Thanks @Graust
Yep - A single put or call = 100 shares. 3 puts would equal 300 shares.
I hadn’t advanced yet to calls. Let’s see ... if you sell a put, than you must buy calls.
From Investopedia / “ When you buy a call, you pay the option premium in exchange for the right to buy shares at a fixed price (strike price) on or before a certain date (expiration date). Investors most often buy calls when they are bullish on a stock or other security because it offers leverage.”
The call allows you to purchase a stock at an inflated future price. You pay a fee in this case. But if the stock rises to a set price you have the right to buy it. Hard to see the advantage, except for small speculative companies (ie an early Amazon).

@FD1000; I'm guessing you bought in around 3/25/20 ?
Derf

Nope, I sold over 90% at the end of 02/2020 and the rest days later.
Made several good trades with QQQ+PCI in 03/2020.
Start investing back in bond funds to over 99+% in 04/2020.
I had a huge % in GWMEX for several months. I owned IOFIX only in the last several weeks.
I wish I was brave enough to buy IOFIX on 3/25/2020. It made over 50% since then.

How do you square owning IOFIX with your later comment in this string to avoid risky funds?

Equality of opportunity is a no-brainer: YES, of course! The pot'o'gold at the end of the rainbow which seems to me to always be assumed, but never made explicit is that because we might be able to improve the quality of schools (and some teachers, too?) then at that moment, we will reach Nirvana: equality of outcomes. But that's just plain unrealistic.
I'm an ex-hippie. It was my generation which espoused an "Anything Goes" attitude. And Bob Dylan said he'd rather be a model for harmonica holders. The over-the-back-of-the-neck sort, rather than study all that less important stuff like history and science... The effects rubbed off on the next generation, which benefitted from the ex-hippie teachers' newfound attitude: "what do grades matter, anyhow? Here, have an A," when a B was deserved. GRADE INFLATION. To go along with dumbed-down standards. And THAT has just grown worse and worse over time. So, kids learn less, and maybe even learn incorrect stuff. That very thing happened to me, so I discovered later. And what my 14 and 19 year-old niece and nephew DON'T know? Scares the hell outa me. And he's already done with high school.

@hank
Don’t sell 100 puts! Each ONE put equals 100 shares (100 shares in above example would be 100 x $200 price per share, or $20K). 100 puts would be secured by $2,000,000 (for 10K shares of $200 TSLA). You would make $225 per put, because you get $2.25 commission “per share”......and each option is worth 100 shares, or $225 total.
Works same way with calls. Each individual option is equal to 100 shares of the underlying company. Does that make sense?

Thanks for the replies. +1.

@MrRuffles
The first 3 funds in the below chart are from your note. I've added FBALX because of personal bias and BRUFX is added, as it was mentioned. FPURX is a decent fund, but not charted; as it and FBALX run very close over the long term. As the account is already within Fido, I would stay there for the many choices, quality service and to not add another firm to keep paperwork simple. BRUFX is fully a stand alone fund/organization and would take you away from flexibility with fund exchanges into the future.
None of these balanced funds will keep one away from a draw down from a large market correction.
Hopefully, the chart will provide a decent visual for your purposes.
10 year chart for total returns, JABAX , BALFX , VLAAX , FBALX , BRUFX
My 2 cents.
Catch

Thanks for posting
I need to dig into this, or maybe someone else will do it for me. There seem to be relationships here that I have never seen before, for instance, why does she think total (non-business) assets per national (including business) annual output is a valid thing to track?
Equally, she notes this coincidence — “ When equities were over 20% of household assets in the late 1960's, the result over the next 10 years was about 2-3% annualized returns, which is not even adjusted for inflation. Then, when equities fell to cheap levels in the 1970's and 1980's, down to well below 10% of household assets, the annualized forward returns were over 15%, which even after adjusting for inflation were great.” — is the implication here that the crowd tends to be wrong? I don’t believe she says.
Finally, she notes — corporate equity value outweighs debt value by more than average. These seem to me to be 2 very different things. What if a corporation had only debt and no equity, think Koch Industries? Or what if an old line publicly traded company did not have any debt?

A young investor should be at 70/30, maybe even 80/20. I started investing in my late 30" and was at %100 stocks. After about 5 years I changed to about 85-90% stocks and only about 8 years prior to retirement I changed gradually but rapidly to more bonds when I was sure to hit my retirement date.

Not fantasyland huh? Consider these points:
1. 76 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck
2. 62 percent of Americans have less than 1,000 dollars in their savings account
3. 65 percent of those 65 and older have less than $25,000 in retirement
4. 21 percent of all Americans have no savings account at all
5. 43 percent of American households spend more money than they make each month
6. Middle-class Americans today make up a minority of the population. In 1971, 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle-class households
7. In the last 14 years, median income of middle-class households declined by 4 percent
8. Median wealth for middle class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013
9. Middle class take-home pay before expenses has plummeted to just 43 percent of gross pay, compared to 1970 when the middle class took home approximately 62 percent of all income
10. There are still 900,000 fewer middle-class jobs in America than there were when the last recession began
11. According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year
So yeah, I think saving $750/mo is out of reach for a large percentage of the US population.
More Here

The above report is from 2015. What happened to Median household income in the United States from 1990 to 2019? It went up very nicely from 2015 to 2019 under you know what president (link)
(link)

Let's say you have a $100,000 portfolio. On a given trading day, the numbers show an increase in value of $500. Within that portfolio is a small position in a stock that blew up and shows a 20% ($1,000) decline for the day.
Are you generally satisfied because you had an increase of 0.5% for the day? Or are you despondent over the stock that blew up? I fall in to the latter category, but it seems illogical. Can you relate? And is there a way to make myself be more rational?

Loss aversion and overrating (overvaluation) of loss, resulting in serious, meaning behavior-altering, flinching are long-studied in investing and elsewhere, so I dunno.
There are not many ways to make ourselves anything one way or the other, ways that work and stick, although painful aversion and strong-pleasure reward do sometimes, as we all know. (Dog training, etc.)
A drink might help, sure, or meditation, or insight-oriented psychotherapy, say, as with everything else in life. Education ('rational') helps with some, being eye-opening and all that, but usually by the time we're using words like despondent, it takes a combination of experiences. And even then.

Tomorrow (September 30) Price’s 40/60 conservative balanced fund TRRIX celebrates its 18th birthday. Since inception, Lipper shows the fund averaging 6.25% - not too far from the 7% figure being batted around here. That was than this is now? Think again. Over the past 5 years the return is even better - averaging 6.47%. Lipper
My own take (based on recollections) is that 7% was pretty easily attainable for a conservative investor in the 70s thru the 90s and up until roughly 5-10 years ago when bond yields began to scrape bottom - where they remain today.
It’s hard finding anything good on the subject. Google it and you’re apt to get a bunch of investment advertisements promising to bring you remarkable returns. Sure! I’m linking an article from The Motley Fool I think does a decent job on the 7% subject. Fool

Not fantasyland huh? Consider these points:
1. 76 percent of Americans are living paycheck to paycheck
2. 62 percent of Americans have less than 1,000 dollars in their savings account
3. 65 percent of those 65 and older have less than $25,000 in retirement
4. 21 percent of all Americans have no savings account at all
5. 43 percent of American households spend more money than they make each month
6. Middle-class Americans today make up a minority of the population. In 1971, 61 percent of all Americans lived in middle-class households
7. In the last 14 years, median income of middle-class households declined by 4 percent
8. Median wealth for middle class households dropped by an astounding 28 percent between 2001 and 2013
9. Middle class take-home pay before expenses has plummeted to just 43 percent of gross pay, compared to 1970 when the middle class took home approximately 62 percent of all income
10. There are still 900,000 fewer middle-class jobs in America than there were when the last recession began
11. According to the Social Security Administration, 51 percent of all American workers make less than $30,000 a year
So yeah, I think saving $750/mo is out of reach for a large percentage of the US population.
More Here

All of the quick departures are alarming. I'm babysitting some money for someone else, and part of it --- 10% of their total--- is in MAPIX. So far, its fund managers remain at the helm. I've re-read the M* analysis of the fund, dated in August. They love it. Best thing since sliced bread! Should we remain, or clear out? I'm pretty impressed by the numbers, too...

I'm not super impressed with Morningstar assessments. For example, analysts or co pms can leave funds and they somehow always seem to think that since the head/lead pm is still there, everything is fine. Quite often, its the underlings that do much of the grunt and analytics. And they never seem to hit on the qualitative stuff (why people left). But I digress.
I looked at MAPIX earlier this year. Performance had struggled a bit over the last 12 months. IIRC, the 3-year return number was below the benchmark, which shocked me. It's since recovered some, but compared to other active funds in that category, Columbia Pacific Asia (USPAX) and Fidelity Pacific Basin (FPBFX) have superior return numbers for 1, 3 and 5 year trailing. I went with FPBFX as the return numbers were better and the expense ratio was 97 bps vs MAPIX 102 bps.

Let's say you have a $100,000 portfolio. On a given trading day, the numbers show an increase in value of $500. Within that portfolio is a small position in a stock that blew up and shows a 20% ($1,000) decline for the day.
Are you generally satisfied because you had an increase of 0.5% for the day? Or are you despondent over the stock that blew up? I fall in to the latter category, but it seems illogical. Can you relate? And is there a way to make myself be more rational?

Good morning @hank : "One thing I like at Max Funds is the maximum 1-year loss they envision. Worst case scenario for sure. Where it’s helpful to me is in looking for / comparing relatively ”safe” funds to meet a certain portfolio need. "
Is there facts as to how close they come to ringing that bell, so to speak ? Is there a look back section ?
Stay Safe, Derf

Hi Derf - They claim some kind of “proprietary” system I think. (Doesn’t everyone? :)) My understanding is it’s run by Max Ferris who has appeared often on Fox as a financial / investment commentator. I don’t know if he still does. Never cared for Fox’s financial programming - but recall him being one of the better ones among the bunch.
I just ran a few lower risk funds through MaxFunds and - yikes - they really derate them (is that a word?). RPSIX comes in with a WCS (worst case scenario) of -40%. A favorite of mine, TRRIX weighs in at -45%. And Price’s venerable (and conservative) PRFDX scores a wopping -70% WCS.
Maybe ol’ Max knows something about the coming cliff? Or maybe he needs to change his whisky brand. I really don’t know.
To answer your question, @Derf - There’s no “look back section.” I can, however, appreciate and agree with their relative risk assessment of the 3 funds just cited, having owned all of them at one time or another. But the depth to which each might fall seems to me a bit exaggerated.
Regards

The difference arises from the payment at the beginning or the end of the month. I changed the HP-12C to "beg" and I received $392.974.05 The calculator was set to "end", my total is $390,695 (rounded).

@Baseball_Fan,
I'm a trader. I don't care what happened in the past but what can make me money now. I do care about volatility/risk when I select funds.
When a black swan shows up is when ugly things happen and you must avoid risky funds.
What many forget already is that higher-rated bond were down too and only after the Fed intervention stock + bond funds started doing better.
Examples: LQD=Investment grade (not junk) corp. A respectable index was down peak to trough over 18%.

Hat tip to you FD1000, appears you have a high level of confidence and success in your investing endeavors. Like they say, it ain't boasting if you can do it.
Maybe I'm, take that back, I am quite a Chicken Little when it comes to investing in Muni's, (ref NHMAX)...that fund seems like top ~30% of holdings are in IL, CA, NY and PR. I wouldn't touch any muni bond from those states with your ten foot pole.
Or maybe the put is in...just invest and wait for the fed / Pelosi and friends to bail out those states? Maybe it's foolish not to invest there?
Re IOFIX...many got burned big time several months ago...news all over that housing is doing well....maybe we're just about to see a bigger downturn than 08/09, in my area we're starting to see sellers discounting homes...of course that might be the "wealthy" getting the heck out of IL.
I recall that Mr Junkster mentioning and you FD as well that you follow tight channels and price performance, so maybe you don't overthink it as I seem to do or maybe you know a lot more the underlying holdings/dyanmics than I do. Again, much respect to your results, being serious, not being sarcastic.
Maybe just better going to LV and putting it all on red and at least enjoy the free drinks?
Good Luck and Good Health to all,
Baseball_Fan

I love these fantasyland hypothetical scenarios that presume that A. most Americans have $750 extra a month to stash in the stock market and B. that the stock market's past returns will be the same in the future. Depending on which study you believe, on the low end, 40% of Americans have less than $1,000 in liquid assets to invest: https://bankrate.com/banking/savings/financial-security-january-2020/
But more importantly, who can say with any honesty what the next 20 years of stock performance will bring? No one.

@FD1000; I'm guessing you bought in around 3/25/20 ?
Derf

Nope, I sold over 90% at the end of 02/2020 and the rest days later.
Made several good trades with QQQ+PCI in 03/2020.
Start investing back in bond funds to over 99+% in 04/2020.
I had a huge % in GWMEX for several months. I owned IOFIX only in the last several weeks.
I wish I was brave enough to buy IOFIX on 3/25/2020. It made over 50% since then.

Increasing access to high-quality education.
Sure, I want even more:
I think that all employees should get better benefits + treatment. CEOs should make much less.
If we're already going there, health care and high education should be cheaper. Please find me these great cheap doctors and universities.
It's funny, the more we try to improve the above the worse it gets under both Dems and GOP.
1) Our school level got worse in the last 20 years.
2) CEOs are making 250-300 times their average employees while they used to make about 30 times in the 80"
3) Healthcare got a lot more expensive since Obama care.
4) The gap got bigger too. Many STEM jobs increase pay more than inflation but lower paying jobs did not + many don't get benefits.