him that if trying to capture the most energy across the largest amount of sun movement would be a compromise, it'd be better to assume perfect alignment and capture as much heat as possible in that one position and I can take care of keeping the alignment right throughout the day.
He also suggested a thermocouple, which would turn the pump on and off automatically as the sun comes up and goes down so you're not cooling the water at night. Seems to me that'd work or a photoelectric sensor, which can easily be bought at Home Depot.
Anyway, he's intellectually invested in this project now, so I'll be curious to see what he comes up with. I'm going to try to have him and me build it soon so it can be tested as a way to put some heat into the workshop, though in that case it'd be like spitting in the ocean. But would test the concept.
Oh, I asked him, and his major is "Manufacturing Engineering", but said my description of "making stuff" isn't far off, since that's the aspect that fascinates him the most. Grabbing ideas out of the heads of people like me and turning them into real objects he can touch and observe working as intended.
He said he can probably have me a working prototype in a couple of weeks. His professors are real generous about letting him spend class time (and nights) with access to everything the school's got so he can make stuff.
Since he's got such a love and knack for making things, he's already getting started making marketable stuff (like my wonderful 4x10 welding table that cost him $350 to make but would sell for a multiple of that) and is always looking for more stuff to make/sell because what intrigues him most upon graduation is self-employment (that apple didn't fall as far from the tree as I initially thought) just making and selling things. Which dovetails nicely with my plans because I don't have a fraction of his talent for actual creation of stuff, but have a seemingly endless supply of ideas and the ability to finance his work and share in the profits. I think we could end up with quite a partnership.
Oh, and we're keeping our eyes open for a totalled Civic Hybrid because both of us are dying to tear it down and not only put the electric motor to more effective use, but see how the heck the tranny works in it.
I'd love so much to use that motor and tranny in a car but with far taller gearing, lots more battery capacity, and a very small turbo-charged diesel engine of low horsepower but similar torque to the Honda's gas engine. And with the diesel, it might be possible to make a 158-volt generator to mount on it along with the standard 12-volt, to do more charging of the electric motor's battery.
Sold a little bit of my core ELN position @ $13.78 on the off chance I can replace them cheaper. Didn't manage to get any options sold on anything. Expect to be able to sell the CIEN puts for small gains next week, though. I've watched it get to this price range several times, only to slowly pull back to the $2.60's. Don't know why this time should be different.
Also opened an Ameritrade account (through one of the ads) because the commissions on options trades are substantially lower than I'm paying now. Bought a little SANM in that account at $4.42, but mostly plan to use that account for options where I'm playing them for a relatively small move.
Though I was pretty inactive today, my portfolio did well due to current positions.
Portfolio value: Up 8.0% today. Cash position: 9.4% (not margin)
Still trying to sell some of my ELN Jan15 calls @ 60. No takers yet.
Bought CIEN Jan5 puts at $2.00. Followed by a GTC sell set at $2.20. If it looks like it's going to do it's usually slow melt to $2.60, I'll adjust the sell price of the options accordingly.
That's another benefit of puts. You can buy them on (some) companies you can't short.
Thinking about some AMCC. Like CIEN, it's a boring one that does pretty reliable and drawn-out swings between $2.60 and $3.00.
Short-term, my PFE puts are looking more and more like toast. Anytime it comes down to $23.90, there's a huge wall of buyers. It'd have to get to $23.80 or lower today for the huge (15,716 contracts, or 1.5MM shares) Ask size on the puts to come down enough to give me half a chance.
Edit: Also trying to buy more SANM Apr5 calls at 0.25. No takers.
Trailing Stopped out of the last of my trading ELN at $13.64, basis $13.36.
Down to just the core position. Considering lightening up on my calls at about a 4-bagger.
I had a British friend in Germany back in about 1980 with one of these, and at the time, they were as commonplace on surface streets (but NOT the Autobahn) as VW's here.
The engine was tiny. If I remember right, a 600 or 650cc boxer twin. A friend and I replaced the engine in my friend's car and the two of us easily swapped it out by hand.
Weird shifter in them, too. The shaft went horizontally through the dash and curved up inside the car to approximate the more familiar vertical shifter.
I wouldn't know for sure, but wouldn't Citroen be French for "Lemon"? Giving rise to the meaning of the word nowadays as it applies to cars?
Another notable thing about those (and all Citroens) is the very soft suspension with travel along the lines of what a motocross motorcycle has.
Looks like iHub is going to reach 9MM posts within hours of SI hitting 22MM. Today.
There went the last of the ELN calls I had for sale. 20% gain on that batch. The ones I'm holding are up more like 200%, having started buying them at 15.
Ended up with only 9 of the PFE puts sold, for a 50% gain.
I think the only other two trades today were getting out of some ELN I'd bought yesterday, then taking another ride for about 10 cents. Which would be more like 30 cents if I'd held them. That and buying some SANM Apr5 calls at 30 cents.
Portfolio value: Up 7.5% today. Cash position: 52.9% margin.
Bought a few SANM Apr5 calls at 30 cents. The Bollinger bands are still tight on it and likely will be tighter after today. I think the breakout will be upward. But am not confident enough in that to pay what's a relatively high price for the stock right now.
Darnit. My sell order on the ELN calls is a Day order, so if they don't all get sold today and I still want to sell them tomorrow, I'll have to pay extra commission.
I guess what doesn't get sold today will be added to the keepers.
A problem with big options positions is getting them sold.
Exactly 9 of my PFE Jan22.5 puts have sold at 15 cents so far. And with the Ask at 6,964, and the stock above $24 again, I'm not optimistic about the rest selling today. Fortunately it's a GTC order, so I won't have to pay extra commissions by putting in another order tomorrow.
Looks like my portfolio is up around 10% today (I don't usually shoot for those kinds of numbers -- I'm fairly conservative) thanks in part to ELN's performance which has helped the stock and the calls. And definitely a huge boost from the last trade on the PFE puts being at 50% more than yesterday's price. Although I do have a large number of them, they don't represent much of my portfolio on a valuation basis.
Edit: The Ask on the ELN calls has reached my asking price, along with a total of 897 of them being offered, and as I was typing this, 18 of them got sold. Actually 1, then 8, then 9. Who on earth buys ONE options contract?
Edit 2: There goes another 9 of the ELN calls. 18 to go. Keeping the rest until closer to expiration.
Nope. Not anytime soon anyway.
I actually thought about that because I personally don't like the extra space it uses up, but really didn't want to add more to the user-config stuff yet. I'm not 100% pleased with how I do user-config right now and figured out a way I could do it a lot more efficiently (perhaps reducing computer workload here as much as 5%), but it's a huge project that hasn't bubbled up to the top of the list yet.
Search lag has been an ongoing problem for months.
The search indexer only kicks in either when the CPU is unbusy enough (that never happens during market hours) or the backlog has gotten big enough.
It's been improved quite a bit through increased coding efficiencies, but it's still not as realtime as I want it to be. I suspect the best solution will be upgrading to SQL Server 2005, which we haven't even set a timeframe for yet. It's supposed to have very dramatic improvements to full-text search.
If that doesn't work, we'll have to move search to a separate computer that does nothing BUT build/maintain catalogs and handle search queries.
Edit: At this writing, the search is behind by 21 messages and growing. During market hours, I'll often see the backlog reach about 150 or so before the cataloger finally kicks in and clears the backlog, which only takes it a few seconds.
Edit 2: That time the backlog reached 31 messages before the cataloger kicked in.
That's because I was working on the underlying query.
Changes to the ASP are easily done isolated from the production environment. Not so anything involving the database. But I went with it because it was for a good cause and I knew the outage would be very short and a very small part of the site.
Should be looking a tad different now.
Love that Calvin and Hobbes strip. Calvin's twisted versions of snowmen have long been an inspiration for my daughter, who decorated the office windows similar each of the past two years. I'll have to get a picture and post it.
BTW, FTF.
I expect links to Family Guy wavs.
Did you already do something about the password prompting, or am I looking in the wrong place? I just removed it from edit_profile. Anywhere else?
It's on the list.
Amazing volatility premium on SFCC options. Stock is currently at $15.45. The Jan15 puts are priced for a $13.60 stock price and the Jan15 calls are priced for $16.80.
Similarly, RIMM, which is at $67.30 right now. Jan67.5 puts are $3.30 (implying a value of $64.20 on the stock) and the calls are priced the same, implying $70.60.
Max Pain (the stock price at which the most options would expire worthless) is at $65, but the open interest numbers are so low I don't consider MP to be much of a factor right now.
FWIW, Max Pain on PFE is solidly at $25, with huge open interest. Which doesn't make me feel real good about my $22.50 puts, which is why this ride, if I'm able to get off of it, is likely my last ride on them.