Man, it’s been over a month since my last update. I guess I’ve been pretty busy since then. What’s happened since then?
- Watched the entire season 3 of American Pickers
- Watched the seasons 1, 2, 3 of The League
- Turned 35 years old
- Made it to the finals of my Fantasy Football league
- Played 8 rounds of golf
- Worked pretty hard on my gift exchange site
- Did a lot of Christmas shopping
I guess it doesn’t seem like much after I list it out, but I feel like I’ve been pretty busy. First off, my other site, b00gspace, increased about 15% in traffic. Sales-wise, I think we’ll probably double the total revenue of last year, which is pretty ridiculous. I scaled back on the Google Adwords budget this year because I didn’t think it was helping that much. Not to mention that there was increased competition this year for the keywords that I was targeting, and it was costing me 40 cents per click, which just wasn’t getting me the ROI that I wanted. So, total expenses are going to be about a third of last year’s. This is going to give me some extra money to spend on a much needed website design for the site.
My plan for this site is still to spend pretty much everything that I make from it for the first five years. I got a quote from a trusted website designer, and they wanted $6.3k for an entire site redesign, including the code. I actually think that’s a pretty good deal, but I don’t think they know what they’re getting into with that quote. I spent 9 years building this damn thing.
Anyways, I think I’m gonna just have someone redo the graphics, and I’ll keep my code and database structure. This is probably going to involve at least a few months of work on my side, but I think it needs to be done in order to take this site to the next level. I definitely have to make it easier to use as well. Right now, it’s a little confusing to a new user. I’d like to streamline things a little bit, maybe make some videos, and tutorials. I keep saying that I’m going to blow this site up, but by February, I procrastinate and end up paying no attention to the site until the following Christmas season. I’m going to try to do things differently this year.
What else? So, I’ve played quite a bit of golf over the past two months. Usually, I call it quits in October/November, but I guess the weather has been pretty nice, so it’s been a bit of a gift to play this late in the season. Tomorrow, it’s supposed to be near 60 degrees here. Four days from Christmas, and it’ll be 60 degrees out there.
Unfortunately, golf-wise, my handicap is going to end the year around the same as where I ended last year. Actually, I ended last year 14.9, and this year, I’m probably going to end around 13.9. The good news is that my low handicap rounds are getting lower, and my high handicap rounds are getting lower. According to my golfshot account, I’ve played 85 rounds this year. Probably closer to 100, since I didn’t keep score a few rounds. I guess my quest to become a single digit handicapper will have to wait another year. I can feel it coming though.
Stock market wise…I have’t done much. Here’s what I’m holding:
- -750 SBUX at $32.88
- -400 BBY at $36.49
- 8 BBY March 2012 $33 puts at $6.20
- 1 AAPL April 2012 $400 call at $28.75
- 2 GOOG March 2012 $575 put at $29.25
- 5 SBUX April 2012 $50 puts at $9.35
I added a longer term portfolio too:
- 72 DVY at $52.90
- 100 DTN at $51.32
- 100 DLN at $48.15
- 500 PEY at $9.04
- 50 DGP at $60.64
- 50 DDM at $58.73
- 50 QLD at $85.36
- 300 PIV at $13.98
- 125 PJP at $27.40
There’s a method to the madness. I actually took most of the longer term tickers off of my watchlist, so that I’m not watching them every day. It helps me from touching them because I can’t tell you how tempting it is to take a profit, or cut my losses.
Anyways, my BBY short is treating me like a king and my SBUX short is treating me like I’m its bitch. My long AAPL, short GOOG play is not doing too well. I made the cardinal mistake of double down on my GOOG position, so now I’m overweighted to shorting GOOG, which was not my intention. I always get myself into this quandaries and it usually starts with me doubling down on a losing position. One of my new years resolutions in 2012 is to stop doubling down on losing positions.
I guess that’s about it. I really need to get the F out of this SBUX trade before it puts a hole in me. I’m already down probably $13k – $14k on this trade. Luckily, my BBY gains have paired these losses. Still it sucks having a loser like this, but death will come to SBUX sooner or later. I know it.
