Fingers Tightly Crossed August 29, 2021August 29, 2021 AFGHANISTAN Peter (who voted for Trump twice): “As you well know, Biden is under intense attack for the Afghan withdrawal, with many claiming he is no longer compos mentis. But the colloquy with FOX’s Doocy shows quite the opposite. He gives briefly a quite lucid and informed understanding of Afghan history, the reasons for our involvement and why we are now at last leaving, and the most persuasive and compelling argument for his policy I have yet seen. Dems should show this video widely, because it is Joe Biden at his best, and it should quell his current attackers.” → Nothing will quell most of his current attackers, but given his voting history, it’s awfully good to see Peter sharing this view. Well worth watching that five-minute clip. RFL PUTS We sold half at $13 last week for a quick quadruple. The underlying stock had dropped from $60 to $37. (Suggested in July, these puts allow us to sell RFL at $40 any time until mid-November.) I thought that if RFL bounced back up, I might get a chance to buy the puts back cheaper . . . and sure enough, last week RFL got as high as $52. (Is this a crazy market, or what?) When I went to see how cheaply I could buy some back, I was astonished to see they had become more expensive. So instead of buying any back, I sold all but a few of the rest at $15.37 . . . keeping those last few in case the stock drops to $10 or $20 by the time these puts expire, making them worth $20 or $30. (If the stock drops to $10, the right to sell shares at $40 is worth $30.) That could certainly be leaving a bunch of money on the table. But you know the old line about bulls, bears, and pigs. And what if RFL delays their bad news past the November expiration? Or what if their news somehow isn’t bad? Or is, but the Reddit crowd decides to make it the next GME / AME / SPRT? So I’m largely out at $15.37, and happy. Speaking of SPRT, that we owned for years around $2 and then woke up one morning this March to find at $8 . . . saga recapped here . . . it touched $59.69 Friday, swept up in a Reddit meme-stock short-squeeze whirlwind, before closing the day at $26.33. Insanity. I seem to recall that crazy speculative markets don’t always end well, and so have built up a pretty good cash reserve in case cash is ever once again king, as it occasionally is. Fingers tightly crossed for Louisiana hours before Ida hits . . . and for the last two days of the Kabul evacuation. Have a great week.