About Calls/Puts.

Buying stocks is called investing.
Buying stocks in calls/puts is called insanity.

Calls/puts is a method of gambling; esentially you are telling the market that by date X my stock will reach Y price or better. If it doesn't you lose it all; if it does, you stand to gain a lot from it. The risk is substancial as you can see, and after nearly seven months of investing I decided to try it out with what I considered to be a 'sure thing'.

I have found myself thorughly discontented with the process. The losses are piling; the overall success of my portfolio are diminishing. It's been a learning experience, one that says 'Never, never do this again'. I might as well start lighting cigars with $100 bills; at least my money would provide some comfort in that aspect.

I'm doing well in the stock market overall, but every once in awhile inexperience takes hold and shakes the profits from me like a bully during recess.

Lemuel's Life (Part II)

"Sophomore year, join a fraternity! Pi Kappa introduces you to mild hazing and boring meetings. You eventually lose interest and are known only for running naked in front of lost pledges shouting, "Follow the moon! The moon will lead you home!"

(I think this picture is funny yet visually appropriate. I am a black kid with curly hair; Pi Kappa was a bunch of white kids shaking my hand and putting their arms around me)

Freshman year, I never saw myself pledging a fraterity. The idea of going through so much trouble to join an elite grouping of male bonding seemed to me to be an insincere approach towards making friends...and gay. Who pays out of their pocket to acquire comraderie!?

Much like most things I initially abhor, I ended up trying it out sophomore year anyways. Pi Kappa was a fraternity that didn't care where you came from, who you hung out with, how you dressed, or how you sang (singing ability is a huge influencial factor amongst Abilene Christian University fraternities. Go figure)

Which was good because I didn't care for most people, dressed in black with a white-out contact and skateboard, and was never destined to be the next American Idol.

Pi Kappa made me carry bricks to my classes, hazed us wearing 'Scream masks', and generally made us attempt impossible tasks. I was rewarded with vague, blasé recolections of my entire sophomore year, either attending Pi Kappa functions or ditching work to go to my dorm room to play Warcraft III. Not exactly grabbing life by the balls, but I had not found my niche in ACU; most activities I engaged in that year were merely to pass the time.

In subsequent years I would periodically attend functions to haze that year's pledges with nakedness and other shenanigans. My visits were itermittent at best, much like most things I do.

A trip with Dustin Simms re-introduces you to the wildly addictive world of comic book collecting! Eventually you'll be spending $25/week on comics! Lose $3000 over the next three years.

This was one of my bigger mistakes. Collecting comic books is an expensive hobby for a college student earning negative money. Hell, it's too expensive a hobby for me to do it NOW, earning as much as I do. I blame Dustin for this mistake and hold him personally responsible for all the dough I sank into comic books in the three years following the reintroduction. They are heavy, space consuming, and have been sitting in my grandparent's attic for the last two and a half years. I have nowhere else to put them, no way to transport them, and no desire to remove them from storage anytime soon.

Someday they're going to get thrown out like my grandmother did to my dad when he never picked up his comic collection. Then I'll have a son who will hear about the fate of my comic collection and look at me like I tossed a treasure chest full of gold dabloons over the deck to sink to the bottom of the ocean, exactly how I looked at my father.