Today sucks. I won’t pretend otherwise. I was positioned for a fall, and instead we’re looking at a market in which the Dow is up QUADRUPLE DIGITS as I am typing these words. It wasn’t catastrophic for me, but I’ll get to that later. What I wanted to point out is this image of the Dow 30 fund:
That red arrow was the glory part of this year. It was fantastic, and my profits peaked in mid-June. They haven’t come anywhere even close to that level since then. Because, as the yellow tint plainly shows, it’s been an absolutely shit-show ever since. Yes, we’ve had times of weakness, and even a new low for the year, but it doesn’t matter. The “easy” bear market stopped on June 16th, and what it’s felt like since this has been exactly like the fate of our dear friend Sisyphus:
Thus, the moment the CPI came out this morning, I saw that rock go rolling RIGHT back down that hill again. Jesus H. Christ, I thought to myself, here we go again. So I plodded down the mountain to start the task once more.
I will say I did a few things right that made today Bad instead of Horrific:
- I took profits on my DIA puts yesterday;
- I took profits first thig this morning on my XOP puts, thus getting rid of the one and only “expires in 2022” options position;
- I trimmed back my most vulnerable positions, and once I was finished, I was down to 20 positions from the original 30;
- I have focused on even longer-dated options, which has increased my average days-to-expiration from 103 to 123, meaning I’ve got an average of a full FOUR MONTHS for the market to have a meaningful fall, which I think is altogether plausible
The difference between my style and the seat-of-the-pants, 0-DTE style of places like WSB is that, even on an absolutely enormous “up” day like today, my portfolio is taking a 11% hit, instead of a 99% hit, which means I live to fight another day. It sucks, but it ain’t gonna kill the Timster.
