Sunday, April 21, 2013

A Week Later

It's a week after my last post. I said that I was going to buy puts on the SLV ETF. I did and the first day I was ahead by about $150 on a $200 investment. After that it went down. After two days of collapsing the metals prices stabilized. I was late getting into the trade. If I had bought the puts on the Friday that the collapse started I could have made thousands of dollars. As it was I was too late. It moved in China too much for me to take advantage of it here.
The lesson was to have some money in my Etrade account to always be ready for a big move. A couple of hundred in reserve can make a big difference. I now don't know which way the markets will move.
That move last week might represent the deflation that happens before the hyper-inflation, that people are expecting.
I watched a lot of truly negative videos about the coming currency collapse, last week. I think they are right. The dollar is worthless and we'll go into hyper-inflation soon.
I feel a need to position myself to be better prepared for it. I talked with Jim about buying his land. I think I could afford it with my income from the Peace and Justice Center. I should try to partner with Jim in building a house there.
I don't know what else I can do. Poverty is the big obstacle. Maybe I could make money in a leveraged manner while the currency is going down. The trouble with that is that I would still be in the dollar.
I was thinking about prospecting for gold. The trouble with that is that it would cost money.
I've been spending too much money on my new computer. It's a Nook by Barnes and Noble. I'm finding myself buying apps for it and they sneak in charging me for them when I don't know that they cost money. The Nook has been a big mistake. I bought an operating system on a memory card for it. It worked for about a week then it froze up. I tried erasing it on the desktop but much of it was write-protected. I'll take it to Radio Shack and see if they can erase it.
I had a money-making idea last week. I noticed how the Peace and Justice Center has regular donations on a monthly basis. I figured that if they can get people to donate year after year and they increase their donor list on a regular basis, it could really add up. I was thinking I could do something similar with dental care for poor people.
My experience with poverty has shown me that dental care is something that is grossly overlooked in caring for the poor. It's hard to get free dental care and people need it. I could start a charity and get people to donate on a monthly basis. In a few years, if I took 10% for overhead, I could support myself quite well. I'll have to ask a few people about getting this off the ground.
That's all for now.
Later.

Sunday, April 14, 2013

Buying Silver Puts Tomorrow

After last Friday's big down move in precious metals, I decided to buy puts in the silver ETF.  Buying puts means that I'll be betting that silver keeps moving down. I would advise using Google and doing a search on put options if you don't understand what I'm talking about. Books have been written on this topic.
I just feel that the move is not over. Since we are apparently going into a depression people aren't buying silver and gold which act as an inflation hedge. Playing the options can be difficult but they are highly leveraged and I might make a lot of money. I just hope that I don't stay in them too long.
I'll keep you all posted on how I'm doing if you come back to my blog.
I went to the Kitco website today. It's a site that specializes in metals (prices and discussions). I wound up watching a lot of negative articles about why gold and silver should go up. Apparently the world's economy is collapsing and now is the time to prepare for it by buying metals and food. Of course, they have been saying that for the last thirty or more years.
 They made some good points on buying silver that I wasn't aware of. Something that struck me was the point that when gold is dug up it is stored as an asset, whereas silver is used as an industrial metal and then thrown away. That means that silver is being depleted at a faster rate than gold.
When the sell-off is over I'm going to buy more silver. I hope I'll be able to afford it. I would also like to buy Jim's acreage. It's close to the Mississippi river, and I could raise chickens and grow a garden as well as fish for food. It really would be an ideal survivalist homestead. Things may turn around, yet. Of course, I've been through this many times, before. I get my hopes built up, then my investments turn bad.
I just checked the Asian market for gold and silver. They opened down, but now they seem to be coming back. I'm glad. That means I'll be able to get into my position at a better price than what it could have been. I'll be buying at 8:30 tomorrow morning. I'm a bit anxious. At least I won't have thousands invested and I have a good income from Social Security and my part-time job. It's money I could afford to lose.
I've been using the Nook a lot more, lately. I still prefer to use a laptop to blog with. I might have to get the wireless keyboard for the Nook. I don't see any great advantage to the tablet computers. They are hard to get used to and I need a real keyboard, anyway.
If anything great happens tomorrow I'll get back to you.
Later

Sunday, April 7, 2013

New Nook

Last week I went to Barnes & Noble, in LaCrosse, and bought a Nook. It's a  tablet computer sold by B&N. I'm having a hard time typing with it. I'm reduced to hunting and pecking typing. I can see that I'll have to buy a keyboard for it. It took me a while to get used  to navigating on it. Overall I don't see any great advantage to this over my old Mac Ibook laptops. I think they are a waste of money.
It was a two for the price of one deal. I got an ereader as well. I like the ereader. It's really handy, but I'm not sold on the Nook. Maybe I'll like it when I get a keyboard. I already sent off for a memory card with a different operating system on it. I couldn't get enough apps with this operating system.
That's all for now. I might get back on the desktop.
I'm back and the desktop works, which is more than I can say for the Nook. It's great to have a real keyboard. I was sucked into buying a tablet computer by all the hype. I think they are a waste. I can't type with it and I keep bumping things and ending up doing something that I don't want to. They are just too hard to use. Maybe the Ipad is better but I doubt it. The new operating system might help. I couldn't get Google Drive on the nook. We'll see.
From what I can see the tablets are just an attempt to get you to spend more money. And I don't have any to waste.
later