My Impressions: The Financial Times on Options

I’ve been trying to read a lot of books on Options.  Since Options is such a complicated topic, it’s really hard to learn about it from “one book” because the depth and technicality of the subject varies greatly across different books.

Usually there are books that give the basics, and pump out a lot of “strategies” -> Or basically ways to mix and match buying/selling call/put options.  To me, these types of books are generally boring.  Once you know your ABC’s, these fancy names aren’t really that special… Candors / butterflies / something bear / something bull / something spread…  Meh.  

The other extreme are books that get super technical with all the formulas and unless you’re a math major…  Good luck…

Financial Times Guide to Options: The Plain & Simple Guide to Successful Strategies, 2nd ed. (Financial Times Guides)

This book is neither, nor in the middle.  Although this book gives strategies for traders to contemplate on and gets technical on certain aspects about hedging Greeks… To me, it feels more like a, “Here are my thoughts on the market as a whole after many years of trading, don’t do stupid stuff such as XYZ.”  Because of this tone, it feels like you’re reading a book written by a human rather than a robot.    

Some key stupid stuff to not do include:

     Don’t take a net short position

     Know why your strategy is working (and why it not)

     Markets change (strategies should follow)

     Keep the bell curve in mind

I don’t think I ended up using any specific strategies mentioned in the book. However, based on new information I learned, I actually came up with new ideas and looked at new places such as the VIX and XIV.  

Check it out. Pretty cool book. Slightly different flavor than the other books on the market.

My Impressions: Two Awesome Hours

I bought the book because I needed something not as “heavy” to read.  This was around 150 pages of content, so I thought it would be a good quick break for me.  

Two Awesome Hours: Science-Based Strategies to Harness Your Best Time and Get Your Most Important Work Done

Instead of cramming more hours into a day and trying to optimize the efficiency of everything you do, the author suggest focusing on the broader/macro picture and making 2 hours really effective.  The five main strategies are:

     1. Consciously recognizing your decision points

     2. Manage mental energy (emotions)

     3. Stop fighting distractions

     4. Leverage mind-body connection

     5. Make your workspace work for you.  

Strategy 2 was fascinating to me in particular.  The book goes into how certain emotions are a lot more useful in specific situations.  And if we channel the right emotions to the right situation.  Looking at recent events of my own life, lots seem apply.

Anxiety and readiness are physiologically the same.  Next time when you are performing or public speaking, if you feel nervous, change that mindset to “I’m ready.”  Beyonce says she’s always nervous before a great performance.  I was nervous in my recent Karate belt test.  Apparently I messed up a karate-form and didn’t even realize.  If I primed myself to think “I’m ready” instead of “I’m nervous,” maybe the outcome could have been different.

Sadness makes us less trusthworthy.  If you’re buying a house or a car and the sales person is painting a fancy picture of you owning all this awesomeness…  Think of your dead childhood dog that got ran over by a car or something.  When someone’s pumping me up, I just think of all the people that fucked me over – e.g. laid me off, cheated on me, stole credit…etc.  All of a sudden I’m not so trusting.   Someone else submitted an offer?  Yeah bullshit.  My offer is off the table if any of the other sales rep calls me back and gives me what I asked for.  Whoever calls first gets it. 

Anger is helpful when we need a push on taking a risk.  For example if you want to risk current sales by increasing price, or go sky diving with your buddies…  The emotion helps in situations that are not pleasant to begin with.  Recently I’m planning to make huge binary bets in the options market.  If I am wrong (or if I am right, but it doesn’t work out), I would lose A LOT of money.  The same token, if it does work out…  Then I’m a huge step closer to financial freedom.  I am so excited thinking about it.  I want to do it.  But as the time comes closer…  I’m having doubts. I’m kind of scared.  I don’t know if I can actually stomach the loss… 

Then, these days I have meetings with a manager that belittles everybody and talks down to everybody…  Shows up late to meetings, high-jacks the meeting, makes me feel stupid and useless, barks out orders, and leaves.   I felt physically sick being in the same room as this manager.  I wanted to quit my job (and I don’t even report to this person).  That’s how bad it was.  I was so hungry.  FUCK THIS.  WHO THE FUCK ARE YOU?  It was YOUR fault on the first place for sitting on this damn thing for four fucking months.  Took 0 action even with my weekly reminders.  Then someone CCs your boss (not me) and you get all upset because you didn’t do your job.  Fuck you and your bullshit!  I can’t stand any of this shit.  If my options bet work out, then I won’t have to.  Fucker. 

So yeah…  Anger helps push to certain risk taking behavior…  We’ll see how that turns out soon enough. 

You can help me by buying a lot of airline stocks and pushing them up.  Thanks!

My Impressions: Made in USA (Sam Walton)

I think it was Tai that was spamming/scamming my youtube or something that made me aware of this book.  He basically said, if you want to be an entrepreneur, how could you not know/read about the man who made Walmart.  I guess that was a convincing argument. 

I had this book on my wishlist for a while, then one day my BookBub daily e-mail alert had this book on sale for $1.99…  So I bought it…  Buying a lot of books…

Sam Walton: Made In America

I don’t think this book was inspiring in an entrepreneurial way.  However, what is really interesting is to read the story of Walmart from its early days – how it was operated, the beliefs, the struggles, the strategy…  That baby Walmart is a very different one than the one I grew up and knew about.  Seeing how the tides have turned, seeing how the culture is different now compared to then…  Very fascinating and very interesting. 

The most interesting for me was seeing the relationship between Walmart and P&G change over time.  From the beginning of the book, P&G didn’t care about Walmart.  After Walmart increased in size, the two became good business partners near the end of the book.  Even later than in the book, one of my college professors was describing a negotiation deal on operating efficiency between Walmart and P&G.  Walmart expects its suppliers to have margin improvements and economies of scale.  So after a certain amount of time, they will come, sit you down, and give you a new (lower) price.  And there’s nothing you can do about it besides nod and say thanks.  Who knows, I wasn’t there.  But even with exaggeration, seeing this relationship take a complete 180 shift is also thought provoking for me.  And fun fact: P&G sells more product to Walmart than to all of Japan…

And finally, I’ll end with a quote from the book with Sam Walton commenting about how 76 of the top 100 discount stores in 1976 went out of business:

It all boils down to not taking care of their customers, not minding their stores, not having folks in their stores with good attitudes, and that was because they never really even tried to take care of their own people.  If you want the people in the stores to take care of the customers, you have to make sure you’re taking care of the people in the stores.  That’s the most important single ingredient of Wal-Mart’s success. 

Does that still apply to the Walmart today?