Postsector

I went all out today and loaded up on SQQQ calls with no hedge. The Fed was going to raise rates for sure and I suspected that Jerome Powell would say something hawkish. So I went big and it paid off. This could have blown up on me and been the end of my "Phoenix Account" adventure. My man JPow didn't leave me hanging, told everyone to expect more pain in the future and sent the market into a nose dive. I didn't hang onto my calls for too long. They shot up in value and I decided to lock in my gains and at least be somewhat cautious. $400 is a fantastic gain for an account hovering in the nine hundreds. My next move is the most important one. I can't let this win go to my head. I broke my rule about not swinging for the fences. It worked well today but if I keep making aggressive trades I'll strike out for sure. The rate hike was a special event, still risky, but the reward was high. Now I need to hang onto it.

 I started this week expecting another down day but the market had other ideas and SPY rose in value. Thinking this was just a temporary spike I sold my call leg figuring I could take profits then gain on my put when the price retreated. Once again the market didn't care about my wants and held firm into a small closing rally.   I locked in a $44 gain but my put was down much more. Normally my rule is to cash out at the end of the day but I felt like this rally wouldn't hold and I could find a better exit on Tuesday. Which was true, the next day things dropped and I was able sell at a $46 loss. This wasn't ideal but with Monday's gain it kept me about even. Turns out I could've waited things out and made a profit for the week but I didn't know that and was starting to worry that the market would launch into a rally going into the Fed announcement.

 Didn't trade today.  Missed the open and didn't want to jump in midday on a Friday. I believe that this was a good call. I'm trying to be better about waiting for a favorable entry rather than playing catch up to recover from a bad trade.