~~Towards Barista FIRE~~

At the start of 2024, I written in my post that I am going to do some trading for my shares in US Growth Portfolio.  Fast-forward one month later, I already regretted this decision.  From December 2023 till January 2024, I have sold part of my shares in Apple, Microsoft, Google, JP Morgan, Palantir and VOO ETF, returning about USD 33K back into the brokerage account.  As investors and traders would know, in January, the DOW, S&P 500 reached new highs, and NASDAQ is near the highs too.  This meant that after I sold my shares, their prices continue to climb, and within a month, I am already questioning myself why did I make such a decision to sell instead of holding on to ride through.  Under my earlier post, anonymous commented: " US growth Stock picking and timing the market may not be substantiable in the long run. ETFs like QQQ, SPY or other sector ETFs may yield better results and not subjected to individual company risk in the longer horizon. " True eno...

Back in October 2021, I started learning about options from various YouTubers.  The main video I learnt from is this video by ProjectFinance.  It is a long video, but it breaks down the principles of options to small bits, and showed how to trade options with different strategies.   " An options contract offers the buyer the opportunity to buy or sell—depending on the type of contract they hold—the underlying asset. Unlike futures, the holder is not required to buy or sell the asset if they decide against it. Each options contract will have a specific expiration date by which the holder must exercise their option. The stated price on an option is known as the strike price.  Options are versatile financial products. These contracts involve a buyer and seller, where the buyer pays a premium for the rights granted by the contract. Call options allow the holder to buy the asset at a stated price within a specific timeframe. Put optio...