Quitting Booze, Progress Report | Ep #4

My sirs and madams, this is the morning episode I

Say this is the morning episode but

Going forward. I am probably not gonna do like a morning and a bonus

Separately, I'll probably just edit edit them together

into one episode

Because I think posting two short podcasts a day

During the times where I do them twice a day is probably a little bit overkill

so I'm probably just gonna

Merge the the morning and the afternoon episodes together into one

episode

Anyway this morning

I made the decision before hitting the record button

That I was gonna talk about

My little experiment with

Quitting alcohol a

While back, I'm a I'm about at the halfway point of this experiment

So about 15 days ago. I

Put a blog post up on my blog

Proclaiming that I was gonna quit alcohol for a month

And it's been about 15 days since since then I haven't had a drink haven't

Haven't had any beer and

beer is my

Drink of choice. I've been a beer drinker for my entire adult life

For the most part with very little interruption

So this is not

I'm not

Not a thing that I usually do

So for me, it is an experiment because I I don't do this kind of thing

Typically, it's not in my makeup. I

Think

In that regard it's probably a somewhat interesting

Somewhat of an interesting experiment because it's something I've never done before so I don't really know what the results will be

And so far, I mean I came into it with no expectations really I

mean I've quit alcohol for

weeks at a time before

But never like a full month. I don't think I mean

Maybe I did and I just didn't realize it

But

This is the first time I'm like really doing it consciously and actually

paying attention to what what changes there have occurred and

So far, I got to tell you like I don't really have much to report. I

Was a moderate drinker to begin with

And the whole reason I started this

Experiment was to see if it would help with my mental health

and

I got to tell you I don't really see much of a change in

things

I

Still feel like crap every once in a while just I

Guess just the normal variation in the in the body. I just I don't think alcohol is making much of a difference

I got to be honest with you

Maybe in terms of mental clarity in terms of motivational drive

I think maybe that is where the biggest gains are happening

Like I started this podcast and I'm actually sticking to it

Maybe it's having an effect on my motivation

I've

Maybe it's hard to say for sure, but

I feel like maybe I'm a little bit more motivated to do things, but it's

Hard to say. I'm sorry. This is not very satisfying. I got 15 more days to go. I'm gonna stick with it

Heading into winter break here

I'm not winter break, but we're heading into Thanksgiving break. The kids are gonna be at home

So I won't be in my mobile sound studio as often. So I'm not gonna be doing this podcast as

Regular early. I

Still have to get over my

I don't really have a sound studio at home. All I got is this mobile sound studio

So, I don't really know where I would record a podcast in my house I

Mean I've I make my youtube videos from my home office

And maybe I'll do it from there. I don't know

but this podcast so far has been all about recording my

my thoughts in my mobile sound studio and

If I'm not gonna be in my mobile sound studio on a regular basis

I'm not gonna get an opportunity to record but maybe I will maybe I'll just run some errands or whatever and record some stuff

Anyway, I digress

halfway through the non-alcohol experiment not much to report

except for maybe some

Some effects on my motivational drive

Maybe I'm putting more energy into protect productive things perhaps

Like I said, I was a moderate drinker man. I was a moderate drinker

And I I don't think moderate drinking has as much of an effect on you as people might think

In fact, I think it might actually make weekends a little bit more dull

to be honest with you because

There's nothing more enjoyable than having a drink out at a restaurant

With your significant other, you know

That's one of my favorite things in the world

Just sitting there out in a restaurant that has a cool like atmosphere and

Feeling a little buzz. It's just

That's culture man, that's what that's what I mean, that's culture, bro

That's all the culture I get out here in suburbia

Shit man, like what do you want me to do? I

Don't know man

anyway

We'll see how it goes with the remainder

I think this whole like quitting alcohol thing is not all it's hyped all it's hot all it's fucking goddamn it

Sorry for my bad language again

Yeah, I think it's just not all it's

Hopped up to be what the hell I can't think of the word hyped up to be

I don't know man. I don't know man. I don't know man. I don't know man

What the hell I can't think of the word hyped up to be

It's not all it's hyped up to be I know that's not it

Yeah, okay

Well, i'm nearing the end of my um, my my drive here

I called it a drive

I wanted it to be a secret

This is my mobile sound studio, okay

well

Ah, yeah, so yesterday I talked a little bit about nvidia and how the stock market was going to be up today

Well, it is

That was pretty obvious

That was pretty obviously gonna happen and it did

So my portfolio is nice and green baby

Nice and green. Hell yeah, fucking a shit

Well, yeah, it's green

and

I'm hoping i'm actually hoping we trade sideways for a while because I like to make money off of selling options

and when the market's just screaming higher, it's hard to like

For me, I like to sell puts

um against a stock

At a price where I would actually want to own it

And when this when all the stocks i'm watching just scream past any like price where I would actually be willing to buy them

I can't really sell puts against that

against that price

So for that reason i'm kind of hoping we don't just scream higher

I actually liked the correction we had recently. It's it's healthy

And I also have a huge cash position because i'm a very conservative investor

So I

I mean

Yeah

I have a big cash position. That's all i'm saying. And uh, so

I'm prepared for a correction like a big correction

Then on the flip side when when the market screams higher like it's looking like it might do

I don't get to participate

in that as much

Which is unfortunate, but that's you call that opportunity risk

So i'm choosing opportunity risk over

like real risk, you know

Risk of losing a lot of freaking money

Frigid money

And the market will correct very violently

eventually

It's gonna happen

Someday, all right

And until that happens, I think selling options is kind of like how I play the market

Um

So when corrections happen I sell options into those corrections and as the market goes lower

I spread the maturity of those. I don't know if maturity is the right word, but I spread the expirations across like a nice

Time range so as the market corrects I sell against strikes lower and lower

And

Until we bottom out and option premiums are through the roof and

By the time we bottom out i'll be

more exposed to the market

and

Just kind of rambling about trading right now

Hopefully i'll get some app development work done today, what the fuck is this car doing jesus christ

Oh

Full self-driving people sometimes it gets confused by a pile of leaves on the ground

Yep fucking thing anyway, uh, yeah, hopefully i'll do some work on my apps today

Perhaps I will perhaps i'll work on my apps. I know I got to get my timer app out there in the world

I was actually using it for my kettlebell exercises yesterday, and I noticed a few things that I need to fix

So it's not as done as I proclaimed originally

So i'll be working on that

Today

I would be remiss not to talk about the historic rug pull that occurred today in the markets

I was so smug this morning talking about how oh, I knew the market would be up today

I knew it would be up because nvidia reported such wonderful earnings

and lo and behold

We continued the sell-off. How about that? So nvidia was up five percent

At the beginning of the day and now it's down over two percent. I haven't checked it

Yeah, so I mean I figure I should mention like it was pretty pretty historic market move today

So I would be remiss not to talk about it

So wow that happened. Holy crap

That was pretty crazy

so this um

This underscores the importance of position sizing and

Underscores the importance of position sizing risk management

and

It's why I have a large cash position

Because of days like this or sell-offs like this

You have to assume that this stuff is going to happen eventually

You have to assume that big market sell-offs are going to happen

And for that reason you've got to be prepared for it

So I think a lot of the

the price action or the

the price activity in

in the market over the last

week or so

A lot of it could be people getting liquidated people overexposed to the market just too complacent

Too complacent with the buy the dip mentality

Because over a long period of time

Most of these sell-offs have been very brief and they've been

They've been met with a lot of buyers

And people just think that's going to continue forever

But it does not continue forever

Eventually the market will continue to sell off

And um, i'm kind of stepping back

uh

When this kind of stuff happens, I like to add exposure

gradually

So right now i'm like i'm at like a 60 something percent equity exposure

I would like to get to 75 equity exposure by the end of the sell-off whenever that happens to be

If that ever happens

I do have some positions that are very very in the red right now and that sucks but

Um

Yeah, i'm kind of maxed out on some of my positions where

I don't like to go too far over

five to ten percent

in one position

or one sector even

so I have maxed out on a few positions where i'm

I'm like at my comfortable level of exposure and i'm not going to continue

adding exposure to

Those particular names I don't really want to talk about in particular names because I don't want to give

I don't want to give anything

that resembles financial advice because

Probably shouldn't be taking financial advice from me. That's for dang sure

But I just kind of

Giving my general thoughts on the market and what's going on in the stock market right now

My approach generally is to just keep a big cash position

So that when events like this occur

You have cash to take advantage of them

And the way i've been adding exposure is selling puts under the market

And if those puts get assigned

That's fine

And then I like to spread out the expiration over

a long period of time

So that like not everything is expiring all at once so

I don't know. I talked about this this morning. It's it's not important

Like do you really care how I approach my investing? That's not really what this podcast is about

I'm, just kind of telling you what's on my mind right now

It's it's hard to ignore the markets right now just because it's so crazy

And crypto is completely collapsing and I have some exposure to crypto

And I have some exposure to crypto, which is not very comfortable. A lot of people are going through the same

pain right now, so

It's probably what's on on the minds of a lot of americans right now

Since so much of our uh consumer confidence is derived from the stock market

I would say

But anyway, anyway, anyway, anyway

um

well

Like I said this morning, I noticed some stuff I need to add to my timer app and that's

um

after I closed all my

Market related tabs and actually got focused on my work again. I did make some progress on my timer app

I realized there's some stuff I have to do with the audio session

This is a lot of this is something a lot of apps get wrong

They don't handle the audio session properly

So

And there's a lot of nuance to it and uh, it's not obvious how you're supposed to do it

But what I want the app to do and I want to add some like some basic customization at this level

so

When the timer finishes it plays

a completion sound

Yes

it plays a completion sound and what I want to want that to do like

Say i'm listening to a podcast or something at the same time as my timer completes

I want that completion sound to play to interrupt my podcast like temporarily pause my

podcast, play the completion sound, and then resume my podcast, and I'm gonna add

an option where you can either loop the completion sound continuously until you

close the timer, or it will only play the completion sound once, and then resume

whatever audio you were listening to. And yeah, I'm just getting that working so

that it functions the way I want. And then it will be close to completion, and

then my timer app will be complete.

So that's that. And this is the so-called bonus, I'm gonna call it the bonus

segment now. It was the whole bonus episode, but this is the bonus segment. So

I said what I had to say about the crazy market action we've been having, crazy

stock market action. A lot of people getting kicked in the dick right now,

including myself. Things were looking really rosy for a

while there, and now dick-kicking has commenced. It doesn't feel good. But the

markets almost always bounce back eventually, so you got to have cash on

the sidelines, as they say, to take advantage of the times when the market

does do this kind of stuff. And it could go a lot lower too. It can go a lot lower,

and it can hurt a lot. And that's where people like Warren Buffett step in and

start buying. That's why he has such a massive cash position. The guy's about to

retire, but I think you know what I'm talking about.

Old Warren Buffett. I mean, value investing, that's what value investors do.

They wait for the stock market to take a complete and utter cathartic dump, and

then they start buying. Well, I kind of have a little bit of that approach. I'm

not that much of a value investor. I do like to buy things when they're down, but

I don't necessarily wait for, like, once-in-a-lifetime events to buy stocks.

Because there's bear markets and individual stocks all the time. And I

often get in trouble when I don't follow this general approach.

Generally, you should... Personally, I like to buy things when they're down. And when

I don't do this, when I try to do, like, trend following or something, it

typically doesn't work out for me. I typically do better buying things when

they're down and increasing my position as they continue to go down. Ideally,

that's the best way to accumulate positions. And a lot of... And the

positions of mine that are doing the worst right now is where I didn't follow

that strategy. So, there's a lesson to be learned there. And that... One of those

lessons is don't ask me for financial advice. Anyway, I'm out of here. Thanks for

listening to the Lone Dev Daily... Wait. No, that's not how it goes. Thank you for

listening to the Lone Dev Semi-Daily Podcast. You can hit me up on X. My name

is Sirius underscore Brett on X. You can send me a direct message if there's

anything you want to talk about on this podcast. I'd love to hear from you.

Thanks for listening, Sir and Ma'am. Peace out.