Blog of Parag

Protected: Skiing trip

admin — Tue, 16 Mar 2010 14:51:34 +0000

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Independent

admin — Thu, 11 Mar 2010 01:30:04 +0000

Ashwini: Daddy, can you pick up my book?
Me: No. Do it yourself. I am busy.
Ashwini: Can you please pick it up?
Me: Do I have to do everything for you?
Ashwini: No. I don’t ask you to do everything. I go to the bathroom by myself.

I muttered to myself while picking up the book for her, “I am so thankful for that.”

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Protected: Happy 7th Birthday, Ashwini!

admin — Mon, 08 Mar 2010 16:56:06 +0000

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Options trading

admin — Wed, 03 Mar 2010 15:56:39 +0000

It has been one year since I started dabbling in options as a strategy to boost investment income. I sold out-of-the-money covered calls for many stocks that I hold. There are three possible outcomes when these contracts reached expiration:

Stock price stays below the strike price of the call option and the contract expires worthless. For most of my options, this was the case. I got to keep the premium I received with no change in stock positions.
On two options, the stock price was above strike price. I didn’t want to sell the stock, hence I bought back the options. As the buying was done close to expiration, there was no time premium left and even on those trades ended up with small profits.
On two options, the stock price was above strike price on expiration and they got assigned. I sold the stock and started buying them back in following weeks. After I had to sell those shares, the whole market had a correction and my buying back price was lower than my selling price. Profit was made in these trades, too.

Even if one plays options very conservatively (which I did), they don’t always yield profits. There is an improved chance of making profits versus a loss. In my case, I was just lucky that all trades turned out profitable. The biggest chunk of money was made from expiration of worthless options. One can look at this strategy as if getting an extra dividend payment for holding the stock. The only problem is that money made from option trading is taxed as regular income and not as dividends which are taxed at lower rate.

Anyway, I made more than enough money through these trades to support my yearly wine consumption. Hope to keep this streak going in 2010.

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Organic or not?

admin — Fri, 26 Feb 2010 19:10:01 +0000

I always want to buy the best produce for my family, i.e., most nutritious and least polluted with pesticides etc. But, it is hard to achieve that many times. We live in an area that doesn’t have conveniently accessible “Whole Foods” or “Trader Joe’s”. Our local supermarkets have a limited selection of organic produce. Also, the organic versions are much more expensive and look stale as there isn’t very high demand. This makes it hard to decide what to buy organic and what not.

Here is a nice handy guide from foodnews.org about pesticide levels in produce. Please go to their website to download the complete guide.

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Pale Blue Dot

admin — Fri, 12 Feb 2010 15:11:48 +0000

It is 20th anniversary of this photo taken by Voyager 1 and famously named by Carl Sagan as “Pale Blue Dot”. Read the full NPR story here. I really liked Sagan’s description of the photo.

Look again at that dot. That’s here. That’s home. That’s us. On it everyone you love, everyone you know, everyone you ever heard of, every human being who ever was, lived out their lives. The aggregate of our joy and suffering, thousands of confident religions, ideologies, and economic doctrines, every hunter and forager, every hero and coward, every creator and destroyer of civilization, every king and peasant, every young couple in love, every mother and father, hopeful child, inventor and explorer, every teacher of morals, every corrupt politician, every ’superstar’, every ’supreme leader’, every saint and sinner in the history of our species lived there — on a mote of dust suspended in a sunbeam.

This comes from his book with the same name: Pale Blue Dot: A Vision of the Human Future in Space. It is a good read.

In the last 20 years, Voyager 1 and 2, traveling at about 35,000 miles per hour, have moved farther away (at about 10 billion miles or 16 billion km currently) from Earth out on the fringes of our Solar system. If they look back and take a picture now, Earth will not even be seen in it.

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Dark Chocolate and your heart

admin — Mon, 08 Feb 2010 15:33:30 +0000

I think I posted this before but, it is alright to repeat this PSA. According to a study published in the Journal of the American Medical Association in 2007:

Small amounts of dark chocolate (one piece of a 16 piece bar of 100g or around 30 calories a day) when eaten daily for about 18 weeks can lower blood pressure, which in turn can help reduce the risk of stroke or death from coronary artery disease.

Use the Valentine’s day as an excuse to buy some good dark chocolate for yourself and your loved ones.

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Parents’ night out

admin — Tue, 02 Feb 2010 16:01:04 +0000

Due to our babysitter’s limited availability, instead of going out for a movie and a dinner, we had to choose between movie and dinner. It only took a few seconds for mexican food at Soltoro to kick Avatar out of contention.

Soltoro is Michael Jordon’s third restaurant at the Mohegan Sun casino. In the mexican food desert that is aka Connecticut, this restaurant is an oasis. Good food, good drinks and good atmosphere. They had a great collection of Tequilas. I did one ‘flight’ of tequilas and 2 out of 3 were quite good. We shared a flan for dessert and it came covered under a big dome of caramelized sugar. Very innovative design — I had never seen this before.

Should plan another outing there soon.

Flight of Tequilas & Fish tacos

Grilled Mahi Mahi & flan for dessert.

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Protected: Just photos

admin — Mon, 01 Feb 2010 20:42:31 +0000

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Protected: Adit’s friends

admin — Thu, 28 Jan 2010 16:57:04 +0000

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