A while back I texted one of my best buds, Don, who I used to skate with, saying I was thinking about starting up again. My concern, I told him, was that every time I would go for a run, I couldn’t convince myself to hurl my body at the ground, so maybe I wasn’t ready.
When I finally did start skating again, I was reminded that it can be embarrassing to get in front of everyone, not be very good, and fall on your ass a lot. And as I just realized my largest loss ever in the market, I’m here now to fall in front of you this month.
I heard Tony Hawk say in an interview, “I don’t like getting hurt; I’m just not afraid to,” and I like that.
I’m not one of those “pain doesn’t bother me” dudes. Pain, both physical and emotional, hurts and I avoid it just like most rational people. Problems can arise from too much avoidance and not leaning into some discomfort from time to time.
I can remember early on having to spend a whole weekend wondering if I was cut out for trading after dealing with several large losses. There have been times where I thought about not skating or continuing this site because of the struggles that I have to overcome each time.
I can tell myself that I’m not very good or that things aren’t coming easily or quickly enough to me. We all deal with this form of self-talk, so it’s important to recognize it and have a plan for how to deal with it.
Don’t just blindly accept it. Maybe even try to prove it wrong.
All Pain, No Gain
Okay, so usually, when I’m talking strategy on here, I’m referring to the selling of options. What we’re about to discuss is buying options and the dangers associated with doing so.
With this being a riskier strategy, and one that I obviously haven’t figured out yet, I have chosen not to explain or recommend it on this site as of now. I hint at it from time to time as some of my biggest wins this year came from buying calls. But as we’re about to see, it’s also the cause of my largest loss ever.
Here’s the drama. Bezos dumped a bunch of his Amazon stock, causing the price to dive back in September. These things happen, and sometimes they’re even planned well in advance as was the case here, so I jumped in thinking it was a good entry point.
So far, so good – except I make two small adjustments to my trading plan.
You see, I have the tendency to get a little nervous sometimes and close out these types of trades for a quick profit early on, only to watch them continue to go in my favor, essentially leaving money on the table. A common phrase you’ll often hear is, “Let your runners run,” and I was attempting to adopt it as I tired of feeling the FOMO.
Secondly, I had also picked up a little tip on how to slowly add on contracts over the course of weeks or months instead of going in heavy all at once, thinking I had timed it perfectly. It was described as dating the contract for a little bit, adding on one or two here and there as things move around, before committing and marrying it after some time, once the trade has proven to be successful.
These two seemingly harmless changes created a perfect storm in my portfolio that I didn’t have the sea legs for.
I slowly added on contracts, but sorta lost track as I was doing this between two different accounts. Before realizing it, I was over-leveraged. I had opened too many contracts and had way too much money at risk. To my credit, I did close half of the position in advance, but chose to let the other half ride. I bought these in September and they expired in January, leaving me to believe I had plenty of time.
But time comes for us all.
At the end of October, an earnings report was released and Amazon has great news for investors, causing the stock to skyrocket and the calls I bought were now at a profit of around $7,500, a return of 150%!
My thought process was that, surely now investors will pile in as it’s been riding the bottom for a bit. Lots of articles and several analysts raising their price targets by +$50, not something you see very often! Everyone and their mama was talking about how undervalued it was.
“The markets can stay irrational longer than you can stay solvent.” – John Maynard Keynes.
Then suddenly, for some reason, the nation seemed to collectively remember that our President was besties with our #1 pedophile. I was under the impression that we’d known this for a while. In the past few months, the markets have been temperamental as people seem to disagree with that relationship, understandably.
So what started as a $7,500 gain turned into a $4,606 loss. This is, no doubt, a hard lesson, major setback, and something I won’t soon forget. I’ve been in this play since September, so that’s a lot of ups and downs and what ifs that I’ve been dealing with on a daily basis. I’m glad to get this over with.
Me IRL
I have a renewed love for the safety of selling options after this experience. In November I said, “Some people only sell Cash Secured Puts far below the stock price in an attempt to never get assigned, effectively using only their cash to make money without owning shares. This is cool.” And this is exactly what I’ve been doing and I’m back to pulling in consistent profits again.
We’re gonna fail, that’s inevitable. What’s important is what you do afterwards.
In unrelated news, do YOU want to learn how to become a Hot Shot Options Trader?! Purchase one of my courses to unlock the secrets that hedge funds don’t want me to tell you!!
SIGN UP NOW!! PLEASE!!
“The fool who knows his foolishness is wise at least to that extent, but a fool who thinks himself wise is a fool indeed.” -Dhammapada, a collection of sayings by the Buddha.
Bio-Dome
There was a $150 million experiment in the 90s where they tried to simulate our ecosystem in a biosphere in the Arizona desert. It was a prototype for a future colony on Mars.
The environment thrived in the beginning. With everything under complete control and away from the chaos of the real world, they experienced vigorous growth, with many plants exceeding expected sizes.
But, what they soon discovered was the daily chaos of our environment was actually beneficial for the ecosystem. They found out the hard way that trees need wind to stay strong. Trees develop what’s known as stress wood, or reaction wood. When stressed by wind or other foreign objects, they trigger a change in their cellular structure in order to grow this stronger wood. This leads to their resilience.
The roots also suffered from what they called, “lazy root syndrome.” When wind pushes against a tree it creates tiny tears and stresses at the base of the trunk and in the roots. This causes the tree to send down extra nutrients and growth hormones to thicken the roots and push them deeper into the soil to anchor the tree. In the windless dome, this didn’t happen, causing the roots to stay shallow and weak.
The trees couldn’t stand on their own and the project was a failure.
You see my point with all this. Weave discomfort into your life.
Monthly Roundup
In January, I made… oh, wait, I’m down $3,461.
I made $1,145 but I gave back $4,606.
Here are the trades. As you can see, I sold a lot of Cash Secured Puts this month in an attempt to crawl my way back out of this hole.
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view more details and notes on all of my trades.
I may not be green in the markets, but I’m green on the news!
So needless to say I’m at odds and ends. But I’ll be stumblin’ away, slowly learning that life is okay. Say after me, It’s no better to be safe than sorry.
Take on me, Chris
Lend as little as $25 to create a more equitable world.Donate directly to the poor.
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Back in this post, I wrote about some of my daily rituals. Well, wouldn’t you know it, I’ve tacked on a few more things since that post, and one of them is journaling. Like the other things I listed, I’ve journaled for a while and can clearly see the benefits from it, but can be inconsistent, so I made it a daily must-do.
I like looking back and seeing how different my life was, even just a short time ago. It can remind me that I’ve gotten out of impossible situations or have freed myself from negative thoughts or emotions countless times before. I only recall it now because I chose to write it down in an attempt to work it out in the past.
Our perspective changes as we go through new and different experiences. The way out of the wilderness seems so obvious in hindsight. But, this can be difficult to realize if you’re not keeping track of where you’ve been along the way.
I’ve really grown to appreciate journaling daily these past 3 months. If you know me personally, you know that my short-term memory is not the greatest, so it’s been a relaxing and handy exercise to go back through my day and evaluate it. I will say, my gratitude has increased exponentially since I started. Taking a moment to recognize how neat and entertaining life is reminds me that there is really a lot to be grateful for. My awareness and appreciation of some of the minor details and interactions in my day to day life has also improved.
In a similar vein, I’ve thought of how my trading has changed as we head into a new year. Having a record of my trades and run-on sentences serve as a reminder of how far I’ve come and helps me learn from my past mistakes.
There was a time where I was consuming a lot of information in the realm of finance. When I first discover something new and intriguing, I tend to dive in head first and become a little obsessed until I have a good understanding of it. I then continue doing the thing but with the burner turned down a little, bringing things to a steady simmer.
So I can see times where I over-traded simply because I was thinking about trading too much. The podcasts I listened to, the books I read, and the TV I watched all soon shared the same common theme. Sometimes I would find myself thinking about stocks while doing my yoga routine or meditating, making me aware that I was becoming a little unbalanced and needed to make some adjustments.
People often say, “money is the root of all evil”, but that’s not the whole quote.
“The love of money is the root of all evil.”
“Feed me, Seymour!”
I’ve done a lot of soul searching on whether I wanted to continue this blog for another year. Honestly, this whole stock market and writing on a website thing is pretty out of character for me. I only make it look easy.
But, I simply cannot deny that I have become a better trader by openly journaling my thoughts, goals, and process as well as my ups and downs throughout the year. There’s magical power behind saying what you’re going to do and then following through on it. When you keep at it the Universe seems to take what you say and what you want a little more seriously.
As I speak, I create.
This whole project has helped me continually refine my system, and the reminder that I must stand in judgement in front of you each passing month has kept me honest and accountable.
And, though, I wrestle constantly with writing and this site and all the silly things that go into it, I know that these little challenges can really help us thrive when we make the choice, each and every time, to push through them. I also sincerely hope, in the process, that I’m able to save you some trouble and maybe get your gears turning a little.
If you don’t take a moment to reflect, circumstances will force you to reflect.
Roll Back Prices
How about one last little lesson to close out the year?
There’s another really good reason to sell options that I haven’t really discussed and I want to take a minute to go over that with you if you’ve got a sec. By selling options on stocks you own or want to own, you are effectively lowering your cost basis each time.
Cost basis tracker tool from ThetaGang.com
This here just shows me how my cost basis decreases as I continue to sell options on a stock. In the picture of the tracker above, starting at the bottom, you can see I sold a Cash Secured Put on HOOD at the $134 strike and received $570 in premium for doing it. The stock’s price was below $134 when the option expired so I was assigned and forced to buy 100 shares for a grand total of $13,400.
But, because of the $570 I received in premium for selling the Cash Secured Put option, that actually drops my initial cost to $128.30 per share, a total of $12,830 vs the original $13,400.
As the stock price recovered, I began selling Covered Calls against those 100 shares. Each time I have avoided assignment, keeping the shares and most of the premium.
You can see that, in total, I’ve collected $1,105 so far from those Covered Call premiums. Doing so has dropped my cost from $134 a share to $117.25 a share. You could essentially do this until your cost basis is $0 if you kept at it.
You’ll also notice in the picture that I was able to lower my strike prices down on my Covered Calls as my average cost lowered. I started by selling calls at the $134 strike (the price I was originally assigned the shares) and I’m now selling at the $120 strike. This allows me to bring in more premium as I’m selling closer to where the stock is currently trading.
Lastly, you’ll see that I also keep selling Cash Secured Puts on HOOD at the same time as I’m selling Covered Calls to bring in even more money. This allows me to simultaneously capture premium on both sides of the stock’s price action.
By using the techniques and indicators I laid out in this post with the wisdom of deltas that spilled forth from me in this post, I’m able to simply use probabilities to make money by selling options in the price ranges that the stock is less likely to reach.
This is another example of my weird little analogy of how these stocks can act like little businesses for you. In just over a month I’ve already made $1,105 from selling Covered Calls on a stock I own and that’s money that I could just pull out and do whatever with, or leave in the account to invest and compound.
You’ll probably see me use this picture several times on here. I made it, I think it looks cool, and I think it’s a nice visual representation of what I’m doing here.
Sell Cash Secured Puts until you’re assigned and have to buy 100 shares. Then you sell Covered Calls until the shares are called away. Collect premium at every stage. Rinse and Repeat.
Monthly & Yearly Roundup
In December I made $1,645.
And I’m very pleased to report my total earnings of $23,857 in the year of our Lord 2025. I did not start out with any sort of “I wanna make X amount this year” goals, to me that’s dangerous as it could lead to forced trades. But, if you would’ve asked me to guess at the beginning of the year what my grand total would be, my number would’ve been well below that.
Needless to say I’m feeling optimistic for next year, regardless of market conditions.
Profit and Loss Calendar for December
Here are the trades .
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view more details and notes on all of my trades.
Here’s a table of my monthly performance.
Well, that’s a wrap for 2025.
Shout out to all my readers! I’m genuinely shocked by how many people look at this thing. It wouldn’t be as fun and would be way more sad without you here. I also owe Becky a huge thank you. She’s always there to let me ramble and flesh things out for as long as I need to on whatever topic I’m currently obsessed with. I couldn’t ask for a more supportive partner and she’s a constant inspiration.
See ya next year! Chris
Lend as little as $25 to create a more equitable world.Donate directly to the poor.
If you’d like to give trading on Robinhood a try you can click my referral link HERE and we’ll both get some free stock.
I’ve increased my accounts by $21,119 in the year of our Lord 2025.
Profit and Loss Calendar for November
Here are the trades lol.
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view more details and notes on all of my trades.
Here’s a table of my monthly performance.
High Achievers, Peep This
I’ll be going over two strategies today, Cash Secured Puts and Covered Calls, there’s a quick primer here if you’re not familiar with them.
I mentioned last month that things are feeling a little unstable out there. I have pivoted back into selling options and attempting to trade more strategically as I sense the environment shifting. But, please keep in mind that I don’t know anything.
What I’d like to walk you through on this episode is The Wheel Strategy. It’s a combo of two strategies when you sell puts until you’re assigned shares, then you sell Covered Calls until they’re called away. Then you start over and repeat the process. The Wheel is about as safe as it comes in the world of options trading.
I’m going to discuss these strategies, walk you through a few scenarios so you can see why and how you would use them together, as well as some tips on how to glance at a chart to determine the best option to choose and when to execute a trade.
Here’s some brief definitions of some vocab that may be new to you.
Assignment happens when you, the option seller, are forced to complete the trade, either selling your shares or buying shares.
Strike Price is the specific price per share at which the underlying stock can be bought (for a call option) or sold (for a put option)
Premium is the immediate cash payment you receive from the option buyer for taking on the obligation of the contract, and it is the maximum profit you can make on that trade when you are the option seller.
Tryin’ to Make a Livin’ and Doin’ the Best I Can
Cash Secured Puts pay you a premium for agreeing to buy a stock if it is below a specified price by its expiration date. They allow you to generate income while giving you the opportunity to buy stock at a discount. They are a low-risk, high-probability trade.
Once I am assigned and own the shares, I wait for the price to recover. When the price rises back near the original price that I paid for the shares, I get paid to sell Covered Calls to sell the shares to someone else. These are also a low-risk, high-probability trade. They generate income while also hedging for a slight decline in a stock’s price.
By doing this, I’m essentially renting stocks and using them like a little business for making money by selling options around their price action, and am not as concerned about the stock’s price. Which will hopefully make more sense after I do some rambling.
In these two examples I’m about to show you, my only two trades this month, you can see how I was pretty off on the timing when selling the Cash Secured Puts, as the stock went way down afterwards. In both cases, on the day the contract expired, the stock just so happened to be at it’s lowest point. Ideally that is where I should’ve sold the puts. I perfectly timed the bottom in a hilariously dumb way.
But I can’t tell the future and this just shows that you don’t have to get the timing or direction right to be profitable with these strategies. This gives you a major advantage.
This first example is for Rocket Lab (RKLB). I sold 3 Cash Secured Puts at the $59 strike price that expired in one month while the stock was trading for around $65. This means that if the stock price is at $59 or below in one month, I am obligated to buy 100 shares at that price per contract, so 300 shares total for 3 contracts.
The reason I do this is because I wouldn’t mind owning the shares at that price and I get paid a pretty premium to sell the contract. $1,266 for 3 contracts in this case.
Again, when you look at it, I kinda did both of these trades at the worst possible time and I still made money. Therein lies the true beauty of selling options!
Now, you have to be able to stomach the downturn and have the patience to let the price rise back up before selling Covered Calls on the shares you now own. When you’re assigned on a Cash Secured Put, this ultimately means that something has happened and the stock price has dropped. More often than not, this means you have to buy shares for a price higher than they’re currently trading. This won’t feel great.
In the picture above, I agreed to buy those 300 shares for $59, so when the price dropped down to $37 that was a $6000 loss on paper, but not an actual loss, I just could have gotten them for cheaper if I were a little more psychic. All I did was wait for price to recover and now I’ve actually made $1,415 on the trade so far.
In the chart below, you’ll see I did the same thing with Robinhood (HOOD). While the stock was trading around $140-145, I sold a Cash Secured Put with a strike price of $134 that had a one month expiration. I was paid $570 to sell that contract. Afterwards the stock dropped way down and I was forced to buy 100 shares on the expiration date.
When I was assigned the HOOD shares I was forced to buy 100 at $134 while the stock was trading at $104. That’s a $3000 loss on paper from the start. I just had to be patient and let the price recover while doing nothing. Once it did in a week or so, I started selling Covered Calls against them to get rid of the shares. I’ve already made $520 in premium doing so.
In this way, I have bought a stock at $134 and sold it at $134, but have profited $1,090 so far. This is what I mean by using the stocks as more of a little business and making your money off of selling the volatility around the dramatic price action, if that makes any sense.
This takes a shift in your trading mindset and is something I’m still having to get used to. It feels unnatural. You’re not so much concerned about the stock price, but more concerned about how you can make money on their volatility and movement. You’ll ask yourself, “but what if the price goes up a little more”, and a thousand other hypothetical questions while trying to glean answers from your scrying mirror.
But you make money off the passage of time and wait for the bigger moves now. You’re not a boring buy-and-hold investor any more. You’re beyond space-time and hypothetical questions.
Not So Risky Business
I kinda just put a new heading there to help break up the whole thing and keep your attention. We’re still on the same subject. However, I do wanna switch it up and show you how you would go about selling options with the probabilities in your favor to suit your risk-adverse way of life.
When selling options, you can attempt to pick strike prices that you don’t think the stock will reach using probabilities that are clearly laid out for you in your trading platform.
For example, if you wanted to sell a Cash Secured Put on a stock but wanted the odds of getting assigned and having to buy the shares to be slim, you would look at the Delta of that option contract.
A contract with a .20 Delta means that there’s a 20% chance the stock will be at the strike price of your contract by expiration. So there’s an 80% chance that you won’t have to buy the shares and will simply get to keep the premium paid to you.
The higher the Delta of the contract the more premium is paid to you because the chances of it happening are greater. Here, let me show you what the option chain looks like on the Robinhood trading platform. This is where I get to pick and choose the contracts that I’m going to sell.
There are different dates to choose from at the top. Below that is a grey bar that shows the current stock price of $60.60. On the left are the different strike prices to choose from with the Delta listed beneath. The green numbers on the right show the premium I would receive for selling the contracts. That number is per share and each option contract is for 100 shares, so that $3.20 is $320.
So looking at that option chain, if I sold the $57 Put I would get paid $199 in premium. In two weeks, on Dec 26, if the stock price is above $57, I get to keep the $199. If the price is below $57 at expiration, I have to buy 100 shares at $57 regardless of what the current price is while also keeping the $199 premium. With a Delta of .29, there’s about a 30% chance of that happening.
This is where your personality and risk aversion come into play. I like to take larger, calculated risks, so I will often choose the contract right under the current stock price to get paid more. A strike price just below the current price is called “at the money” and you’re paid more for these because they are so close to the stock price, making the odds of you getting assigned pretty high.
Some people only sell Cash Secured Puts far below the stock price in an attempt to never get assigned, effectively using only their cash to make money without owning shares. This is cool.
However, you will notice as you retreat to the safety of the lower probability contracts that there is a trade off; you aren’t paid as much premium. With less risks, comes less rewards.
ting!
Keep in mind, we’re selling someone insurance when we sell a Cash Secured Put. You sold the put, so that means someone bought the put. The person on the other side of the trade owns the stock and bought the put option from you for the chance to sell to you should the price be below the strike price of the contract at expiration. I’ll understand if you need to read that again. This helps offset their losses on their investment and gives them an easy out should things go south.
Actually, I’m gonna go ahead and explain why the person on the other side of the trade is buying the Cash Secured Put your selling to help put it all in perspective.
But first, go ahead and gift yourself a little stretch. Big inhale. Big exhale. We’re at the finish line, I promise.
For the sake of this example, let’s say our fictional trader, Travis, owns 100 shares and wants insurance on them in case the price drops significantly. He would buy a put contract against those shares.
Travis owns 100 shares at a price of $100. He buys a put option with a strike price of $90. This gives him the opportunity to sell someone the shares at $90 should the price drop to that. Even if the price drops to $10, he can still sell it at $90. The put contract that he bought as insurance will actually increase in value if the price drops and this is what helps to offset some of the losses. Just like real insurance, Travis hopes to not be put in a position to use it, though.
So Travis lost $1000 in value from the stock dropping from $100 to $90, but the the put contract he bought as insurance is now worth, let’s say $400, so his portfolio only drops $600 instead of $1000. It’s the definition of “hedging your bets” and is why a lot of people use options in the first place, especially for very large investments.
You, (insert name here), on the other hand, are brave and courageous and you wouldn’t mind owning the stock at $90 because you think that’s a great price! You assure yourself that if it were to drop to that, lots of other traders would agree with you and would start buying at the discounted price, too, causing the stock price to rise back up eventually.
You hope.
Using the power of indicators that I laid at your feet back in September’s post, you can spot the levels of support and resistance, and this can help you choose a strike price or plan your next move by seeing where price is likely to NOT go.
Below is a chart to show you what I mean. I’ve labeled the support and resistance levels as well as each time the price tested those levels and bounced off them with little sparkles. There are several ways in which to use this information when trading.
For example, there seems to be strong support at the $38 price, as once it broke through that price it has never dipped below it. So you could sell a Cash Secured Put with a strike price of $38 or lower and feel pretty confident in that.
Neat, huh?
And when it’s time for leavin’, I’ll hope you’ll understand
Alrighty, well I reckon that wraps up this month’s sermon.
Let us pray.
Lord, I pray that some of this technical jargon made sense to this congregation gathered here today. Bless my jokes so that they may all land in accordance to Your will. Forgive us our short-sided trades and lead us not into margin calls.
Forever and ever, until the closing bell. Amen.
Go in peace, Chris
Lend as little as $25 to create a more equitable world.Donate directly to the poor.
If you’d like to give trading on Robinhood a try you can click my referral link HERE and we’ll both get some free stock.
Further Education
Here’s a quick video explaining Cash Secured Puts. This guy is a straight-shooter and doesn’t put out flashy content.
This guy is a little more on the trading guru spectrum, but he does give really good advise and explains things clearly. This is a longer video but it will breakdown the whole process even more if you’re jonesing for it. Just don’t pay for a course or anything.
I’ve increased my accounts by $19,284 in the year of our Lord 2025.
Profit and Loss Calendar for October
Here are the trades.
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view more details and notes on all of my trades.
Here’s a table of my monthly performance.
I’ll go over how I did it in a minute, but, girl, first I gotta talk about …
Wife Changing Money
Bagholding is an informal, colloquial term in finance that describes the act of holding shares of a stock after its price has dropped significantly, often far below the price at which the investor purchased them.
The Bagholder continues to hold the stock, typically refusing to sell in the hope that the price will eventually recover, even when all fundamental and technical signs indicate the price decline is permanent or long-term.
A failed trade does not have to be a multi-year endeavor and become your entire identity.
For a while now I’ve been kinda obsessed with the aftermath of the GameStop saga and the degenerate traders that are now deep in conspiracy, trying to warp reality in the hopes of a dead company making them filthy rich 5 years after they missed the boat. These guys even stoop to looking for clues in children’s books and it’s hilarious, but I craved something new as I’ve been keeping an eye on their cult for a while now.
Like manna from heaven, my prayers were answered as every morning in October I woke up to fresh posts from new bagholders whining about a little company I like to call Beyond Meat. Because the company’s name is Beyond Meat.
Now, first of all, I was vegetarian for about two years and ate their burgers almost daily. They’re great. However, as a company, they run at a negative net margin, which, is rare and funny. They sell their products for less than it costs them to make, so they lose money with every sale. Also remember when their CFO was arrested for biting a man’s nose during a fight?
So, long story short, Beyond Meat’s stock surges from $0.50 to $8.00 in around a week’s time, which is an absolutely massive climb. Stocks do not normally behave this way, and when they do, it’s often wise to stay away until the dust settles or not touch it at all. What usually happens, though, is that tons of people dump their life savings at the top, just before the stock reverses, and they ride the wave all the way back down. It’s really fun to watch from the sidelines, if you call watching a guy lose his kid’s college fund twice fun.
One morning I saw a guy dump $75,000 in as the stock was pumping in the pre-market trading hours, and that’s when I knew the top was in. Sure enough, over the next 2 weeks I watched as he turned $75,000 into $10,000 while the stock went from $8.00 back down to $1.00. Another guy lost over $40k and started savethekoreanguy.com which, I promise, is even zanier than you’re imagining and also has a pretty good video game built in.
Here’s what the big event looks like from last month on the chart. You can see it jump from $0.50 to $8, before crashing back down to reality. A lot of this hype was led by an AI capybara on Twitter.
Now here’s what it looks like when you zoom out and see the whole life of the stock. I’ve placed a little golden star there to mark the same event that you see in the chart above. That there is when people thought it would be a good idea to HELOC their house and yolo it all into a fake meat company that has never had a profitable year with dreams of obtaining generational wealth.
I’ve compiled a small gallery with some of the large losses so you can share in some of my joy.
Oophf
Yowza
Double Dooper
Come on now
We’ve been passing down cautionary tales since the dawn of man as a way of entertainment with an attempt to alleviate suffering for future generations. These people went all in on a pump-n-dump and quickly found themselves going from trying to make a quick fortune to becoming a self-soothing community of bagholders with like-minded losers who are unwilling to accept their mistakes, spinning stories to ease their pain, while holding out for hope leading to even heavier losses instead of owning up and moving onto better things.
I can’t help but wonder how people so silly got their hands on so much money to lose in the first place. They’re even going out and buying tons of product in an attempt to boost sales so the stock price goes up lol.
Put checkpoints within yourself to make sure that you are not feeding your own bias. Play devil’s advocate. Search out articles that express the counter-point. I’m gonna be honest, I can be gullible as hell, and I think that’s true for just about everybody. Just because someone is an author, podcaster, or blogger like me with dozens of views, doesn’t mean they’re always right or that they’re right for you.
Do not fall for the allure of getting rich quick by trying to jump in on a meteoric rise of some penny stock. There’s been an influx of these cheap stocks hilariously ruining people’s lives recently so I’m trying to do my part.
I’ve compiled a small list of key words and buzz phrases that should send you packing if you hear them in regards to an investment that you’re interested in. I hope you heed my warning so that you don’t find yourself all-in on a stock that’s already climbed over 1000% in a week (not a joke number) like these baffoons.
Red Flag Terms: short squeeze, short sellers, shill, hedgies, FUD, HODL, DD, ape/apes, tendies, dark pools, diamond/paper hands, or “To The Moon” usually followed by too many rocket and moon emojis.
To wrap it up I’m gonna take a page out of their playbook and end this article on meme stocks the way most of them do, with a quote from Anne Frank.
“How noble and good everyone could be if, every evening before falling asleep, they were to recall to their minds the events of the whole day and consider exactly what has been good and bad. Then without realizing it, you try to improve yourself at the start of each new day.”
-Anne Frank
It’s Quiet… Too Quiet
A large chunk of my profits came from buying and selling 3 Nvidia call options. I bought them for $1,709 each and sold them 43 days later at $2,365 each for a total profit of $1,968. I also bought and sold some call options on SOFI for quite a large profit, too, but buying call options is riskier and something I’ll talk about more in a future post.
“Be fearful when others are greedy, and greedy when others are fearful”
– Warren Buffet
The market was green as all get out this month, which makes me nervous. Things seem a little too optimistic and everything’s just climbing for no reason, especially when most of the nation is in agreement that things are kinda bleak right now. This has caused me to shift back into selling options, as opposed to buying, and I have not used margin for quite some time.
When starting out with options, you’ll see a lot of people advising against trading around a company’s quarterly earnings call. This is often good advice as these events are binary and unpredictable. A company can have an outstanding earnings report and the stock will absolutely tank, and vice-versa.
However, with some experience, I think these events can be played safely as long as it’s a strong stock and the vibe is right. It’s a great environment for selling options because volatility increases, which makes the price of options increase. When you’re selling options, this is what you want.
It goes like this; before the earnings call, all the answers are unknown and this means volatility increases and the option prices follow suit. We don’t know how well the company did the last 3 months, if they beat expectations, or what their forward guidance is.
After the earnings call and all the answers come out, volatility collapses as all the unknowns become known. Things are a little more stable now. This is good news for you when you’re selling options because the value of the contracts you sold have also decreased, and you can now buy them back at a lower price.
As I’ve mentioned before, I’ve mostly traded SOFI this year. I sold a total of 11 Cash Secured Puts in October on SOFI, with 7 of them being sold a day before earnings were released. This means I agree to buy 100 shares per contract if the price was at my strike price by it’s one month expiration date, while getting paid a premium to do so. Check out my brief explanation of options here, if you’re lost, and scroll down to the section called, “Selling Puts”.
I had to set aside enough collateral to buy the shares minus the premium paid to me for selling the contracts.
$19,500 for 700 shares – $1,035 Premium = $18,465 Collateral set aside
You’re paid a premium the second you sell an option and the name of the game is to keep as much of that money as possible. I was paid $1,035 in total and bought them back the next day at a lower price for a profit of $325 for ~30% profit. Not bad for a day’s work.
Hedge Fund? More like Hedge FUN!
One of my buds trusted me enough to send me $1000 of their own money to trade with. The plan is just to trade with that amount and send any profits, minus taxes, back to her.
I’ve only opened two contracts so far, but I’ve already been able to send her back $159 in the first month!
I’ve been trading in my sons account for a while and in December I’ll be trading with a few thousand dollars that also isn’t mine. It’s been interesting to see how differently I behave with someone else’s money. I tend to be aggressive and take larger, calculated risks with my own capital. However, I’m not as comfortable doing that with someone else’s money. When I discuss strategies with them, they’re never thrilled on the more aggressive option, either, and always want to go the safest route, even if that means smaller returns.
This is understandable as it seems most people relate the market to people going broke and that simply comes from inexperience. We’re afraid of what we don’t understand. I hope that a years worth of tracking my progress on here has shown you that doesn’t have to be the case.
Trading is a unique skill and it’s been rewarding to use it to help others. My goal is to show you that you can do it, too, if you keep your wits about you.
Now go get ’em, Tiger, Chris
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Further Education
I absolutely love this documentary and have watched it several times. It’s actually a two-parter because these idiots move onto dumping all their money into Bed, Bath, and Beyond as it spirals into bankruptcy. It’s lunacy and their stupidity and greed are unmatched.
I mentioned in my little intro post that I was a severe alcoholic for a while there with an embarrassing lack of willpower and discipline. Dropping booze began a snowball effect of getting other unnecessary garbage out and completely turning my life around. I began focusing on healthier things that tickled my fancy more, and started the never-ending work of trying to be a more complete and balanced individual.
Committing to just one simple thing can blossom into a whole new depth of self-discovery that I just can’t shut up about it. Around this time of year I happen to hit quite a few anniversaries of things I have either dropped, or added into my life as a practice. I’m proud of these and would like to share them with you, if you don’t mind, then discuss some of them below.
4 years No Booze
2 years No Nicotine
2 years Yoga Everyday
2 years Meditation Everyday
2 years Learning Spanish Everyday
1 year Running Every Week
I’ve debated on whether to make a post like this but I wouldn’t be where I am in my trading adventure or life without these bad boys. I’m concerned with coming off preach-y or like I have a guru complex, so please just know that is not my intention. I’ve lived on both sides of the tracks and this is what has been working best for me. I only hope to say something useful and lessen suffering through my ramblings.
As it is with all of my posts, I had no idea what I was going to say when I started this one. I did know, however, from the get-go that I wanted to use a quote that used to gnaw away at me like the dickens back in my drinking days.
Well, wouldn’t you know it, at the same time I began working on this very post, I started reading Michael Lewis’ book, Flash Boys: A Wall Street Revolt. It just so happens to open with the very quote I had in mind!
These rituals take up well over an hour of my time every day but they keep my momentum going and help keep unnecessary distractions to a minimum.
I resist every single thing that’s good for me. All the activities that light me up require me to overcome resistance each and every time they call out to me. I’m into a lot of different things, and I have to overcome resistance with every single one of them, every single time. I think overcoming that is one of core lessons that discipline teaches you. You can’t rely on motivation.
I have the urge to be productive and have profound experiences at all times. I tried a lot of different things and worked my self silly before learning that these desires can be fulfilled with little effort. I discovered I was actually doing too much. Now I try to show up every day and to do less with intention.
By acting in accordance with All things, you can achieve your goals without forceful effort.
“When nothing is done, nothing is left undone”
– Tao Te Ching
Meditation
Thought is not reality; yet it is through thought that our realities are created.
So, truth be told, a few years ago I attempted meditating every day and I gave up around day 200. It’s not easy and I wasn’t approaching it correctly, this allowed the practice to transform into a huge burden on me. So I gave up and, in the aftermath, I didn’t meditate again for another 3 months.
In the time spent away from the practice, I began noticing that the inner peace I had been cultivating was fading out and I was returning to this frazzled, manic, and easily agitated person. The persistent chatter, anxiety, and restlessness all crept back in. Which, as you can imagine, was a bummer.
So I got back to it and it’s now been over 2 years of daily practice and I’ll probably never stop. Day 832 as of this posting.
The object of meditation is not to sit down and make your brain stop thinking. It’s to point out that your thoughts are having you, not the other way around.
I credit meditation as being one of the biggest tools to changing my life. If you can’t learn to sit and be with your thoughts you’re gonna find yourself reaching for distractions for the rest of your life. People nowadays can’t be at a red light for 3 seconds without pulling out their phone, and our attention spans are falling off a cliff with the world in TikTok shape.
There are many cool things to do at redlights.
“Until you make the unconscious conscious, it will direct your life and you will call it fate.”
-Carl Jung
If you bring forth what is within you, what you bring forth will save you. If you do not bring forth what is within you, what you do not bring forth will destroy you.
-Gospel of Thomas, verse 70
I can be a very excitable and reactionary person. Meditation puts space between something happening and my reaction to it, allowing me to choose instead of giving into the same old patterns that haven’t been working out all that well for me.
Over time you can start to work on the root issues of your patterns, habits, and repetitive thoughts. Your mind is like a lake and you’re more likely to see the bottom when the surface is calm.
It is difficult for me to sit and do nothing. I seem to have an endless supply of energy for someone who doesn’t sleep a lot, and I’ve had to learn the art of relaxing over the last few years, which has helped me tremendously with balance in my everyday life.
You begin to realize that you don’t really need to be doing anything most of the time. Everything is as it should be. You learn to stop resisting every little change or discomfort happening to you. Every annoyance, somebody else’s kid actin’ up in the store, rude customers at work, someone saying “horse blanket” too many times last year at Thanksgiving and ruining the whole meal for everyone.
You can reach a place where you’re mostly fine with any and all of it. You may even begin finding humor in your small misfortunes or at other people’s unconscious behaviors instead of letting them ruin your day.
I sit in silence for around 20 minutes each day. Sometimes more, sometimes a little less. I focus on my breathing with the fourfold breath aka box breathing. For 3 or 4 seconds at each stage you breathe in, hold, exhale out, hold. Sometimes I do a breathing exercise where I just exhale for longer than I inhale.
When a thought arises, and hundreds will, you simply bring your focus back to your breath. This can be frustrating and seem impossible at first. You get to see just how active and cluttered your mind is. It does get better.
Your breath is directly tied to your nervous system. Calming your breathing down tells your body that everything is A-OK. You can do the opposite and self induce a panic attack by breathing fast and shallow. Try it!
Over time you will find yourself coming back to your breathe throughout your day. Almost like a little hidden inner temple that you can retreat to if you notice yourself ruminating or anxious about something. You will begin noticing when you’re all tense and shrugged up and will have the tools to help regulate back to a more chill vibe.
If you’re a creative person (you are) you may find that area of your life expanding as well. Like any Aha or Eureka moment, ideas, solutions, and revelations often spring forth when the mind is at ease. The unconscious is where they seem to arise from.
I feel like in order to create something you’re truly proud of, it’s necessary for you to get out of the way. How you want it to be or your desire for perfection are mucking things all up. Meditation helps to dissolve the boundaries of who you think you are, allowing things to bubble forth that you didn’t know you had in ya.
Fulfilling art doesn’t usually feel like the artists actually did anything, but more allowed themselves to become an empty vessel that could then be properly filled and poured from.
Here’s an interesting anecdote I noticed when I was younger and still holds true to this day. I found that if I was having trouble learning or memorizing something on guitar, I could go to bed and by the next morning things would have smoothed out considerably. Almost as if I kept practicing in my sleep. It’s an odd feeling and you’ve probably experienced something similar with a problem in your life, but it just goes to show that there are things going on in our subconscious that we may not be fully aware of, scientifically and mystically speaking.
Meditation is constantly teaching me, it’s not always something as simple as focusing on your breath to be more chill. You’ll find it goes much, much deeper than that but I’m saving the crazy talk for the last section.Try starting with 5 minutes and see how you feel after a week.
Calmness is not a natural reaction, but a conscious choice.
“The mind is its own place, and in itself can make a heaven of hell, a hell of heaven.”
– John Milton, “Paradise Lost”
Running
My grandpa ran every single day and I think about that a lot. Every day, dude. A few years back I ran every day just for a single month and it was rough. And I’m not even a grandpa.
I remember him being in the newspaper for it. “Rain or Shine” was the headline or something like that. It wasn’t uncommon for me to see him running down the sidewalk from my elementary school or spot him from the car with my mom driving around town.
I’ve been running around 14 years or so, but sporadically at best. I would go from times of intense training and miles to months without a single run. Running is good for me and my mental health and is another activity I’ll be doing until I can’t.
After my 40th birthday last year, I decided that I wanted to make a commitment of at least one run a week because of its obvious benefits and my lack of consistency. Truth be told I never want to go for a run, it’s only during and after the run that I feel great and am reminded why I do it in the first place.
Back in August is when I completed my first year of weekly runs and almost every single week I waited until the very last day to do it. This only further proves my point that I’m a rascal and I really need rules like this.
I don’t run with headphones as I use this as another form of meditation. I will either try to focus only on my breathing or I will meditate on a particular idea or issue. For instance, a lot of refining and editing for this blog goes on during my run, it doesn’t just pour out as the masterpiece that you see here before you. I can start the run with a problem and by the end I can see the way out. Practical magic.
This is what a year of my running looked like before I made the weekly rule.
This is a year of adhering to the rule.
I hope to ramp things up a little this year. I bought a treadmill this week to help me stay consistent, especially with our extreme temps in Florida.
Yoga
I chose to do yoga every day because, knowing me, I would just wait until Sunday, like I do with my running, if I settled on just once a week. Plus, what’s the point of stretching just once a week?
I started this out solo but now we do it as a family. All the animals even come out and join us on the mat every time.
We all know what yoga is so I don’t need to get into all that. The point is these practices help me to quiet my mind and bring my focus and energy back in. You start to establish and maintain a very peaceful inner life. Changing your inner life will change your outer life.
It also has the added benefit of making my body feel really good and increasing my balance comes in handy way more than I thought it would.
Nothing fancy, we pull out our mats and pick a class from one of three teachers we cycle through on YouTube. This is usually the first thing I’ll do to help settle me into my nightly routine and sets me up perfectly to slip into meditation.
Estoy aprendiendo español
I also learn a little bit of Spanish every day for good measure. Or should I say, bien measure?
You know, I don’t have a lot to say about this (for once) or really know why I’m doing it. I started before meeting Becky, who’s Cuban, so now I can pick out some of the words hurled at me when I keep accidently burning furniture with incense.
It’s like each skill that you learn is a fun, little upgrade for yourself. A lifetime of piling those up can lead to a more fulfilling one.
It Ain’t Me, I Ain’t No Prodigal Son, No!
Before you proceed, there’s a reason I saved this part for last. I need you to scroll down there and make sure you know what you’re getting yourself into.
Did you scroll down?
Yes, this is the condensed version. Here, you know what? Here’s the whole dang thing collapsed to two lines, then it’s your fault if you keep reading.
Religion – Bad Hollerin’ into the Void – Probably couldn’t hurt nothin’
Ok, so, the way I speak might lead you to believe that I would call myself a Christian, but I’m not sure if that’s the term I would use. In fact, if you called me that in public I’d probably tell you to keep your voice down.
I was raised a Fundamentalist Christian, meaning I was taught to take the Bible literally. Everything in there is true and if one part isn’t true, then none of it is. That ended up being quite a hurdle for me down the line and led to my breakup with religion once I couldn’t reconcile it with facts.
My grandfather on my mom’s side was a Southern Baptist preacher and a fantastic drummer. He even played for Elvis when he was first getting started and got me my first kit at a pawn shop with a shotgun and a few rings.
That’s not my grandpa, though. That’s Chuck!
My Dad seemed to not really fit into a church, though I can definitely remember him trying many before settling into his own thing at home with a sort of Jewish flair. In another dazzling display of the Universe’s infinite humor, although we no longer talk, I have found myself to align more with my Dad on this approach.
Did You Know?! The only time Jesus directly told someone they must be “born again” was to a religious person? John 3:3
I do believe in God. There have been times when I did not and I was very vocal and edgy about that as young people tend to be. I don’t necessarily like saying God because everyone has their own ideas, baggage, and hang-ups around that word. But I’m not gonna say Source, or The Divine, or any of that so God is what you get. People who are scarred by negative experiences are usually left wounded by people in the church, not stabbed in the back by God.
I do not believe in a Sky Daddy that’s willing to grant your every wish as long as you follow his rules. I will admit that is the idea that was beaten into my head since I was born and it is hard to shake.
I’m an occultist that views the Bible and other holy texts as trying to connect with and understand the same, underlying force of all forces. The Bible was not supposed to be read literally or as history, that’s pretty clear when you read it. I don’t even know how someone could argue against that, it’s absolutely chock full of contradictions. Even the whole birth story of Jesus is told two completely different ways.
I jive with the Taoist idea of this whole thing for the most part. That the creator is the impersonal, ultimate reality that underlies the Universe. The natural order of things. The flow of the Universe.
I also like the notion that everything is God, sorta the Pantheism or Panentheism view. Theism would mean that God and the Universe are separate whereas Pantheism is God is equal to the Universe and Panentheism is the Universe is contained within God. If God is truly infinite then when they create, they must make room and create inside of themselves.
If God were to create something outside of themselves, that would give them a limit where they stopped and that something else began. So I play a game where I think of everything as having different levels of consciousness and it’s all God experiencing itself. Everything is holy!
“I form the light, and create darkness: I make peace, and create evil: I the Lorddo all these things“. – Isaiah 45:7
Isn’t that interesting? And just like I used to hear in the intro song to “Married, With Children” before my Mom shouted from the kitchen that it was time for me to turn the channel, “You can’t have one without the other!”
All this to say, I don’t think any one has it exactly right, and I think it’s absolutely ludicrous if anyone thinks they do. It’s been a fun, life-long game of cat and mouse, though, and keeps me occupied.
“The Tao that can be told is not the eternal Tao.”
– Opening line of Tao Te Ching
I practice ceremonial magick daily in the tradition of The Hermetic Order of The Golden Dawn as well as Chaos Magick. I’ve been at it for around 10 years and, oddly enough, magick is what led me back to believing again. I’m mostly drawn to Kabballah, mysticism, hermeticism, esotericism, and philosophy. I like to study many forms of spirituality and religion, as I believe if you want to truly know something, you should look at it from all sides.
All words are sacred and all prophets true; save only that they understand a little; solve the first half of the equation, leave the second unattacked.
– The Book of the Law
I think Jesus gets tied up with a lot of corny mess and not seen as a radical dude out there doing radical things, while telling you to do radical things, and then getting killed for it. Jesus was an apocalyptical preacher, trying to point Jews back to their Old Testament laws and the Jewish God, Yahweh, who, he admits, is just one God amongst many that has chosen that group as His people.
And actuallyyyyy the word, “Elohim”, which people just assume is another name for God, is a plural noun that combines both masculine and feminine elements. So Genesis doesn’t open with God creating every thing from nothing. Rather, it is a group of androgynous spiritual beings hovering above the waters of Chaos! Rock n’ Roll! The verb here is also used in Deuteronomy 32:11 to describe an eagle fluttering or hovering over its nest to encourage its young to fly.
The Bible is very different when you read it in its original language, and lots of people on both sides of the argument have very strong opinions on it without ever really reading it.
Jesus was a Jew and was not trying to start a new religion or start a new church. Jesus never says in the Synoptic Gospels that he is God or that you have to believe in him, that’s all added in later. He actually alludes to quite the opposite sometimes and tells people to keep their mouth shut when he performs miracles.
“You shall worship YHVH your God, and Him only shall you serve.” – Luke 4:8
“Why do you call me good? No one is good but God alone.” – Mark 10:18
“I can of Mine own self do nothing. As I hear, I judge; and My judgment is just, because I seek not Mine own will, but the will of the Father who hath sent Me. -John 5:30
Ok, so that’s out of the way.
This here is a very interesting passage and one of my favorites as Jesus neatly sums it all up. He is asked what the single greatest commandment is and he answers back with two commandments, in typical Jesus fashion. Basically, God is One so love Him with all you got, and love your neighbor as yourself. So God is One and you should love your neighbor as if they are one with you. Hmmmmmmmmmmmmm.
Mark 12:28-31
28 And one of the scribes came up and heard them disputing with one another, and seeing that he answered them well, asked him, “Which commandment is the most important of all?” 29 Jesus answered, “The most important is, ‘Hear, O Israel: The Lord our God, the Lord is one. 30 And you shall love the Lord your God with all your heart and with all your soul and with all your mind and with all your strength.’ 31 The second is this: ‘You shall love your neighbor as yourself.’ There is no other commandment greater than these.”
32 And the scribe said to him, “You are right, Teacher. You have truly said that he is one, and there is no other besides him. 33 And to love him with all the heart and with all the understanding and with all the strength, and to love one’s neighbor as oneself, is much more than all whole burnt offerings and sacrifices.” 34 And when Jesus saw that he answered wisely, he said to him, “You are not far from the kingdom of God.” And after that no one dared to ask him any more questions.
This is the only time where Jesus commends someone’s understanding of his core message in the Gospel of Mark, which is the oldest book of the Gospels. They are in the Temple and the scribe is waving his arms around and saying, “Oh, so all of this is pointless!”. Jesus says, “Yeah man, you pretty much got it figured out”, and it doesn’t involve following or believing in Jesus.
Ok, so where is the kingdom of God, then?
Luke 17:20-21-And when he was demanded of the Pharisees, when the kingdom of God should come, he answered them and said, The kingdom of God cometh not with observation. Neither shall they say, Lo here! or, lo there! for, behold, the kingdom of God is within you.
The Gospel of Thomas Saying 3 – … But the kingdom is within you, and it is outside of you. When you know yourselves, then you will be known, and you will know that you are the sons of the living Father. But if you do not know yourselves, then you are in poverty, and you are poverty.
I am a huge fan of the historical Jesus, that’s never really waned. I have his likeness and words tattooed on me in a few spots and I even meditate on his image sometimes. He’s sarcastic, sassy, rebellious, and I’m here for it. As it stands right now, I don’t necessarily believe that he is the literal son of a Deity that was sent down in human form as a sacrifice to save us.
I’ve approached God from many different angles in my life and whether you’re coming at it from the unwavering rules of ritual magick or you’re simply heartbroken, crying on the floor, again, and calling out, there seems to be something with a VERY good sense of humor listening and willing to help.
I’ve known many people throughout my life who are just banking on getting to Heaven and just passing through this moment. That’s actually one of my big gripes with religion. I think the point is to wake up to the heaven around you now.
You’re already in heaven and you’re making a mess of it.
Sidenote: I became an ordained minister 14 years ago this month. Something I did because I was brewing a beer with all Holy Water. Ain’t I a stinker?
Last Call
My life used to be chaos. Now I feel like a kid again. I’m in a band with close friends, playing airsoft with my son and his friends, looking at pretty flowers, doing art, and skateboarding.
I’ve had a theory that we’re trying to get back to some point in our childhood when we were less bogged down by life. I think we reach for things that put us in states of unawareness believing that the reason why we were mostly content as kids was because we were ignorant of the ways of the world. Addictions are born as we try numbing ourselves back to that feeling.
But I think we were just way more present and curious as kids. I think we were more aware and having a practice of bringing your focus to the present moment can help facilitate moments of childlike wonder and ease some of the burdens and stresses of living.
When you allow discipline to whittle away the things that don’t matter from your daily life, you start to naturally hone in on what’s really important. Life starts to unfold for you.
You don’t always need to think outside the box. Sometimes you need to make the box smaller. Limit yourself. When we can do anything, we often do nothing.
I’ll leave you with one last quote. It’s my personal rule for comedy but like most things, it can be applied elsewhere.
My goal this month was to work on better entries when putting on a trade. When I evaluate my trading now, this is one of the biggest factors keeping it from being an A+ trade every time. Honing this in will allow me to make more profits in a shorter timeframe, hinder me from over-trading, and help keep FOMO at bay. If this month’s profits are any indication, I’d say I might be onto something here.
Now this might go without saying, but I really like to trade. I love all the drama and the act of opening and closing trades, and I want to do it all the time, forever and ever, amen. However, it is far better to do so when conditions are ripe, and that requires patience, I’m afraid.
dedgummit
So when I had to sit, watch, and do nothing for the first 4 trading days of the month while I was waiting on the perfect setup, boy, was I chompin’ at the bit! But wouldn’t you know it, my patience paid off when some trades showed up on day 5 and I made $2,314 in one day!
In the past I would’ve entered other, weaker trades throughout the week, leaving money tied up for when a real trade showed itself, causing me to miss out on the bigger move.
In this episode I’d like to show you how I’m attempting to get better at timing when to enter and exit a trade. I’ll show you just a few simple things I look for that put the odds in my favor, and show you what it truly means to buy low and sell high. You can take this information home with you for free to make sure you’re not another silly retail trader who buys at the top.
This is super simple stuff, just stick with me. I’ve labeled a few things on the chart above, and I’ll explain them below. I will be using the same chart throughout the examples, but will zoom and crop different areas so you can get a better look.
The Indicators
Indicators help traders confirm whether a price move is genuine (supported by momentum and volume) or likely to reverse (due to being overbought or extended).
They don’t predict the future, but they give insight into the supply, demand, and volatility of a stock. They help traders make informed decisions about when to buy or sell.
Below are the ones I commonly use and I’ll explain how I interpret and apply them.
Bollinger Bands
Seen here in blue, they simply have a top, bottom, and middle line with a shaded area in between. This indicator can show you when something is likely overbought or oversold. The blue line running in the middle of the bands is the 20 Day Exponential Moving Average and it acts as a baseline. It is the average price over the last 20 days.
When prices are volatile the band will widen, showing you the price range in which it will likely trade. The band will contract in periods of low volatility where the stock is trading sideways which can indicate a “price breakout” is near. This means a large swing in either direction could be just around the corner. You can think of it as the price being squeezed and then released with great force.
When the stock is trading sideways it is referred to as a period of consolidation. You have buyers (bulls) and sellers (bears) evenly matched and both sides are rallying their troops. Eventually one side overcomes the other by sheer volume and the price will dramatically skyrocket or tank for a period of time as the losing side closes their trades and runs for cover.
Bulls strike up. Bears strike down.
The top of the Bollinger Band is plus 2 standard deviations from the average price, the bottom is minus 2 standard deviations. There is only a 5% chance of the price going outside of the bands, so when it does happen it will usually quickly revert. These can be great entry and exit points but are few and far between.
Notice what happens each time the price touches the upper and lower parts of the Bollinger Band and also look for the rare instances it pops outside of the bands in the chart above. Sorta like bowling with those kiddie guard rails up, huh?
The thing to remember is this is a trailing indicator, meaning that it’s not predicting the future, it’s showing you what’s likely to happen based on past and current information. When the price is at the bottom of the band it can still continue to go down, trust me!
One way to put the odds even more in your favor is to wait for confirmation with something like the price retesting and bouncing off of one of the moving averages, which I explained here in a previous post and you can see take place in the example below.
Estimated Moving Averages (EMA)
This is the horizontal, orange line on the chart showing the average price over the last X number of days and is a solid indicator to use for determining the health of a stock. It can act as strong support, meaning the price isn’t likely to go below that for long as buyers like to buy at that level. You can clearly see this in the chart, each time the stock dips down to touch the 100 Day EMA it quickly bounces back up. Being patient and waiting for these opportunities is the key to becoming a thousandaire like myself.
There are several different EMA ranges you can choose to overlay on your chart, I actually use several at a time. All stocks do not behave the same so you must take a second to see how the stock you’re trading behaves around these different indicators.
Does the stock always hug tight to the 50 Day EMA? Does it sometimes take a little tumble, touch the 100 or 200 Day EMA, then immediately shoot to the moon for a few days before settling back down?
It only takes a few seconds to interpret the story a chart is showing you. It’s also handy if you keep the list of stocks you trade relatively small. It’s better to get acquainted and have the feel for a few stocks than to be scattered trading whatever random ticker is popping that day. I’ve done around 80% of my trading this year on just one stock.
And I’d have to say, “Sofi So Good!”
Prices usually revert to the mean. Prices can jump up and down, but they will move back to their average levels. I’m trying to show you how to capitalize on these swings, how you can make money off of other people’s fear and greed. The way God intended.
Relative Strength Index (RSI)
The primary use of the RSI is to determine if an asset’s price has moved too far, too fast, and if it might be due for a reversal. It measures momentum, not volume, and is another helpful piece of the puzzle.
To keep it simple you use this the same way as you would the Bollinger Bands. When the price reaches the top it could indicate a pullback is due to the stock being aggressively bought and now it might be considered slightly overvalued.
When the price reaches the bottom it could indicate that the stock has been aggressively sold and buyers might consider it a good buy at these levels as it’s slightly undervalued.
In the example above you can see where the price dips outside of the Bollinger Bands and also touches near the bottom of the RSI. This could be prime time to enter a trade.
Now it may seem like both of these indicators react the same, but you will often find instances where the RSI is doing the opposite of what the price is, and this means that a reversal is probably imminent and this is referred to as Divergence.
Example of Divergence. You’re getting new lows on the price but new highs on the RSI. This is followed by a price reversal.
This is why it is important to use these indicators in conjunction with one another to get a view of the bigger picture and to confirm that everything is lining up.
All of these indicators are one trick in your bag and you wouldn’t make a decision based on a single one. It’s about reading the heavens and having all the stars line up in your favor.
My morning pre-market routine.
Volume
This is one is crucial as it can confirm the strength of a price movement. Volume is the number of orders coming in. It’s traders showing up for all the excitement.
Traders analyze the relationship between price movement and volume to make better decisions. Below is how you might interpret these signals.
When price moves you want to take a look at the volume to see if it justifies the move. Sometimes price will jump up on very little volume and this usually means that the price will reverse soon. The price will lie to you sometimes. Volume should confirm the move.
It’s easy, you just make sure those little bars at the bottom are substantial enough to push the price up, as you can see in the large swing in the chart above. You got a big swing in price with lots of volume there supporting it.
Let’s take a look at what happens when volume doesn’t back up the price movement.
A classic example of volume not justifying the move. Womp.
See how the volume isn’t telling the same story as the price movement? You will often see the price climb like this, but without confirmation from the volume it is likely to be a weak lil’ baby trend.
One last note is that it’s important to look at these different indicators on different timeframes, as well. If you planned on holding something for a while you wouldn’t make decisions based solely on the daily chart. You would also want to zoom out and look at the monthly and yearly chart, allowing you to see the greater trend. Things might look great today, but the one-month chart could be atrocious.
That wasn’t too bad, huh? Now you’re more informed than the average retail trader! How about that?!
If you’re new this may seem like a lot but it’s all pretty simple and straightforward. You can quickly reach a point where you’re able to look at any given chart and decipher a lot of information from it in a few seconds. It just takes time and experience. I’m not having to watch charts all day, I just like to sometimes. Trading does not have to be complicated. I do just fine keeping it simple and sticking to a few rules.
Sadly, this is real. Someone trades like this. I didn’t even know you could get circles involved.
I hope this helps to demystify some of the process. I plan on gathering the more educational parts of my posts and putting them all onto a dedicated page so they can be easily referenced in the near future.
Mistakes Were Made
I’m only human. I let FOMO get the best of me one morning and jumped in on a trade. This usually isn’t that big of a deal but things were different this time.
Now that I sometimes trade on margin I have to keep a certain amount of cash in the account as collateral. The amount of collateral required is based on how risky the stock I’m trading is. I mostly trade with stocks that only require 25%, making them on the safe side of the spectrum.
For instance, if the stock’s price was $20 and I wanted to buy 100 shares on margin I would only have to put up $500 as collateral and not the full $2000.
But every once in a while I’ll briefly trade a more volatile stock and that’s what went wrong here. It required 75% collateral and I completely forgot about that while also not even noticing until it was too late. When I hastily jumped into the trade it put me close to receiving a Margin Call instantly.
Not only was it a terrible movie, in more ways than the obvious one, but a margin call is also a frightening event I hope to avoid! This occurs when your broker requires you to put in more money because the value of the assets that you own on margin have dropped.
If you do not deposit more capital within a few days the broker will close out any positions and sell whatever is necessary from your portfolio without your permission to try and recoup as much of their money as they can.
Fun Fact: Elon risked a Margin Call earlier this year after he threw up a Nazi sign in front of God and everybody causing Tesla shares to plummet. The problem was that Elon bought Twitter using Tesla shares as collateral and then they lost half their value after the incident.
I hope to keep a clean record and never receive a Margin Call. This was the reason behind me closing the trade out for a loss and it was the right thing to do. This was not an easy decision as you’ll discover you’ll always find room for more hope when things aren’t going your way. You just KNOW the trade is going to turn around and will find the means to justify it.
The effects of Copium
I was faced with the decision to either hold on to the trade and hope for the best (gamble) or cut my losses. If the stock continued to go down I would lose even more money and risk a margin call. My other choice was to play it safe and close for a small loss. I chose the latter and chose correctly, as the stock did not behave the way I predicted and would’ve lost even more money.
I made over $2000 the previous day but losing that $82 completely overshadowed that. Funny how the brain works. I could only focus on that tiny loss. I felt silly and was disappointed in myself. I knew that this very day would come and I would be standing here before you in judgement.
These types of lessons tend to stick with me and hopefully this will be the last time I let excitement get the best of me. Rules are important.
I had another small loss, but it was purely an accidental, user error. I lost $24 because I closed a trade instead of opening a second one by mistake. It could’ve been way worse so in the future I will take the time to slow down and double check what I’m doing.
Monthly Roundup
I have decided to forgo my monthly percentage goals and trade solely on vibes. I don’t want to force trades or have any more pressure than there needs to be. Now that we’re waiting for the perfect setups, we will more than likely be trading a little less. I went into some detail about this last month in case you missed it.
In September I made $5,281 in total.
I’ve increased my accounts by $15,273 so far in the year of our Lord 2025.
Profit and Loss Calendar for September
Here are the trades.
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view more details and notes on all of my trades.
My monthly performance in 2025.
Since buckling down and really sticking to these guidelines I’ve laid out, I have freed up a ton of time and energy while bringing in my best month yet. When a setup shows itself you can learn to act without overthinking and do the dang thang. When things don’t line up you learn to be patient and wait for something better. The beauty of rules is that they take out the whole decision-making process.
In the stock market you figure out what kind of trading you like to do, you set some solid rules for yourself, learn from your mistakes, and you will watch your account grow.
In life you figure out what kind of person you want to be, you set some solid rules that direct your compass towards that ideal, learn from your mistakes, and you will watch yourself grow and be of better use to the people around you.
Now make like you’re a bull breed and show ’em how to strut, Chris
Lend as little as $25 to create a more equitable world.Donate directly to the poor.
If you’d like to give trading on Robinhood a try you can click my referral link HERE and we’ll both get some free stock.
Furthering Education:
This short video shows you why the market moves and how things will trade in a range before breaking out to find a new range. These breakouts are what we’re looking for and this will help visualize the whole concept.
A great video going into more detail about volume, why it matters, and how to read it.
This nice little video explains quite a few things I discussed today. If I hadn’t just found it right now at the end of editing this I would’ve told you to just watch this instead during those parts.
Whattup?! Hope everyone is doing well. Let’s kick it.
All In
I’ve made around 150 trades so far this year and have only lost 4 of them. I think it’s time to crank it up and put my money where my mouth is.
So this month I started dumping every last cent I made into my brokerage account. I’ve even been donating plasma twice a week for a few years that pays an additional $500 a month, and all that goes in, too. It also doubles as a great time to read! Quick, easy, and painle…
What’s funny is the first half of the year I added almost no extra capital and solely traded with what was in there. Depositing nothing and withdrawing nothing. Now I put everything in, withdraw what I need, and I couldn’t be happier with the results. I even reached my monthly goal in the first week! (Spoiler alert: I reached my monthly goal on my first trading day in September)
In my experience money seems to work better when it’s transitional and being put to good use. It doesn’t like to be hoarded, static, and gathering dust. It likes to flow, it likes to be active and used honorably. This leads to less clinging and I don’t wind up being a dragon alone in my cave protecting a pile of gold that I have no need for.
There’s a parable where a master going on a journey entrusts his possessions to three servants. Two of them invest and double it, the third is too yellow-bellied and buries his. The master returns, praises the first two and punishes the third for letting his fear lead to his inaction. His money is taken away and given to one of the faithful servants.
We need to be accountable with our gifts, talents, and resources and use them for the benefit of others.
Live life with an open hand. Accept what is given and freely give.
Margin
If you have $2k in your brokerage account and meet certain criteria (or pretend that you do) you can trade on margin. Margin is just stock-talk for a loan. It allows you to purchase more than you could with your own cash, using your existing investments as collateral. If you have $5000 worth of stocks, for example, they will let you borrow an additional $2,500 at 5.75% interest, which ends up being around $0.40 per day. Not too shabby!
Let’s use a very modest example. If my portfolio was boring and growing at 8% per year and my margin loan costs 5.75%, I pocket the spread while still spending borrowed cash. This is called arbitrage and I’ll post a video down at the end if you want to see how someone uses this to have stocks pay for themselves over time.
Growing a small account can be pretty tricky and can take a long time if you’re playing things safely. Margin can give you a jump start by amplifying your profits and losses! You can even withdraw this margin to your bank account to spend how you please. In fact, borrowing against investments is exactly what the wealthy do! This avoids taxes because you don’t sell anything to get access to your money while also allowing you to stay invested.
(The margin rate drops to 5.5% in Sept)
Shifting Mindset
Until now my goal has been to simply grow the account, not live out of it. This is the first month that I’ve ever actually pulled money from it so this is a drastically different game plan for me. I’m switching from building up a stockpile to trading for income.
Last year I got out of debt the same week my truck died forcing me to buy another vehicle. I also happen to have a knack for buying something that will need a new transmission within the first week of purchase. So I went from debt-free, to buying a new car, then buying a new transmission for it in the same week.
All that to say, that $6000 transmission had to go on a credit card which has gotten a little out of control now that it’s had a year to snowball while I continue to use it. Surely someone can relate?
So my plan of attack is to take 100% of my profits from my brokerage account and heavily attack that bill along with some additional categories. I even made a spreadsheet that calculates everything for me when I punch in my profit!
The reason I’m only accounting for profits in my brokerage account is because I cannot withdraw from my retirement account.
You can see that as of starting this 3 weeks ago I’ve already been able to put almost $900 towards that credit card debt! And the way I see it I made that money by clicking a few buttons on my phone. Pretty rad if you want my honest opinion.
I have other categories that will move in once the debt gets paid down and I’ll increase the percentage of some of the pre-existing ones, but this debt gotta go.
This has been no small task. I’ve had to switch all my bills over, figure out how all this margin stuff works, and get used to seeing my bank account with $15.00 in it. Ok, well maybe I was used to seeing that already BUT I’M THE BANK NOW BABY!
Charity
This feels tricky to talk about so I’m just gonna try and speak as honestly as I can. My giving is coming from a genuine desire to help, not from a desire for recognition or praise. It’s also serving as an act of faith on my part. So don’t even talk to me about it.
On our first date Becky and I shared our biggest flaws with each other. I answered selfishness probably a little too hastily. (The anniversary of this date happens to be the same day I’m posting this.)
I can also tend to do quite a lot of living from a “scarcity mindset”, as they say, that can act the same as selfishness in it’s behavior. I can get overwhelmed with the sense that I need to gather and hold onto everything because I’m going to lose it all someday. I act as if I lack something.
Behind all the worry what I’m really saying is that I don’t have enough and I don’t have faith that the things I need will be provided for me in the future, though that has absolutely been the case up till this point.
The ugly truth is I’m rarely satisfied unless I take the time to recognize that my cup actually overfloweth all over the damn place.
I started donating to Give Directly in January and was just giving a small, fixed amount each month. Money was tighter then as we were just coming out of the holidays followed immediately by 3 big birthdays in my family. It was at this same time that I also stopped depositing money into the market.
I was punched in the soul at work one day with the realization that I’m just working frantically to fill my own barn with plans to build another so I could fill that one, too, and suddenly found my self crying in the corner of the greenhouse.
There have been several times where I’m casually looking at huge profits on my screen and still find myself wanting more. I’ll close out a huge win and instantly go on the hunt for another. Recently I’ve realized that a year ago I would have been in an ecstatic state of bliss over these wins. Now I’ve grown used to them and I want bigger numbers.
“Whoever loves money never has enough; whoever loves wealth is never satisfied with their income. This too is meaningless”. Ecclesiastes 5:10
So obviously I’m just chasing the green dragon here and needed to change my, “WHY”.
This has led me to discovering a unique way to give that has already brought me a lot of joy and feels more involved. Kiva is a microlender that connects you with people around the world allowing you to lend them money to help with a wide range of needs.
Let me introduce you to my first 2 friends.
Rufino is from the Philippines and is the caretaker of 5 young kids. He’s been in the pig raising business for 6 years and it’s how he provides for his wife and family. He was just asking for $75 for feed and supplements for them big boys and that just so happened to be what I was there to spend that day!
Rosemary is a widow and a farmer from Kenya. Their annual income is $1,800 and she’s having a tough time with her crops which she solely relies on to meet her family’s needs. So some bloke from England and I got her fully funded.
What I really like is that these loans are paid back so that the cash pool can really grow over time. The money is recycled so you’re able to lend a hand countless times.
I started teaching my son to invest at the beginning of the year and this month we started trading options in one of his accounts. He’s already made $345 in his first 3 trades. Crazy. But this poor dude is exactly like me so I’m trying to head him off at the pass and nip some of the shortcomings we share in the bud.
So I’ve decided to treat his account just like mine. Any money he makes goes into his account to invest, he pulls out what he needs, and gives to charity based off a percentage. I can only hope that instilling that not everything is intended for you early on will help him along his way.
Continuing with the honesty, giving is not easy for me and I think that’s the point. A sacrifice is not something that’s easy to hand over. When I made my spreadsheet I didn’t include the charity column at first and told myself that after the debt was paid down I would add it while still keeping my small monthly donations going. I even convinced myself with the oxygen mask analogy from airplane travel. Gotta take care of yourself before you can help others.
Ultimately I got punched again and decided against that. I cancelled my small monthly donation to GiveDirectly and started giving on a larger percentage of my earnings instead. Now the plan is when my debt is paid off I will up that percentage to a larger one.
I like the analogy of arising tide lifts all boats over the airplane oxygen mask one.
Giving and receiving are the same thing. You gotta let some of it go to get the good stuff.
Through my whole stumbling journey I’ve learned that I’ve needed boundaries like this to keep myself from getting out of control. I tend to do all things to the extreme.
Roth & Roll!
If we’ll remember, a Tarot card told me to get my shit together last month which led me to finding $12,300 in an old IRA from a previous job! Now let me tell ya, it’s been a doozy and a half to get this money moved over, and I’ll spare you all the details (except that they mailed the check to a very old address for starters), but when it’s all said and done it’ll be 2 months from the time I found it until I can get it moved over and start trading with it.
This thing only grew, like, 1.4% over the entire 10 year period. So it didn’t even beat inflation. I’ve heard horror stories of people not checking their retirement accounts until it’s too late. Most people don’t realize that their retirement accounts are investments in the stock market, they just think it’s some magical savings account. Even more so, sometimes you need to go in and specify how you want that money managed. I have no idea how mine was set up but the account only grew a hair over $100 in 10 years.
Go check your accounts, please.
Now I’m not a full-fledged King of Swords yet, but I’m on my throne and inching ever closer.
Knights of the WrapITUPALREADY!!!
My monthly goal is to increase my accounts by 5-10%. In August I achieved an increase of 31.86% bringing in $2,581 total.
I’m up 110% this year increasing my accounts by $9,992 so far in the year of our Lord 2025. The S&P 500 has only returned 5.5% in this same timeframe.
If you’ll recall, last month I changed my monthly goal to accommodate a range instead of a fixed percentage. A goal of 5-10% vs the goal of 10% we had all grown to love. The decision to go all in with my whole paycheck was one of the main factors behind that. Also, now that the account is in flux constantly, a monthly percentage isn’t that helpful or accurate of a statistic.
To put some things in perspective, if you put your money into the S&P 500 you can expect to get an averaged return of somewhere between 7-8% a year.
Now I want to lay out 2 scenarios for you.
Scenario 1: I put $20,000 in the market, I drive to work, and 30 years later, with an 8% yearly return, I’m sitting on $201,000. Easy peasy.
Scenario 2: I put $20,000 in the market, but I’m a hot shot option trader with groovy, long hair and impeccable comedic timing. I get a return of 8% a month and in 30 years that’s $21.6 quadrillion. No goofin’ that’s the real math.
Now this may come as a huge surprise to you… but I am the hot shot trader from Scenario 2 and there’s no way that’s a feasible plan. Even with my perfect hair forever.
I’m not trying to fly too close to the Sun here. A little wing clipping does me some good sometimes before I get a little too ahead of myself.
Tldr: this gives me some breathing room, takes off a little pressure, and could prove hard to keep up with now that I’m dumping my whole paycheck in. Don’t be surprised if I stop listing monthly percentage all together.
Profit and Loss Calendar for August.
Here are the trades.
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view all of my trades with more details and notes.
Here’s a table of my monthly performance compared to the S&P 500’s.
Profit
% Change
S&P 500
Jan
$1214
+13.7%
+2.7%
Feb
$1741
+16.85%
-1.42%
March
$339
+2.8%
+5.75%
April
$182
+1.46%
-0.76%
May
$459
+3.64%
+5.9%
June
$3840
+38.6%
+5%
July
$757
+4.5%
+2.2%
August
$2580
+31.86
+1.91
Oh Boy, There’s More?!?!
Welcome to the VIP LOUNGE.
Recently I’ve opened up even more by showing my whole account balance and making some videos as sometimes it’s just easier to show what I’m working with and talk it out.
In the first video both my kids went to the wrong school on their first day and I made $460 in the process of getting them to the right ones while selling in the money covered calls in standstill traffic.
Selling an “in the money” (ITM) covered call is a strategy that seems counterintuitive at first because it almost guarantees you will sell your stock. However, it is a deliberate move used for specific purposes, primarily to generate a large, immediate premium and to lock in money now. That’s a solid plan if I’ve ever heard one.
The longer I’m in the market the more I learn the value of a bird that’s already in your hand being worth more than the two birds that are slated to beat their quarterly projected growth with a 11% expected swing either way after earnings in the bush.
Here’s how this plays out. I know, I’m sorry for trying to explain a strategy at the end of such a long post, I’ll be brief.
In this strategy I’m buying stock then opening a contract to sell it at a lower price because I’m paid a lot of money to do that. This isn’t the way I, or most people, would usually trade covered calls. You normally offer to sell for a price above what you paid while mostly hoping that it doesn’t reach that price so you get to keep your shares and your premium.
Let’s say I see a stock that I believe is going up. I purchase 100 shares at $40 each. I sell a covered call that offers to sell the shares for $38 but I’m paid $350 for that option. If it continues to rise I lose $200 in the difference from my price paid vs price sold leaving me with $150 profit. Kinda funky, huh? I like it.
Here’s a video of me walking you through some trades where I execute this strategy. You might notice that I now flippantly trade a stock that I’ve anguished over in the past after the shares were called away. People can change.
In this video you get to see how some of my trades play out over the course of a whole week. You’ll see the good and the bad days along with even more thoughts from my head.
Alright, I’ll let you go.
If you’ve stumbled across my little ole site and you’re looking to get started, feel free to reach out and I’ll see if I can get you pointed in the right direction. There’s a plethora of info out there but I’ve noticed through teaching other interests of mine that people’s problems feel very authentic to them and it can be reassuring to have someone talk through a specific question or issue.
Thanks, as always, for stopping by! Chris
You can be notified when I post by subscribing here on WordPress to receive an e-mail or you can follow me on Instagram which comes with some free jokes that I workshopped all month.
The video below is the one I discussed earlier in the Margin section, and he is actually the guy that got my gears turning on investing with my entire paycheck. He does things entirely differently as he buys dividend paying stocks with his paycheck, which then pay for themselves over time. If you are less risk-averse you might want to look into something like this.
If you’re interested you can research some ETFs like SPYI, QQQI, & XDTE.
If you’d like to give trading on Robinhood a try you can click my referral link HERE and we’ll both get some free stock. Or don’t use the referral I don’t care, just get started if you haven’t already.
Please remember that not a dedgum thing on this site is financial advice.
The Universe has a subtle way of giving you little warnings before having to resort to more drastic measures to get your attention.
I’ve been into tarot for a few years now and I have a tendency to overexplain myself so to not come off too weird so I’ll just say I do not see them as some sort of spooky fortune telling device that prophesies your unchangeable future.
Often when I draw a card I’m reminded of a character trait that I could lean into a little more. Self-control, generosity, nurturing, patience, compassion – all these things are inside of us but for one reason or another they sometimes aren’t the easiest to bring to light. But the suggestion of one small change can make big, lasting changes when compounded over time. You hold a lot of wisdom inside of you, these cards are just something else to help remind you of that. They’re a tool to help you on a journey of self-reflection if that’s your thing.
On my last card pull I had gotten the King of Swords and kinda half-assed the whole thing to be honest. I didn’t give it the time and thought that I normally would. I have a whole journal dedicated to these sort of mystical endeavors but I wrote nothing about it, just went through the motions.
There are 78 cards in a tarot deck so imagine my surprise as I shuffled and pulled the King of Swords again a week or so later. This time I decided to sit with it and really contemplate what I could learn from this card and apply it to my life.
Strategic Action – Don’t just react—plan. Consider long-term consequences before making a move.
Clear Thinking – Strip away bias, wishful thinking, and emotional fog. See the situation as it truly is, not as you hope it to be.
When I trade I can easily get swept up in my emotions. I trade impulsively or over-trade more times than I’d like to admit. Although I’ve only had, like, 4 losing trades this year I could be doing better by not making silly mistakes that leave my money tied up for a long time or messing with cheap meme stocks. So to accomplish this I needed to start working on a plan and a set of rules. And let me tell ya, doing this lead me down a whole ‘nother rabbit hole that has completely changed the way I’m currently trading and will be even more apparent next month. (I’m already at my monthly goal of 10% in the first two weeks of August. – Future Chris)
I’m very pleased with my results from trading but there has been a nagging feeling that I needed to refine my rules a little. I shoot from the hip a tad too much for my liking. This was made clear after some LEAPS I bought shot up to $2000 in profit then went negative and I did nothing because I didn’t have an exit strategy for that position. I told ya’ll last month that I would be buying more LEAPS but I didn’t take the time to figure out when to take profit on them causing me to not make as much money as I could have.
Hope is not a strategy in trading. You need to be able to take any situation, look at it with total impartiality, and then come to a balanced and insightful decision.
I needed to hunt for setups like the American cougar hunts for food. Not searching frantically everywhere wasting energy, but up in a tree watching the patterns of prey and striking when the opportunity arises.
I am, what they call, a technical trader meaning I make decisions based off of chart patterns and not from reading a bunch of boring financial statements.
So I needed to decide on a setup that I felt the most comfortable with and just trade that, it’s just that simple. And that leads us to …
The 50-Day EMA
When you’re looking at a chart there are all kinds of indicators that you can overlay and use to help make more informed decisions. One of those indicators is the 50-day EMA (Estimated Moving Average). It tracks the average price of a stock over the past 50 trading days and is a good indicator of the current trend. A rising 50-day EMA suggests an uptrend, while a falling one indicates a downtrend.
The 50-day EMA can act as a dynamic support level in an uptrend (price bounces off it) and a resistance level in a downtrend (price struggles to break above it). Things trading above the 50-day EMA is good sign. Things trading below it could mean something’s amiss.
Let’s take a look at the setup that I’m on the hunt for rawrrr…
You can see on my little chart there that after a huge drop the price will rise above the 50-day EMA (pink horizontal line), pull back some to re-test it, and will either rocket upward or take the fast elevator down. This is usually a volatile moment so you want to be correct when choosing if and when to enter the trade.
That’s why it’s so important to wait for conformation after a retest. You want a nice, fat candle with plenty of volume supporting it. I miss out on a small amount of profits from not getting in at the very bottom but I’ve been faked out so many times it’s not even funny. So I will take a small decrease in profits in exchange for putting the odds greatly in my favor. I don’t want ALL the profits, only some of them.
By waiting for an event like this to happen (and it does often) I greater my chances astronomically because I’m going with the flow of the markets and not guessing what’s going to happen next.
I’m tired of trying to time tops and bottoms. I’ve had to change my mindset to watching the action play out and sometimes waiting days to take on a trade. I’m not a market wizard and it doesn’t do much good being a contrarian in this area of my life. I gotta go with the flow.
Candlesticks
Candlesticks will show you a more detailed picture of what’s going on with price more clearly than the plain line graph we’re all used to seeing. There’s tons of videos on learning how to read candlesticks so I won’t go into that right now but it’s a skill worth picking up.
You can toggle the time frame that each candle represents from nanoseconds up to days. Until recently I hadn’t realized how much I was also getting faked out by looking at the shorter timeframe candles. I needed to scale back and look at the bigger picture so I started with the 15 minute then eventually settled on the 30 minute and 1 hour candle.
Here’s an example of how different those candlesticks can appear when looking at the same stock event on different timeframes.
5 MINUTE – This gives the illusion that things are taking off and you better hop on unless you hate money. One green candle after another with the price appearing to break above the previous high.30 MINUTE – This would have seemed promising and if I had been watching it in real time it would’ve been tempting to enter. Price is not shown breaking above the previous high.1 HOUR – Obvious rejection by a big red candle soon after it crosses over the 50-day EMA just before diving off a cliff.
… kinda like life, huh? Sometimes we need to zoom out and slow down a little to get a better vantage point and see how things are going and how they might play out from here if we continue down the same path so we don’t rush into things …
Anyways, being in a trade way longer than you planned while clogging up money because you got impulsive and bought on the first big swing you see feels bad, man. I’m still in a trade I did that exact same thing with 2 months ago. I’m here to help you not do the same.
There’s a lot of trading going on second by second but I don’t need to hear all that noise and that’s what I’m doing by looking at the shorter 5-15 min timeframe candles. The trend of the hour is stronger than the trend of the minute. Tides vs waves.
“Rushing into action, you fail. Trying to grasp things, you lose them. Forcing a project to completion, you ruin what was almost ripe.
Therefore the Master takes action by letting things take their course. He remains as calm at the end as at the beginning. He has nothing, thus has nothing to lose. What he desires is non-desire; what he learns is to unlearn. He simply reminds people of who they have always been. He cares about nothing but the Tao. Thus he can care for all things.” ― Lao Tzu, Tao Te Ching
Alright, wrap it up already Lord have mercy!
Now usually this is everyone’s favorite part where I say, “My monthly goal is to increase my accounts by 10%”, but after much thought I’m gonna give myself a little more wiggle room and shoot for a range of 5-10%. Things change up quite a bit next month so I feel now is a good time for the switch. In July I achieved an increase of 4.5% bringing in $757.20 total.
I know what you may be thinking and it may seem as if I’m lowering expectations and the bar for myself but this decision will hopefully be made more clear in next month’s post. I can assure you that is not the case.
I’m up 82% this year increasing my accounts by $7,411 so far in the year of our Lord 2025. Even though it keeps touching all time highs, the S&P 500 has only returned 9.5% in this same timeframe.
Profit and Loss Calendar for July
Here are the trades.
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view more details and notes.
Here’s a table of my monthly performance compared to the S&P 500’s.
Profit
% Change
S&P 500
Jan
$1,214
+13.7%
+2.7%
Feb
$1,741
+16.85%
-1.42%
March
$339
+2.8%
+5.75%
April
$182
+1.46%
-0.76%
May
$459
+3.64%
+5.9%
June
$3,840
+38.6%
+5%
July
$757
+4.5%
+2.2%
10 Things I Hate About Skew
And before we go, it’s not really visible in my charts here, yet, but in the spirit of transparency I did take a big loss that’s spread out over a couple of months. I finally admitted defeat and closed out all of my SMST trades for around a $900 loss. Didn’t let it get to me and put the remainder of that money to good use. I love being a contrarian but I’ll have better luck going with the flow and trading with momentum, not trying to bet that a stock is going down when they usually just want to go up, even when their dumb.
This was an inverse ETF based off MicroStrategy which I still think will crash and burn but obviously not in the timeline I had hoped.
Thanks to SMST going through a reverse stock split, some weird math, and a call with my brokerage it took me a long time to calculate this loss into my stats. I will still need go back and edit some numbers.
This one stock has been behind the only losing trades I’ve made this year and the only time I followed someone else blindly. I went in heavy, too, and paid the price. Important lesson here. I would’ve had over 100 trades with no losses had it not been for this hiccup.
But, in the end, this all made me consider that maybe the real profits are the friends we make along the way.
From our charts to yours, Chris
PS – I hope this goes without saying and, perhaps, something I should’ve been stating this whole time, but obviously this is not financial advice. I’m just showing you what I do and trying to spare the people close to me from some of my rants.
If you’d like to give trading on Robinhood a try you can click my referral link HERE and we’ll both get some free stock.
My monthly goal is to increase my accounts by 10%. In June I achieved an increase of 31.86% bringing in $3,840 total.
I’m up 83% this year increasing my accounts by $7,575 so far in the year of our Lord 2025. Even though it’s been on a tear and recently hit an all time high, the S&P 500 has only returned 5.5% in this same timeframe.
Profit and Loss Calendar for June.
Here are the trades.
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view more details and notes.
Here’s a table of my monthly performance compared to the S&P 500’s.
Profit
% Change
S&P 500
Jan
$1,214
+13.7%
+2.7%
Feb
$1,741
+16.85%
-1.42%
March
$339
+2.8%
+5.75%
April
$182
+1.46%
-0.76%
May
$459
+3.64%
+5.9%
June
$3,840
+38.6%
+5%
Calls to the Wall
Alright, so how did I make over $3000 this month?
Well it allll began way back in March when I started buying Long Calls (aka LEAPS) on SOFI.
Now if you think a stock is going to go up and you don’t want to buy shares, LEAPS (Long-term Equity AnticiPation Securities) are what you’re looking for. You can think of them as a stock replacement. The game plan is to buy contracts at a low price and sell them at a higher price. Simple enough.
In this situation the difference between buying a LEAP and buying 100 shares was $150 vs $1,500 with SOFI. I’m able to control around the same amount of shares, depending on the contract selected, for a fraction of the cost! That’s leverage, baby!!
In my Roth IRA I purchased 18 of these $150 contracts over the course of the year. I sold them all for $270 each bringing home $2,160!
Once I noticed a lot of momentum I got brave and bought some more LEAPS in my brokerage account. I bought 8 at an average price of $226 and 5 days later I sold them for $350 making another $992 in profit.
Here’s what the position looked like in one of my Robinhood accounts towards the end. You can see I’m holding 18 contracts with an average cost of $1.50. That’s actually $150 because contracts “control” 100 shares, so you must multiply by 100. The value of the contract grew by $1.11 and now the current price is $2.61. That difference is multiplied by how many contracts I own and that’s my profit minus fees.
$261 – $150 = $111 $111 x 18 = $1998
No Free Lunch
The trick is these bad boys have expirations so you must be correct on many factors like volatility and time, not just price movement, to be profitable. That’s why I tend to buy them at least 1 year out to expiration giving me plenty of time to be wrong. And for a while I was wrong as they were down 50% for a minute and there’s always the possibility of losing the total amount of capital that you put in when you buy options. In this case that would’ve been thousands of dollars. These contracts didn’t expire until March, I just chose to take profits now to be safe.
But, admittedly, it wasn’t without a fight. It took the counsel of 2 people close to me to gently remind me that I had a wild look in my eyes and that it didn’t seem like I was following my rules.
Artist’s Rendition
Just a few days before, there I was happy and content about the trade being up $200 only to find myself being a greedy little pig wanting even more as I was sitting on $3000 in profits. That’s a dedgum 90% return on my investment and I was still wanting to squeeze out more juice! How ungrateful!
This is just another time when I’m reminded that trading is almost completely a mental game and I must not be swayed by emotions.
Now in full transparency had I stayed in the trade I would have actually made several more thousand dollars at this point and that leaves me with a choice between being grateful for the $3000 I just made or dwelling on what could’ve been. Ultimately I made the right decision by sticking to my rules and I have no regrets. I’ve already started loading up on new contracts that expire 2.5 years from now.
I mostly sell options so that I’m paid to open contracts. Buying them is much more risky and, you know, costs money so I prefer selling Cash Secured Puts on stocks I wouldn’t mind owning and selling Covered Calls on stocks I own at a price I’m willing to sell at. But done correctly LEAPS can be very powerful and will be something I utilize more from now on.
Alright… but fool me THREE times…
Some good news followed by a picture with Jeff Bezos and the CEO of AST SpaceMobile being posted caused a stir and made all my precious shares get ripped out of my arms again. This is the second time this has happened to my favorite stock.
I had to sell them at $24 while the stock shot to $50. That’s around $3000 of opportunity loss because I was Selling Calls in low volatility environment on a stock I didn’t particularly want to get rid of at that price. Funny how obvious things are in hindsight when you say them out loud.
I turned around and sold 4 Cash Secured Puts on ASTS in total making $324. I changed my strategy on this as I was selling puts while the stock price was rising this time around. I normally sell puts when the price is going down because I’m paid more premium to do so. Selling puts while the stock price goes up puts the odds in my favor even more with the trade off being less premium being paid to me.
But if I sell puts on a stock that is ripping upwards my chances of winning are greatly increased, the only downside is I’m paid less premium. And because I was so very correct these trades were only open for 2-3 days each allowing me to rinse and repeat.
AST SpaceMobile (ASTS) going back to April.
Honestly, this was a very trying time for me. Seeing my favorite stock get called awayagain while it rockets off truly hurts. Psychology says FOMO is more painful than loss.
Ultimately I have paused on Selling Puts on ASTS because it’s in a downtrend and I’m not trying to catch a falling knife. This stock has mooned then gradually slid back down to where it was before. I just have to be patient and hope it does the same this time. I’ve made this mistake in the past and see people wiser than I do it all the time…
… People like Sir Isaac Newton! A couple of months ago I quoted him as saying,
“I can calculate the motion of heavenly bodies, but not the madness of men.”
– Sir Isaac Newton, sore loser.
The quote is a reminder of the importance of understanding human psychology in speculating financial matters and he said it after he lost a fortune in the South Sea Bubble. Long story short, Newton makes a lot of money, lets FOMO get the best of him, then loses everything.
Its helping me hold a strong resolve as I fight the temptation of getting back into a stock that I think is priced too high, especially for a pre-revenue company, along with a price movement that was unwarranted by the news. I know nothing but my gut is telling me to wait and let the dust settle.
If I sell a Cash Secured Put with a strike price of $44 and the stock continues to drop back to the $22 range, that misjudgment just cost me $2,200 in unrealized losses and a lot of frustration. I’m attempting to avoid that and wait for confirmation that the stock is trending back up. It’s this new thing I’m trying that doesn’t involve gazing into a crystal ball.
Feel free to shoot any questions or comments my way.
Live Laugh Leverage
Chris
Oh, we also went on a week’s vacation to D.C. this month. Here’s video proof.
If you’d like to give trading on Robinhood a try you can click my referral link HERE and we’ll both get some free stock.
Last month I was able to close out my Nvidia position and this month my 100 shares of Robinhood were finally called away freeing up around $7,100 so I’m back in the saddle, babyyy.
I got right back to it and starting selling Cash Secured Puts on AST Space Mobile (ASTS). I sold 7 in total bringing in most of this month’s profits.
On the flip side I did a Buy/Write on the same stock. I bought 100 shares at $25.94 and started selling Covered Calls against them. 3 in total with 2 of them closed out on the same day. Those brought in $98 in one week dropping my average share costs down a dollar to $24.96 in just 3 trades! One of the many advantages of Covered Calls.
To quickly summarize I sold 7 contracts agreeing to buy 100 shares if the price fell to a certain point. It never did and I got to keep the premium paid to me for selling them. I also bought 100 shares of the same stock at market price and wrote 3 contracts agreeing to sell them if the price rose to a certain point. Which it did on the final one and they were called away.
I explain these strategies here if you’d like a primer.
Rodeo Roundup
My monthly goal is to increase my accounts by 10%. In May I achieved an increase of 3.64% bringing in $459 total with 15 trades and no losses.
I’m up 43% this year increasing my accounts by $3,935 so far in the year of our Lord 2025. The S&P 500 has only returned 0.5% in this same time.
Profit and Loss Calendar for May.
Here are the trades.
Clicking the image will take you to my Theta Gang profile where you can view more details and notes.
Here’s a table of my monthly performance compared to the S&P 500’s.
Profit
% Change
S&P 500
Jan
$1,214
+13.7%
+2.7%
Feb
$1,741
+16.85%
-1.42%
March
$339
+2.8%
+5.75%
April
$182
+1.46%
-0.76%
May
$459
+3.64%
+5.9%
Now it’s time for Chris to relate trading to everyday life.
I’ve been gardening for a little over 3 years and after many disastrous attempts in the past I can safely say that things have clicked. It’s even what I do for work now! As I gained more experience I started taking note of things that I would do differently in my garden if I got the chance to start over.
Well my time has come because my lady and I just bought our first home together! It has a large yard and I’m doing things bigger and better this time. I even called before I dug!
My life seems to flow between different themes. This month my yard and stock portfolio are blank canvases and I’m getting to approach both with a little more experience. We’re creatures of habit and trading can be an emotional game so I will freely admit that I have still made some of the old mistakes this month when it comes to patience and FOMO, but I was able to recognize my behavior and change course a little quicker than in times past. I’m improving, it’s calculatable, and that’s all I could ask for.
It takes going through many seasons to see all the different ways things can play out and take shape, not to mention you and your tastes evolving as well. You see what you like, how to manage what you have, what’s not worth the hassle, and learn from your mishaps.
Look, I could sit here and come up with gardening metaphors till the cows come home. I get excited and want to get to the finish line but gardening and investing don’t really have finish lines. I have to remind myself of that and slow down. I have a big yard with lots of room for growth just as I have lots of time to grow my wealth. In both I’ve got to do the tough thing sometimes, then remember to sit back, enjoy it, and be grateful, as well. Finding balance in life is crucial.
Some photos of the old garden.
One of my main jobs is assisting people with plants and the most common beginner mistakes comes from fiddlin’ with them too much. Too much water, moving ’em all around, and just generally worrying too much. They can smell the fear on you.
But by selling my contracts only one week out instead of several I’m doing the same exact same thing in my own, adorable, way. I’m just doing too much fiddlin’ and taking too much risk. Now I already have things set up to auto-trigger at my price targets so it’s not as if I’m staring at charts all day. I sell a contract then immediately set an order to close that contract once it hits my profit target. Most of the time I’m buying back the contract at 50% profit so I can take risk off the table and move on to the next trade. Below is a look at my order screen using Robinhood.
Up top under “Pending Orders” is where I’m set to automatically close out of the positions (below) once it reaches 50% profit.
Under “Positions Held” at the bottom you can see my open orders along with how much profit I’ve made since opening it in the green.
Some of these previous failed gardening attempts were quite large. Fenced in raised beds with chickens, 250 gallon aquaponics tanks, and enough houseplant blood on my hands that I’ll never be let through those pearly garden gates.
I tend to go all-in on things and figure it out as I go. Below is a chart with an arrow showing the exact moment I discovered trading options and the subsequent abyss I slogged through in the wake of that pivotal moment.
This IS my first rodeo!
I’ve never looked at the past and thought I had things more figured out than I do now. I’m meant to evolve just like every thing else. So I try to keep in mind that currently, even right this very second, there is something I’m wrong about and something I will change my mind on in the near future.
And, boy, it’s easy to be wrong in the stock market. Thankfully, selling options has less risk so when I’m wrong it’s usually only costing me time and frustration.
I’m writing this from the future and let me tell ya I would definitely do things differently this month. The last Covered Call I sold on my 100 shares of ASTS ending up getting called away at $24.50 a share while the price mooned to about $40 a share. That’s almost $2000 I missed out on so it looks like I’ll be changing some things up.
Seeing what I was able to do in such a short time has me hopeful for next month. It at least makes Mondays exciting.
Ya’ll come back now, Chris
If you’d like to give trading on Robinhood a try you can click my referral link HERE and we’ll both get some free stock.
Moses of the South 