is happily being the wheel rather than a rusty old spoke
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Working for me. It might've been a temporary outage or might not be system-wide and only affecting certain tickers.
I'm working on getting a new quotes provider. I don't have a major problem with the current one except the cost. It's really quite high. We're talking to two other providers on a way to get equal or better quotes here either free, nearly free, or as a profit center.
I tried to talk QuoteMedia down in price since everyone's used to them now and any major change, even if it's an improvement, is always met with a lot of resistance and backlash, but they're not interested in reducing the price to keep the business, so I've gotten more aggressive about looking for a replacement.
IMO, as big as iHub is, and now having Silicon Investor in the mix (which is one of the best-known names in the arena), we shouldn't have to pay for quotes that include "Provided By" with them. We should be getting paid for the right to be presented as part of our sites.
Nah. While it's definitely intended to be a place for the Mother Earth News tree-hugging grassroots homepower discussion, I don't want to limit it to that. I'm also fascinated with and want to discuss things like what Honda and Toyota are doing with hybrids.
I meant to say I got out of the ELN trading shares I *bought* yesterday. Out this morning.
Still have trading shares. My ELN position is still about 90% larger than I like to have in any one stock.
Yeah, when a dramatic move in a stock is based on fundamentals, I try to wait 3 days before placing my bets that it's going the other way. The exception is when an over-reaction is extreme. I don't think it is on RIMM quite yet.
Scottrade doesn't offer pre-market trading. Which works for me. I'm not a morning person.
Couldn't figure out why my portfolio value had suddenly jumped so dramatically. Turned out someone paid 0.15 for the PFE $22.50 puts. Mine are for sale, but of course it wasn't any of mine that got bought. But at least Scottrade thinks I've made 50% on them.
Any emailed reports of problems? If not, I'll go ahead and yank the password prompt off the account management screen.
Edit: Out my ELN trading shares yesterday at $13.13, basis $12.89.
Look at SFCC. I read the overview of the stockholders rights plan that's causing this pop. Smoke and mirrors, IMO. My wife worked at a company that had a poison pill in place for shareholders to benefit from a takeover (which happened), and I've seen other poison pills. I don't think I've seen any *this* poisonous, though. It reads to me like they've made it so a takeover can't happen because, no matter how much the stock is trading at at the time, the takeover makes it a double.
Edit 2: I forgot to take into account the $130 exercise right of the option to purchase double the shares for the current price. Not sure how to factor that in. Does it put a floor under the stock? A ceiling over it?
I forgot you wanted a blonde version.
A put is an option contract that lets you bet a stock's price is going down. Similar to shorting but:
1. Limited risk but the 100% loss scenario is VERY likely. When I traded them very actively, 40% of them expired worthless. And that's an unusually low number for an options buyer.
2. Better than shorting because if the stock goes down, say, 5%, it's likely the puts have gone up in value 50% or more.
3. Worse than shorting because the likelihood of making money is far less. If I would've shorted PFE instead of buying puts, I'd have made money already. Instead, I'm sitting here waiting for it to go down enough for my puts to be profitable.
4. Reiterating #1, the loss potential is "only" 100%. Short a stock that becomes a 10-bagger and your loss is 900%.
Yeah, I came here to see if any problems were reported with the changes implemented yesterday and had to waste about 15 minutes only to find out none were.
As soon as I'm sure that the new change is working and not wreaking havoc, I'll remove the password prompt.
Should be tomorrow, and a change like that can be made safely during market hours (famous last words, oft-stated and regretted).
Not sure why that would be.
One test I forgot to do today before implementing was closing my browser, deleting my cookie file for iHub, then going back to the site. As expected, I wasn't logged in, but was able to do so.
So I don't think the worst-case scenario of a bunch of people being unable to access the site has happened. I'm sure Matt will let me know about it as soon as he checks email if that's the case.
Nope. But it looks like either Matt or Dave is changing things so it's a little clearer what type of post you're writing.
Slow as in page-loading speed, or slow as in not much traffic?
Hopefully we don't have a bunch of people unable to log in because of the changes implemented this afternoon.
The heart of the new routine has been in place for over a month, specifically so it wouldn't be likely to result in people having to log back in.
Nothing at all. It might've been a temporary bandwidth issue on your end. I get those a lot from home.
The trace log shows nothing unusual.
Also, Dave's got some process running every 20 minutes that looks like it takes about 2 minutes to finish and ramps the CPU up to about 50%, but I haven't yet seen the site slow down when that process is running.
Best if I assume you don't understand calls, so I can give them my standard definition, which makes puts easier to understand.
Call options are the right, but not obligation, to buy a stock on or before the expiration date at a set price, called the strike price. That's the perspective from the buyer of calls. The seller of calls is obligated to sell his stock at the strike price should the buyer demand it. Which will happen if the stock price is above the strike price on expiration day, and might happen if it gets past it before then.
Puts are the opposite.
A put buyer is buying the right (but not obligation) to SELL the stock to the put seller at the strike price. The put seller is obligated to pay the strike price if the options are exercised ("The stock gets put to them" in this case. "Called from them" in the case of calls).
All options contracts are based on 100 shares. For example, Pfizer (PFE) January 22.5 puts are currently priced at 10 cents on the bid and 15 cents on the ask. That's the per-share price. Since each contract represents 100 shares, you can buy a single put contract on PFE for $15, and sell it for $10.
$22.50 is the Strike Price of these particular puts. So, what I bought today was the right to sell someone PFE stock at a price of $22.50 per share.
The stock closed today at $24.04, so my puts are what is called Out of the Money, often called "OTM". If the strike price of the puts were $25, they'd be In the Money ("ITM").
My purchase of puts is, in the simplest terms, a bet that the price of Pfizer stock will be below $22.50 sometime between now and January 20th. Options always expire on the 3rd Friday of the month.
If the stock trades at $21.00 between now and then, I can buy the stock, and exercise my options, forcing the seller of the puts I bought to buy the stock from me at $22.50. For a $1.50 per share gain.
More likely, though, I'd sell my puts to someone else, since they'd then be worth $150 per contract.
It's basically similar to shorting the stock. I'm placing a bet that the stock price will go down.
But without the unlimited loss potential of shorting. If PFE skyrockets to $50, my puts expire worthless, meaning I lose 100% of the price I paid for them. If I were short the stock, I'd lose a bunch. If it went to $75, I'd lose twice as much as I'd invested in the short position. With contracts, my loss is limited to 100%.
It's worth noting that worthless expiration is the fate of a huge majority of options contracts. I consider myself a somewhat decent, but far from great or even good, options trader. I have a lot of them expire worthless. But more than make up for those losses by the ones that don't. The leverage can be incredible.
A perfect example is Elan (ELN). I paid $15 per contract for December $12.50 calls and sold them at prices ranging from $20 to $65 per contract. And sold too early. They topped out around $150 per contract. I currently have a sizable batch of January $15 calls on the same company and have paid between $15 and $40 per contract for them (average price $25.71 per contract) and they're currently worth $45.
A 5% move in the stock price can be a 50% or higher move in the price of its options. The leverage, when you're right, can be incredible!
Oh, one more thing while I have you thoroughly confused. I don't think for a minute that PFE can possibly get down to $22.50 between now and January 20th. So, why did I buy the puts? Simply because if it drops to, say, $23.50 in the next week or so, a lot of other people will think it can get down to $22.50, which drives up the price of the puts. By a bunch. There's no hard and fast formula that can be used, but I estimate that a $23.50 stock price between now and a week from Friday would result in the puts being worth about $40 per contract. Just an estimate. I won't get into the even more confusing concept of "time premium".
Suffice it to say that if you're extremely positive a stock is going to go down from where it's at, and you use money you can risk losing 100% of, puts can be a good way to play your belief. Very high risk and very high reward, but the reward only happens when you're right.
Lemme complicate it just one step further. Take the perspective of the person selling the contracts.
I currently own a bunch of ELN. It closed at $12.93 today.
The January $12.50 call contracts are priced at $1.25x$1.30 (per share -- remember to multiple by 100 to get the contract price), so I can write covered calls on the stock right now if I want to. That means I can sell calls at $1.25 on each share I own.
The buyer of those calls would be buying the right to buy the stock from me at $12.50 on or before January 20th. But they'd have paid $1.25 per share for that right, so they're unlikely to do so until the stock gets above $13.75.
If I sold the calls, I get two benefits. I essentially lock in an effective sale price of my stock of $13.75. I also reduce my effective cost per share by $1.25, making it easier for me to sit tight through a certain amount of tankage. And if the stock goes down to $12.50 or lower, and doesn't get above that price on or before January 20th, I get to keep both the money I got for the contracts and all of my stock.
It's why it's generally true that the only people who make money on options are those who sell them.
The downside, which I've experienced, is if the stock skyrockets, I don't benefit from any price greater than $13.75. If it's $15 per share, that's my tough luck. I will have sold someone the right to buy the stock from me for $12.50 a share.
This happened to me a couple of months ago in ELN. When it was trading in the low 8's, I sold $7.50 calls on some of my stock. The price climbed and the Monday after expiration day, the stock was gone from my account and $7.50 per share cash was added to my account.
I'm really going to be eyeing RIMM puts tomorrow if it overreacts to its news. I like puts when there's a lot of optimism but a lot of temporarily-forgotten reasons to be pessimistic. That's what got me into the PFE's to begin with.
But I may not get the puts even if the stock over-extends. Last time I checked, there was way too much volatility premium priced into both puts and calls for my liking.
And if I can get my PFE puts sold this week, it'll likely be the last time I play them this go-round. The current stock price is, IMO, a lot closer to having the challenges priced in. And PFE assures everyone they're going to be very happy with them between now and February.
Oh, goodie! I see you're making oatmeal raisin! My favorite!
And that fact is well-known in my family. That and my love of deviled eggs.
Yet if I want either, I usually have to make them myself.
I kept the water flowing through mine at a pretty good clip, but I experimented with restricting the flow and you're right. The output can get extremely hot! And once the pool got up into the 80's, even with the decent flow I had, the output was pretty hot. And I think that pump only used about 100-150 watts.
The pump for the koi pond in my front yard is at least twice as big as that other pump was and between it and the lights, there's less than 400 watts being used. I used to run it all off a small inverter and marine battery in the generator shed, and would trickle-charge the battery off the grid with a standard charger. Another proof-of-concept thing. I'd determined that a single 150-watt panel on the roof of that building would be more than enough for the pond if I cycled the pump to run maybe 10 minutes out of every hour. But the cost of the panels never got low enough for me to finish the project.
Replying again, but keeping it shorter. Don't want to give away too much info.
Basically, the change that just got made to the site mirrors a recent change on Silicon Investor that makes it impossible to successfully tinker with cookies. Any attempt to edit them manually renders the site unusable. To the person who edited their cookies.
Wouldn't surprise me.
And it's a real hassle running big, highly-visible websites. A real feather in a hacker's cap to successfully do something we don't want them to do. SQL insertion used to be a vulnerability on both sites that I think has been pretty well shut down. A little too tightly, but that's the way it has to be. That's why sometimes a Search will take you nowhere but the homepage. I parse every form field and querystring looking for SQL commands.
But we're a prime target for every manner of attack, and hackers, as a whole, are infinitely resourceful.
He deserves a LOT more than he gets. He wrote all the administrative stuff for SI and it's brilliant! Since he's such an adept programmer and enjoys doing it, we're slowly finding a level that works for both of us so he can do as much programming as he wants, but when it comes to User Interface and supporting queries, he does it my way, for the sake of standardization.
What's great about working with him is that there are areas he's particularly strong in where I'm not so strong, and vice-versa. He can write SQL queries to do things I'd be unable to figure out in SQL and instead use ASP to do the same thing more slowly. But I've got him beat on ASP and some of the more esoteric aspects of tweaking both ASP and SQL for maximum speed.
I suspect he's like me, though, in that he enjoys programming when he wants to and hates it when he has to. It's part of my job title and why I'm paid the big bux, so I just have to bite the bullet and do it.
Otherwise, I'd have him doing ALL the programming and just letting me come in after the fact to tweak better performance out of it.
Edit: Matt's inclusion in the geek loop is equally synergistic. He can't write code worth a damn, but he understands DNS and TCP/IP, operating systems, etc so well that I don't even bother learning them. He always has it covered.
Yes, and you should be ashamed!!!
That's Matt's problem. He doesn't program and I don't Admin. That's the only reason we haven't killed each other yet. <g>
Amazing!
Reminds me of changing out the plug wires on my 89 Taurus SHO at the same time I replaced the timing belt. Didn't think I needed to take notes since I had a Chilton's.
I should've taken notes. Of course, the car wouldn't run. There were essentially two different diagrams for the spark plug wiring on that engine and one of them was wrong. I found the second (correct) one only after I took the valve covers back off and figured out the firing order on my own based on the positioning of cam lobes as I turned the engine over by hand.
Now I've got a factory service manual for that car.
And that was an expensive set of plug wires. Yet another expensive item I bought for that car BEFORE I ended up with a parts car with every single part, in excellent condition, I've ever bought for the one I was driving.
Learned my lesson and as soon as I got the 94 SHO for my daughter, immediately started looking for a parts car and found one with only 85k miles that'd been wrecked and nearly every part but some body panels and the front suspension is in perfect condition.
Did you get logged out?
Test for echo...
I'm kinda curious how many people got logged out by the thing I just put into production. Hopefully not very many. 90% of it has been in production for a month. Just not the part that makes you log in if things aren't completely right with how the site keeps track of who you are.
I'm actually ready to put the checksum thing into production and, if it works, will remove the password prompts from other pages.
"shows what board the posts come from?" You mean in the MailBox like I'm doing on SI? If so, I can probably bang out that code in the next half hour, assuming the checksum thing doesn't suddenly make me real busy.
I bought a sizable chunk more ELN this afternoon at $12.89 and immediately put in a trailing stop on that batch, but it never got triggered.
Just noticed the bid/ask jumping around like crazy on RIMM and checked news. Found one about PALM. Good news. That they're planning to roll out a Treo based on Windows Mobile. Palm OS has been a bit of a problem for me here and there. I've got the Treo 600 and have tried out the 650, but its keyboard is still largely unusable to me. I'm hoping the next version keeps in mind that some of us have large hands. If not, I'll have to break down and get the plug-in keyboard or the adaptor that lets my laptop use it to get on the internet.
Of course, I didn't get any filled at 15, but that was the Ask for about the last 20 minutes. Problem is, with PFE above 24, everyone's happy to sell at 15 and buy at 10. It has to get below about $23.75 at this point for anyone to want to buy them at 15.
My $14.00 SFCC stopped out at $14.09. Since that was a larger batch, I ended up flat on the SFCC trades, but a little loss after commissions.
I also used that foil-wrap insulation in mine to limit heat loss through the wood sides and back of the box. What'd be really trick is for the front of the box to have the kind of thermal glass that'd let as much heat into the box as possible but let none of it escape.
I'd also thought about a kind of glass that'd magnify/focus thin lines of light so that (more intense) light would only reach the tubing and nowhere else, but definitely have no idea who to contact to have such a sheet of glass made. And then it'd get a lot more complicated anyway because you'd have to have a (likely computer-controlled) mechanism for keeping the box correctly positioned throughout the day. Similar to the controllers that do the same with solar panels, but the controller would get its signal from a temperature sensor on top of one of the pipes. Or perhaps affixing a solar panel to the box in exactly the same plane and using a positioner already on the market. And the solar panel could run the pump.
If the servo motors of those positioners are strong enough. A 4x8 box full of water-filled copper tubing is REAL heavy.
Yes, I had thought about the copper sheet and soldering it to the pipes, but didn't know where I could get it.
Even better, I'd think, if you could form half-circle valleys in exactly the right places in the copper sheet so it'd be in contact with the back half of the pipes. Or form nearly complete circles just big enough you have to gently tap the pipes into them.
Hey can you tell me where I can find a lot of Family Guy wavs? Each site I've found in Google so far has been nothing but a way to deliver a bunch of popup ads and who knows what else.
$ Trail Stop got me out of SFCC @ $14.05. Trying again @ $14.00. Slightly more shares, with a 25-cent trail, which I'll tighten up if any alerts trigger I've got set upwards from here.
Too bad you can't set it up so you can put in a limit order to buy at $12.85 and, if the order fills, have a stop loss at $12.74 go into effect. I'd really like to use a platform that's more automatable and will have to check into that one they advertise on TV. I don't remember the name of it except that one of the commercials showed a guy's computer doing trades. At the reading of his will.
I don't pay attention to the market much during the day except the first and last hour and try to put the rest of the day as much on auto-pilot as I can just by setting limit orders before I dig into work.
Speaking of which, finishing this cup of coffee then heading that way.
Though I think $12.95 is a price you'd look back on 3 months from now as a steal, I wouldn't pay that today for a position I planned to get out of today. It's being really iffy about $13 and the volume's a little on the light side.
But when it does break out (or down) it tends to do so in dramatic fashion on a lot of volume.
Small ask size on my PFE puts now, so if it can lose about another nickel, my limit order should be part of the Ask, and I should get a fill if it can do about $23.95.
I'd love to take out the last of the ELN Jan15 calls at 45 cents right now (this coming from a guy who owns most of his at 15 cents), but Scottrade only allows me to hold 500 options contracts on any one security and it'd take more than that to take out the ones offered at .45.
Edit: In SFCC small at $14.16. Putting in a sell order at $14.46 and heading to the office.
Don't even get me started on my "It's better to go for a LOT of base hits than trying too often to get homeruns" bit.
I try to get the equivalent of doubles and triples in my options plays and, yes, my ELN, along with most of my calls, are being held for a homer, but the rest of my trading is just for a hundred or so bucks here and there. Including part of my ELN position. Right now I'm holding about 250% of the shares (but only 80% of the options) I allow myself for a long-term position, but the 150% excess in the stock will be flipped at the first profit opportunity.
Edit: And his ELN trade was a very solid base hit. Feels damned good, doesn't it, Matt.
I thought we had you weaned off of those penny stocks. You can get that same risk/reward rush playing options. But you have to be very careful and disciplined and be able to support your position based on fundamentals and technicals before playing them.
My PFE puts, for example, are based on my belief that the recent pop on its patent win was overdone plus there's nearly insurmountable resistance at $25, but relatively weak support at $24. When it's in the mid $24's, the Jan22.5 puts can be (for now -- they'll lose time premium soon) be bought for a dime and when it drops below $24, everyone and their yellow dog will buy them from you at 15 cents.
Just got back from breakfast and noticed it'd done that pop. You should reload in the $12.80's, if you're able.
I noticed the Jan15 calls reached a high of 50 cents. My sell order on about half of mine is 55 cents. Also noticed some of the PFE puts went for a nickel, but I didn't get any.
Bought a bunch of PFE Jan22.5 puts at a dime. Have another order in to buy a bunch at a nickel.
Already have a limit order in to sell the ones I have at 15 cents. GTC.
It's through it now, but it's not acting like it's a sure thing it'll hold. If it does, $13 will be a huge wall. If I had trading shares that were profitable in it right now (I don't), I'd have a limit order in to sell at $12.98 and wait for a pullback from $13 to get back in.
It should eventually break $12.90. The offer size is smaller there with each visit.
PFE up nicely. May get another opportunity to take a quick 50% ride on the Jan22.5 puts again. Yep. I'll take the tiny SANM profit now and put in an order for as many of those puts as I can at a dime, which is the current best bid, then if I get them, put them up for sale at 15 again.
Usually, I trade pretty actively the first hour of the day, then set limit buy/sell orders and alerts and ignore the market unless an alert pops up, then focus on it again in the last hour of trading. I'm hanging in there a little longer today because my wife's off work today and we're going to Awful Waffle (aka Waffle House) soon before I head to the office.
Just broke $12.90 on ELN. Wonder if it'll hold this time.
I think even taking the commercially available ones and enclosing them in an airtight box would increase their efficiency.
But building it yourself is immensely more gratifying. And copper tubing has great heat transfer properties and a lot more thermal momentum than the plastic bladders used in the ones you can buy.