Day 79 - MELTDOWN!
Market Recap
What a week!
Markets started with a sharp drop but managed to claw back most losses, finishing nearly flat. SPY ($645.7) closed down just 0.19% (-1.26), while QQQ ($572.65) lagged with a 1.39% (-8.05) decline.
Year-over-Year:
- SPY: +$83.16 (+14.78%)
- QQQ: +$87.81 (+18.11%)
Tech’s recent strength may be showing cracks, ever so slightly though, as QQQ underperformed SPY for a second straight week.
Trading Update: Aug 18 - Aug 22, 2025
This was the week that humbled me.
I placed 22 trades - many in an attempt to dig out of a single bad session that erased my year’s progress.
Here is a screenshot of my TastyTrade activity history for the last week.
Trades
Last week, I wrote:
This week has been the 4th consecutive week I have realized profits.
THOU SHALT NOT TEMPT FATE !!!
On 8/20, I lost all discipline in a single 35-minute window that cost me a quarter of my TastyTrade portfolio.
What happened?
It started with PLTR. On 8/19, PLTR dropped from $174 → $152.
I had two naked positions open and rolled them out to 54 DTE and down to $145. So far, so good.
But on the morning of 8/20, PLTR hovered near $150. Nervous, I bought a $135 put as a hedge. Big mistake. PLTR kept sliding, the put went ITM, and panic set in.
I tried to manage by spreading it out, then closing positions to reduce margin risk. Each move made less sense than the last.
By 7:04 AM, I’d closed two $145 puts for ~$2.6K in losses - the single biggest hit to my account this year. Those Puts were opened as part of a spread, I don't know why I thought it would be smart to individually close each position in the spread.
I have tried hard to get wiser in hindsight, but the decision making in that instant is full of fog. Panic trumped clarity, even after a few days I have no clue why I lost my reasoning and discipline.
META added insult to injury, as a falling spread in META forced another loss.
Result: In just over half an hour, I lost more than I’d made all year.
Here is a Bollinger Band showing PLTR for the last 3 months. I have drawn a red arrow showing where exactly the above events unfolded.
Portfolio Status
By week’s end, PLTR rebounded slightly, but the damage was done:
Start of Week: $8,785
End of Week: $6,625
Change: -$2,160 (-25%)
Closed this week way lower than last.
- 2025 Net P&L: Down $5.6K
- All Time: Down $8K
Profit and Loss Trend - Monthly - Year to Date
Portfolio Strategy Breakdown
Here's a view showing my Win Rate breakdown by strategy deployed.
Here is a breakdown of P/L by strategies I have used so far.
- Best Performing Strategy: Sell Put
- Worst Performing Strategy: Buy Call (LEAPS)
Win rate and P/L by strategy remain skewed by oversized losses like this week’s.
Plan for Next Week
See what I wrote last week.
I still have too much risk - at least one more naked position than I can realistically afford.
So next week I will look to close one or both of the naked positions I have open and switch to perhaps a more defined risk position.
Prescient, right?
If only I would have moved faster, perhaps I would not have panicked.
But thinking about what if scenarios in the past is painful and gives more grief than actual learning.
Time to reflect and correct.
Two takeaways stand out:
- Too concentrated: I was far too heavy in PLTR.
- Too big: Position sizes exceeded what I could manage emotionally.
The plan now:
- Shift to defined-risk setups until I rebuild to $10K.
- Size future trades at ¼–⅛ Kelly Criterion, which I began testing this week with encouraging early results on SPY and QQQ. Fingers crossed for scaling it up further.
This was painful, but the portfolio survives.
Time to trade smaller and last the year.
Thanks for following along - see you next week! Hope you tune in.
📌 Disclaimer: Nothing on this site is financial advice - I’m just here to entertain! Here’s my introduction, my trading philosophy, and some ground rules.
