I got sick of the social media and people running them like Zuckerberg and I am no longer supporting these people with my money or presence. I cancelled Amazon Prime, Kindle unlimited, audible, I no longer participate in Facebook, Twitter, Reddit or similar. I only support independent media like Axios, Substack. or Medium.

When Bezos laid almost 30,000 workers but supported Melanoma’s worthless movie with ~$45 million (for rights and creation) and ~$30 million in advertising, I had have enough. I think Americans must start to use their purchasing power to “vote” billionaires out. I stopped supporting the Humane society as soon as I learned that they hosted a fury party in a Mar-a-Lago, and I stopped using Amazon services as much as possible too.

 

Reason 1 – moral view

An author on Media, Citizen Reader, wrote about Bezos:

“He’s got no money to pay his reporters in warzones, but he’s got $40 million to pay for the rights to the “Melania’s” documentary, and $35 million to advertise it;”

 

 

Reason 2 – financial view

The lack of morality was enough for me to spend money on Amazon. But I also reviewed my spending habit on Amazon and this is what I found:

1) Amazon Prime

Typical cost:

• ~$139/year (~$11.60/month)

What I get:

• Free shipping
• Prime Video (basic tier)
• Prime Music (limited)
• Random perks (photos, deals, etc.)

Reality check:

• If I order often and value fast shipping – Prime pays for itself
• If orders are sporadic – shipping savings often don’t justify the fee

 

2) Prime Video

Hidden issue:

• A LOT of content is paid add-ons now
• You still end up renting/buying movies

Reality check:

• If you already use Netflix / Apple TV / YouTube – Prime Video is usually redundant. (I don’t use Netflix/Apple TV either, I still use YouTube, though).
• Very few people watch it intentionally

 

3) Kindle Unlimited

Typical cost:

• ~$12/month

Reality check:

• Excellent if you read genre fiction heavily
• Terrible if you read specific books, non-fiction, or classics
• Most high-quality books are NOT included

For someone like me (analytical, selective reader): Often poor value

 

4) Audible

Typical cost:

• ~$15/month (1 credit)

Reality check:

• Credits accumulate – psychological trap
• You often buy books “because you have credits,” not because you need them
• Libraries + Libby often replace this at $0

 

I spent ~$650/year on all sorts of Amazon services I rarely used:

 

My Amazon order frequency (hard data)

I made the following purchase orders per year:

• 2025: 18 orders
• 2024: 28 orders
• 2023: 20 orders
• 2022: 3 orders
• 2021: 13 orders
• 2020: 14 orders

Let’s focus on recent behavior, because that’s what matters.

Average (last 3 full years: 2023-2025):

• (20 + 28 + 18) / 3 = 22 orders/year
• That’s ~1.8 orders/month

 

Cost of Amazon Prime

• $139/year
• Break-even logic:

If Prime saves:

• ~$6-7 per shipment (typical non-Prime shipping)

Then:

• $139 / $6 = 23 shipments
• $139 / $7 = 20 shipments

My actual usage (~22/year) is right at break-even.

So strictly financially:

• Prime is not clearly winning
• It’s not clearly losing
• It’s marginal at best

With this behavior, I have a zero reason keeping Amazon Prime, spend ~$130 a year and support a billionaire who doesn’t give a shit about people. More over my shopping behavior was not urgent driven. It usually was intentional and planned. I was not buying because “oh crap, I need this tomorrow.”

Prime does one thing extremely well – it removes the pause between “want” and “buy.” And I read some responses under the Citizen Reader’s post about one person cancelling Amazon Prime and feeling worse. His life got worse and his cancellation made no difference. It is a trap billionaires want you in it. But Prime got very addictive. The convenience of one click and same day delivery shopping is very addictive and it changes people’s behavior. By cancelling Prime, you are effectively de-coupling convenience from compulsion which is the trap Bezos wants you in. So cancelling Prime is not about making a significant change in today’s economy, you will not make effect that happens tomorrow, but you will improve your behavior, save money

 

Facebook, Twitter (X), and Reddit – gone

 

I cut Facebook years ago. It was a toxic platform spinning lies, propaganda, and outrage. If you are a right-wing extremist or MAGA, you may love it. To me, it became a machine that amplified everything I consider destructive misinformation, division, and censorship.

But Facebook wasn’t the only problem. Over time, I noticed the same pattern spreading across platforms like Reddit and X (Twitter). Different branding, same underlying mechanics: engagement at any cost.

At first, I thought I could manage it. Use it “responsibly.” Stay informed. Maybe even have meaningful discussions.

That illusion didn’t last.

 

Sugarberg (Zuckerberg) got repulsive

 

Overtime, this billionaire got extremely repulsive to me. When he was investing in his company, growing it, coming with ideas, and what seemed like revolutionizing media (democratizing it), I was hooked. We could express ourselves, it was a better platform than this block that almost no one reads and I felt like I could help others trading and investing better by sharing my experience there than here.

Then 2018 came and the Cambridge Analytica scandal came. Third-party apps collected private data from users (Facebook is still sued in Europe over private data handling, along with X (Twitter)), Facebook was able to collect data from your profile friends and followers, data then passed to Cambridge Analytica for analyzing and then targeting and politically profiling users. Back then $87 million users were affected (I was safe to a certain level as I used a nickname and toss-out email and never posted any private information about me, though there may have been external leads to public web where you can find almost anything about me you want, so I guess, I was not that much safe).

But this annoyed me to a certain level but I shrugged it off.

Then Metaverse came. A huge waste of money. Our money. Money these people make from us, from our advertising, use of their services. That’s when I started realizing that Facebook is personally worthless to me, wasting my time, my money, and the Alien-executive-officer is repulsive:

Yet, he got away with it!

 

The Real Cost: Stress, Anger, and Addiction

The biggest issue wasn’t politics. It wasn’t even misinformation.

It was what these platforms were doing to me.

There were days when I woke up, grabbed my phone, and immediately checked Facebook or Reddit. Within minutes, I was already irritated. Angry. Pulled into arguments about things I couldn’t control. My day would start with frustration instead of focus.

Think about that for a second.

Why would I willingly start my day by reading someone else’s opinion, often taken out of context, exaggerated, or outright false, and let it dictate my mood? Why would I spend time arguing with strangers who:

• Don’t know me
• Don’t care about the truth
• Are often more interested in “winning” than understanding

It makes no sense. Yet that’s exactly what these platforms are engineered to do.

Designed to Hook You, Not Help You

Social media isn’t neutral. It’s not just a tool.

It’s a system designed to:

• Maximize your time on the platform
• Trigger emotional reactions
• Keep you coming back

Outrage performs better than nuance. Conflict drives engagement. Fear and anger keep you scrolling. So that’s what you get more of.

Over time, you’re not just consuming content, you’re being conditioned:

• Shorter attention span
• Higher reactivity
• Lower tolerance for opposing views
• Constant background stress

And the worst part? It feels normal.

The Breaking Point

For me, it wasn’t one event. It was accumulation. Repeated account blocks on Reddit for sarcasm or jokes. Endless circular arguments. The realization that no matter how much time I spent, nothing improved, neither my knowledge nor the world around me. Just more noise. At some point, I had to ask: “What am I actually getting out of this?” The answer was simple: nothing of value.

I asked myself one question:

 

Compare billionaires like Bezos, or Sugarberg to Warren Buffett. He is not bombastic, lavish spending, politically involved, yet he is a billionaire. Or Dan Price! He is also rich yet he raised salaries to his employees to 70k a year no matter what position. It was outrageous. Yet it works (I admit, I was against it, too, as it defied any logic of merit, but the company survived. So how come some billionaires are humble and contribute to the society and others become total jerks?

The short answer is: wealth doesn’t make people jerks; it removes constraints. What emerges depends on what replaces those constraints. People like Warren Buffett or Dan Price preserved their moral constraints, they kept their external anchors after becoming rich such as:

Warren Buffett’s anchors:

• Reputation as an allocator of capital
• Long-term credibility
• Moral consistency (even when unpopular)
• A peer group that values restraint and stewardship

Money never became his identity – judgment did.

Dan Price’s anchors:

• Internal coherence (“I must be able to justify this to myself”)
• Direct proximity to employees
• Willingness to absorb ridicule
• Acceptance that not all value is measured short-term

His move did defy orthodox merit logic, and it felt right to have been skeptical, but it worked because:

• Trust became a productivity multiplier
• Turnover collapsed
• Institutional knowledge compounded
• Employees behaved like owners

The key point: both men constrained themselves voluntarily.

Compare it to other billionaires who:

• Outgrew the customers
• Outgrew their employees
• Outgrew local communities
• Outgrew consequences

At massive scale, incentives shift from “build something valuable” to “Protect position, access, and optionality.” Then we see” political hedging, prestige spending, narrative control, and labor is treated as a cost, not a constituency. Buffett still answers to markets, shareholders and his own reputation, Bezos doesn’t give a shit. He doesn’t respond to anyone. These people removed any constraints, confused scale with virtue, mistake survival for superiority and they stepped needing consent. Humility doesn’t come from wealth. It still being answerable to something you can’t buy. Buffett kept that, Price chose it deliberately, other didn’t, they actively dismantled it. And I chose not to be a part of that and support it with my only leverage I have – wallet and participation. Choosing not to auto-fund that, mainly when it costs nothing, is a moral standing for me.

Today, I feel better. I saved a good junk of money which every year, I will grab that and invest instead of paying to Bezos, and I also feel like I am doing my part not supporting the people like Bezos or Zuckerberg.

 

 

 

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Our orange buffoon continues his charade and the markets reacted with a strong rally. Financial media continue praising it as the best week’s rally the market ever experienced (they seem to have a very short memory span). On one hand, it was obvious that there will be a rally at some point. The markets were so much shorted, so oversold that a rally was imminent. We only didn’t know when that happens and what will be the catalyst. But the signals were in the charts. My only concern is that I consider this market rally suspicious, very suspicious!

If we look at the histogram, we had a buy signal, we were in a very oversold territory and, although the trend was negative (red trend line) the delta volume was positive and increasing. I got caught with only two call spreads that I had to start adjusting, but all my put spreads were successfully expiring OTM and I kept collecting decent premiums, both on SPX spreads and Futures.

But is this rally justified?

The rally was based on news only. No fundamentals changed. And I see it this way: before the illegal war our orange king started for no reason (well the only reason was to cover Epstein files scandal) the Straight of Hormuz was open and free. Now it is closed and Iranians are going to charge a toll for all ships passing by. Somewhere, I have read, that they plan to charge up to $2 million per ship. Our Moron in chief salivated and declared that they would do a joint venture, hoping that he gets the cut. It didn’t happen. The US as well as Trump are out in this “venture.” The buffoon announced a cease fire and conditions under which the cease fire happen. Those conditions, if true is horrible. It is a shame!

But, no cease fire happened. Iran is bombing Lebanon and Israel is still bombing Iran, and the Orange moron is shouting on social media that this is no fair and it must stop while everyone is ignoring him.

• So, before Hormuz was free and open. Now it is still blocked and tolled by Iranians.
• Iran still has uranium and free to develop whatever they want as Trump tossed the Obama’s treaty in the trash.
• We still have raising inflation.
• Oil prices are still high and will be growing higher.
• Labor market is still shrinking
• Economy is shrinking (the GDP was announced at 0.7 vs 2.8 expected)
• Billionaires are getting richer and do not contribute anything to the economy

I do not see any reason for the markets go up. But it doesn’t mean it should go down. In short term views the market is driven by greed, speculation, and in this case probably by a short squeeze. Right now, I am waiting for the development of this trend. Will it continue or stall, reverse and keep dropping?

How I prepared myself

I started doing what I preached but never followed rigorously. I had a table, see below, that I was supposed to use and based on the market conditions either stay in cash and trade only a portion of the account based on the all time highs (ATH) of the market. If the market was at ATH, I was allowed to trade only 15% of my free buying power (BP) and the rest was supposed to be in cash:

Honestly, in the past, I didn’t follow this much. I was greedy. But this time I prepared myself and I built a spreadsheet and built this table into it. This is how it looks like in my “challenge account”:

And I was saving cash like a madman. I save cash in the ICSH fund – a short term bonds that pay dividends (distributions) of 4.06% (at the time of this writing) and unlike savings accounts or certificates of deposits (CD) I can invest a small amount money and still get this yield. With CDs you must invest large sums to get 3.6% yield and you must lock the money for at least a year or more to get that yield and if you need cash sooner, you forfeit the interest and pay penalty. Not worth it.

And now, this spreadsheet tells me where to direct my proceeds and how much I can trade. As of today, I have $412 to be deployed to stocks or SPX trades. So all proceeds from credit spreads or dividends now go to trading. When the market turns higher and my net-liq too, this chart flips and I will be allowed to save cash in ICSH only. No questions, no doubts, no second guessing.

So I am ready for a crash now. If this market turns sour again, I have a plenty of ammo to go after cheap stocks or trade more aggressive spreads.

I still think, this market may be heading down. I am not sure, but there is no logic in the rally. The only logic that may change it is that the market is expecting Trump to be removed from the office (as even Republicans are no growingly calling for it) which may bring in some order in lieu of a chaos of out TACO moron. If that is the case, then the market may be pricing in higher market.

 

 

 

 

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Everything Trump touches dies. What else would you expect from a con man who bankrupted casino? And not just one! The markets are down >7% today and even today’s relief rally was actually a failure. The futures were dragged down the whole night until the Orange moron said that they have talks with Iran over opening the strait of Hormuz (which Iranians declined and said they are in no talks with Trump so the attempted rally crashed:

That means, it was all happening in Trump’s sick head. I am extremely baffled how come Congress does absolutely nothing about this. I can’t imagine Obama or Biden doing something similar. Republicans would be screaming on top of their lungs and impeaching 24/7. Hypocrites!

But what can we expect from cowards Republicans in Congress. Half of them are MAGA (thus stupider than Trump), and other half is scared of him.

So the markets are tanking. The rally was abysmal and futures are already pointing to further decline:

Look at the delta volume! This is a full blown free fall. The only positive thing I can see in that chart is a potential bounce (the question is when) due to SPX being extremely oversold.

And $BTC is not any better:

 

 

We had a nice break up a few days ago. It all failed too. But, right now, I can see higher lows. If we create new higher highs, this chart may still be saved. Let’s see what TACO will  do next.

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Our Orange Turd destroys anything he touches. What do you expect from a person who bankrupts a casino! And now he is destroying the US economy, possibly the world’s economy (if the US falls into a recession, the world may follow). It is now very likely that the US is heading to a recession.

Trump destroyed the US economy in his first term. He inherited a booming economy from Obama and due to his mismanagement during Covid sent it to recession. Biden fixed it. Trump inherited  economy that the entire world envied. It was not perfect. But it was heading in the right direction. Turd destroyed it.

And so the markets are crashing because Trump, in his stupidity and narcissism started an illegal war, MAGA Republicans approved it by doing nothing, some even suddenly approving it – where are the Republican claims about ending the “forever wars?” I guess, starting a new forever war is suddenly OK.

And the markets are reacting to the entire Iran war domino effect:

The war impacted everything – surging oil prices, rising inflation, rising bonds interest rates, etc. Add all that to the problems we already had such as losing labor market, unemployment increasing, tightening credit, and we are heading towards recession. All that to distract from Epstein files!

 

We had an open trade since February 20th. We had to roll that trade multiple times to protect it. We had a call spread left out of that trade and that call spread was in the money. And since we saw the market actually toping and rolling over, we decided to roll it further away in time. Later, we added puts. Today, that trade will most likely expire worthless despite the sharp sell off.

Here are the multiple rolls we had to do:

The original trade (ID #032) was rolled a few times until the last trade (ID #036) that is set to expire today. It was a wild ride but very profitable. We still have a second trade, that is still safely out of the money but if this selling continues, we will be in trouble.

We will re-assess our positions on Monday but it is likely that we will stay in cash to keep dry powder for adjustments and recovery or adding additional new positions.

 

 

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Here is my outlook for the market and some of my core positions for the week of February 2nd to February 6th. This outlook is pure technical view based on simple technical rules.

 

Last week, the markets reversed the pre-market decline and paired all losses. Then rallied on FED. We briefly topped 7,000 level for the first time ever. That seemed like a legitimate rally but it was a bull trap. So, what can we expect next week?

 

SPX – I trade options against SPX (and /ES futures) to generate income that can be invested into dividend stocks or growth stocks. As per my strategy and goals for 2026, I invest the proceeds to high yield dividend ETFs and for growth stocks, if possible, I use LEAPS and Poor Man’s Covered Calls strategy. The next week I expect likely range trading early in the week (unless ISM is a big surprise), because everyone is waiting for the mega-cap stack + Friday jobs. The market can be drifting up again until the news. It might be chopping around 7,000 level. But then we have a week heavy on news and earnings. This can shake the market in any direction and predicting the direction is impossible. Will 7,000 hold as support on pullbacks, or reject as resistance? Watch reactions to data. A “good” number that sells off is a red flag (positioning/valuation fatigue). Mega-cap guidance tone – not just beats/misses — listen for demand/capex language, margins, and any “macro caution” framing. Friday jobs report: watch the triad, payrolls, unemployment rate, hourly earnings, because Fed expectations price off the set. In the upcoming storm of data, hard to say. And on top of all this we have more than ugly consumer sentiment. That spills into investors and trader’s sentiment too. Retail investors are extremely bearish and may get hurt (while also blaming the market being manipulated) if data come slightly good and the market reacts positively. I am personally in the cautious-bearish camp too, and that is why I am still aggressively building cash reserves and stay conservative.

 

 

 

The trend is still bullish but weak. We still see many knocks on the support. The market still struggles to move higher, the trend delta volume worsened to -7.65%. We need good numbers next week to reverse this weakness. So far, I am skeptical.

 

 

 

TQQQ – this is my core growth position. TQQQ is a 3x leveraged Nasdaq100 fund. It goes up three times the market move. It also goes down three times, so if you decide to ride it down be prepared for two whacks (slaps in your face) – steep drawdown and rebalancing decay. I still hold LEAPS but as you can see below the trend is rapidly deteriorating. I also have covered calls against my LEAPS and if we see further declines, I may move the covered calls in the money to protect the position. So far, this trend clearly shows how week the underlying index is. This hurts my LEAPS and the only way to offset the losing value is selling covered calls.

 

 

 

 

BTC – not a big fan of Bitcoin, but trading it for a good potential of good gains if you catch the trend. Bitcoin broke down below the support from a long consolidation pattern. This makes it a trend continuation.

 

 

This was the trend a few days ago showing the breakdown:

This is not good for BTC. Upon a breakdown, buyers stepped in and pushed the crypto back to $84k. That was a good attempt. Unfortunately, it didn’t last and another sharp sell off followed. Today, we see a strong continuation to the downside, range support decisively violated. The price discovery is no longer in the “peek below” the support. It is aggressively trading below support. The previous support at $84,000 is no longer defended.

What we saw so far:

• Prior impulsive sell off from 125k > 80K
• Long consolidation (box) sideways trading (I hoped that to be a phase 1 consolidation prior to reversal and move higher. Instead this appears to be a bearish trend continuation.).
• Breakdown attempt.
• Now, momentum expansion out of the box.

The measured move trading tells us that the path to ~40k is open. Will it go there? Maybe, maybe not. It can be a slow decline, churning down, or a rapid sell off. Today’s decline is a serious damage to the bull case. The market wants lower prices. We will wait for this last candle to settle and possibly on the next bounce attempt we will open a short position (instead of using futures, I will be buying $BITI ETF to short BTC with a stop loss).

 

 

Happy trading/investing!

 

Here is my entire spreadsheet with all positions.

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We are opening a new put spread this morning:

Order Summary

Sell to Open 1 SPX 01/30/2026 Put 6770

Buy to Open 1 SPX 01/30/2026 Put 6755

Limit GTC @ 1.05 Credit

 

 

 

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