I am not a registered financial professional and your risk is your own. Invest at your own peril.

The market has a way of dragging you in even when you’ve been trying to play it safe. I think that nobody is immune when it comes to this phenomenon, and it happened to me this week. Before we get started, here are the results as of market close:

Brokerage:

Roth:

As you can see, I was pretty lucky to have logged a total gain of $1800 for the week. I say I was lucky because that huge tumble mid-week came off the back of some incredibly hot PPI data. As it turns out, we might finally be seeing the effects of tariffs on the economy in a more concrete fashion. The number was far above the expected rise, which would have been significant on its own.

This move was eight standard deviations from a usual surprise. We quite literally have not seen anything on this scale since early 2021.

I made some huge trades via cash-secured puts this week on $HOOD. I think, in hindsight, it was a bit reckless. For 48 hours, I had relegated nearly my entire portfolio to the strategy—albeit at different strikes. I’ve closed most of them at meager profit to insulate myself against whatever comes out of the Trump-Putin meetup that’s happening now. However, it’s really more a hedge with seasonality in mind. The second half of August tends to be pretty weak, and this PPI data might be a great excuse for Wall Street to instigate some weakness here.

So, where does that leave me position-wise?