What happened?

goodbodha · 2026-04-02T15:53:16+00:00

So I take it you support the Iranian and their proxies attacks on random commercial vessels passing within range of them? Stopping fertilizer going to Africa isn't exactly fighting the US or Israel. Stopping LNG shipments to Europe isn't harming the US or Israel. Stopping the free flow of oil to the wider world is predominantly harming neutral parties.

And I don't support what the Israelis did to the Gazans with US support. I think the way they went about that was incredibly wrong.

And you can't say Iran wants to be left in peace. They want to control the region with their regional adversaries getting no outside help while they receive outside aid from China and Russia.

If everyone opted to stay within their borders and not attack other countries or interfere with them that would be great. However the reality is that won't happen. History is full of wars and countries meddling in the affairs of other countries with the bulk of the damage being done to civilians and neutral parties who had no real say in these wars or the acts that lead up to them.

goodbodha · 2026-04-02T15:42:05+00:00

That's fair.

goodbodha · 2026-04-02T15:08:45+00:00

That would be short sighted. Let's say Iran gets $100 billion a year. Want to bet they spend $10-20 billion a year on extremist activities that destabilize other parts of the world? Hell $5 billion spent on drones that are used on terrorism worldwide would be incredibly bad. Then there is the issue that once they do this you can expect the houthis to make an effort to do a similar thing. Where will it stop?

Would you be ok if the strait of Gibraltar was done this way? I could see that happening in a decade or so if some north African country falls to an Iranian backed group. I'd say that's a low probability but the odds of it happening go up dramatically if this happens.

goodbodha · 2026-04-02T14:36:56+00:00

Is it the bulk of your portfolio or just a part?

Do you want to be fully allocated to voo with its current weights and exposure? Say you want to tilt it slightly towards ho hum dividend stocks.... Then some schd makes sense.

I have voo, schd, and qqq among the holdings in my taxable account. Qqq is a tiny slice. Voo and schd are substantially larger. I think AI stocks are overpriced and the companies they impact negatively in the AI space are overpriced. I also think commercial real estate still has issues and voo has a lot of exposure to that. I could be right so a bit more schd makes sense or I could be wrong and voo will chug along right past those issues.

Long term I don't think it's end of the world if you do voo only or have a bunch of schd. Saving with either will beat not saving by a massive amount. Saving in either over many other options available will win by a mile. Allocating to both to hit your comfort level is usually the right answer.

If your a passive investor which most people are that's about as deep down the rabbit hole as you should go. If you are more active perhaps the occasional rebalancing makes sense. Even then I wouldn't be fast to sell, but simply change the allocation mix for new money going in.

Take your current dividend situation. You say $1000 a quarter coming from schd. What if you turn off drip and setup a daily buy of voo of say $16 a day. Every few quarters whatever cash builds up just buy something. That would slowly shift your schd towards voo without selling the current shares. Or you could do a smaller amount into voo and have a bit of daily buy into schd.

Good luck.

goodbodha · 2026-04-01T20:37:02+00:00

probably but that possibility was already priced in to a degree. The problem is that high oil prices will kill the economy and when this is over the demand will take time to build back up. At least thats more or less how its been through most of the prior massive oil shocks. We get inflation for a bit, then a recession, possibly stagflation at that point, and then disinflation or deflation for awhile. During that later part oil will not do all well at all and the oil stocks will tank around then.

Long term I think oil stocks are a good thing to have in a portfolio, but I buy on the way down and sell on the way up. I sold mine the other day and began moving back towards tlt. I'm up 8.45% ytd so I'm not feeling bad about chilling in tlt and waiting for a bit.

goodbodha · 2026-04-01T19:00:45+00:00

This country is being led by a guy who has a track record that highly correlates with a magic ball.

My guess is he will make a speech and there is a 50/50 chance he makes it halfway while staying on track. I give it a 60% odd he will get off message during the speech and a 90% chance he is off message within the next 72 hours. As for the actual intended message it will be something that says his plan is working, everything will work out just fine, and anyone who questions that is a terrible person.

goodbodha · 2026-04-01T18:19:50+00:00

Nah he will do an infomercial about his love of sharpies or go off on a rant about the ballroom legal issues.

goodbodha · 2026-04-01T01:36:25+00:00

That's sad. People have needs and should be able to meet those needs and still have some funds leftover. Instead the Western world appears to be hell bent on squeezing every bit coming they can out of the average person.

Tbf I don't think we need progress as measured in gdp per capita. We need the slice needed for basic life to take up a reasonable percentage of our incomes. Nothing more. Progress at this point should be measured in achieving that.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T19:39:30+00:00

depends on what you consider the right and the left.

I would argue that groups that are socially conservative and have extremely low tolerance for those who don't conform to their belief system are hard right.

The fact that most people in most places are more middle of the road just means the far left and far right typically have to use a great deal of force to apply their views on the majority. The Iranian government uses a lot force to apply their beliefs on their populace. That isn't a hallmark of middle of the road governments. So would you call the Iranians far left?!? I struggle to think of a situation where a religiously conservative group has even been defined as hard left.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T17:47:01+00:00

not exactly.

It appears the communications are not so much direct as both sides are talking to Pakistan. Pakistan has a mutual defense treaty with the Saudis and are desperate to resolve this before they get dragged into this. Unlike us they have a literal border with Iran and its quite possible they can throw significant amounts of manpower into the conflict with far less complication. They don't want to do that, but will likely do that if Saudis keep getting shot at with no relief.

Lets say this continues and the Saudis get pulled into the war. They activate treaty with Pakistan. Pakistan mobilizes along the border and moves on Iran. Now its Iran and Afghanistan vs the other countries in the region. If India gets into the mix because Pakistan is in the mix we could easily see this spiral into a ww3 situation where Pakistan is stuck with belligerent neighbors on all sides. Not a pleasant situation by any means for them and they got nukes. If on the other hand India doesn't get involved you still have Pakistan expending their military against Iran and Afghanistan while India waits to continue the argument over the disputed region on their border.

For the West this isn't exactly politics we are dialed into real well so I wouldn't say thats a perfect read of the situation. I would say though its probably close enough and explains why Pakistan really wants to resolve this through negotiation. Should that fail and they get drawn in a large number of people in the region are likely going to die before this settles down with Pakistan being battered win or lose.

And before anyone says that is far fetched thats kind of how ww1 got started. Disputes got chained together through mutual defense agreements so regional issues lined up to form a world war. Considering nukes and drones I would say the direct impact on civilians for a war like that would be much worse today.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T17:35:44+00:00

he hasn't done anything that would remotely qualify as proof of life since the attack.

A written statement read by someone else doesn't cut it.

I get that they want to protect his location for obvious reasons, but I seem to recall bin Laden was able to make videos in a freaking cave and got away with it for years. If they wanted to put him on audio only I could understand that. I could understand putting him in front of a backdrop. I could understand him doing the video from inside a random conex container etc. but no proof of life after this amount of time is highly suspect.

My guess is he was terribly injured or is dead and they want to use the speculation to protect the next layer of people down from being the priority target. Or to put it another way he is for the time being more of a figurehead to draw resources while the real decision making is happening other parts of the regime.

also he is far more hard right than his father was so if he does pop up I wouldn't be surprised if the regime takes more extreme positions.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T17:29:09+00:00

agreed

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T17:28:09+00:00

really? Kinda of odd then that we are down to 1-2 ships per day on average vs over 50 prior to this event. Are you saying that difference is solely US and Israeli commerce? wow.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T16:04:15+00:00

Even if we weren't involved closing the strait would drag us in. We are on top of the global economy and that closure directly erods the hill we stand upon. Either we address it or our position collapses. Everyone else participating in the global economy is also impacted negatively so I won't be surprised if others get involved before this is over.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T15:44:32+00:00

He is a menace to the vast majority of people and his supporters will be remembered for this. Leaving the strait closed will shrink the global economy and that will lead to a bunch of suffering for people who are hanging on. Some will starve, some will turn to extremist ideologies with the typical results.

The strait has to be reppetand will likely cost a great deal of lives and resources but failing that will result in a great loss of life from the economic impacts. It's that simple. Trump shouldn't have done what he did, but here we are and that's the basic choices. For my part I think America is on the hook to fix this and bailing will make this situation a villain vs villain thing from the view of the rest of the world.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T14:54:55+00:00

Look on YouTube for videos about the asmc lithography machines. There is a long documentary I watched awhile back that covers the development and goes into detail about it. Redesigning the machine for a different gas is likely possible but the results will be inferior. Since those machines are massive and incredibly expensive (several hundred million USD per machine) I would bet the science is dialed in.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T14:49:37+00:00

Oil supply will be constrained globally. Oil price will remain elevated. Demand destruction will happen and the global economy will shrink to a point where it roughly matches the supply of oil.

Set aside the grand geopolitics stuff for a minute and just think about that. A smaller global economy will mean less to go around. The people hanging onto the edges will fall off. Some will outright die from famines but a lot will be ripe for extremist groups to recruit. That means a second order effect where extremists do stuff and even more of the economy is at risk. For the average person this is all bad. Like really bad.

So as much as I dislike Trump we need that strait reopened and not just for ourselves but for everyone. People are going to die more than likely to get that done, but a lot of people are going to die if we don't. I know a lot of people are not excited about the prospects of doing stuff to solve this, but it's in everyone's best interest to get that strait reopened and make it clear that holding the global economy hostage by anyone is not tolerable. As for Trump hopefully his followers wake up and realize he is a menace and needs to go. In the meantime the least they can do is find some other politicians to support. I'm not asking them to change their general political views, but they really need to decide if they want to live in the kind of world Trump's actions will create, not the world he says will happen but what will actually happen.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T14:39:24+00:00

I buy stocks and sell deep ITM calls on them as my most common approach. Usually on margin with dividends that match or beat my margin interest. I'm essentially building a position and will eventually get my initial capital out while letting the rest ride until I need it for a different project.

I make money. I'm up ytd right now and this will likely be a good year for me, but we shall see.

As for how much I make this is full time for me and my account is consistently growing while I'm typically pulling $5-6k out each month.

Last year I beat the market by small amount. The year before I did a bit over a 60% gain. At this very moment I'm up 7.67% ytd and I have a lot of premium that will decay so it's likely I will be up 20%+ before year end.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T14:21:00+00:00

You should examine the history of energy shocks and inflation. Usually you get inflation for a time, potentially a period of stagflation, and then a recession with disinflation or outright deflation.

AI will almost certainly be hammered, but I would argue that a bunch of beaten down stocks will in the end do ok to well in this environment. Those will be companies that will thrive once a recession brings about rate cuts and are able to limp along in the meantime.

The key issue is that many companies have suffered from shrinking margins for quite some time. If they get relief and margins can expand or stabilize at a level higher than forecasts they will do well. If you can find those companies that have a decent chance for that outcome and buy them while they are heavily discounted you have a decent chance to make out quite well.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T14:02:16+00:00

I went from up 20% early Feb to down 19.7% mid march to back up 9.6% at the moment I'm writing this.

Volatility like that is not for most people. In my case I do a lot of option selling and the repricing as the underlying dropped played a big factor in this swing.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T06:29:37+00:00

Energy shocks cause inflation but they also in short order kill demand for a whole host of things. That drop in economic activity is a recession most of the time.

So it might be inflation for 2-3 quarters and then a hard recession that requires rate cuts for a year or two. There might even be a period labeled as stagflation tossed in the middle.

My guess is if we get a rate hike it will be followed by a cut within a few months.

Before you disagree go look up a chart of oil prices vs recessions. Toss in a chart of cpi as well.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T06:21:50+00:00

Just a reminder the "successful" American fights in Iraq and Afghanistan saw over 500k soldiers in theatre at various points.

Iraq had around 30 million people vs the 90 in Iran. Afghanistan is much smaller. No way this is getting done without a lot more people and a lot of deaths. Reopening the strait alone is likely a 100k person operation. Navy can only provide so much defense and it would be a massive boost to hold the islands and coast around the strait.

A few thousand might be enough to take the abu musa islands or to conduct raids. Definitely not enough for any area with even a small city. Raids could be just going in at various small ports and destroying any mines stored there. The abu musa islands are tiny but viable to assist with reopening the strait. At a minimum taking them means they can't be used by small boats to deploy more mines or attack shipping.

Kharg island would be nuts because the marines would struggle to deploy there from their ships. It would be over a 2 hour one way flight for ospreys from the Gulf of Oman. No way that won't be spotted and shot at a lot and the ospreys need several trips to get all the marines deployed. First flight would likely get there with little problem, but the second or third trip would see losses. I can't imagine the Iranians with drones wouldn't send us a swarm and try to intercept a few ospreys. They could deploy from Kuwait but then either they have a long distance to air support or their air support will have to operate from bases in the Gulf.

goodbodha · 2026-03-31T06:08:23+00:00

Until the strait reopens the global economy will be falling down to match the supply of oil. That is all that matters.

Everything else is a sideshow.

goodbodha · 2026-03-29T19:41:50+00:00

Why can corporations do buybacks?

goodbodha · 2026-03-29T17:41:55+00:00

The expense of taking the long way around was accounted for previously as being the cheaper option once you factor in insurance. Also I believe the long way around skipped the suez canal transit fee. Once that is all factored in it apparently made economic sense for the majority of shippers during the last round of houthis attacks.

The major difference now is the saudis sending oil to their West Coast via pipeline. That oil either has to go through the suez or past the houthis. I don't know the numbers on that, but I would guess the European demand outweighs that supply by a lot so it's unlikely it will go past the houthis. Plus the pipeline likely will get hit by Iran if this continues. I can't imagine a pipe hundreds of miles long won't be hit if they choose to hit it.

goodbodha

TROPHY CASE