[OP Ed. Note: This Editorial Was Drafted Without AI]

Yo Pit Crazies,

Putin’s pitching a Trump, Xi and Putin summit

Oil still can’t get through the Strait of Hormuz

The Houthis are taking over the Red Sea

Putin’s selling the U.S. diesel fuel

Iran wants to negotiate

Ukraine’s hitting Russian oil refineries

AI is taking over the world

Anthropic’s revenue growth slows

AI data centers can’t find funding

That wild bunch of headlines gave us four straight days where the SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust (SPY) moved at least $10 from high to low. Those headlines keep handing us volatility, but honestly, none of it’s surprising.

SPY 5-Day Chart

It doesn’t matter who’s in the White House. If you didn’t like President Obama and sat out stocks, you missed SPY going from 80 to 227. If you didn’t like President Trump, you missed 227 to 384.

Same story with President Biden, and with Trump again. There’ll always be politics, and there’ll always be geopolitical events. There won’t always be a wave of tech to ride.

Right now, we’re in a tech wave upcycle and the train’s still running.

What I want to do is be ready for whatever the market throws at me. On Friday, I sold most of the VIX calls I owned (options that pay off when the market’s fear gauge jumps).

VIX 10-Day Chart

The VIX is trading at 18, right in the middle of the I-don’t-know zone. The issue with the headlines above: solving any of them sends SPY to the moon, and I want to be ready for that.

I’ll help with all of that this week in my Trader X special. You need to check it out.

I hope this was helpful,

AG