Hiatus and Kyle Tucker, Sam Darnold and new priorities

 I have decided to take a break from blogging about my options trading. It has been way more than 10 years. Publicly posting my thoughts made me more accountable, less likely to do stupid things. During recent years my updates have been less detailed, perhaps less interesting. 

Anyway, Kyle Tucker is a baseball player recently signed by the Los Angeles Dodgers. His four year $240 million dollar contract is a metaphor for the current stock market. Tucker is a good player but that much money is not a good value. 

The stock market is slightly over valued. There are pockets of exuberance but overall I would estimate 10 percent over valued. I am long past the stage of all in, all cash, or all short. Almost no one can function that way for the long term. 

Sam Darnold is any case study. Darnold was a high draft pick that was considered a bust. He has rejuvenated his career with two solid seasons with two different teams  I remember selling Palantir at $9.  PLTR has gone up more than ten fold  Captain Obvious will say it is difficult to be right on every investment or trade, but it is one that got away.

Big big news in my personal life is I have joined a local Baptist church and am getting baptized. It is a good time to reset priorities. Active trading is less of a priority. I plan to post quarterly updates. Plans may change. Good luck and God speed to all. 

Grade C+/B- for 2025

I didn’t do much these last few weeks. The year end numbers are in:

SLV silver 144.7%
GLD gold 63.7%
EEM emerging mkt 30.8%

QQQ Nasdaq 100 20.2%
SPY SP500 16.4%
IWM Russell 2000 11.4%

TLT US20 yr -0.2%

My trading acount +14.6%, so slightly behind SPY. The sky rockets are in precious metals. Many overseas markets also did well. I have signficant positions in NVDA which out performed, AMZN and BRKB which lagged the overall market. I didn’t have any of the really hot stocks in any meaningful way. 

My biggest losers for 2025 include AMD and MSFT. Both ran to the upside while I was short calls. Minor dollar amounts, but staggering percentage losses. One of the few things I did correctly was to stay in NVDA. 

We’ve had three decent up years in a row. Average for a fourth year bull is +12%, so that would be my near random prediction. Markets are slightly overvalued. There certainly are some signs of froth. 

My over riding theme for 2026 is back to basics. When I think about option trading, selling covered calls at 20 delta, selling puts at 20 delta are a well worn path aka as the Wheel strategy. That’s the plan at the moment. Add shares on any dips of 10% or more. It would be great to see the future, but experience tells me that I rarely get that even partially right. So vanilla is the flavor at the moment. Back to basics.

There is chatter about bubbles and crashes. The popularity of that kind of talk, often means at least 20% more upside before the rug gets pulled. That said, external events can and will influence the markets. 

I rarely mention politics here. Trump has a few more months to do things. He is already positioning for the mid-term elections. Most likely result is grid lock after that, with a lame duck president.