Agreed. A value investor who scaled his puts too big, probably because he thought he wanted the stock at 90; until it got there and then decided he no longer did. We've all done that. Some of us still do after 20 years.
...and on a cheaper underlying, too - maybe some cheap ETF with minimal counterparty risk (i.e., essentially guaranteed not to go to 0.) Figuring out your own risk appetite is an iterative process, but if you don't know what you're doing, then start small. As I recall someone saying, "you have to earn size." Saw an interview with Euan Sinclair a while back where he differentiated between risk and danger, and his contention was that you should take a lot of risk - once you've found some with a positive edge and actually understand it (as I recall, what he meant by "a lot" was something like 100% of the Kelly criterion.) That's way too much for me personally... but it's a good place to start and then revise downward from there.
I looked at his 13-F a while back and saw several option positions.. Haven't looked in years,but I know he was short KO puts in size.. I liked his quote(taken from Mae West)regarding averaging down "Too much of a good thing can be…wonderful"
See, this is just one of the reasons I like reading from guys like you. It comforts me when I look back at some of the stuff I've done... hell, some of the stuff I still do.
You mean when you go from sailing in blue waters to take on the rougher stuff? Teehee. I love the Jaws theme they overlayed.
Nope; I've got too much sea-time to do any seriously bone-headed stuff. It might kill me one day, but it won't be because I shirked any necessary work or didn't know my business. But the sea, unlike the market, isn't out to get you; I've seen some damn fools survive on it for much longer than they should have by any stretch of imagination. The market's got millions of people looking for every possible opportunity to snatch every penny that's not nailed down. Not the same thing at all. Trading - well, if I live long enough to learn as much about it as I have about the sea, then maybe I'll be able to defeat my own tendency to screw up. But I'm not betting on it; in my experience, the market tends to stimulate those tendencies in everyone.
Well, that is changing. The humpback whales have finally gotten around to watching Star Trek IV:The Voyage Home and they are pissed!
No surprises there. It's illegal as all fuck to get that close to whales in most places, but... idiots will be idiots. Those are BIG animals, not cutesy cuddly photo ops. More whale fun: back in the days when I was anchored off Boqueron, Puerto Rico, a friend asked me to help him with his boat, and we headed over to it - only to see his neighbor's boat getting towed out to see at high speed... with the engine off and no one at the helm. Took us a minute to figure it out - the anchor rode standing straight out was a big clue: a baby whale had snagged it and was headed off in a panic (there's a big whale migration that transits the Mona Passage at certain times of the year.) We chased it down with our dinghies, then spent a good 20 minutes getting it unhooked; quite a challenge, with that little baby not giving us even a second or an inch of slack. Laughed our asses off afterwards, of course, while drinking up all of the neighbor's beer. Can't even imagine where that boat would have ended up...
With all due respect my love, yes, I can totally imagine where it might have wound up. So thank you and fuck you at the same time for the horror you have reintegrated into my mind.
That's a very rare life occurrence...for a whale to snag your anchor and drag you out to another sea, You are Destined for Greatness....in the same way Alexander The Great was able to tame a wild horse only he can. A Shining Star moment...the same way Baby Jesus had a glowing star on his birth. BlueWhaleSailor ....become a whale in the market, Sail that whale to the Moon