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.

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.

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

Here is my outlook for the market and some of my core positions for the week of January 26th to January 30th. This outlook is pure technical view based on simple technical rules.

Our TACO is on it again. When he fucked everything and everyone up in Davos, embarrassed our country as no president has ever done before, Canada decided to trade with China instead of the US. Our man-child McTitty Taco got offended and over the weekend was threatening Canada with 100% tariffs while Republicans are enabling him. I hope in November, Republicans receive their wakeup call from the voters.

While the Idiocracy continues, the weekend trading is down and so far all indicates that futures may open lower:

Of course, this may be just an overreaction to our man-child Narcissist in chief and futures or even cash may be bought once trading opens, the overall trend is concerning. The market is pretty much flat, struggling to make new highs (since the end of October 2025):

Are we in danger? Not yet:

But the market is stalling. It may mean two things – 1) building a new base for a new rally leg up, or 2) we are creating a topping pattern. If we break down from this pattern, expect serious drawdown.

The sentiment is bearish as everyone expects a crash. This is structurally bullish – until it isn’t. The sentiment doesn’t crashes the markets, it just postpones them. They do not happen because everyone expects them, in fact, the markets can keep grinding higher while the rest of the world is bearish. Crashes happen because something else changes – either funding stress, credit crunch, policy mistakes (we are close), or volatility feedback loops (self fulfilling event “prophecy” when rising volatility sparks selling which then forces more liquidations).

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 market struggled to move higher and this weakness seems to continue. Trump continues wrecking the US economy, ICE keeps shooting citizens in Minneapolis, which may spark a general strike in the entire state. This all brings uncertainty. And we can see it in the trend which is still extremely weak (Delta volume -5.91%). Unless something changes, I expect the market struggling. All this points to a need of aggressively raising cash.

We see too many knocks on the moving average. And as the “law of technical analysis” goes, “the more the trend is challenges, the more likely it will break.”

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.

BTC – not a big fan of Bitcoin, but trading it for a good potential of good gains if you catch the trend. Bitcoin failed to hold the trend and I was stopped out of the position. We are in cash again.

Happy trading/investing!

Here is my entire spreadsheet with all positions.

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