u/Groucho-and-Harpo

Hello everyone,

My stepkids, friend, and mom took a trip to Six Flags Magic Mountain last Saturday. They wanted to make the most of the day so rode the rides until the very end.

When they came back to the locker to get their stuff at 11:00 pm, it was completely emptied, apparently by park security. A staff member told them to go to guest services to retrieve their items. Guest services told them to wait for 15-20 minutes so they could retrieve items. They kept waiting until 12:30AM until finally the agent told them they couldn’t locate items and they should fill out a report.

It’s been 3 days since we file the report. We have made repeated phone calls and emails to inquire about the status. Our email responses have been nothing but automated notifications that they have the report. When we called and chatted online, we were always sent to voicemail when trying to contact Lost and Found, and when we finally reached people by searching different extensions, the responses were either “we will do everything to expedite it”, “your inquiry will be handled in the order it was received”, and “please give us 4 business days to get back to you”.

This is absolutely absurd. You would think that if they removed items from someone’s locker, they would mark them clearly and put them somewhere that someone can find them easily. But instead, their responses are all along the lines of “you need to give us time to locate the items” as if it were our fault for misplacing them when THEY TOOK THE ITEMS. So they make zero effort to separate these items from items lost throughout the park. I pressed their representative on the phone until she finally started crying so I realized I was getting nowhere and had to back off.

Six Flags staff, you need to show more courtesy and respect to your guests. If you handle their personal items, you should never, ever make guests jump through so many hoops to get their stuff back. This is a total disgrace.

I have tried almost every other option strategy and straight buying stock. When I bought uncovered stock, I shot for the moon and fell flat. When I bought and sold options, I never had a habit of stop losses and ended up with massive swings or uncovered assignments that ultimately ended in losses. Never did stop losses because I always counted on things going my way which obviously didn’t always work.

Covered calls have lowered my anxiety. They give me the true feel of long term investing. I don’t have to shoot for the moon anymore. I am going along with the trend rather than trying to fight it or outsmart it.

The best part is when trades don’t work as expected. If the stock shoots way higher, shares get called away. No sudden uncovered borrowed shares (happened to me with spreads and iron condors). And if the stock goes down, the call just expires worthless. And there’s no time limit on holding the stock.

The strategy I am working with:
Pick stocks that are running near flat and have found a good floor.
Stay away if you can’t figure out why the stock is priced where it is.
Don’t be afraid to run ITM especially for volatile stocks like SOFI.
Roll wherever the stock price is closest to the strike price. This means waiting for the price to spike down for ITM calls and spike up for OTM calls.
Learn to “grey rock” - don’t react to sudden up/down movements

Thoughts?

Hello all,

You may recognize me from my frequent contributions before to this community, especially when recommending DMPs. Ha now I’m back here looking for help.

So at this point I have all of my credit cards in DMPs averaging a very low interest rate of about 3.5%. I have approximately $140,0000 in cc debt for which I’ve already paid off 1/3 but have another 2/3 left to go over the next 3 1/2 years. Payment for this is about $3,000 per month. Problem is I also have a small business line of credit for $70,000 that got rolled into a personal loan because I moved out of the state where I started the business. Payment is $1000 a month on this one. Problem is this loan is for 5 years and it’s interest only at 17.1% interest. I have also looked into this bank (First Hawaiian Bank) and found out they virtually never lower rates when working with credit counseling organizations.

During the last two years I have managed to pull my credit score up quite a bit. Vantage score is about 669 (up from 580) and Fico8 averages about 710 average from Experian, Equifax, and TransUnion (up from 660). I always pay promptly and have great history, but banks turn me down due to a high outstanding balance of about $200,000 including the DMP, personal loan, and other random loans (PayPal Working Capital and Business Loans, Cherry Technologies). Gross income is slightly over $200,000 - married with children and wife works.

So any of you have specific ideas where to find a way to get this $70,000 loan financed at a lower rate? Having a 17.1% interest rate is crazy. I figured out that paying an extra $750 a month to get this paid off after 5 years, but would rather get this paid off sooner if possible with a lower interest rate.

I am starting to do long term value investing and have some high dividend stocks in my portfolio.

Just today’s I caught wind of some of the craziness surrounding the ex dividend date. I’d like to hear from other Redditors with experience investing in high dividend stocks, especially if combined with option strategies.

Apparently right when the ex dividend date is crossed, the value of the stock typically decreases according to the amount of money that will be distributed to people who owned stock at that time. This is based on the assumption that the value of the company essentially decreases by the amount of money it distributes to investors.

This comes along with many surprises to the uninitiated:

1. The shock of seeing your stock tank (but brokers typically show less intraday loss to compensate for the dividend). This effect could create momentum which causes the stock to fall even further.
2. Investors might exercise your short call earlier than expected if you do a covered call which is ITM, especially if the stock is on a bull run and the ex dividend date is approaching.
3. Options get repriced according to the amount of adjustment expected on ex dividend date.

Another learning experience for me! Gotta be aware of what happens on earnings dates as well as ex dividend dates.

Anyone with high dividend stock experience care to share insights here?