2nd Street, S: Fill & Download for Free

(question edited. As originally asked, What are the volatility and execution risks of going all in for a 15% discount stock purchase program in a individual stock in the S&P500 and naked options short to hedge against the position?)The execution risk is entirely in your ability to deliver the required amount of cash if the option is exercised early.(image from Covered call - Wikipedia)You’re probably thinking, well, I’ve been permitted to buy my company’s stock at a 15% discount. Congratulations, that’s a very generous offer, but as the saying goes, it’s an offer in the bush, not in the hand. You’ve been promised delivery of the stock in the future, otherwise you’d already have the stock and not have to be writing a naked option. Typically, they agree to deduct a small amount from each paycheck to cover the purchase of a variable amount of shares, price to be determined in the future, typically the lesser of 85% of the price at the start of the period or the end of the period. You’ve probably said to yourself, “hmm, if there was some way I could write an option to profit off of that difference now, I could get my 15% discount early, rather than having to wait until next year”. But here’s why this is a spectacularly bad idea.One thing the graph above doesn’t show you is that the payoff for a short call has nearly unlimited upside risk. As the price continues to go up, you continue to have an ever increasing obligation to buy the stock and deliver it to the option holder, who can typically request to execute that option at any time (for american options), not just when you happen to be getting those ESPP shares. And frequently, although you “purchase” the shares of an ESPP, you can’t physically get at them until days after they are purchased. The timing differential becomes more dire as you get closer to the expiration date of the option.You can hedge some of this risk by using a longer dated option, but the end result of this is you will wind up getting a much smaller premium. So, you’re going to be tempted to sell, for example, four sets of 90-day options, one each quarter. (I’m not even going to think about how you could make that even worse with a greater number of 30 day options.)Imagine the stock price is $100/sh, it’s January 1st, and you’re setting aside about $325 every two weeks out of your paycheck to cover this purchase. Let’s also imagine the March $100 call is selling for $1. So, you sell one option and collect $100 bucks. But, you’re going to have to put up margin equity for the shares you are obligated to deliver, typically 100% of the premium received plus between 10% and 20% of the strike price or current price of the stock. So you need to leave that $100 + up to $2000 sitting in “cash” in your account. You’re also going to have to be eligible for at least a level 3 options trading account, so in all likelihood you’re also going to have to have $25,000 in equity already in your account or have to pony up $25k in cash to open an account with those privileges. At most brokerages, you’ll pay a commission for the sale, so you have to pony up cash for that too. Say, $5.So on January 2nd, ignoring the amount to open the account, you’re now out say $2005 in cash. In two weeks, you have $325 deducted from your paycheck, and again, every two weeks thereafter. Already, does this sound like a moneymaking scheme to boost your cash flow early? You get the $2095 back on option expiry, if it expires worthless. Maybe you roll it over.Now, let’s say the stock suddenly has bad news, and to boot you lose your job. The stock price drops to $50, and the option is now more-or-less worthless. You’ll still need to pay something to close it out right away to stanch bleeding, but disregard that $0.01x100/option in that scenario. You pay another commission to close the trade, and now you get back about $90 in profit for one cycle, but you’ve also lost your job, don’t get to buy the stock at a discount, get back the $325 or so you deposited every two weeks with your severance check. If you did something really stupid, like borrowed the money to open the option from a credit card or some other scheme, you’ve also been paying 10–20% pa interest on the $2000 you put up, so you’ve got to factor that in to your big gain of $90 for the scheme. I’m assuming that you’re being paid enough that the $325 was less than 10% of your overall pay stub, but really, congrats, you win. This is the third best way you’re going to “win big” with the play you’ve made. $90 on $2000 put up on deposit is a 3 month return of 5%, or about 20% a year maximum gain.What if the stock goes up after you get laid off? Say, the price of the stock goes up overnight 20% to $120 a share. The option you sold will cost you at least $2100 to buy back, completely obliterating the money you (might have borrowed to) put into your brokerage account, and in all likelihood, even more, or worse, your broker sends you a margin call and automatically closes out your position against you. But you still have the… nope! you don’t have any stock, cause you got laid off.But even if you had maintained your employment, you’re now out the $2100, plus your $325 payment every two weeks going out of your paycheck, and if you can wait around till the end of the year and the stock doesn’t move up or down more from there till then, you can get 100 shares of a $120/sh company for $85/sh, so you sell for $12000 minus commission for an overall gain of ~$1400 minus commission, when if you had not pursued the option you’d be sitting on a sweet $3500. You essentially “lost” 40% of money you otherwise could have had.But imagine you don’t lose your job, but the stock keeps dropping so you never have to exercise, and you keep pursuing a 90 day option every quarter for a similar profit profile. You wind up with an extra $90 x 4 = $360, which is just a little more than one of your paycheck deductions. The stock drops to $50. You have $8450 in your ESPP account, which is then used to buy 198 shares plus a little cash back. You paid $42.5, and you can turn around and sell those shares for $50 immediately for $1485 profit. So your gain of $1845 total is 20% more than the overall benefit of $1485 from the company, which is the second “best” outcome, and that gain doesn’t include the lost income opportunity of the $325 x 26 you gave up on loan to them in the interim. No really, congrats- you’re working for a loser of a company whose stock is effing cratering, but really, your additional $360 really “stuck it to them”. You could have just not bought the stock at all, and after two weeks your paycheck would have been immediately “$325 bigger”. Short term options plays like this are not a good strategy to quickly turn loose some cash.But this is not the worst life you could lead. Let’s say the stock goes up 20% each quarter. Congrats, you’re working for a great company. But each quarter, hoping for some regression to the mean, you keep pumping another $2100 wipeout into the option market every quarter. The stock price is now $207/sh. Your profit on selling is $12,200 minus commissions, but you lost $8400 on those covered calls, so you only see $3800 in profit. That’s kind of a “best case” scenario, where at the end of the period you have made the most overall profit from your job within the scenario, but you lost over two thirds of your potential profits.It gets worse. Let’s say mid year the stock goes up 20% a quarter, then turns around and heads back down. So your naked call strategy loses you $2100 the first two quarters, but gains you back $90 a quarter the last two quarters. You’re now out $4020+, but the gain you get from the company is only $1500 because the stock went back to $100/sh, for a total loss of $2,520.Hopefully, what have you learned? For the measly benefit of trying to make an extra couple hundred bucks, you put yourself at grave risk, even with fairly ordinary scenarios. You basically said, “I don’t believe the company is going to do well in the short run”, because when you buy even a covered call strategy you are betting that the company isn’t going to appreciate very much (or possibly drop), yet you continue working for them and (giving them back!) their money.Why would you want to work for (and invest in) a company whose prospects you are actively betting against, and yet sink thousands of dollars over a year period into a stock purchase plan, during which that money sits in a low or no interest accumulation account?Companies offer you stock at a discount because they believe you, as an insider, are working to make the company do better, perhaps very much better. You know, win-win. An extra $90/q, $360/y in option premiums is a terrible way to both bet against your company and try to squeeze a few additional bucks out of a minor perq. And this by no means is how bad this can all go down- if the company does really well, and pops 100% or more overnight, you can be on the hook for tens of thousands of dollars instantly, even well before the ESPP plan vests you the stock, and while you might be good for the cash in a few weeks, days, months, whatever, when your ESPP happens to pay out, you don’t have it right now. That’s why naked call writing typically requires a large, seasoned free-and-clear equity in your account before any brokerage house lets you do such a foolish thing. A person who puts tens of thousands of dollars at >100% risk for the hopes of making an extra $360/year is only one thing: an idiot.(Updated to include buying one put.)So, you decide not to sell a call, and instead buy a put, in the hopes of hedging some of the risk of that stock dropping before you buy it.Buying a put in this case removes the downside risk of the stock dropping. But you’re already hedged a little bit against the stock dropping with the terms of an employee stock purchase plan (ESPP), which typically offers you to buy at a discount of the lower of the prices at either the beginning or end of the period. So by offering to sell in a years time by buying such a contract, you might gain much more than the mere discount premium you might have earned if you hadn’t hedged.One option for 100 shares costs you say $100 plus commission. A put gives you the option to sell at a fixed price, say $100/sh, so if the option is still active when the stock drops, you increase your overall profit from the stock because you will get to buy at a price significantly lower than the strike price of the option, minus that $100 or so, yet have a right to sell at $100/sh. N.B.: your ability to purchase in the event of a big drop in stock might be limited by the terms of the ESPP, and I’m just talking about one entirely hypothetical ESPP. The details of your ESPP might have lots of weasel clauses.Here’s the thing: if you expect your company’s stock to drop significantly in the short term, why are you continuing to work for them? Aren’t you more worried that they might lay you off? And if you’re hedging because you have good reason to believe that the company will drop in price, you are definitely putting yourself up as an investigation target for insider trading. There might be some slight value to buying downside protection, but in almost all scenarios where you continue to want to work for the company, you’re actively working to make the company more valuable, not just put in your 8 hours and walk away hoping it burns down behind you.And what happens if you don’t get the stock at a cheaper price? You get laid off, for example? In that case, you wind up either selling the option for some gain, so it’s perhaps a nice insurance contract to have if you have some uncertainty over your job. It’s much more probable, knowing the performance of S&P 500 stocks is typically positive over longer time frames even though people get laid off all the time, that the contract expires (or you let it expire, since you don’t have that long stock to fulfill the sale option) worthless, and in the realm of what ordinarily happens, you’re just giving up some of your potential nice 15% discount to a random wall street person for the slight but potential downside protection. You’re essentially writing yourself and paying for a generous unemployment insurance contract (you hope) if the company fails utterly. Would you buy unemployment insurance if it were offered? And what signals are you sending by such an act?The real question you have to ask yourself is why doesn’t every long and bullish investor buy protective puts on their stock, since it allegedly removes all the downside risk for a price? see, e.g. Stock Options Trading: Do protective puts provide real protection? The proof is in doing it- do it, and tell us how it worked out for you. It’s probably an expensive mistake, but you do you.

Here is my answer to your original question as below:“I have a 2.4L 4cyl at 175whp. I would like to turbocharge it to around 300whp, what turbo turbocharger and supporting mods do I need?”Garrett T3/T4 hybrid turbo (T3 turbine/T4 compressor) would be the best for 2.4L bolt-on turbo. You will expect 250 HP with 8PSI of boost.You can’t boost too much because of compression ratio. NA engine is higher compression than turbo engines. You should enjoy the bolt-on turbo for good engine response rather than peak power. Also you will face a problem with engine knock. In that case, you have to reduce boost pressure, and retard ignition timing. But retarding ignition timing increases exhaust gas temp, so you have to increase fuel to reduce exhaust gas temp to keep engine running safely.Moreover, you need to know if your engine parts, con-rods, pistons and short block have a capable of 300HP. Otherwise you have to consider to lowering a target max power.If you are clear above issues, then you need following parts:Oil feed lineYou need an oil line to the turbo. You can feed from oil filter adapter used for aftermarket oil cooler.Oil return lineYou need to have a oil return from turbo. You have to mod the oil pan.Turbo manifoldIf you can find an aftermarket turbo manifold, you can use it. Otherwise you have to make it using a mild steel.Intercooler and pipingThere are many universal intercooler cores available, but piping is more difficult. If you can find a piping kit, that will be great, but still you need to mod pipes to fit your engine exactly.Air filter and piping to turbo inletBlowoff valveExhaust downpipe and cat backInjectorsYou need to calculate how much you need to increase the injector capacity. This injector capacity is also required for reprogramming the ECU.MAF SensorIf your stock MAF Sensor is not capable to measure enough air at full boost air induction, you have to swap to bigger MAF Sensor.Fuel pumpProgrammable ECUIf you can mod with your stock ECU, that will be the best. If you can’t, you have to change it to standalone ECU.I do not recommend to use s-afc such a device to correct MAF inputs because you can’t control fuel and ignition independently. The most important for ECU tuning is to adjust A/F ratio first then adjust the best ignition timing for the A/F ratio.Wideband O2 Sensor and Exhaust Gas TempThese are required for ECU tuning.A/F ratio at boost must be 10.5 or richer. 11 will be okay, but bolt-on turbo engine is high compression, so richer A/F ratio is safe to prevent from engine knock or engine blow.Sampling point of exhaust gas temp should be at the turbo manifold just behind the turbine inlet.Never exceed the exhaust gas temperature more than 1560F (850C).During you are tuning the ECU, the exhaust must be quiet so that you can hear the engine knock.Here is what I did to S13 240SX 15 years ago:I put the turbo to 141k miles of stock KA24DE.I used T25 from stock SR20DET, and I used mostly aftermarket parts of SR20DET such as downpipe, intercooler piping, injectors and ECU daughter board using two 27256 EEPROMs. What I made was a turbo manifold only.Calculation of engine power was also used a spec of stock SR20DET. SR20DET has 205hp at 6000 rpm with 8 PSI of boost. The engine air flow of 2.4L engine at 5000 rpm was the same as 6000 rpm of 2L engine. So 205 hp would be at 5000 rpm for KA24DE engine. Also spooling boost at 2500 rpm for 2L was 2100rpm with 2.4L engine. So, power band was between 2100 - 5000 rpm. KA24DE engine was not high-rev engine, so it was good enough to me. The actual power band was exactly what I calculated.I spent one-year for ECU tuning to find all-year round ECU setting and I programmed almost everyday. The base idle setting was calculated from injectors. Stock injector was 265cc, and I upgraded to 370cc. So, I reduced to multiply by 0.716 to the base idle K number in the ECU, and I fine-adjusted by monitoring A/F meter.My advise is always tune either Fuel or Ignition. Do not tune both at the same time because you never know which is affected by fuel or ignition so you can’t go next step, and always you should be able to step back to previous settings because it does not make always a good result. Tuning sequence is adjust fuel first and then ignition next because the best ignition timing is different by A/F ratio at the same rpm. So, for example set the A/F ratio at 10.5 with full throttle, then set the ignition timing just behind the engine makes a knock with exhaust gas temp not exceeding 1560F.If you advance the ignition, the exhaust gas temp tends to reduce, but has a risk of engine knock. If you heard engine knock, you must release gas pedal immediately and find a root cause why it was happened. Setting at full throttle is easier because ECU is reading always the same area, and half throttle is more difficult because reading map is changing by engine load.Start from lower rpm with 2nd gear first, then after you are able to rev limit with 2nd gear, and then shift up to 3rd gear and start setting from lower rpm again, and keep it doing until with highest gear at rev limit.After I completed an engine setting, I drove the bolt-on turbo KA24DE for 2 years, and I didn’t have any issues until I sold it to my friend after I finished my college.

I came of age in Seattle in the 1990’s. I had just graduated from Chief Sealth High School in 1990. The following year, they had a gang unit paddy wagon at many of the high schools because the trendy effects of the films such as Colors glorified the inner city gangster life. Being a fake gangster was fashionable for a few years in the 1990’s.I entered the University of Washington in the fall of 1990. I knew students from different high schools that entered with grade point averages between 3.00 to 3.4 and SAT scores between 1080 to 1300, which would be shocking today. Generation X was such a tiny cohort that the entering class at the UW was one of the smallest in quite a while. Universities across the system also had much lower admission statistics. USC, UCLA, Berkeley, Davis were all within range if a student had a B+ average and around an 1150 on the SATs. Even if a person was rejected at the UW, the transfer agreement from a community college guaranteed admission if your transfer GPA was at least a 2.75. The worst that could happen if they had no room was you would have to wait one or two quarters to be admitted.Tuition was just around $635 per quarter while that same amount was for the entire year at a community college. Medical and law school had graduate school rates at $3500 a year. The most expensive textbook was the year long calculus sequence at $125. A person working part time at the minimum wage of $5.15 in 1991 could easily pay for expenses and still have money left over. Rooms in the University District were around $180–230 per month while 2 bedroom apartments at the Malloy down the street from Schmidt Hall on 15th Avenue NE were $695 in 1992, which was considered expensive. The venerable Wilsonian apartments near 50th and University Way were a staggering $795 for a 2 bedroom in 1997. Harbor Steps on 1st avenue was $635 for a studio in 1996 and topped out at $1700 for a penthouse apartment.Indian Buffets were $4.99 in 1991 while a drink at a bar was $5 for a double shot of top shelf liquor until about 1998. Bottomless champagne bruches were everywhere at $8-20. A porterhouse steak with baked potato at the Metropolitan Grill was just under $50 in 1998. Students never had any money issues because financial aid, even the Perkins loan was more than enough. Sadly, limits now were the same back then. The Last Exit, Arnold's, and Jensen the jewelry store were still around. There were a few teenagers that pretended to be homeless on University Way. In fact, it was illegal to sleep in a tent. I know because I tried in 1995 in Ravenna Park.Allen Library was almost complete in 1990. Paul Allen's mother had just died recently. The U Pass was an orange paper card in 1990 then became a plastic card later. You registered for classes and checked for grades using the STAR automated system on the telephone. There were vending machine style IBM selectric typewriters on the lower floor of Suzzallo library. Next to each typewriter was a contraption that accepted quarters. Each coin allowed the machine to work for 20 minutes. Course Syllabi were available at the HUB copy center.Real Estate was a mere pittance. There were 2 bedroom Capitol Hill condos for around $75,000 and I saw a tiny co-op for $35,000. The most expensive houses were under $2 million. You could buy a house for as low as $90,000, even Queen Anne had houses for under $200,000. A brand new house in West Seattle with 2100 square feet and a 2 car garage was about $145,000. The main drag of Alki facing the water still had the original shoebox houses that would sell for under $175,000. A 1200 square foot house in Fremont was $275,000 in 1999 and Magnolia as well. I remember a mathematics and history professor who each separately lived near Northgate Mall. Nowadays, that would be an impossibility. In 1995, a small studio at Seattle Heights in Belltown was $75,000. The Montreux in 1998 was $85,000 while Colonial Pacific on 1st by the exit into downtown near the Seattle Art Museum in 1990 was $99,000. Newmark Tower on 2nd was $140,000 for a one bedroom in 1992. Hammering Man by the way was new in 1991The tech of the 90’s was telemarketing. I worked part time for Time Life Libraries in 1995. I averaged about $450 per week working 28 hours. Phone rooms were everywhere from timeshares to dating services. I knew some people that earned $30,000+ doing this line of work. A high school teacher could still buy a house within the city limits while an assistant manager at Burger King could buy a 2 bedroom condo with a $32,000 salary in 1990. Mortgage rates however were around 8%. Also, such a position would be competitive to acquire, unlike now where even a store manager position is relatively easy to acquire.I used to go to the Frontier Room on 1st Avenue and Ernie's on Broadway. There were so many dive bars like these that no longer exist. Well drinks were $2–2.50 a shot. The Frontier Room had a greasy bacon burger with fries for under $4. On weekends, some men's urinals had vomit from the stiff drinks. The Crocodile had bands that are now a part of history. I saw the drummer for Pearl Jam relaxing with a drink at the Re Bar.Downtown was still littered with a few porno theaters, older regular movie theaters like United Artists($2 movies), pawn shops to fence stolen items like Liberty Loans on 1st and Pike, and porn/ video game arcades. One of the most infamous was the Midtown Theater on 1st Avenue. In its heyday it played first run porno films. By the time I came around, it still played porno classics but was a place for people to have sex. The Embassy where the Wild Ginger is today degraded to playing 3 porn videos on the big screen for the admission price of $10. I caught my first showing in high school because at the time they just didn't care about admitting minors.Lou's Arcade where Deja Vu is today across from the Pike Place market had private booths and rooms. Patrons and sex workers would be separated by a glass partition. I remember going into a room that had a box next to a solid metal window. The metal covered the actual glass window. I placed a couple quarters into a metal vending box next to the window. It caused the metal portion to raise, revealing the glass window. Behind it were several naked women. One woman proceeded to my window then she placed a finger in her vagina. She proceeded to streak her juicy finger onto the window. After less than 80 seconds, the metal portion lowered. As I stepped out of the booth, one of the other workers who had just completed her shift now fully clothed asked if I liked the show. We both laughed.SEATTLE will never be like this again….