Dan on June 7th, 2006
Today was quite busy so I haven’t had time to do much work on the site. I have the gallery online and integrated but the theme doesn’t work with the blog them at all. I have to find one that looks decent or figure out how to design my own.
There seems to be a bug with either the blog theme or WP that is causing a warning to come up. This is disrupting the first pageview and causing the title image to be shifted down into the tabs. It works fine on a reload. I looked at it very briefly and can disable the function if necessary but I’d rather fix it. It’s on my list of stuff to do.
On the investment front I opened a new trade yesterday. I sold a condor that expires on the 16th with a potential return of 23.6% after fees (about 6.8% of the total account). I had been putting off any trades until I opened an account with TradeStation but I felt this was a good opportunity. The trade is based on extremely high implied volatility (IV). When IV is high option premiums are high. This can potentially mean that options are overpriced, thus leading to a situation where their value decreases rapidly. Since expiration is approaching on the 16th the time value (premium) is decreasing at an increasing rate (the time value is rapidly approaching zero). So long as the stock stays between either end of the condor, which is quite likely with this trade, I make money.
I will post another update tomorrow.
Dan on June 5th, 2006
Amidst the site contruction I felt like creating a normal update. I’ve been doing research into supplements. There is a rediculous amount of hype out there surrounding supplements. Do not believe anything a website selling them says. Here’s what I’ve found so far.
I estimate that 90-95% of supplements are useless or even harmful. Even multi-vitamins can be unhealthy since many give you well over the daily recommended values. For example, taking twice the daily recommended dose of vitamin A has been shown to cause hip fractures in older women. ((Feskanich D, Singh V, Willett WC, Colditz GA. Vitamin A intake and hip fractures among postmenopausal women. JAMA 2002; 287:47-54.)) One supplement that has been repeatedly show to assist muscle growth: creatine monohydrate. I’m not going to list a bunch of research but I will show one study. ((Okudan N, Gokbel H. The effects of creatine supplementation on performance during the repeated bouts of supramaximal exercise. J Sports Med Phys Fitness. 2005 Dec;45(4):507-11.))
I strongly recommend you do your own research before buying a supplement. Two of the best sites I’ve been able to find are PubMed and PDR Health. PubMed is a government listing of scientific research and PDR Health has summaries of various studies for many different drugs and supplements.
Dan on June 5th, 2006
As you can see the new theme is up and running. The theme is called Fluidity3C and can be found on Kaushal Sheth’s website. It flows much better than the old one and the colors are a bit easier on the eyes. Plus it allows for better integration of other items such as an image gallery, forum, etc.
Speaking of image gallery, that is the next item on my agenda. I believe I have found a good gallery script with excellent WP integration. Watch for it today or tomorrow.
Dan on June 4th, 2006
I’ve decided to make a number of significant changes to the site. Here’s a list:
- New theme
- New image gallery
- Add a ton of images
- Move my other old blog (http://www.driverdan.com/stocks/) to this site (it keeps going over bandwidth on that host)
- Begin my summer project (see below)
- Add a forum as part of the summer project (see below)
- Possible addition of advertising
- More TBD
I have a general idea in my mind for the new theme. It’s going to be toned down a bit from the current one and a bit more simple. I’m not very happy with the current gallery so I’ll be removing it and putting up an entirely new one with a TON of new photos. I have a lot of stuff I haven’t posted.
My old blog (http://www.driverdan.com/stocks/) has gone over its max bandwidth for the past 3 months. It ran for one month and served its purpose well. Now I want to migrate it to this server and combine it with this blog. It would allow the traffic that site continues to get to be forwarded to this blog and thus increase the number of readers.
I’ve been thinking of adding advertising for a while. This site gets enough traffic to warrant it. Even if it makes me only a few bucks a month it’s worth it. I promise that if I do place ads on this site that they won’t be intrusive like you see on some blogs. I can’t stand that.
Finally my summer project. I’ve put a bit more thought into it and have decided on some of the specifics. I’m going to program it as a plugin for WordPress. It will fully integrate with the rest of the site, allowing for ease of both viewing and administration. It will allow management of a private investment fund I will be running. It will be quite unique in that I will be GIVING SHARES AWAY FOR FREE! It will NOT be open for direct investment (there is no legal way I could do that even if I wanted to). Shares will be given to people as gifts, donations, and bonuses for referrals on other sites. To provide support for the members I will be integrating a forum (most likely running phpBB). The forum will be open to the general public but will focus on my investment strategies and the fund.
I also have a few other ideas for improvements but they are not to the point of posting them. I will discuss them if I decide to implement them.
