I would be very cautious on the rental property-I am not convinced that rental property will not qualify for the new deduction-borrowing from Hedge Fund land -trader vs investor-it is not defined in the code and as alluded to previously trade or business under 162 goes to case law-in financial services one of the items to determine a trader-which is a better tax position (deductions not subject to AGI 2% limitation)-is regular and continuous activity-lots of trading-turning over portfolio multiple times a yearIn Real Estate World-if someone owns 6 or 7 houses and is always involved-think tenants, busted pipes, collection of rent, evictions when necessary-can you say that does not rise to the level of a trade or business-why is a grocery store any differentI have looked around and I don't see any major commentators saying rental wont qualify unless common ownership (I did see the verbiage in the proposed reg and I think there is a different reason that was put it-something about aggregating rental with non-rental activity)Bottom Line-all I am saying is lets wait and see as comments are submitted to Treasury and not rule anything in or out as far as rental properties are concerned 

For ex: interior paint cost-, exterior paint cost.. by doing this you get what they charge you based per sqft and then you can compare apples to apples with our Gcs.

Reno seems like a good place to WFH since we have many recreational activities (ski/snowboard/hikes), all the typical shopping/stores (whole foods, trader joes, coscto, 3 big malls) and of course nightlife at the casinos.

I do so with hesitation because I am sure there are a lot of differing opinions on my numbers and also what the numbers should be for ex. cap ex, vacancy rate, etc.  

Lastly, if you have a trader's mentality (frequent buying and selling), your strategy should be different than a buy and hold type investor. 

Several of the world's most talented traders, economists and businessmen try to do it and most fail.

I forgot to mention the first thing I did was to jump in the binary options but I realized that being a trader is a job with super flexible schedule, not an investment.

For ex. 

That is an extremely high risk venture and only a "TINY" sliver of the investor market - in fact, those folks are not really investors but rather gamblers (similar to the day traders of stock investing).  

Volitity is good for traders.