All right, so I f**ked up again

Andrew Giovinazzi

BY ANDREW GIOVINAZZI

June 20th, 2025

Hey there, Andrew here.

All right… so I f**ked up again…

I had positions that were up 25% – literally every leg of every trade – and somehow I am not collecting it, which is not making me very happy right now.

You know what pisses me off most?

It’s not the Fed flip-flopping between Waller saying “July cuts” and Powell saying they’re “well positioned to wait.” It’s not Iran getting bombed while VIX stays stubbornly stuck around 20.

It’s me. I’m the problem.

Here’s what’s been happening for the last month. Every single trade I put out has hit 25% gains. I know it’s hard to believe, but it’s true. We’ve had this perfectly orbiting market – SPY can’t really get a direction, VIX won’t budge from this 20 level, and we just keep going up and down and up and down.

Perfect conditions for the kind of trades I do. And I keep… not taking the money.

The 25% Curse That’s Killing My Profits

So if we don’t close them faster, we’re not gonna close them at all. That’s the brutal reality I’m facing right now.

See, what’s been happening is we drift down about a half percent, a percent, and then go right back up again. In this kind of environment, you usually get maybe one or two days of real movement, then you get a fake out move in the morning and then we’re going the other way.

But I keep thinking, “Oh, this time will be different. This time we’ll get that big move.”

That’s what I get for thinking.

Let me show you something that’ll make you as frustrated as I am. VIX has been stuck around this 20 level for weeks now. Every time I think it’s finally going to break lower and give us that beautiful volatility crush, something happens.

Why did I think we’d get that crush? Because the market keeps going nowhere. SPY volatility should be falling, VIX should be trending toward 15, maybe even lower.

Our puts were gonna pay us great, great money.

But no. Nope. Iran decides to make things interesting. Again.

When Markets Refuse to Behave

All right, let me explain something that most people miss about these choppy, orbiting markets.

Right now we’re in this weird zone where VIX won’t go down even though the market isn’t really selling off. After 15 years of looking at this stuff, when volatility gets stuck like this, it usually means the market is waiting for something to happen.

The market has to do goofy things to stay in this range.

You know what it is? It’s kind of like you’ve climbed to the mountaintop, you’re at the top of the Empire State Building, you’re looking over the edge. You’re like, “Ooh, I don’t know how close I wanna get to the edge.” And that’s kind of what it feels like.

There hasn’t been real acceptance of SPY back to new highs. Maybe it’ll change next week. But until you see some real direction here… we’re stuck.

The Volatility That Won’t Die

Here’s what really gets me. Look at where we are compared to the beginning of the year. We’re basically at the same levels, but volatility’s way higher than it should be.

We were trading these same SPY levels before when VIX was way, way, way lower. You see what I mean? Same market level, much higher fear premium.

Does anybody find that odd?

I sure as hell do. And that’s exactly why I kept our puts longer than I should have. I kept thinking the normal pattern would kick in – market goes nowhere, VIX goes down. Which is why I kept our puts.

But obviously that Iran thing just turned everything sideways. Still.

We had July puts – all the July puts were up money. The 20 puts got as high as $2.75 this cycle. The 19 puts got as high as $1.75. And they were on their way to being three, four dollars in the money.

Instead? Our 16 puts expired worthless.

How to Stop Outsmarting Yourself

From now on, I’m just gonna close our VIX puts when they’re up money, because I just don’t want to give the money away.

Look, I like moonshot trades if we trend. But there’s no real good trend right now. I like to see volatility trend lower, but there isn’t one.

So here’s what I’m doing differently: tighter closes. Way tighter.

For my trades going forward, I’m putting out specific levels where I’m taking profits:

SPY put spread: close at 25% (around 594)
VIX puts: close at 25% (around 19.50)
SPY calls: close at 25% (around 605)

These aren’t very far away. But if we get there on a move, I wanna put a premium on just closing stuff.

Because I’ve got too many open positions, too many positions have been paying, and you know what the fake out is? In this environment, you essentially get maybe a fake out move in the morning and then you’re going the other way.

I’ve been treating this like we’re in a trending market when we’re clearly in an orbiting one.

The market is just waiting, waiting for a reason to go somewhere. If we break a little higher, that should finally kill VIX. But if there’s a scare or problem, we could probably break down easily.

At this point we’re waiting. The more we wait, the more I should be taking profits when I have them.

But I’m done waiting for perfect.

Twenty-five percent is good enough. Hell, in this environment, 25% IS perfect.

The biggest lesson here?

Sometimes the best trade is the one you actually close, not the one you hold hoping for more.

And that’s what I get for thinking otherwise.

-Andrew “Should Be Paid” Giovinazzi