Yearly Archive for: ‘2009’
Considering a Mac OS X Server Upgrade
Years ago, we launched our first business on a couple of cheap, out-of-the-box Dell Computers with Microsoft XP and Dreamweaver. Shortly thereafter, we signed a lease with Apple Financial and purchased nearly $30,000 worth of computer equipment and software for our new offices, followed by regular rounds of equipment additions and new systems being shipped into headquarters. The e-commerce sites, …
The Illusion of Record Profits
When managers talk about record profits, they often leave out one crucial detail that would allow shareholders and owners to view their performance in a more honest light: the change in capital at work in the enterprise. This seemingly small detail is actually one of the most important numbers any analyst, executive, owner, or lender needs to know. Assume you …
Storyville Coffee Company
Every year, I read tens of thousands of pages of financial reports, SEC filings, business proposals, expansion requests, and everything else you can imagine relating to our businesses and my job as the chief capital allocator (which is, after all, the primary job of the CEO). It takes a lot to raise my eyebrows and get me excited about a …
Selling Covered Calls
The volatility in the markets has caused pricing for certain derivatives to shoot through the roof, allowing investors to earn huge returns by selling covered calls (also known as writing covered calls). Here’s an example of a real transaction involving selling covered calls that one of our businesses recently contemplated. Right now, we could purchase 6,000 shares of U.S. Bancorp …
Buying Call Options
Posted May 28 2009 by Joshua Kennon in Investing Strategies with 1 Comment
Buying call options is the opposite of selling covered calls and is an extremely aggressive strategy. You can generate big losses, but if you’re right, huge (and I mean huge) gains. The only reason we are willing to do it with a very small percentage of our assets is because we have the liquidity, net worth, and profitability to support …
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