6/23/25 Recap

The SPY is sandwiched between the 8 and 21 ema, this isn’t really bullish or bearish until we pick a direction. We tried to push over the 8 ema and so far 2 hours into the session we have rejected it. The market needs a sharp move up in the next 2-3 sessions or we’re going to see the 8 ema cross down through the 21, that wouldn’t be bullish. For the most part the weekend WW3 fears have calmed down, but Trump is speaking now so who knows what he says, if he hints at any sort of prolonged war the market would definitely not like it. For now we held the 21 ema for the 2nd straight session but remember multiple tests of it are not bullish, we need to move away from it quickly or we will likely breakdown.

This weekend is the mid way mark of the year, how has your year been? To this point year to date, my trading style was completely different than what it was last year. Last year I thought would be a pretty smooth ride under Biden, he never tweeted, and I just stayed long some leaps as he never really rattled markets. I was just levered to the upside. This year I thought with Trump back in office we would see more volatility and being long only was going to be a rollercoaster so I changed up my battle strategy to being levered short puts thinking we’d be flat or down. If you’re going to be a successful trader, you have to adapt to the market infront of you, there is no 1 style always works approach. You see me bounce around to whatever my database is showing as hot whether it be Silver or Bitcoin or even oil when its time. I just go with the flow and trade around it, all these names are just trading instruments to me, I have a long term book where I have a few names that are multi year holds, but in here, the book you see is just an aggressive trading book where I’m just trying to be right on direction short term, nothing more.

This particular year I really didn’t see much upside in the market after that sharp run we had once Trump won combined with earnings expectations falling and I decided to focus more on put selling. The reason being was should the market be flat or down, I would still do well and here we are 6 months into the year and I’m up 22.6% coming into today with the Nasdaq up 1%.

Think about when I closed that huge META risk reversal in February or when I closed those massive AMZN call spreads I had, those were 1000 lot, had I held those, I would be deeply negative on the year as decay kicked in. So while I do love Amazon and ultimately I do think it goes higher, same with META, there’s many ways to win at this game that don’t involve sitting around hoping and praying your stock goes up. AMZN and META were both charts that were showing weakness when I cut each. The key if you want to outperform, you have to be in the right name at the right time and that doesn’t mean ALL THE TIME. So while many would say this has been a so so year for the market,I’d say this year has actually been incredible for me as I’ve beaten the Nasdaq by 20x coming into today because of the change in approach I took for this time period. Even a day like today my largest position MSTR is down but because of the specific approach I took to it, using a strangle, selling premium on both sides, I’m up ALOT on the position just today alone as you’ll see down below. Alot of people don’t understand you can still make plenty of money without stocks going up or down meaningfully. In those periods, the premium sellers emerge as the big winners.

My Open Book