As the year 2025 is coming to an end, it’s time to review our investing and trading strategy for the next year. And the next year trading and investing strategy will be simple and the same as what I have been doing in 2025. This strategy is designed to grow a small portfolio. We started with $3,800.00 initial investment and right now, even after Trump’s idiotic tariffs, we were able to double the account.

The goal will be to grow our challenge account using multiple approaches:

Selling option against SPX or futures

1. We will be selling put spreads, call spreads, or Iron Condors against SPX or futures (/ES, /MES, or /MNQ). Primarily, we will be selling options with 4 DTE and as far out of the money as possible to avoid assignments. All premiums will be reinvested into high yield ETFs or growth leveraged ETFs.
2. If the options (as noted above) get in the money, we will be rolling options down or up and away in time until they expire worthless or we buy them back for less premium. Occasionally, we may take a small loss instead of rolling, but we will attempt to avoid large loss (for example when both legs are in the money).
3. For this reason, we will keep larger buying power (BP) available or parked in an ICSH fund to allow us to widen the spreads as need to roll them for credit. For example, if our put spread is in the money, we will roll it down and we will roll the call spread down but also enlarge the spread. This will help us to avoid rolling the call spread too low but also collect large enough premium to offset the cost of the put spread’s roll. Conversely, when the market reverses, we may roll the call spread back up and even narrow the spread but roll puts and enlarge the spread to offset the cost of the roll, and so on.
4. Most of the time, we will be selling put spreads with 0.05 – 0.10 delta and collect at least 0.30 (after fees). We can be adding call spreads as needed as a repair strategy. To determine the direction, we will use volatility metrics and a simple 50MA strategy.

Reinvesting premiums

As noted above, all premiums will be reinvested to high yield dividend ETFs such as QQQI, ICAP, BTCI, DIVO, and GPIQ. We will however invest only 10% of Net-Liq to these funds using the following rules:

1. Buy and hold 10% of account net-liq in these ETFs.
2. Keep dividends grow the account and as the account grows add more ETFs to keep 10% of the account in these ETFs.
3. Each holding shall be 25% of the max allocation.
4. When the holding of any ETF drops to 15% or less, add more shares.
5. When the holding exceeds 30% or more stop adding shares.

Once I reach 100 shares of each ETF, I will re-evaluate the strategy to decide whether we continue adding more shares or add other ETFs. But this is a distant future.

If the rules prevent me from adding new shares, I will be investing the rest in the TQQQ (3x leveraged) ETF.

TQQQ core growth ETF

I will be using TQQQ as a core growth vehicle to aggressively grow the account. But as you may know, TQQQ as a leveraged ETF that moves 3x the Nasdaq, it can work great in a bull market but it can hurt you badly in a bear market. It goes up 3x but it also goes down 3x. But, there is also a built in volatility decay or drag, because TQQQ is rebalanced daily. In a bull market, the growth is usually large enough to offset the decay, but in high volatility, choppy market, or bear market, this may result in serious losses or drawdowns. To avoid it, I will be using (and I have been using this for years now) volatility metrics combined with a simple 50day MA strategy to get out of TQQQ when the markets are whacky and volatile and get back in the bullish market. Here is simple chart illustrating the strategy:

When TQQQ drops below 50 day MA and volatility metric say to get out, I will sell TQQQ and park the money to ICSH or SGOV and wait for a better time to re-entry. I recently bought back into TQQQ although it is still trading below 50 day MA but the volatility tracker tells me that we have a high complacency, so there is a good chance that we may, in fact, see the Santa rally in the last two weeks in December and maybe even the first week in January 2026 despite the recent selling.

Parking cash

When in the middle of a cycle or markets feeling heavy or I feeling uncomfortable accumulating into stocks, or selling premiums, or buying TQQQ, I will park free cash in ICSH or SGOV short term treasuries. They pay a decent dividend (distributions) despite the recent FED interest rate cuts and most importantly, hold the value (for example during 2008 crash when the markets lost ~64%; if I remember it correctly; ICSH lost only about 4%; not bad while also getting the dividend).

Selling covered calls

Once I reach 100 shares of all optionable ETFs as mentioned above, I will start selling covered calls to further boost income. If any of the holdings get assigned, I will sell cash secured puts (a Wheel Strategy) or roll calls to avoid assignment.

Bitcoin BTC investment

I am not a believer. I still think BTC is trash (or as Charlie Munger or Warren Buffett said “a piece of horseshit”) and it has no value, no utility. The entire premise of BTC is a bigger fool game. If you are a believer, answer yourself the following questions:

• What is its intrinsic value?
  Not price action, not narratives — actual intrinsic value.

• What real utility does it provide that the world genuinely needs?
  Why is it essential, not optional?

• If it’s so transformative, why has mainstream adoption remained minimal for 15 years?
  And why do most people still treat it purely as a speculative asset rather than a functional currency?

• What is the underlying discounted value of future cash flows?
  What income, growth, or economic output does Bitcoin produce, and how does that compare to a company that creates products, services, and value?

If you cannot answer these questions, you have a problem.

But that is not the point of this post about my goal for 2026. Even though I do not believe in Bitcoin, I am willing to trade it. It offers good growth potential although it has the exact same correlation with TQQQ. Knowing that, I am willing to trade it but I will be using the same strategy as when trading TQQQ. When BTC is below 50 day MA, I am out. I will be gradually getting back in when it crosses back above 50 day MA and crypto volatility metrics are bullish. As of today, the BTC is clearly in a severe bearish territory with a potential of further decline coming.

Here is a correlation of BTC (candles) and TQQQ (blue line). Most of the time, these two instruments are pretty much behaving in the same manner:

So, trade BTC, do not buy and hold it. BTC has no utility. If it disappears tomorrow, no one will notice and nothing will happen in the world. The banks will keep going, there will be no bankruptcies, and the world economies will keep going as usually. BTC had almost 15 years to gain usage and popularity.

So this is my strategy for the next year in a nutshell. Simple and boring. This strategy is pertaining to the challenge account only. I have other accounts that I trade but these are private now.

Thank you for reading and Merry Christmas and Happy New Year!

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