sleepydragon

CP’s options are only trading at 30% vol is seems really low. People haven’t been buying protections . Not sure why there’s no fears on this stock..

sold most of my Freddie commons , shorted some Google puts

It’s interesting and surprising that the official tvs in china have a change of tone and are singing praises for Ukrainian. I think the peace deal is not good for Xi. Lower the risk for china to attack taiwan as Russia will be on the US side and will be free to take advantage of it when Chinese military is moved south.

sold puts on MSTR, CACI and OXY

Love it!

thanks boilermaker.

This puts he sold are 2 month to expiration ATM , with premium of 8%. That’s so good! The stocks i am looking at only has put premium of 1-3% two months out.

I am reading how selling options is taxed. So when selling puts, if the puts expire worthless, you are taxed at short term capital gain rate. But if the puts is exercised, the tax on the premium you received is effectively deferred and is later determined by how long you hold the stocks that were put to you. So that’s advantageous than buying stocks directly. Maybe i shall be doing this from now when buying stocks.

@boilermaker75 when you write puts, do you just write short term slightly OTM ones? I am looking at a stock (not brk), and thinking to sell a one year 10-15% OTM put. It seems if one is bullish in a stock, it’s more likely the put will be worthless if expiration date is further out.. (though i admit i may end up never own the stock selling long term puts).

Right. This is for those who habe some cash on the side paying for future expenses or emergency fund, but now can also use that cash as an “insurance float”. In the event that put option is exercised and also I need to use that cash for certain things, i can raise money selling other stocks in the portfolio.

What about this idea: Suppose you are like me, who’s already 75% net-worth invested in brk. One could sell 100 shares of Brk atm put with strike $500 and 1 year expiration, and pocket about $2000-2500 put premium. At the same time you put $50000 in Tbills earning 4%. One year later, if Brk is higher than current price. You have earned 8% (2000+ 2000/50k). If Brk is lower, you will spend the 50k to buy Brk stocks. HOWEVER, you can sell these stocks immediately if you want - you will lose some money but since you already have a huge BrK existing holdings that has already appreciated a lot, it’s probably not a big deal to feel bad about. You can also keep the stock of course. It could also be better to sell the two years put. The amount of the puts to sell can be capped at 10% of your existing brk shares (so you will increase your brk shares in portfolio by 10% if brk dont go up any in two years) What u guys think?

When i worked at an option market making desk at credit suisse (now long gone, hahaha), this is the book i was asked to read: Option Volatility and Pricing: Advanced Trading Strategies and Techniques, 2nd Edition https://a.co/d/4uNGXPC

not necessarily surivivor bias. a lot of people buy calls and most lose money. but there are still people who use calls to bet on high confidence ideas..(insider trading, which is illegal of course, is one example).

my point is really that buying calls is much closer to a free lunch than selling a call, because of the huge leverage to upside and downside capped at zero. selling a call is dumb, unless you do it systematically on a basket of stocks .

You guys have to take interest rate into account when looking at call options. Current interest rate is 4%. That means when market maker writes a call he needs to borrow at 4% to finance his stock purchase. Or think in another way, you have 50k cash earning 4% and can use the interest earned to finance part of your call. So writing calls seem to be good deal only to many now because interest rate is higher now. I think writing calls (and puts) only make sense if you do it on a basket of stocks. Historically you make a little 2% extra — this is based on sell side backtests. This is a product commonly sold by many banks’s private wealth department. buying calls is the smartest thing you can do, if you are right. It’s a gift to retail investors. I dont do it cuz i am not that smart.. but people make fortunes buying calls. selling puts makes sense too. You can have your cash earning 4% plus getting put premium. When things go bad, you buy some stocks. But Brk’s put is too cheap nowadays, partially because interest rate is high and vol is low. You make like what, 2% writing a 1 year 10% otm put, i think? Not worth doing really, imo

4, 6, 13, 17 weeks T-bills

Sold most of my LQDA, Gral, BGC, PLTR, NBIS. Still have them in coffee cans (~0.5%)

“Shale is peaked“ is actually bullish for the biggest US oil companies that has the best fields (cvx, xom, oxy)

I think it can’t be done now unless he’s willing to pay in shares and he want this matter to get settled now.

I noticed the letter in the annual report has more contents (and more interesting) than the “annual letter”. Was it like this for prior years or it’s a new thing? Wondering why is that..

https://defensescoop.com/2025/02/20/dod-review-consulting-contracts-cuts-trump-priorities-doge/

China lab #3 ? (Covid, deepseek, new covid)

isnt F35 (or maybe the next generation) you can have just plane that’s piloted , which control 5 other planes that are unpiloted. I think I read about this somewhere.

dealraker, thanks for your insights. when i was in college (decades ago), as a computer science major, i vaguely remembered BAH came to campus to recruit. The consensus among the students are consulting companies built software for other companies , and thus has no great future. You want to work for companies that build products for themselves. That’s what keeping me from buying CACI and i bought LMT instead. However, CACI’s price is down so much recently it does look very appealing and i found myself keep looking at it.

How about CACI?