Let’s get to the important stuff first.  I’ve already played 13 rounds this year due to the 50+ degrees weather that we’ve been having almost every day.  Unfortunately, my game has been struggling bad.  Seems like everything is failing me.  My handicap is now 16.5.  Probably higher than it was at any point last year.  My driver, my irons, my short game, my putting…everything is going in this shitter.  Whatever I’m doing, it’s obviously not working.

I need to find a different way to learn.

Not everybody is like Bubba Watson where you can just figure out the entire game of golf by yourself; no coaches, no books, no videos.  That’s kinda what I’m trying to do, but I feel like I’m just repeating the same mistakes over and over again, which leads me to Albert Einstein’s saying:

Insanity: doing the same thing over and over again and expecting different results. 

That’s how I feel about my game of golf.  I need to come up with a new game plan.

On the business front.  I’ve been spending quite a bit of time playing around with BuildMyRank and MechanicalTurk.com.  I find that I can get some cheap articles through Mechanical Turk.  Roughly $2.50 for about 300+ words.  Then, I’ll use these articles in BuildMyRank to get some links back to my site based on the keywords in the articles.

So far, I’ve posted about 40 articles on various subjects.  Most of the articles were linked on PR1 and PR2 websites.  I had a few PR3, and one PR5, but that article was never indexed…DOH!  BuildMyRank just cut off access to their site for new registrations.  I can see why now.  Their “blog network” is seriously being devalued due to the crazy amounts of junk posts that come through their site.  I mean, who really wants to pay for PR1 and PR2 links?  I’m paying $59/month for 5 domains right now.  I don’t know how long I’ll keep paying this amount for these low quality links.

Another thing that I’ve done was to go to WarriorForum.com, and I purchased a few “web 2.0″ links packages through one of the guys selling their service.  I paid $47 for 1500 links back to my site, which includes a spun article.  I’ve done it twice already for two different domains and it definitely worked for one of them.  I was #2 in google for my search term, and immediately after they finished building the links, I moved back up to #1 and I’ve been there since.

Long term, it may be better to try to build my own blog network, but that will take a long time.  So, I think for the short term, it’s better to just paying for these links packages, and using BMR and MT.  I’m gonna give it a few more months to see what kind of results I get.

I’ve also been looking to redo some websites.  I’ve been shopping around looking for a designer, and I’ve gotten quotes from $600 to $15k minimum…heh.  My guess is that I’m going to get what I pay for.

Health-wise, I’ve been trying to hit the gym about 3-4 times a week.  The diet is definitely a little bit hurting, but I’ve been maintaing my weight around the 155-160 range, which is still about 10-15 pounds less than what I was in January 2011.  I don’t think those 6 pieces of chicken from KFC that I ate yesterday is helping the cause…Heh.

I’ve been swimming quite a bit at the gym.  I think I’m finally getting the whole breathing thing. It was never endurance for me, as I’m able to run 10 miles with no problems, but I was having a hard time swimming two lengths of the pool without coming up for air.  Anyways, swimming freestyle is all about timing your breathing pattern.  I’ve got that down packed now.  Breathe every two strokes.  My next goal is to swim faster.  Old fat guys are still lapping me, which I don’t understand.  I’ve watched some Youtube videos though, and I’m starting to learn that it’s all about reducing friction, and maximizing efficiency.  It’ll take some time, but it’s taking me about 30-40 seconds for 25 meters right now.  I signed up for an indoor triathlon in May, which calls for a 10 minutes swim, 30 minutes bike, and 20 minutes run.  Taking the lower range, I should be able to do 10 full laps (500 meters) in ten minutes.  That’s my goal.

First off, how does one get started with affiliate marketing and “building websites” and making money from these sites?  That’s really the million dollar question.  But after digging into it a little bit, you’ll realize that it’s not as hard as you might think.  Nor, is the market as saturated as you might think.

Sure, there are ton of websites out there already, most of money-making domain names are already taken, and there are a ton of SEO guys who know a lot more than you do, but the truth is, there’s plenty of room for everyone.  I mean, you really just have to find your own niche, or something that you’re familiar with,  and  start from there.  That’s kinda what I’ve been doing.

What are my interests?  Well, that’s pretty easy: golf, poker, sports, stocks & trading, gambling, MMA, etc.  So, naturally, I’ve been trying to figure out how to make money from these interests of mine because these are the easiest topics for me to build upon.

Let’s start with MMA.  MMA stands for mixed martial arts.  I probably read more about MMA than any other sport out there.  And MMA is still a relatively new sport in terms of search marketing.  Naturally, I do Google searches for topics that I want to learn about.  About a year ago, I did a search for “UFC lines” to see if I could get the odds on the upcoming UFC fight.   Well, to my surprise, there were only a handful of sites listed on my google search results that gave me what I wanted.

From there, I went to my Google adwords account and used the Keyword Tool to see how many global searches were taking place for the keywords “ufc lines”.  If it’s something that I think I can get on the first page of Google for,  and there are enough searches for the keywords, then I will continue with building my website.

Another important thing to take into consideration is to figure out if you think you can make money from the site.  I mean, I can create a website about diapers, but if there aren’t any affiliate links to diapers, then it’d be kinda pointless to build the site.  Or if affiliate sales for diapers are at a 1% commission, then it’s probably not worth my time.

With the MMA site, I knew that I could link to my sportsbetting affiliate sites, where I could make hundreds of dollar for each registered signup, so it was a no brainer for me.  Just FYI, the main ways that affiliate marketers make money online are from the following affiliate sites:

• Commission Junction
• Clickbank
• Google Adsense
• Amazon Associates

So, after coming to the conclusion that I can make money from these keywords and knowing that I can probably get near the top of the search results with a little work, then I go through the process of building a site.

I’m not going to go into too much detail on how to build a site, but I will list some of the easiest ways to get started.  First off, you need a domain name and hosting (somewhere to house your website).  Godaddy is what I use for all of my domains.  I would suggest signing up for a month-to-month Deluxe Linux hosting account, which costs $6.99/month.  Hostgator is another well known hosting website.  I’ve never used them, but a lot of SEO artists do.

After you sign up for that, then you’ll need to register a domain name.  Mine was easy because UFCLines.com was available.  It’s not necessary to do the exact keyword match for the domain name, but if you can get it, then always go with that option first.  For US traffic, I would recommend ALWAYS going with a “.com” domain name before anything else.  If you find a great domain name, but the “.com” is not available, then go with “.net” or “.org”.  Dot com domain names seem to rank better than the others.

I don’t normally use the Stock Trader’s Almanac, but an old coworker put me onto it about 5-6 years ago.  The biggest thing that I took away from the Almanac is the seasonality / cyclical trends.  Basically, the idea is that certain sectors do better than other sectors during the year.  Some traders use these seasonality trends as their trading system.  Like all trading systems, there is nothing that is ever certain, but the odds say that trading the system makes you money.

So, what the chart above says is that if you went long Natural Gas on or near the end (E) of February, and sold in beginning (B) of June, then you would’ve net 19.2% over the past 15 years, 14.4% over the past 10 years, and 18.3% over the past 5 years.  Holy F?  And if you would’ve short Natural Gas in the middle of June and covered at the end of July, then the average gains were 8.8%, 10.0%, and 8.4% respectively.

Now, I don’t know about you, but those average are pretty sick.  I went back 3 years, because UNG is a fairly new ETF and sure enough, even though we’ve been in a downtrend, going long in Feb and selling June, and going short in June, and covering in July, would’ve been golden 5 out of 6 times over the past 3 years.  I’ve been following UNG and Natural Gas for what seems like years now.  Here’s the current weekly chart:

Yes, the chart is absolutely hideous, but there is money to be made…I think.  I’ve already purchased 500 shares of UNG yesterday, but I think I may have entered prematurely, like usual.  My goal is to get 4000-5000 shares of UNG some time over the next month.  Scaling in is probably the best option.  Looking at the historical data, it seems as though getting in a few days before the end of Feb is the best.

Anyways, I’ll be watching this trade over the next month to see how it develops.  If I have to buy at higher prices, then I will.  I gotta play the odds, and in this case, the odds say that I’ll be a winner in the long run.  Obviously, the entry and exit points are subjective, so the results may differ based on when the entry point.  If I were smart, I could probably tweak the stats and find out which day offered the best results.  I think the better option is to watch RSI or some similar indicator to find an entry point.  Along with scaling in, this should reduce the odds of error.

Most people who have been reading this blog for a while now, know that my primary income is from my main affiliate marketing website boogster.com.  I started it in 2004, while working at my engineering job, which I quit almost exactly a year later.  Since then, I have been on my own, with the exception of a 1-month jail sentence of a side-job three and a half years ago.

Over the past year or two, I’ve started to branch out to other affiliate marketing niches, like my gift exchange site, and several other SEO related sites.  These are what I consider my secondary income streams.  They have done pretty well over the past several years.  My goal is to build up these secondary incomes streams, so that I’m not just relying on my primary income source to pay all the bills.  I’m trying to diversify, mainly because the gambling affiliate business has been pretty volatile over the past several years.  Starting from the UIGEA in October 2006, to Black Friday on April 15, 2011, it’d be crazy not to diversify.

Anyways, onto some more details about my secondary income sources.  Earlier this year, I went on a domain buying spree at Godaddy.  I just calculated how much I spent at Godaddy this year: $628.15.  I think I probably registered about 10 domain names, and paid for 3 years of linux web hosting.  I already had a Windows web hosting account, but I ran into some problems with WordPress on this windows account, so they made me purchase a linux package.  I must say that wordpress blogs run much smoother on linux than on Windows.

So, roughly 10 new domain names, all of which I setup a simple blog using the free Back My Book wordpress theme.   Similar to one that you see on this blog.  I wrote a few articles on the blogs, added a bunch of plugins for SEO purposes, then added each of these domains to my Google webmaster tools account, and setup adsense for faster google indexing.  Most of the blogs are identical in looks, with the exception of colors and images.  Here is one of my sample domains:

http://www.ufclines.com/

Basically, my idea was to target exact keyword matches in google searches.  If you do a search for “UFC Lines“, you’ll see that I’m 2nd on the list.  This was done with very little effort because there is not a lot of competition for this keyword and the keywords are in my domain name.

It takes me an hour or two to setup each blog, including writing some quick articles.  The idea is to make money via affiliate links to gambling sites, direct product links to amazon, other affiliate links and through google adsense.  Unfortunately, the site above doesn’t get too many affiliate sales for me.  I just checked and I made exactly $15.52 from adsense last year on that one particular site.  I think I got some Bodog signups as well, but nothing substantial.  Regardless, the cost to me was $8/year for domain registration, 2 hours of time spent setting up the blog, and partial rent for the linux hosting account.

Fortunately, while the above domain didn’t work, I did have a few others that worked quite well.  One domain, I made, $1,537.52 and another domain I made $1,248.32 for the year.  Those were my two biggest earners of the exact name match projects.  That’s about $2.8k there.

Several other projects that I worked on was the gift exchange site and my golf related site.  I raked in about $8k from my gift exchange site, with expenses at about $2k or so, mainly for advertising via adwords.  Revenues actually doubled from last year.  I didn’t spend too much on anything else this year for the site.  My golf related site, through adsense and affiliate sales, I made around $300, plus or minus a hundred bucks.  I’m not tracking the affiliate sales as well as I should be doing.

All in all, I’m about +$8.5k net income from secondary sources.  Gross sales would be around $11k. Hopefully, I’ll be able to get these to double by the end of next year.

I didn’t get to play too much online and/or live poker this year.  Mainly because I didn’t really get the urge to play.  I did pretty well at the beginning of the year, then I had a nice little losing streak, and that pretty much killed my urge to play anymore.  Regardless, I still ended the year up about +$1,300.  I would like to play more in 2012.

I didn’t really keep track of my sportsbetting this year, but I think I probably dropped about $400 or so.  I reloaded on Bodog a few times and I didn’t even bet that much.  I went all-in a few times though…I do remember that.  Of course, it’s always that last all-in that doesn’t work.

Casino income was neglible at +$80.  I went up to AC once last year, and ending up winning a little bit playing Roulette and Craps.  Plus is always better than minus though.

Trading-wise, I just counted my totals across all accounts, and I ended the year at +$350 realized gains.  Not good considering the amount of time that I spend watching my quotes every day, but it is what it is.  I don’t think it was easy for anyone this year, due to the volatility.  The S&P gained something like .004% or something like that.  The Dow gained 5.5% on the year.  Regardless, I need to do better.  I was pondering the idea of putting my money to work into real estate instead.  With interest rates so low, and so many houses on the market, my money may do better in real estate than in my trading account.  Based on the last two years, I’m sure I can’t do any worse.

Looking back at some of my trades last year, two of my biggest losers were ASEI (-$4k) and UNG (-$4k).  The ASEI trade was dumb as it was a low volume stock, and I bought it right before earnings.  If I would’ve held, I’d be close to even, but I panicked and ending up losing $4k in just a few short weeks.  The UNG trade was long, slow grind lower.  If I would’ve held onto that trade, I’d be down almost double now.  I’m starting to sense that my SBUX trade is going to kill me too.  I’m already down like $13k on the puppy and I’ve been holding and averaging up the whole time. I really need to just sell my losers and let them go.  It’s always that one trade that kills all of the profits for the year.

As far as the good trades, I made some good money on my BBY short.  Not without some pain though.  Like SBUX, I was down $4k-$6k on the trade before I started making money.  I think I booked about $5k-$6k in profits from this stock last year, and I’m still holding onto about $5k-$6k in profits on paper this year.  I’m gonna let this one run.

Here’s what I’m currently 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
• 7 SBUX April 2012 $50 puts at $8.09
• 5 BBY June 2012 $30 puts at $6.00

Longer term portfolio:

• 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
• $2,500 worth of GASFX

I really need to start unwinding some SBUX here.  Earnings are coming up this week and I’m getting a little nervous.  Psychologically, it’s not good seeing a -$10k in the profit/loss column next to a stock.  Heh.

My next trade will be natty gas (/NG).  I was going to wait until Feb 1st to start accumulating, but I think I should start scaling in now.  I’m gonna try to get 4k shares total of UNG.  We’re trading at $5.70 right now and spiraling lower every day.  Historically, natty gas has done quite well in February.  Since I suck at timing, I think it’d be better to just start accumulating at set intervals for the next few weeks.  We may go down another dollar or so, but I think I’ll see a nice return if I start buying here.

So, I guess with the end of 2011, I should probably list some goals for 2012.

1. Become a single digit handicap (currently 13.2).  Gotta work on my short game, starting with putting.
2. Double my secondary income, which includes all of my SEO related websites.  I think $20k gross is realistic.  I really need to put some more work into it though, instead of slacking off playing golf (see goal #1).
3. Find 2 or 3 new sources of income, whether it be bringing up some new SEO sites, or following through one of my ideas.  I’ve got a few ideas queued up, which I just need to implement.  I can probably outsource most of them via elance or oDesk.
4. Do better in the stock market.  The last two years have been abysmal.  I made money, but barely.  Definitely not worth the time that I’ve spent following the markets.  Not to mention that without respectable profits, I cannot validate my knowledge in the stock market.  Profits = validation.
5. Don’t sleep on my main income source.  I feel like I’m neglecting it a little bit.  Gotta keep moving with it, otherwise, I will regret it.
6. Quit sportsbetting for the umpteenth time.  For *real* this time.
7. Stop using emoticons in anything that I write.  I always hated them…not even sure why I started using them in the first place.
8. Eat better.  I have my moments, but like anything, it’s all about consistency.  McDonald’s Big Breakfast on Sunday mornings is always my weak spot.  I’m pretty sure it’s about a thousand calories, but those damn hotcakes are so delick-y-ous.  I’d like to sniff 145 this year.  Might have to cut off my leg to do it though.
9. Run 13.1 miles.  I’m not ready for a full marathon yet, but I think the build up will be inevitable. For now, I will start with a half.  I’m debating whether to run the Wine Country Half Marathon.  I just need to sign up and  then I’ll be committed.
10. Procrastinate less.  Put deadlines on tasks, instead of leaving them open ended.

That’s about it.  How was your 2012?

• 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.

Here’s what I’m holding now:

• -750 SBUX at $32.88
• -400 BBY at $36.49
• 6 BBY March 2012 $33 puts at $6.50
• 1 AAPL April 2012 $400 call at $28.75
• 1 GOOG March 2012 $575 put at $32.00
• 5 SBUX April 2012 $50 puts at $9.35

Yes, I started my long AAPL and short GOOG again with April 2012 options.  I don’t normally play out of the money options, but both of these have about a .40-.50 delta, which gives me 40% to 50% of the move of the stock.  Also, I want to reduce my risk by keeping the options at around $3k-$4k each.  Every time I look at GOOG, I think that it’s making all of the wrong moves.  Yes, I use gmail, I Google everything, and I use adsense/adwords, but honestly, I think their search will only take them so far.  I mean, I signed up for Google+, but never use it.  I signed up for Google Music, but rarely use it.  This is pretty much an ongoing theme with Google.  They have so much money, but yet their innovation compared to Apple is nubs.  I just signed up to iTunes Match for $24.99/year…it’s money compared to Google Music, mainly because I can use itunes instead of Google Music terribly slow user interface.  Anyways, short GOOG, long AAPL.

Looking at my portfolio, I am probably going to roll over my SBUX jan puts and switch them over to the April 2012 puts.  Same with my remaining Jan 2012 BBY puts.  As a matter of fact, I am probably going to add more BBY puts for the “longer term”, since we’ve gone up about 5 points since when I initially sold.  I want to decrease the volatility of the Jan 2012 puts as well.

Another thing that I’ll be looking to do over the next few months into the new year is to buy banks.  I’m looking at WFC (Wells Fargo), BAC (Bank of America), and UYG (bank etf).  I’ll be adding about $20k of each when it’s all said and done.  Based on what I’ve read and heard from all of my sources, I am expecting a decline here after the new year, so I probably won’t start accumulating any longs until the new year comes.

I’m also keeping a close eye on UNG for a long.  The stock almanac says that February is a good month for natty gas.  Natty gas has been pummeled over the past few years…I think we’re gonna get a nice pop here soon.  UNG is trading near $8/share right now.  I’m gonna try to get about $20k worth of natty gas related stocks going into Feb 2012.

So, that’s my plan for the new few weeks/month for the stock market.  I just sold my BBY and SBUX Jan 2012 puts.  I think I made about $1k on BBY and lost $2.8k on SBUX.  I’m bidding to roll these over to the Mar/April 2012 puts now…

What else?  Christmas season is coming up, so I’ve been working pretty hard on my other site B**gspace.  I don’t want to spell out the name because I don’t want the search engines to pick it up and link my blog to the site.  Not like I have anything to hide, but probably not a good idea to link my ideas with the site.  Anyways, it looks like traffic has picked up about 10% from last year.  The busiest time is from now until about December 23rd.  I’m getting about 4k-5k uniques and about 15k page views per day right now.  This year is the first year that I put up Google Adsense ads, so that’ll be an additional source of revenue.  It’s actually been a pleasant surprise.  I’m making about 76 cents click with the CTR of .13%.  Not that great of a CTR, but I didn’t expect much anyways.  I imagine that I will probably make an additional $500 from Adsense this year.

I’ve been spending quite a bit of time patching up a few bugs here and there.  Changing the layout of a few pages, etc.  Right now, it seems as though a lot of people are complaining about the ease-of-use, and user-friendliness of the site.  It all makes sense to me, but maybe that’s because I built the damn thing??  I wonder if I can hire someone to do some QA for me…maybe on elance.

Also, over the past few years, I’ve been ranking #1 for the term “secret santa generator”, which has really helped me bring customers to the site.  Additionally, I picked up the domain names secretsantagenerator.com and secretsantagenerator.co.uk from godaddy at regular price ($7/year).  I have yet to build them out, but I think I’m gonna create two separate versions of the sites, probably using PHP and Amazon SES, then maybe get some link juice to b**gspace from these two sites.  The problem is, I don’t really want to give someone my ASP code to rewrite it in PHP, just in case they decide to steal my idea, so I think I’ll need to do it myself.  It shouldn’t be too hard, but to be honest, I don’t know PHP very well.  That’s why I’ve been putting it off.

I’m really starting to expand my affiliate marketing to outside of the gambling space.  Similar to investing in the stock market, I gotta diversify, otherwise, I’ll be left behind.  I don’t want to get left behind.  Anyways, it’s fun trying to make money in other spaces.  I’ve been doing Boogster for about 7 years now.  It represents probably about 99% of my income.  With the double Black Fridays, April 15, 2011 – DOJ indictments of the major online poker sites, and  October 2006 UIGEA,  I’ve seen so many affiliates (and professional poker players) go out of business because of these surprise events.  The truth is, until online poker is regulated in the US, owning any type of business in this market will be volatile.  Expect the unexpected is what I’ve come to realize.  Gotta be prepared for anything and everything.  And this probably applies to all small businesses.

So, since shorting Starbucks, I downloaded Howard Schultz’s book Onward.  I wanted to find out what’s going on in the mind of the current Starbucks CEO.  I will say that my mind is changing about Starbucks as a company.  However, I’m not sold on the fact that changing the mentality of a company will ultimately change it’s bottom line.  We’ll see.  Until then, I’m still short this bitch.

Golf.  I’ve played quite a bit of rounds this November.  Normally, I tend to shut it down towards the start of the NFL season.  I definitely don’t play on Sundays anymore.  But this year, I’ve already played like maybe 10 rounds.  My buddy, who’s a low single digit handicap, we have a standard $10 bet every round, match play.  Sometime in the middle of the season, he was giving me 8 holes.  It got all the way up to 18 holes.  Basically, he was giving one stroke every hole, match play.  And he was winning.  I think I lost about $150 to him throughout the season, but now we’re down to about 15 strokes again.  I’m not playing all that great, but I’ve been doing enough to beat him.

My handicap is at 13.8 right now.  My goal to become a single digit handicap will have to be postponed until next year.  I feel as though if I spent some more time on my short game, I’d be there.  So, next year, I will make it a point to focus on my short game.

Alright, that’s about it for now.

I should’ve kept my DGP (double gold), as it’s flying now.  SLV is lagging a little bit, but hanging in there.  I think gold is probably gonna continue soaring here, but it’s gonna do so without me.  This tape is not for the faint of heart.  The action has been so wild.  If you’re a trader, it’s game on, but for swing traders like me, it’s probably better to sit tight and “see what happens” over the next few weeks.

Shocker that I sold Netflix at $80 a few days ago.  It’s pushing $91 right now.  Anyways, every time I have a play, everything changes a few weeks later, even though things don’t really change.  WTF?

Also, looks like the banks are going to be in play over the next 6-18 months.  I’ll be buying shares of Bank of America (BAC), Wells Fargo (WFC), and UYG (financials ETF) over the next few months.  Gonna scale in, so that I won’t have to time the market.  Looking to get about $20k of each.  I probably won’t start buying until near Thanksgiving though.  We’ll see.

Starbucks has been pummeling me…still.  I added 100 shares of DGP (double gold). Here’s what I’m holding now:

• -750 SBUX at $32.88
• -400 BBY at $36.49
• 3 BBY Jan 2012 $40 puts at $9.00
• 5 SBUX Jan 2012 $45 puts at $9.30
• 350 SLV at $34.51
• 6 SLV Jan 2012 $30 Calls $6.99
• -1,500 UNG at $8.91
• -1,000 ETFC at $9.55
• -2,000 SIRI at $1.71
• 100 DGP at $52.46

Anyways, I beat all of my friends and I did make a PR (personal record) in the ATM (Army Ten Miler).  I really hate running, but I like competing…even if it’s against myself.  I think my next challenge will be a mini-triathlon.  I need to get my swimming up to par before attempting it though.  I can swim about 6 to 8 25 yard laps right now without stopping, but that’s still only 200 yards.  Most of these mini-tris, you gotta swim about 800m or more, and sometimes in open water where you can’t stand up and take a break.  Sigh.  I’ll shoot for the spring time.

Now, onto the markets.  I’m getting obliterated here.  I was well above my all time highs just last week, then whammo….and just like that….I’m about $8k lower now.  Ugghh.  Every time I make a push to my all time highs, the market gods seem to know, and push me back down.  I can’t tell you how many times this has happened to me, and yet I seem to continue making the same “mistakes” year over year.  It doesn’t make sense, but at the same time, it makes perfect sense. So, luckily, I bought some longs the day after the market turn, so that’s kinda eased the blow a little bit.  With that said, I sold out of my longs on Monday and Tuesday for small profits.  Here’s what I’m holding now:

• -750 SBUX at $32.88
• -400 BBY at $36.49
• 3 BBY Jan 2012 $40 puts at $9.00
• 5 SBUX Jan 2012 $45 puts at $9.30
• 350 SLV at $34.51
• 6 SLV Jan 2012 $30 Calls $6.99
• -1,000 UNG at $8.97

So, I sold 2 BBY contracts at $17.10 for about +$1,600 or so.  I added 200 shares of SLV today at $31.47 to average down to 350 shares at $34.51.  Also, I added 500 shares short of UNG at $8.70 yesterday to average up to -1,000 shares at $8.97.  And I sold DGP for +$233, QLD for +$314, XLU for +$128, DVY for +$167, and DTN for +$177. However, SBUX is killing me.  I added 250 shares near $38.80 and now we’re closing in on all time highs at $42.  Uggh.  Definitely down about $8k on this trade so far.

Deep down, I am still a believer in the trade, but it’s getting harder and harder every day seeing it keep rising like this.  I will probably have to do some damage control soon, meaning, I’ll need to suck it up and cover some shares at a loss. I feel like I am missing the boat here seeing the market rise every day.  I feel the need to get long here, but I feel as though it’s the wrong thing to do.  Not here, at least.  I think, ultimately, we are still going down, but it may not be for another few months.  If I’m right, then we’re going to get a whole lot of nothing for the next few weeks.  But then again, how often am I right?  Who am I kidding, we’re probably going to continue grinding higher from here…

I’ve been playing golf for quite a number of years now.  I’m making progress for sure, but my goal to become a single digit handicap is taking a lot longer than I had ever anticipated.  When I was daytrading, trying to become successful at it, it took me a while to understand that it wasn’t for me.  I mean, I tried.  I tried hard.  It’s all documented in this blog.  But in the end, it wasn’t for me.  I like efficiency, and I realized that daytrading wasn’t the most efficient way for me to make money.

So, back to golf.  God dammit.  It’s so frustrating.  I shot a 107 yesterday.  58 on the front 9, and 49 on the back 9.  That’s atrocious for someone that’s been playing for quite a while now.  No chance that I’m giving up though.  I’m pretty confident that I will get below 10 for my handicap.  It’ll take a lot more time that I thought, but I’ll get there for sure.  No doubt in my mind.

Steve Jobs died yesterday.  Here’s a dude that has more money than God, and yet, that pancreatic cancer shit was uncureable, even with the pools of money that he had, and the best doctors in the world at his disposal.  That goes to show you that there is no escaping death.  Everybody dies.  That’s a fact.  Steve Jobs basically worked until his last breath.  I mean, he just resigned from Apple a few months ago…probably because his doctors told him that he was going to die within a few months.

I don’t even know Steve Jobs, but if there’s anything that I can take from his life, it can be taken from this quote:

“The only way to do great work is to love what you do. If you haven’t found it yet, keep looking. Don’t settle. As with all matters of the heart, you’ll know when you find it.” – Steve Jobs Anyways, the point is “love what you do”.  If you don’t, then go find it.  No point in living in misery at any point in your life.

So, I’ve really been contemplating my Starbucks short.  I have 750 shares short, and 5 puts.  Maybe it’s because it’s been over a year, and the stock has gone nowhere.  Maybe it’s because I went to Dunkin Donuts the other day to get a cup of coffee, and it really sucked…it wasn’t Starbucks.  I started asking people that I know what they thought of Starbucks and the truth is, Starbucks has the best coffee.  If people just want coffee, then they’ll go to 7-Eleven, McDonald’s, Dunkin Donuts, but if they want a real cup of joe, they’ll go to Starbucks.  I mean, I would go to Starbucks, if I had the choice.  So, why am I short the stock?  I don’t know…it may be time to re-evaluate this position…

A couple of moves that I made yesterday:

• Sold 2 BBY Jan 2012 $40 puts at $17.10 for +$1,620
• Bought $4,000 of each of these stocks yesterday morning: DVY, QLD, DTN, XLU, DGP

Here’s what I’m holding now:

• -750 SBUX at $32.88
• -400 BBY at $36.49
• 2 BBY Jan 2012 $40 puts at $9.00
• 5 SBUX Jan 2012 $45 puts at $9.30
• 150 SLV at $38.57
• 6 SLV Jan 2012 $30 Calls $6.99
• -500 UNG at $9.23
• 83 DVY at $47.80
• 86 DTN at $46.44
• 124 XLU at $32.30
• 77 DGP at $51.97
• 56 QLD at $71.34

I needed a few longs to hedge my shorts, just in case we exploded to the upside.  Again, my goal is to put about 50%-60% of my portfolio into a longer term strategy, otherwise, it will just sit in my accounts in cash, which is what I don’t want.  It’s okay to have cash, but cash sitting in accounts don’t “work” for me these days, especially with nubs yields these days…I mean, we’re talking less than 1% usually.  Gotta put my cash to work.

• -750 SBUX at $32.88
• -400 BBY at $36.49
• 5 BBY Jan 2012 $40 puts at $9.00
• 5 SBUX Jan 2012 $45 puts at $9.30
• 150 SLV at $38.57
• 6 SLV Jan 2012 $30 Calls $6.99
• -500 UNG at $9.23

Actually, I guess I just made one move, and that was the sell the rest of my WMT calls.  I think I lost a little over $600 on the trade.  The above is what I’m currently holding.

I don’t know where the market is headed from here, but I do know what I’m feeling right now.  All I want to do is cover my shorts, and sell my longs, and book my gains, so that I can say that I’m at my all time highs.  The fact that I want to do this means that we’re not done on the downside just yet.

I’m gonna sit tight here.  If anything, I’m going to lighten my load on my SLV position.  I’m holding 6 Jan 2012 $30 calls right now, and 150 shares of the ETF.  I think we may have a short term blip in the markets to the upside from here, but I do think that we’ll get a cleanout to the downside before some real relief.

I thought Ameritrade had made a mistake at first, but then I did some researching, and it looks like it’s true.  Also, if there is a dividend, you’ll have to pay the dividend to the person who you borrowed the stock from.  Usually, it’ll be noted as “payment in lieu of dividend” in your account history.

I remember a few years ago, I shorted 900 shares of this stock PD.  I ended up paying almost $2,000 in dividends because it announced a $2 dividend or something close to that number.  I didn’t know why the hell Interactive Brokers took $2k from my account until I realized that PD had a dividend payment.

• Covered 1900 SIRI @ $1.71 for +$220
• Covered 307 ETFC @ $9.62 for +$543
• Sold 349 P @ $12.20 for +$757
• Sold 240 AMTD @ $14.95 + $80

That’s about +$1,500 or so for a two week trade.  Not to mention the $2k that I made on my AAPL/GOOG pair trade.

Unfortunately, I have also had a few missteps like SLV.  I added some more Jan 2012 $30 calls in the collapse, so I’m down about $3.2k on the trade right now.  Uggh.  You know what, looking back at my trades, I always end up getting pummeled when I add to severely dropping stocks.  These trades almost always get me for anywhere between $4k and $20k.  If I eliminated these stupid add-ons, I’d be much better off.  With that said, my BBY trade, which I’ve held for more than a year now; I was down on the that trade pretty heft-ily before I saw a profit.  The difference in that BBY trade was that I scaled in small.  I never bought a big lot at one time.

Anyways, I’m going to make a mental note of this.  It’s always just a handful of trades-gone-bad that cause me to be much less profitable for the year.  This Silver trade, I should never have added to it when it dropped like 15% in one day.  Instead, I should’ve sold…

So, here’s what I’m holding now:

• -750 SBUX at $32.88
• -400 BBY at $36.49
• 5 BBY Jan 2012 $40 puts at $9.00
• 5 SBUX Jan 2012 $45 puts at $9.30
• 150 SLV at $38.57
• 6 SLV Jan 2012 $30 Calls $6.99
• -500 UNG at $9.23
• 2 WMT Jan 2012 $47.50 Calls at $6.05

Ultimately, I would like to see this market tank.  I’m pretty confident in my starbucks short position, but I should probably sit tight with what I have right now.  I shorted another 250 shares a few days ago.  I’ve got about $50k short right now, which is quite a bit.  750 shares of common, and 5 Jan 2012 puts.  If my technical skills are worth anything, I might have to wait this one out another few months before I see any profits.  I’m prepared…we’ll see what happens.  F SBUX.

So, I went out Monday and played a round at Pleasant Valley just to see if my 81 was a fluke or not.  I played from the whites because the two old people who I was paired with were playing from the whites.  I started off bogey/triple, but was only 7 over after 12.  Then, I just went downhill after 12.  Finished with a 92 from the whites.  42 on the front nine and 50 on the back nine.  37 putts total.

Annoying.  Very annoying.  I can’t wait to get back out there, hopefully in a competitive round (with money on the line), so that I can really put my game to the test.  The round yesterday, I feel, I didn’t have any consequences to my actions because there was nothing riding on it, so we’ll see what happens the next time I’m in a money round.

Time for a little lunch here.  I am feeling neither buy nor sell here, so I don’t have a hunch as to where this market is headed.  If anything, I am more inclined to sell my longs, which means that we’re probably going higher from here.  More pain for my shorts…it makes sense…final decision, we’re going higher….

Anyways, I don’t get it.  I don’t play for two weeks, come back and shoot my best round ever.  Golf just doesn’t make sense, nor will it ever.  Similar to the stock market.  There is no rhyme or reason to how both operate…there is not “figuring it out” because neither will ever be “figured out”.

So…onto the stock market.  It’s getting pummeled today.  The Dow is down 400 as I speak.  Figures because I bought some WMT (Walmart) Jan 2012 calls two days ago, when the market was 700 points higher.  I bought 5 contracts of the WMT Jan 2012 $47.50 calls at $6.05 mainly as a hedge to my BBY short position.  I sold 3 of those contracts a few minutes ago at $4.25 for -$500 and change.  Ugghh.  My timing is impeccable.

Also, I just shorted some UNG (one of my old favorites).  500 shares short at $9.23.  Gonna try to get another 500 shares shortly.  From here on out, I will be scaling in and out of all positions, unless it’s just for a trade.  Every time I go full position on a trade, I lose.

I just averaged down on my Silver too.  We’re getting annihilated here.  Silver is down 8% today.  I added one more SLV Jan 2012 $30 Call at $6.85.  Now, I have 3 contracts, and 150 shares.  I will continue adding if we go lower.

So, here’s what I’m holding:

• -500 SBUX at $30.08
• -400 BBY at $36.49
• 5 BBY Jan 2012 $40 puts at $9.00
• 5 SBUX Jan 2012 $45 puts at $9.30
• 150 SLV at $38.57
• 3 SLV Jan 2012 $30 Calls $10.28
• -500 UNG at $9.23
• 2 WMT Jan 2012 $47.50 Calls at $6.05
• 349 P at $10.03
• 240 AMTD at $14.64
• -1900 SIRI at $1.82
• -307 ETFC at $11.39

I’m about $2k from my all time highs now.  Probably up just a few thousand YTD.  I’m content with that considering that I was down probably $10k to $20k at one point this year.

What else?  I’m sure that you guys have now heard of the Full Tilt Poker “ponzi scheme”.  I don’t know if I’d call it a Ponzi Scheme, but one thing that I know for sure is that these guys had no idea how to run a business.  In my opinion, you always have to be on the lookout for the worst case scenario, and for FTP, the worst case scenario would be returning all of the player’s monies in their accounts.  Obviously, they weren’t prepared for Black Friday to say the least, but how in the world could they let it get that bad.  I mean, according to reports, they had over $300 million in play accounts, and only $60 million in their bank?  WTF??  That’s just ridiculous.

Then, how about the uncollected deposits.  I talked about this in pre-black friday posts.  Basically, they were crediting player accounts with ACH deposits, but weren’t taking these amounts from the player’s bank accounts.  I mean, this went on for months.  It was all over 2+2, players were talking about it in the poker rooms…how in the world did they not know about this?  Then, I discovered that they were sending bank wire withdrawals to players, and giving them $50 for their bank wire fees.  Players were withdrawing like $50-$100 via bank wire, and would get an extra $50 for free on top of their withdrawal.  It was an absolute joke.

Poker Stars, on the other hand, had the same problems as FTP, but they were able to deduct these unreceived amounts from player accounts.  That’s what FTP should’ve done, but for them to ignore the problems for so long…that was part of the problem.

• Out 1 GOOG Jan 2012 $550 Put at $49.30 for +$70

Definitely got a little lucky with this one.  Too bad SBUX is sticking it in me.  I’m currently down $7.3k on the trade right now.  Ugghh…I always hold my losers too long.

Back to the drawing board.  Gotta find some more ways to put my money to work.

After my pair trades post yesterday, I decided to start scaling into the positions today.  I put about $3.5k into each of the positions mentioned yesterday.  Here they are:

• Long 349 P at $10.03
• Short 1,900 SIRI at $1.822
• Long 240 AMTD at $14.64
• Short 307 ETFC at $11.39
• Long 1 AAPL Jan 2012 $350 Call at $58.50

I haven’t entered my GOOG put yet.  I was going to buy 9 shares of AAPL long and short 6 shares of GOOG, both $3.5k each, but I was thinking a total of 15 shares is nubs.  How can I make money like that.  So, I’m just gonna do about $6k of each in calls, with deltas around .50.  That’s going against my rule of only playing options with Deltas higher than .80, but we’ll see how that goes.

As far as BBY, the monthly charts dating back 20 years says that we go higher from here. It IS the monthly chart, so I should have time to cover before the real squeeze comes.  I’m gonna sit tight here and follow my scale out strategy.  Again, I’m gonna try to hold 3 out of 5 of my put contracts and let them run just in case the downside is not done yet.

For the positions above, I’m gonna scale in another 2-3 blocks from here getting about $10k-$15k total of each.  As for the rest of my money, I’m gonna put them to work in a longer term diversified strategy.  I have a list of tickers, which I will be putting 10-15k a piece into already.  I actually bought them all a few weeks ago, then sold them all a few days ago, when I thought that the market was going to tank.  I told myself that I’d hold those stocks for the longer term, but I didn’t and now they’re all ripping higher without me.  Go figure.  I should’ve known…based on the Always-Bet-Against-Boogster strategy…

On another note.  I place three wagers last week on the first week of NFL.  Believe it or not, I won all three wagers.  A single bet, a double parlay, and a triple parlay…heh.  I won about $100 total…heh.  I’m so nubs.

I’m gonna stick to companies that I know, so here’s what I’m thinking now:

• Ameritrade (AMTD) long $14.52/ E*Trade (ETFC) short $11.22
• Apple (AAPL) long $389.30/ Google (GOOG) short $531.40
• Pandora (P) long $10.24 / XM-Sirius (SIRI) short $1.80

First off, Ameritrade is the nuts for online brokages.  I’ve had accounts at a bunch of different sites, and Ameritrade has all of my money currently.  IBKR was great for futures, but the java client was terrible.  E*Trade is great for moving moving, but terrible for their brokerage and terrible for banking.  They’re more expensive, and there are less tools available, and they don’t offer futures trading (I don’t think).  I’m gonna do $10k a piece on this pair.

Apple vs. Google.  I know that they are two different beasts, with two different revenue streams, but I think they are close enough so that I can turn them into a “pair trade”.  I’ve been finding myself buying more and more Apple stuff.  I like their innovation, and the fact that they are light years ahead of all competition.  Companies try to copy them, but are always unsuccessful, because the quality is never there.  As far as Google, if there’s a definition for johnny-come-lately, its name begins with Google.  Let’s be honest, google sucks at everything, but search.  They own the search market, but fail at everything else.  Look at Google+, Buzz, google deals, Wave, etc.  I don’t understand why they even try to do these crazy things.  I just don’t see them growing anymore because their search revenue will only take them so far.

Satellite radio is dead.  It’s only a matter of time before XM-Sirius goes to shit.  Streaming through 3G (soon to be 4G) will be the future.  Right now, Pandora owns the internet streaming business.  Let’s be honest, high speed internet access in cars, in some form, will be available in a matter of years.  Not everybody has satellite.  Everybody will have internet.  I’ve tried streaming Google Music in my car, but it sucks.  I haven’t tried iHeartRadio or the others yet, but what I do know is that Pandora is money.   I have not paid the $36/year subscription fee, but I would.  I’m sure that they still make money without my subscription.  Imagine if they got talk radio streaming deals….Howard Stern or someone like that.  Why not, right?  I’m not quite sold on Pandora’s revenue stream, but I know that if they own the space, then they will eventually find a revenue stream.

Anyways, earnings for BBY came out on Tuesday morning.  The numbers were terrible and in a few years BBY will be no longer unless they change their ways.  The just started selling third party items on their website.  A little too late to the game if you ask me.   They were a leader in their domain for many years, but sat there and watched while amazon, newegg, and even Wal-Mart now, stole their customers.  Now they are going downhill and the ball has already started rolling.

I covered 300 out of my 1,200 shares this morning for $3k+.  Around 42% gain, since my initial entry at $33.88 on 9/7/2010. I still think that bby is going to the grave, but like the winner of Bachelor Pad said, this is a game.

I am going to scale out of my bby position from here, because I believe that the bulk of the profits have already been made.  Seeing that I’m wrong 90% of the time…the big drop is probably yet to come….heh…which is why I’m gonna try to hold onto 300-500 shares for the longer term.

Also, I sold my 145 shares of IVW this morning for a small gain (+$180).

Here’s what I’m holding now:

• 100 RFG at $77.50
• 150 SPYG at $55.22
• 350 PJP at $24.19
• 150 SLV at $38.57
• -500 SBUX at $30.08
• -700 BBY at $36.49
• 5 BBY Jan 2012 $40 puts at $9.00
• 5 SBUX Jan 2012 $45 puts at $9.30

I have a lot of cash on the sidelines, like normal.  I said that I was going to try to put more money to work this year, but I find myself unwilling to actually follow through with it.  I don’t know why.  Probably because I feel as though I’ll make a mistake.  Or maybe it’s because I don’t have a good idea of which direction the market is headed, but then again, I’m never certain about anything.  I think the best thing to do is to allocate maybe 50% of my cash into a longer term diversified strategy, then play with the other 50% with my short term strategies.  Then, maybe see what my longer term results are compared to my short term portfolio results.

Anyways, long weekend ahead, and I’m heading to the beach next weekend.  As of right now, I am very close to my all time highs, if not at the all time highs. My golf handicap is on the increase…at 14 (up from 12.5)…I should’ve shut my yap about not shooting above 100 in my last post because I shot 100 on that same day…ugghh…struggling.  My weight’s at 153.3 lbs…I’m about midway point in my training for the Army Ten Miler in about a month.  I have a long run at 8 miles on Sunday.  I have really been slacking with my business lately…more like neglecting it.  The fall is coming, so I really need to step it up again…

Enjoy the weekend.  Gonna go enjoy some cold ones tonight (Miller Lite, of course, cause it’s the healthiest of the beers, and I like it better than Michelob Ultra).

So, we’ve had a nice run-up in the stock market over the past few days.  All I want to do is sell here.  Sell my longs and just leave my BBY and SBUX shorts to do the work, but don’t forget, always bet against boogster, so we’re going higher.  Final decision.

The McClellan Oscillator is above +200, so we may be due for a pullback/consolidation here.  Normally, my longs would be sold by now.  Even right now, I want to sell my longs.  I may still do it, which means we’re definitely going higher.

That’s why I’m going to go play some golf today.  Old hickory.  I don’t think I’ve played that course all season.  My handicap went back up a little bit.  I’m at 13.8 now from a low of about 12.5.  Still inconsistent everywhere.  Yesterday it was short game and putting.  Today will most likely be my driver or something.  I haven’t shot a round in the 80s in a while, but I also haven’t broken 100 in at least 30 rounds.

Anyways…gotta goo….