I discovered that steak is rather simple to make. You add salt, pepper, and whatever else you want, then plop it on a frying pan and flip it over a few times. Boom. I also discovered that my camera is awful.
r
not a bed of roses
Steak
Portfolio Theory
I broke even this morning with my few investments. I haven’t come up with a colorful graph since nothing interesting happened with it, but my current holdings are…
Callaway Golf Company (ELY): They design and manufacture golf clubs and golf balls. I kind of bought this as an experiment, and admittedly I mostly read up on it on Seeking Alpha in lieu of doing my own due diligence. I just wanted to get my feet wet at the time!
TrueBlue, Inc. (TBI): I studied this company and its micro-industry (blue-collar temporary staffing) this past academic year for Finance Club, so I had a head start. Our 1-year target price in May was $16.61 or so, and I bought in at market price last month at about $11.40. One of the risks we identified during our presentation was that of a double-dip recession, which we rated as moderate. Speaking of which…
SPY Dec 2011 80 Put: This is essentially a play based strictly on the prospect of a double-dip recession. Simply put (no pun intended), one contract of this gives me the right–but not the obligation–to sell 100 shares of SPY (a security tied more or less directly to the S&P 500, trading at about a tenth of the actual index for convenience’s sake) at $80 per share. The expiry date is December 2011, so if I don’t do anything by then, the offer is gone. I bought in at $5.20 (times 100 shares, so it cost me about $520), and I will profit nicely if the S&P 500 plummets well below 800.
It might seem like a far way off, but this article provides a pretty good insight into the strong possibility of it occurring. Also, Charles Nenner predicts the Dow to hit 5000 before then; I don’t know much about this guy, but let’s just say I wouldn’t be surprised if he was right.
Finally, I also have a tiny amount of money in Altria Group, Inc. (MO), mostly as a long-term growth/dividend idea. I don’t even hold enough shares to make the dividend yield notable, but I figure it’s good to have a bit invested in a solid company that won’t budge instead of leaving it as cash.
Anyway, my days of buying almost blindly are over. I don’t plan on making any more purchases until I get some time to run my own analysis (fundamental + simple DCF + simple comps) and mull over it for a day or two. In the meantime, I’m also going to start reading about portfolio management to get a better idea of how I should be allocating my measly $3,500.
Crawling
A friend of mine recently told me that 15 minutes of interval training isn’t enough to induce any serious fat burn. My typical beginner routine is:
4 minutes jog/warmup
30 seconds of 80-90% sprinting, followed by 60 second jog
Repeat 4-6 times
4 minutes jog/cooldown
This works out to about 15-18 minutes, which apparently isn’t enough. Plus, I realize that the rest portion of the cycle is designed to allow your heart to return to normal (or in my case, close-to-normal) rates, so maybe slowing it down to a very slow jog or even a walk may benefit me. So I may revise this to…
2 minutes jog/warmup
30 seconds sprint, 60 seconds walk
Repeat 8-10 times, but with the sprints getting increasingly harder
4 minutes jog/cooldown
This would reduce the time “wasted” on a warmup, since 2 minutes ought to be enough anyway, and the increasing sprinting intensity should make the entire routine more feasible as a whole because I won’t be killing myself by going 90% on my first sprint segment. The entire routine is also extended to about 20 minutes with more overall cycles.
Still Alive
I haven’t given up on this, but I’ve been out traveling or otherwise not sitting at home since any last updates, or going out with family to eat, meaning there hasn’t been much in the way of cooking, investing, or running. Stay tuned, though.
Spaghetti and meatballs
I’m surprised I didn’t have this earlier.
Mile #4194
7:17 this cloudy afternoon. Maybe I run more slowly when it’s sunny and hot outside.
No Country For Old Sharks
A few weekends back, I took a trip to the Boston Aquarium which was not too shabby. Unfortunately there were no live sharks or enormous vicious animals, but it wasn’t too bad. The piers nearby were romantic, too, though I got cold feet, afraid to get my feet wet when approaching the pier edge due to my great fear of flailing in the ocean helplessly. I got over it in the end and pretended I had the IQ of this penguin, who did nothing but spend all day staring at a rock:
Fettuccine
Made chicken fettuccine with vodka sauce last Thursday! Turns out my brother hates vodka sauce so I had plenty of leftovers for myself.
TradeKing? More like TradePariah
Since they finally cleared my funds, I tried putting in an order…
