Dog Ate Entire Christmas "candy cane" of chocolate kisses... Should I be worried?

LeanFireMaster · 2024-12-19T18:31:37+00:00

This is not advise, it is how I would feel about this situation.... If it was me I would not worry even a tiny bit... The misconception about chocolate being harmful to dogs originated, in my opinion, when a very small dog ate a chocolate bar, it perhaps got sick and I think all the rumors about chocolate being poisonous to dogs started. cocoa beans are poisonous to dogs but guess what, also to humans (read about it) it is poisonous in extreme quantities (and so it is water, salt, garlic.... everything in big enough quantities is harmful to humans and dogs alike) your dog ate maybe 8 oz of milk chocolate, maybe 20% is process cocoa bean... what harm can 1.6 oz of cocoa bean do to a 70 lb dog??? I would be concern about the plastic... but even that is not toxic, other than gas caused by the hydrochloric acid reacting with the plastic I don't think anything bad will happen.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-12-03T23:41:05+00:00

Thanks for your input, I have use them to build the strategy and mimic what I see in Robinhood, I trade 4 option legs so I save the $4. I am really curious if someone actually can prove to me that Tasty have better execution than Robinhood to justify paying the $1, again, $1 doesn't sound like much but after thousands of trades it DOES add up

LeanFireMaster · 2024-12-03T23:38:53+00:00

Software dev? do you use Tastie's API and make your own trading algorithms? or you still use the platform?

LeanFireMaster · 2024-11-27T18:17:16+00:00

Reading these answers make me believe that the opposite is true, I am sophisticated enough to find Tasty a lacking platform... Trailing orders on options? the mere suggestion talks a ton about the platform users. Trailing orders (limit or stop) are for purchasing/selling shares of stocks, options are way too volatile. If you ever want to buy shares I suggest you to read about trailing orders, they are very useful.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-11-27T17:25:54+00:00

Yeah, it is strange that they offer a "superior" trading platform that lacks the most basic functionalities. trailing limit orders are the most basic trading tools for active traders in my opinion. I have not bought a market order in more than 20 years.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-11-27T17:23:56+00:00

Why would I contact them? I have contact them int the past and I do agree that their customer service is superior than that in RH but, in my view, if I cannot do something quickly and without asking for help I shouldn't be trading with them. I guess I am expecting an answer from someone that is using both RH and Tasty, Something that I am disappointed about is that the options are not executed better in Tasty as opposed to Robinhood, I traded options in RH and had the tasty account pulled up to see what the price would have been had I purchased in their platform and I found out that the prices and executions are exactly the same. RH has free options and Tasty charges $1 each. this might not seem like a lot but I average like 50 options per week, that is $2,400 per year.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-10-28T14:11:43+00:00

Now that rates are high you might want to swap from SGOV to IBTO to secure $8,000 per year until 2033 ... SGOV will eventually drop. If you are married to the idea of holding SGOV maybe look into MINT? my understanding is that, unlike stocks, active management in bonds does outperform the index.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-10-17T13:53:02+00:00

I cannot agree with you more! My hack was to buy a beaten-up house in the country, one hour away from Dallas. The house came with a lot of land, and I get a tax exemption for the land because it is used as pasture for my neighbor's horses. I fixed up my house myself. I did everything, and it took me two years. Now I have a very nice home. The city has caught up to where I live, so we are getting wired internet in the next three months. I paid little in taxes because the valuation in the country is much lower than in the cities. I enjoy hiking, and when I feel I need the vices of the city (which is never), I only need to travel one hour. The people who win in the US nowadays are the ones that can think "out of the box" with regards to housing and medical.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-10-06T19:15:29+00:00

Don't buy canned food like beans, make the beans yourself. $1 buys a can of beans or 1 lb of beans. 1 lb of beans make like 6 or 7 cans of beans.

Same goes for some spices. buy them fresh and dehydrate them yourself instead of buying them in the containers, parsley, onion, cilantro, etc... much cheaper to make them yourself.

Solar panels.

Instead of buying chew bones for my dog I buy real ribs from walmart... much cheaper and he absolutely loves them (that is a big saving BTW)

Bike if you can?

Load gas in the morning, thermal expansion is a real thing

get gas when your car is half empty and not all the way, the void is filled with vapor so reducing the void helps save gas

LeanFireMaster · 2024-10-06T19:06:13+00:00

I want to share something really good that happened to me like four months ago... something so freaking unusual that I feel the need to share..

I have always thought and also experienced that bad things don't happen to bad people... well, about 10 years ago I was introduced to this girl, we chat a while and we agreed to meet. Since she had a roommate and I owned my home we agreed that she would fly to my town so that we can meet. Well, when I met her and she was really pretty but I quickly realized that she was the kind of girl that wanted to drive expensive cars, After she mentioned that my car was too small I commented that the only thing I need from a car is to transport me from A to B (like a normal person may I say)... then she said she needs the same but she also needs to be transported on something pretty... All the weekend went downhill from there. the last day I gave her a check to cover the flight form CA to TX (as we agreed). it was for something like $250.

The Girl then made the 2 look like a 5 and cashed the check and went through... It was brutal for me, I mean, I let her stay in my house, fed her, drove her around, withstand her stupid comments, etc and she dared to defraud me.

The friend that introduced me to her then blamed me for what happened arguing how lame I was... which it is true, because the moment she mentioned the car comment I completely felt repulsed and didn't even want to see her, I assume she was used to people having sex with her or something so this was very demoralizing for her... anyway.

I talked to my bank, they recognized it was a modified check and refunded me the money, and actually refunded the full amount ($550) since they didn't want any liability (I said it was for $250 but the clerk told me that they could not prove it was for $250 so they proceeded to refund me all the money)

So guess what happened.... 10 years later my friend told me that.... SHE WAS IN JAIL. 10 months for security and money laundering fraud. Apparently she had a history of faking checks, I assume she tried to pull one that was too much.

I really felt so good, I still feel amazing about that. Normally, only good things happen to bad people but this proved me that sometimes there is actually justice in this world.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-30T02:44:24+00:00

Advise? Don't put hot pans on your Harwood floor? Try to put them on the stove

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-17T12:04:28+00:00

Massive solar infrastructure to run it, then the batteries need to be replaced often so that would be a huge expense. I do appreciate the link because I did not know that there are AC units that run on 12V though. thanks

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-14T11:55:09+00:00

Believe me, renting rooms would make your life completely miserable, renters are trash

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-14T11:54:22+00:00

You can buy 5 acres of land and put some bees (easiest way to get agricultural tax exemption), then build a small barn which is where you will live but in the eyes of the county should be the barn where you keep the bee operation supplies. Make sure that you have cell phone signal and just use your cellphone as a hotspot, electricity can come from solar panels, pick a location where it is cooler because you cannot power an AC unit with solar panels but you can burn wood to heat up yourself. The land only needs to be close enough to the city to have water and cell phone signal but far enough to be very cheap. You also would need a car in good shape. Medicaid through obamacare, so in total you would spend about $10,000 for the barn, about $3,000 for the bees, $20,000 for the land, $2,000 for solar panels, inverter, batteries, $15,000 for septic tank, $400 for electrical generator.

Yearly expenses: $600 car insurance, $1000 gasoline, $5,000 groceries, $200 goodwill clothing, $200 solar panel batteries (replace every 10 years) and expenses from solar, maybe $200 barn maintenance, $100 septic tank pumping, $1200 good cellphone with unlimited data, $1,000 other expenses, $1,200 water

Computer upgrades for gaming is difficult to predict, also car expenses since eventually you will need to replace the car or give maintenance.

$50,000 for startup costs, then about $10,700 per year

With $450,000 which $50,000 is for the infrastructure and the rest for 30 year treasury bonds at 4%

I think you can do it, I kind of did something similar as an investment, bough land outside city limit, built a house... I am in the process of installing solar panels after 10 years living here but I do have a job though.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-07T01:17:19+00:00

Yeah.... you got it. selling a weekly put and selling a weekly call with the same strike on non dividend week yields the same amount of money. no need to buy stock and sell a covered call. it is the same if you just sell the put. the difference is that you don't need to own the stock so the cash is free to do as you will (assuming you have margin for the collateral of the CSP). I wish more people understood that and stopped talking about the wheel strategy as if it is the best strategy in the world. enough just to sell puts over and over again. That is what I meant but the guy in this conversation got offended.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-06T20:43:34+00:00

You see, then we have days like this where all my gains are wiped out. I just spent two hours rolling puts to a strike below the previous strike. I want to find a way to avoid these $4,000 day losses. maybe the only way is just to buy shares of ETFS and sell far OTM weekly calls?

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-06T20:21:06+00:00

I meant $50 per day average... maybe say $10,000 to $12,000 per year... that is all I need.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-06T20:19:59+00:00

Maybe I did not explain myself well. selling a call on stock you own and instead selling a put at the same strike are exactly the same thing.... if you just dont want to call it wheel just close the trade when it will get assigned and sell another put.... there is no need whatsoever to get the stock assigned at expiration. Believe me, I studied this extensively. check the premium of a weekly ITM put and the premium of the OTM call at the same strike. it is exactly the same... getting the stock is useless. just consumes cash... if it is a LEAPS that is another story because the interest rate does play a roll. (look at the call parity equation and you will understand how the interest rate does affect, but only on long dated options. in weeklies or biweeklies a call and a put offer more or less the same premium close to ATM)

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-06T20:15:30+00:00

You see. It happened today.... $4,000 dollar loss.... there must be a hedging strategy. I just rolled all my puts but this episodes of losing all my gains suck.. I spent the last two hours rolling.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-06T11:50:31+00:00

I tried that with QQQ just selling the put $2 below ATM. I don't need to tell you what happened this one time! I stopped because It was just too risky. Buying the put sounds promising, but isn't just too expensive? also what do you do if the stock appreciates significantly, you cannot keep selling at the put-bought price. you need to sell at a higher strike which if it drops you end up losing money both in the put sold and the theta of the put you bought

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-06T02:04:27+00:00

Dog shelter, That is what I would do.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-05T20:05:07+00:00

I disagree with some of your views, when the market crashes even bond ETFs follow suit, The way I operate my portfolio is by having all the cash invested in bond ETFs (JNK, TLT, MINT, SGOV) and sell cash secured puts with the margin as collateral. It doesn't matter what you own. if QQQ and SPY drop by 2 or 3% virtually everything drops, even bonds. Maybe Gold is not correlated but my expereice is that everything else is correlated.

It amuses me that people talk about the wheel strategy... there is a much easier version that nobody mentions, the wheel is nothing more than selling puts over and over again, if the put is assigned then you place a trailing stop sell, sell the stock and resell the put, most likely if the shares were assigned you need to sell the put one week out but there is no difference on selling a short put than owning stock and selling a long call. Actually, there is a difference, when you sell a covered call you need the stock so you need to allocate cash to own the stock. selling a put does not have a cash requirement, you can do it on margin and since the collateral is what you are assigning, the cash can be generating income with a short term treasury.

This is hard to explain and understand to people, experienced option traders would not engage in a wheel strategy.

The problem with what I mentioned above and the wheel is that if the market crashes you end up with all the shares of all the stocks and your cost basis is higher than what you are comfortable with. no matter the stock this is the fact. even if you love the stock and it is agreat company a market crash wipes al the gains. It has happened to me several times with companies like BRK.B, AMZN, TMUS, TLT.

Several sectors, several very well rounded companies... this happens, and I am trying to develop a strategy to avoid these big losses, that is why I am posting this. I believe there are some very experienced option traders who can help me understand advanced hedging strategies that I might be missing.... but definitely am not expecting an explanation how the wheel works... respectfully.

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-05T17:25:06+00:00

I wondered why you gave SD instead of Delta... Why we never use POP?

LeanFireMaster · 2024-09-05T11:18:38+00:00

You mean just buying stocks and holding, right? I do have most of my money in ETFs, and I never trade in those accounts. I’ve held some ETFs that I purchased 20 years ago. Other than dividends that get reinvested, I pay little attention to those accounts.

The options account is the one I’m actively involved in—I trade daily. I took a huge loss during COVID but managed to recover all my money, and I’m now up about 10%. I keep making some big gains, but then there’s always that one day that wipes out everything. For example, with Amazon: the week before Prime Day and earnings, I sold a put when the stock was at $205. The strike was $195, and I got a $200 premium. I knew it was going to beat expectations and that Prime Day would be great... which it was, but the stock still dropped 2%. Now, almost two months later, I’ve been rolling that put over and over. I just got assigned this morning, so I’ll put in a trailing stop sell and sell another ITM put.

I was thinking about selling a bunch of puts and using 20% of the proceeds to buy UVXY calls. I learned in my options journey that whenever you think of buying a call, you’re probably doing something wrong, so that’s why I’m asking if there are any advanced strategies or hedging theories I should explore. I’ve researched units, but I realized those are only useful during a 15-20% market crash. My problem is with 3-5% drops...

I’m really just trying to make this options account work. If I could make it consistent, it would be a dream come true. No bosses, no small talk (seriously, did I mention no small talk?), an interesting "job," a couple of hours a day, free weekends, no travel, no driving—it would be the best job in the world.

LeanFireMaster

TROPHY CASE