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52-80

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Everything posted by 52-80

  1. For cash purchases, registeres flyertalk member get access to Mileage Run Deals and Premium Fare Deals and theres always interesting shit in there if you are fairly flexible
  2. You can always ask on flyertalk. There are people who make hobbies or sidejobs out of optimizing your points basket and finding good redemption strategies. They usually charge a few hundred, which if you redeem for e.g. 3 premium seats with $10k street value can seem like an absolute bargain. Sometimes they launch independent sites which could be like the ones @someguyshared. (I didnt check those sites specifically and havent used these things in ages).
  3. Shoot the Times, not the reposter
  4. Exactly 1 week ago, the NYT reported that a bunch of Mexican traffickers expressed genuine fear over increased arrest/prosecution risk. This in response to Mexico extraditing 29 traffickers to the US due to tariff pressure and also possibility of direct US action via designating them as terrorists.
  5. This is my flavor of spice. Practically it's a short term instrument to make a 1-day bet on vol. Technically, it's a derivative of a derivative of a derivative - it's turtles all the way down - which makes it really unsuitable for anything but 1-day holding. Options prices are notionally risk-adjusted. The market determines the prices. Therefore, the prices of options on S&P 500 Index (SPX) reflect what the market think of as the likelihood of price change of SPX, aka volatility. The derivatives involved: 1. VIX is an amalgamation of the prices of SPX options expiring in ~30 days . i.e. the SPX 30D forward vol. 2. VIX futures are prices on bets of the VIX value at monthly intervals in the future. i.e. what will VIX be in April, May, June, etc These things are directionally linked 3. UVIX continually buys and sells VIX futures contracts, so that its 1-day exposure is roughly equivalent to the 2x change in VIX. There are some persistent qualities in the futures term structure that makes the mechanics of #3 a very bad idea. It results in the value of UVIX degrading over the long time. This is why it's bad for people to buy, but can be good in a lottery ticket type of way. The sponsor of UVIX don't care because people buy it and they earn money on the fees. Because of the effect of #3 above, I like to sell options on UVIX and UVXY, which is mostly very fun, and sometimes scary, but mostly fun.
  6. Equity options were originally designed - and still likely are best - as hedging tools. It's really an insurance product in that it's risk-adjusted; it's time-bound; profitability is conditional; and there's a premium paid to hold the insurance. An example is SPY250404C580 quoted at $16.07. That's a call option on SPY that expires 2025 April 4th, the premium costs $16.07 per share for 100 shares (=$1607 to purchase the contract), and the condition is within that time frame you can "call" 100 shares from the counterparty for $580 per share. Conversely you can also get put options to "put" shares to the counterparty. It can also be used as a leverage speculative tool: You paid $16.07 per share premium to own the 580C. You profit is the size of the market discount relative to the premium. -SPY @ 596.08. You call shares at a $16.08 discount ($596.07-$580). But you paid $16.07 premium. Your net profit per share is $0.01 (or $1 per contract) -SPY @ 597.00. You call shares at a $17 discount. Net profit is $0.97 per share (or $97 per contract). -SPY @ 600.00. You call shares at a $20 discount. Net profit is $3.93 per share (or $393 per contract). It's possible to sell the call option as an underwriter and pocket the $1607 premium up front. SPY closing below $596.07 is profitable for underwriter. Below $580 nets the full $1607 as profit. That's the gist. Most retail are long options, i.e. they buy the contracts, and lose money on it consistently. I like to get spicy and simultaneously short and long options at different strikes and expirations, so I can also lose money, but in more exotic and exciting ways.
  7. I have standing buy orders at 570 too. If we die, we die together 🫡
  8. We dont have to blame Wally anymore anytime the market drops. its all blutos fault from now on.
  9. Treasury bonds are doing well if you folks havent abandoned it in your retirement portfolio
  10. This is just like when the Germans bombed Pearl Harbor
  11. My understanding that is most dealers don't really care to resell your car -- unless its same make, recent, or particularly desirable. Most trade-ins they just offload to wholesalers and end up in independent car-lots or at auctions. The low price they offer is worth the convenience to many people.
  12. We used to have a housecleaner come once a week, and my wife always freaks out before her visits because she feels compelled to "preclean" for the cleaner. Anyway, wife often asks me to clean up or rephrase her work memos so they sound perfect. I told her GPT/LLMs can do that task very well, all she has to do is just copy and paste the text to them.. So now instead of dumping the text to AI and letting it handle the hard work.... she's actually spending 5 minutes trying to clean up the QUESTION to GPT, so what she's asking it sounds perfect. 🥴
  13. Its inexplicable how bad Amazon Prime (and other platforms’) video player UI is compared to Netflix’s, especially on Apple TV. I mean, im not talking about the backend/infrastructure engineering, just the interface of the navigation and digital video player, with which every person on earth has been familiar with for decades. Its not the flight controls of the 787 jet. Its just a play/back/fwd button, a timeline scrubber, and some toggles for audio and caption modes. How hard is that to design? Why is it so bad?
  14. No equity longs until after tax season
  15. Im fairly certain OW rules are similar to *A: AA-status holders get access to AA lounges in the US only if flying on international (or select domestic) itineraries. Those with status from other alliance carriers get access to all alliance lounges everywhere.
  16. I dont understand the psychological basis behind the meme of women and murder mysteries … but yeah all my wife watches on streaming are swedish homicide thrillers and harlan coben style investigative shows
  17. Movie kinda sucks. The animation is a bit cheap and distracting and the story feels more like a 3-episode show than a LOTR epic movie.
  18. Its amazing there isnt more consumer activism against the car dealership model. I think the entire country is united in their disdain for car dealerships. They hate them more than telecomms, but while everyone grits their teeth at paying $50/mo for Verizon, nobodys really mobilizing against the car dealerships ripping them off on $50,000 trucks.
  19. 1. This fucking charity/microlending platform says because I havent loaned in a while, theyre just gonna confiscate my funds. And if I want to withdraw it, its a fucking complicated process. And I do all that to find out the only withdrawal route is through Paypal. 2. For what was once an innovative tech service, paypal has been such a shitpile. Once in a blue moon that I have to use it I have to lift mountain and earth to restore access, because of their draconian stone age verification measures.
  20. That's pretty much the consensus: noone is remotely close to what you described as FSD for native in-car implementation. Comma is supposed to be good but I dont have first hand experience. Waymo is fully autonomous, but they operate in a very limited area, and require a gigantic suite of sensors. Mercedes is probably the most falsely-advertised system. They claim to be the only Level 4 system but are ridiculously constrained: basically <40mph on certain preapproved sections of highway only (lol) and in perfect weather condition and traffic density. Ford's Bluecruise is also supposed to be decent comparator to GM's Supercruise
  21. GM's Super Cruise is reputed to have the 2nd best driving assist system, when comparing to original Enhanced Auto Pilot (EAP). Comma.Ai is a 3rd party system retrofitted to cars that has lots of fans. For actual all-road autonomy, in which Tesla made tons of recent progress (and, to be clear, is NOT commercialized at the moment), noone else is supposed to be close.
  22. the cool thing about nyc is it has everything from around the world. and the cool thing about tokyo is that it has the absolute best version of everything from around the world. like if you want nepalese chicken momo dumpling, theres probably some 90 year old japanese guy in a hut below the JR train line whos been cooking nothing but that since he was 4 years old.
  23. American auto dealers ARE cartels. State laws around franchising grant geographic exclusivity, preventing competition. It auto has protections against manufacturer terminating dealer agreements unless there are obvious and egregious causes. The best solution is buying direct from manufacturer, online. Like Tesla. (go ahead CR boys). But many states have or have had laws prohibiting direct sales from manufacture. It's the most illiberal anti-market thing. It should be noted there's less fuckery with dealerships in Europe. The majority are still privately owned, but there's less protective clause around them. Dealerships don't carry large new car inventory where they go through pricing cycles, and they act more or less as agents for you to order a new car from manufacturer. The general pricing attitude is take it or leave it. It's a cleaner transaction.
  24. watched The Gorge on AppleTV. this is Anja Taylor Joy, who Hollywood tells the public is the hottest it-girl:
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