2/12/25 Recap

The SPY bounced right off the 50 day earlier and is going for a close over the 8 day. God forbid stocks ever sell off on any bad data. Every dip is bought recently and yet somehow we’re flat for the last 90 days. I have more context below under my open book but for now the market looks ok, still a cascading series of lower highs but we are past the landmine of CPI now and onto the next datapoints incoming.

Recent Trades

UBER - a week ago today in the 2/5 recap here I noted these massive put sales that came in on UBER. Of course we all know Bill Ackman tweeted the next day and the rest is history, UBER is up 20% since. Was it Ackman himself? Either way, excellent trade by whoever timed it just perfectly.

My Open Book

Big change today, I closed up my AMZN call spread. The good news is I got a long term capital gain, the bad news is I left alot on the table that I did not want to. The problem for me was aside from AMZN guiding to obscene capex that the market will never appreciate after their reckless overspending during Covid, we now have inflation ramping again. Is it a one off? I don’t know I’m not an economist but I’ve always been in the camp all the numbers are nonsense. We changed the definition of a recession in 2022 to fit narratives, we revise every jobs report under Biden, and today Trump has been in office 2 weeks and inflation is ramping again. I’ve made enough to where I don’t really care to deal with these narratives and we still have Trump asking for rate cuts and with hot inflation now Powell has his excuse not to. All in all I’ve made a fortune since I entered the trade was back in May 2023 here and then I rolled it in January 2024. I caught an over 100% move on a megacap in calls and I need to step aside with so many question marks looming. The tax hit will be bad, but I won’t owe it until next year so I have some time to work with it before I have to pay but in the end I did get a long term capital gain so that was a double win.

I’m all cash right now so I added tons of new short put positions today, you can always verify them with the volume on each one like EPD, not many people out there are going to sell 1000 puts on that but I did. Will stocks likely go up from here? Possibly, we’ve gone up at a 70 degree angle for the last 100+ years but I don’t have to play the upside with calls anymore, my book is up 400% since I began all this in 2022, I can play with shares going forward and use short puts as my leverage. Just remember every stock is a buy, somewhere on a chart. For instance you will notice a plethora of META short puts, I’m trying to go below the 8 ema, that is clearly the market leader and I want to be involved but on a pullback. Things like that are my focus now. The overall market is a zoo, we’ve done nothing in 3 months and I really do believe we do nothing for a long time, equities are just pricey and we have way too many risks ahead with DOGE cutting tons of things which will impact consumer spending, the government is the biggest employer. Whatever it is, I’m more than happy with where I’ve gone with this trade and with AMZN ramping capex to record levels last week, I think their upside is muted for a while and if the overall market sees downside, they will get hit. Anyways here’s my book for now…..