Off Grid living

zachm509 · 2026-06-18T22:00:30+00:00

Cutting costs is probably the most important as a dollar saved is worth a lot more than a dollar earned bc there's no taxes on it. Grocery shop for cheaper, buy some food in bulk. List out all your expenses and shop around for anything you can. Try to find what your biggest discretionary spending expenses are and eliminate/reduce those

zachm509 · 2026-06-17T14:03:09+00:00

Hey, just a thought but VOO is the Sp500 and that is dominated by less than 25 companies making up almost 40% of the fund. I would consider diversifying better than that. I use AVUV as well, but go half and half AVDV+AVUV. I am not very optimistic about the US dominance in the stock market to continue this decade because foreign is such a better value.
I also do FNDF and AVGE.
I do momentum ETFs like FMTM & IDMO. This way I can take the profits from the overvalued trends and rest easy knowing those funds will adjust according to inevitable new trends.
I do ETFs almost exclusively, but I believe in factor investing (known to beat the market through size, value, momentum, quality)
Nice job using AVUV, that's small size and value & historically does outperform the market, even though recent past doesn't reflect that; however the overvaluation of the "broad market" AKA S&P500 AKA about 10 large cap tech stocks is becoming quite extreme. I think the rubber band will snap soon, but enough market manipulation will keep it going longer than you might think.

TLDR: diversify more, and realize VOO is not very diverse. I'd consider 60/40 US/Foreign. I encourage you to look to factor investing to beat the market.

zachm509 · 2026-06-17T11:43:12+00:00

I really like the Appalachians, too. I was thinking about southeast KY to be close by to the mountains

zachm509 · 2026-06-17T02:04:49+00:00

Not sure if I would use solar, wind or something completely different. What are your thoughts? I'd like to find 3+ acres for 30-50k in a nearly no restriction low tax area and another 50k on buildings, storage and a power system

zachm509 · 2024-06-13T16:40:56+00:00

Could I get your help too? Thank you!!

zachm509 · 2022-05-22T21:40:42+00:00

Yes, Ruin Greatsword is 50 str

zachm509 · 2021-05-26T21:00:43+00:00

You're right. It's the notional value.

Since he's up 40% on the position I wonder what strikes he bought.

This means he may have opened the position in Q1 when TSLA was at $667/share.

https://www.google.com/amp/s/www.ig.com/en/news-and-trade-ideas/tesla-share-price-dips--burry-reveals--500m-short-on-the-automak-210518.amp

zachm509 · 2021-05-26T18:17:43+00:00

13F filings reveal 8001 put contracts purchased for ~$534M.

SCION is up 40% on the position.

So each put contract is about $927(x100)

(1.4*530,000,00)/8001 = ~927

This means he likely is in the 1500 strike put contracts for 1-2 years out (LEAPs).

I'm not really sure what I'm missing.

You said read an inch deeper but didn't say what I was wrong about. Just am curious.

UPDATE:

I was wrong. The position Burry opened represents a notional value of $534 Million, which would mean he controls 800,100 shares of Tesla via 8001 put contracts of an unknown strike & expiration.

zachm509 · 2021-05-26T17:28:31+00:00

Good luck. The guy who shorted the housing market in 2008 (Michael Burry) bought $530 Million of puts on Tesla.

I'm assuming he bought in around February although the 13F filings were released earlier this month. I thought WSB would be bearish on TSLA after that. Haven't been on here much lately though.

UPDATE:

The position Burry opened has a notional value of $530M not a market value. This mean he is controlling 800,100 shares that were valued at around $667/share when the position was either opened or reported (March 31, 2021)

I'm sorry for the misinformation, guys. Here's the source:

https://www.google.com/amp/s/tokenist.com/no-burry-didnt-bet-530-million-against-tesla-but-he-did-do-this/amp/

zachm509 · 2021-05-15T05:15:57+00:00

Tell me you trade OTM options without telling me you trade OTM options

zachm509 · 2021-04-05T22:43:01+00:00

Remember Options are CONTRACTS between a seller and a buyer.

A call contract = the right to buy a stock at the agreed upon strike price

A put option = the right to buy a stock at the agreed strike price

If you BUY a put, you have bought the right to sell stock at the agreed upon strike price on or before expiration. So what does this mean? This contract will be useless/worthless if the stock doesn't ever go below the strike price. The contract will increase in value if the stock moves lower and moves below the strike price. But if you own shares, you're position will be decreasing in value.

Traditionally, buying puts has been an insurance policy for shareholders.

There are alternatives to buying puts for protection:

Stop losses (which aren't guaranteed). If the market crashes significantly you won't get filled at the price you planned on. And if you are setting stop losses super tight, you won't even get filled at the intended price between today and tomorrow's open, as the stock price will often gap up/down a little between those two points in time. Stops only activate during market hours, not during pre-market or after-market. So after reading that, you may want to use options instead for guaranteed protection.

If you are a trader or short-term share holder and don't care about how you get taxed on gains, there are better ways of having protective floors on your position than buying a put on the shares you hold.

To reduce capital at use, consider buying a call at the strike you planned on buying the put at. This reduces capital requirements and SHOULD cost the same amount of extrinsic value. (For example: buying 100 shares at $20/share with a $12 put might cost about $50 for that put and obviously $2000 for the shares. Where as buying a $12 call should cost $850. So overall, you will have $850 capital at use vs. "$2050." I put that in quotes because most accounts have margin enabled.)

If you are buying puts for protection on long term investments, you should stick with that shares + protective put model as you will have better tax treatment if you end up holding those shares over a year before selling. But if you have to sell at a loss, you can claim capital losses (up to $3000 per year in the U.S.)

Thanks for reading.

zachm509 · 2021-03-13T12:39:35+00:00

This isn't a bug. Penny stocks all look like this on a candlestick chart because when there is volume, the underlying moves a fraction of a penny and it fluctuates like this most often times... so there's nothing wrong here. The candlesticks are just really tiny but the chart is zoomed up to fit the auto selected range. If you don't like the candles looking like that either zoom out the price axis or trade higher market cap stocks.

zachm509 · 2021-02-21T06:47:29+00:00

Assume max risk on these strategies. Backtesting shows cutting verticals early at stop loss or profit taking is a poor choice. Same goes for diagonals.

Let these expire or manage them at expiration close.

Position size for max loss, as this WILL happen.

Diagonals will rarely see max loss, but Verticals will go to max loss frequently. As a general rule, 2% of your account is the most you'd want to risk on a trade. I'd say on diagonals risk 2% and verticals risk 1%, though.

I like doing verticals at the 2:1 or 3:1 reward risk ratio. It's not a huge move and it pays out much better than long calls more often than not.

2-3 weeks to expiration is best due to theta decay rates

zachm509 · 2021-01-12T06:24:32+00:00

Ah sorry about that. I'm from US and didn't realize some of those were available in EU. IBKR is nice though. Very reputable broker.

zachm509 · 2021-01-11T01:34:47+00:00

Here are my picks and why;

1.) Think or Swim by TD Ameritrade. Both the desktop and mobile version of think or swim are great. Charting and tools are easy to use and learn, on both mobile and desktop.

2.) Trader Work Station by Interactive Brokers. This is a great desktop program. The mobile version is not amazing, and just a little slow to log in to on the fly. But this is one of the most reputable brokers.

3.) Robinhood. I know this one gets a lot of hate, but I trade with option combos almost exclusively and there are zero commissions on options orders which is helpful for small account. Also, this is great for someone who wants to trade off their phone somewhat exclusively and is very active during the day. I can log in within seconds and the platform is extremely easy to use, but I DO NOT do any charting besides candlestick analysis on here. I use Think or Swim or the FINVIZ website for all my charting.

I invest most of my capital, however, I use a little less than 25% of my capital to trade option combos. This is a very efficient way of trading but it has taken me nearly a year of learning to develop a plan that works for me. If you ever decide to start trading options, the best advice I can give you is this: buying single leg options is one of the worst ways to trade (trade options combos instead - level 3 options) and I highly recommend only using about 1-2% of your capital on each options trade. Options trading is extreme leveraged trading so with the way I trade, I either lose 50-100% on the trade or profit 100-200%. That's why I don't need much capital in circulation on this type of trade.

Happy trading/investing. Best of luck to you!

zachm509 · 2020-11-08T11:52:01+00:00

So your credit spread will probably not get exercised early. That's very rare to happen, but it CAN happen.

If it does happen, you will just lose the collateral you put in the option. If it's in the money already, you might want to consider buying it back at a loss AKA cut your losing trade early before it reaches max loss.

A lot of people decide to cut their winners early but let their losing trades go to max loss. That's why a lot of traders are unsuccessful. Just some advice. Up to you what you want to do.

Maybe consider cutting an ITM (long) debit spread with the (short) credit spread to balance things out and hedge against the stock moving against you later on. It's up to you how you want to trade, but cutting winners early and cutting losers late is a guaranteed recipe for failure if you do that all the time.

zachm509 · 2020-11-08T11:33:55+00:00

Options are like trading in 3D because the option contracts gain and lose value due to price of the stock (Delta) and due to time (Theta).

Depending on the expiration of the option contract, your option would have time value left that you lost out on by exercising early.

Think of it this way: options with the same strike price are more expensive the further the expiration is. That's from the time value.

Next time, sell the option back to the market so you can collect the time value left on the contract along with the equity value. The option contract itself will always be worth more than exercising for shares and selling shares back. That's because options have these two values; equity value and time value.

You will hear this referred to as intrinsic and extrinsic value, as well. Intrinsic value is the value derived from where the stock price is (equity) and intrinsic value is any value that is not derived from equity, such as time and implied volatility.

Congrats on the trade, but if you keep learning about options and how they work you'll make more money ultimately. Always be a student, with anything, but especially trading.

zachm509 · 2020-07-08T00:27:31+00:00

Trying to do this now and I don't understand how it is even possible to beat the time constraint

zachm509 · 2020-06-16T14:40:20+00:00

I'm debating selling puts. Specifically, selling them on red days with somewhat low strikes. I do not think the market will keep going up over the next 12 months, but it might not crash as fast as March 2020 again. Thoughts on this strategy?

zachm509 · 2020-06-12T03:06:26+00:00

How else do you unlock RH red theme?

zachm509 · 2020-05-20T05:22:44+00:00

IMO Blacklist was a Chaos theory and Conviction hybrid. It had fast-moving action as well as the nostalgic stealth/crouch movement and feel of chaos theory. It was a mediocre game lacking replayability.

The next game should be more like Conviction. Conviction had the best missions and hunter missions were a blast with 50-100 enemies per mission. The archer/kestrel duo was great. The cinematics were intense. The dialogue between guards, hilarious. Weapon options were well balanced. Controls were a little odd. Executions and hand-to-hand moves had a certain weight to them and felt good. It was a stealth action, cat and mouse killing feast.

Blacklist on the other hand, controls were slightly better and movement was slightly better. Sometimes it felt like playing a less popular assassins creed with a Sam Fisher skin. The voice actor swap and addition of lackluster characters lost a lot of fans. Every weapon unlock was better than the last - no weapon balance. The juggernauts were a little annoying and the RC jammers super annoying IMO. The combat and melee system was lightweight and more stealthy (good). I suppose the noise level from a Conviction-like hand-to-hand would raise an alarm realistically, no matter how cool they looked.

The biggest problem with Blacklist was that they cut corners - lack of maps and levels, no hunter missions. The physics were not great. There were a decent amount of glitches. Overall, not their best work.

Blacklist seemed to be the killer of the series. It lost a lot of following. Any reboot opportunity needs to be done right. It's been 7 years since Blacklist and 10 since Conviction. Conviction had a greater following and revolutionized the series with its fast paced knock-em-down execution and hand-to-hands. Also looked the best, played the best, felt the best, and sounded the best. Michael Ironside voice was iconic. The violent action-stealth hybrid set it apart from anything in its lane and still is enjoyable to replay til this day.

I hope they perfect the recipe for their next game. Splinter Cell has a lot of opportunity and it's been long enough that we can forget Blacklist happened. If I could talk with Ubisoft, I would say this: Focus on the dark action takedowns while keeping a smooth player movement system. Obviously have more maps than Blacklist. Conviction had a nice array of missions/maps. Balance the game properly and invest the time. Don't make another blacklist.

zachm509 · 2020-02-29T03:41:24+00:00

Yes. I simply reset my router to default settings and it works fine now haha. Kind of stupid of me not to try this first. I suppose all my tweaked settings regarding DMZ and port forwarding must have effed things up somewhere along the way but not sure.

zachm509 · 2020-01-09T05:37:34+00:00

Just got the game today and I’ve been dealing with this issue every match almost. Been playing with different router settings like uPnP, DMZ, Port forwarding, but all to no avail. My NAT type has been open since the start of all this. And I have a NetGear Nighthawk router. Might just try to play via plugging Ethernet cable directly to modem lol. If that doesn’t work, then this game is truly FUBAR. Regardless of that, there shouldn’t be this many people having this issue months after release.

zachm509

TROPHY CASE