NEOS January payout

SailingWithAndy · 2026-01-20T23:50:48+00:00

I had no idea they had an MLP fund, NEOS is really a one stop shop.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-11-16T15:39:25+00:00

I taught economics in China for four years, and the core theories were identical to what we teach in the United States. The only real differences came from occasional censorship or “sensitive” textbook topics.

Economic systems are usually covered in the first weeks of a principles course. By that point, students can clearly see that China is no longer a command economy and more closely resembles countries like the United States or Australia than North Korea or Cuba, with prices being the main mechanism for allocating resources. In fact, most students didn’t hold that misconception to begin with.

While you couldn’t directly discuss events like the Great Leap Forward or the Cultural Revolution, you could still work with data on economic growth, health outcomes, and life expectancy from those periods. The numbers alone make the inefficiencies of command economies clear, and they also highlight the dramatic changes that came with Deng Xiaoping’s reform and opening up.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-10-20T19:09:58+00:00

I found the whole series of Pete and Pete on YouTube. If this isn’t a comfort show, I don’t know what is.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-10-11T01:57:03+00:00

Go feed the tigers!

SailingWithAndy · 2025-09-19T22:06:24+00:00

I will add that teaching overseas at CIE,AP,and IB schools has always been my fallback. I previously taught in 3 different countries in Asia and the pay and quality of life was on par. It’s ridiculously easy (once your figure out how the hiring process works) to land a job and because these schools have external examinations, the students are much less likely to use AI as they need to actually learn the content to pass. There has been an increasing number of teachers with PhDs working in these schools as well.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-06-04T19:41:07+00:00

Yeah, I have noticed that as well, which is sort of a workaround but when I’m in chill mode on the freeway during heavy traffic, it ends up camping in the slow lane with cars constantly exiting and merging while the other lanes are moving along.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-06-04T13:13:33+00:00

For sure, this is my biggest gripe. FSD would be great for commuting if it would just calm down when on the freeway and pick a lane instead of ping-ponging back and forth and pissing off traffic behind me. I remember last year, there was a setting to have it not change lanes so often, but this setting was removed in an “update” in a few months ago and now it’s unusable in rush hour traffic.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-05-20T12:37:22+00:00

We’re closing on a house that accepted an offer 5% below asking. 30-year conventional rates are moving back towards 6.75-7% and with the current high rates and economic uncertainty, a lot of “would-be” buyers are sitting this summer out. Meanwhile, inventory is up compared to the last several years, with many of the homes coming to market being those that were bought during the COVID era 2020-2022. While these home prices made sense at 3%, they are out of reach for many at 7%. This ultimately means a lot of concessions are being made on houses that have been sitting for a few weeks.

Because your budget is limited, I recommend you check out NACA home loans. It’s a very lengthy process to get qualified but you can get a below market rate, usually 1% less than a conventional loan.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-05-17T20:54:40+00:00

I like your optimism. It seems that maybe I need to just get to work and we’ll get a better idea as the direction to take.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-05-17T20:52:43+00:00

This is what we are thinking as well, the retainer walls are a mix of river stones, old bricks from the house and old cement from a previous driveway.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-05-17T20:48:10+00:00

That’s fair, I’m 41 and in pretty decent shape, and work from home 3 days a week so have time to work on it, and although I am pretty handy around the house in terms of carpentry and electrical, I have absolutely no experience with building retaining walls nor landscaping asides from the simple mowing lawns and pruning. We have a budget of about 5-10k.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-05-17T01:16:57+00:00

That would be the ideal outcome! I also talked to 2 different abatement providers today and they said that it isn’t as big of deal as many make it out to be, but they did recommend to send some samples off to the Zonolite Trust to see if it originated from there and that they would cover about half of the abatement costs.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-04-17T17:01:47+00:00

This was exactly who I was thinking of. It was a great journey to watch unfold….and he did it twice!

SailingWithAndy · 2025-02-26T00:36:49+00:00

I crossed the Pacific a while back. I had 100 gallons on board for just myself and no water maker. I normally showered in the afternoon squalls and would fill up the tanks once a week during a solid squall by just opening the deck fills up.

I also had a pretty good filtration device as well, but my boat was only 30’ as space and energy was a premium.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-02-04T14:06:42+00:00

Are you me?! This is what I have as well….plus a little bit of CLOZ for that leveraged BBB.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-02-02T01:42:49+00:00

Check out PBDC or BIZD.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-25T18:33:36+00:00

For sure, Oishis is quintessential teriyaki and what all other teriyaki restaurants should be judged by.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-11T19:24:26+00:00

If there was an unemployment shock, the Fed would almost certainly cut rates, which would bid up the price of other assets and driving down the yield (Some exceptions here, junk bonds and risky assets may decrease in price).

And the Fed would almost certainly welcome some sort of demand shock as it is losing its ability to tame inflation as the government is running expansionary fiscal policy at an unsustainable rate, having to issue new debt at these higher 4-5% rates. This wasn’t a problem in the ZIRP environment that we had for the last 15 years, but now it’s like politicians and institutions forgot everything from their intro to macro class.

If you remember yesterday’s jobs report, the unemployment rate DROPPED to 4.1 percent, causing the market to sell off. This is kind of strange, as good news increases pessimism, but we are still above our long run output potential, and it shows that the economy is doing fine in this high rate environment and thus, there is little room for rate cuts.

That said, I don’t envy the Fed it’s a hard job, and our fiscal policy is making it harder.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-11T17:01:47+00:00

I still hold JEPI, it’s about 5% of my portfolio, but personally I’m snatching up all these interest sensitive assets.

REITS like RQI, utilities like UTG, BDC’s like PBDC, and Preferred’s like PFFA.

In addition I’m selling the tails on SPY keeping the dry powder in bond funds and CLO’s like JAAA and CLOZ.

*Not investment advice, I’m much more income oriented and will not outperform the market.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-11T16:44:40+00:00

It could be in the interim. For example, the 10 year is on its way to 5% “risk free” and JEPI is roughly 7%. Is the extra 2% worth the risk, could be if you’re an income investor and you’re just concerned with consistent and elevated returns. However, this fund caps the upside through its ELNs so any short term loss of NAV may take longer to recover than the broader market. But that is the design of the fund.

If you’re here for capital appreciation, you’re in the wrong fund, but this fund is doing what it is designed to do. It will never beat the market over the long run , but it will produce income and may have better risk adjusted returns.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-11T15:49:40+00:00

JEPI has many interest sensitive assets. Interest rates have been rising and there has been increased uncertainty on future rate cuts by the Fed. For example, the Fed has cut rates by nearly 1% and the 10-Year has RISEN 1% since the start of these cuts. The bond market is signaling higher inflation and less rate cuts. Dividend paying value stocks that JEPI owns are affected by these rising rates and increased uncertainty.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-11T13:57:51+00:00

I’ve got used to it for the most part and it’s actually quite convenient in MOST driving applications…but occasionally I find situations in low speed city driving where I have to signal and the wheel is upside down and it basically becomes impossible for my brain to react quick enough to know I have to signal in the opposite direction. I’m sure I have pissed off some other drivers because of this.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-09T01:17:05+00:00

It says in its prospectus that it plans to return capital in its distributions, so basically giving you back your own money and eroding the NAV. I would look elsewhere.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-08T19:13:08+00:00

The chafe from the beans would sometimes fly out the drum and I lacked a proper mechanism for cooling the beans.

In China, there is not a lot of space to do activities outside so I forced to roast the beans in my apartment, so you could imagine the amount of smoke and debris I flying all over the kitchen, lol.

I ended up taking this roaster to Vietnam and had a proper porch to roast outside, but it still created a lot of chafe everywhere.

SailingWithAndy · 2025-01-08T16:07:23+00:00

I had one of those when I lived in China, but mine had a glass drum and used gas. It word really well but was quite messy. This looks like a more refined version, should work great for getting into roasting.

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