“Good News Is Bad News Again”
I reviewed the week’s major market developments with one question in mind: what actually changes the setup for traders and investors heading into next week?
The defining theme was the return of the rates trade. A surprisingly strong jobs report, a global bond selloff, renewed oil/geopolitical risk, and extraordinarily high expectations for AI stocks created a much more complicated backdrop than the headline indexes suggest.
The Five Stories That Moved Markets
1 · The Jobs Report Was Too Good for the Fed
Friday delivered the week’s biggest surprise. The U.S. added 162,000 jobs in August, nearly triple the roughly 56,000 economists expected, while unemployment held at 4.1%. Labor-force participation also improved. Stocks initially struggled, Treasury yields jumped, and markets increased the probability of a Fed hike at the September 15–16 meeting to roughly 60%.
Trader Take: We are back in a “good news can be bad news” environment. Strong economic data can push yields higher and pressure QQQ, semiconductors and other high-duration assets. Watch the 2-year Treasury yield—it may be one of the most useful tells for equity direction right now.
Investor Take: A resilient labor market is fundamentally good for earnings and the economy, but it reduces the case for easier monetary policy. Favor companies that don’t need lower rates to make their valuations work.
2 · The Bond Market Became the Real Story of the Week
September started with a global bond selloff. The U.S. 10-year Treasury yield reached its highest level since early 2025 as investors grappled with inflation, government borrowing and the possibility of additional Fed tightening. Yields subsequently eased when Fed Governor Christopher Waller sounded more patient, only to rise again after Friday’s strong employment report.
This is important because the stock market is increasingly trading off the bond market rather than the other way around.
Trader Take: I’d keep the 10-year and 2-year yields on the screen next to SPX and QQQ. A sustained breakout higher in yields could create a very different volatility environment, particularly for expensive technology stocks.
Investor Take: Higher yields raise the discount rate applied to future earnings. That doesn’t mean sell stocks; it means quality, cash flow, profitability and reasonable valuations become more valuable.
Since Friday’s close, Saturday, September 5. Per First Squawk: “Treasury sell-off piles pressure on weakest US borrowers - FT”. That is the credit column in the cross-asset table further down. High yield (HYG) lost 0.73% on the week and investment grade (LQD) 0.82%, and both closed within a dollar of their 52-week lows. The bond market didn’t just push yields up; it started charging the weakest borrowers for it.
3 · Broadcom Proved AI Is Booming — But “Great” Isn’t Good Enough Anymore
Broadcom delivered remarkable AI numbers. The company raised its fiscal 2027 AI-chip revenue forecast to approximately $115 billion from $100 billion and expects that figure to roughly double to $230 billion in fiscal 2028. Third-quarter AI-chip sales more than tripled to $16.7 billion. Yet the stock struggled because the outlook didn’t clear Wall Street’s extremely high expectations.
That’s an important market signal.
Trader Take: AI has moved from “buy anything AI” to “show me the numbers.” Earnings reactions matter more than the headline beat. When an outstanding report can’t push a stock higher, pay attention—that can indicate expectations and positioning are already stretched.
Investor Take: The Broadcom numbers actually strengthen the long-term AI infrastructure thesis. But they also reinforce why price matters. Great business + unreasonable expectations can still equal a disappointing investment return.
4 · Oil Is Back Above $95 — And That’s a Problem for the Inflation Story
Middle East tensions returned with force as U.S. and Iranian military attacks resumed. Brent crude moved above $95, reviving fears that higher energy prices could feed back into inflation just as the Fed is debating another rate increase.
This creates an uncomfortable combination: strong employment + expensive oil + persistent inflation = more ammunition for the hawks.
Trader Take: Energy remains a legitimate momentum trade, but geopolitical markets can reverse violently on a single headline. Smaller position sizing and defined risk make sense. Also watch whether higher crude begins pressuring transportation, consumer and other energy-sensitive sectors.
Investor Take: Sustained $95+ oil could alter both inflation and corporate-margin assumptions. Energy exposure can provide some portfolio diversification against precisely this scenario.
Since Friday’s close, Saturday, September 5. The wire overnight, verbatim. Per Walter Bloomberg: “U.S. CENTCOM: U.S. FORCES STRUCK THREE IRANIAN CRUDE OIL CARRIERS -STATEMENT” and “U.S. CENTCOM: U.S. STRIKES COME AFTER IRAN LAUNCHED BALLISTIC MISSILES TOWARD TWO U.S. NAVY WARSHIPS”. Per First Squawk, cut off where the page cut it: “U.S. CENTRAL COMMAND SAYS ITS FORCES STRUCK THREE IRANIAN CRUDE OIL CARRIERS ON SEPT. 5 AFTER THE IRGC LAUNCHED BALLISTIC MISSILES TOWARD TWO U.S. NAVY WARSHIPS PATROLLING REGIONAL WATERS, WITH A U.S. AIRCRAFT CARRIER AND GUIDED-MISSILE DESTROYER SUCCESSFULLY EVADING MULTIPLE” and, from the CENTCOM commander, “’LET THE MESSAGE TO THE IRGC BE CLEAR: IF YOU SHOOT AT TWO OF OUR SHIPS, WE WILL IMPOSE AN EVEN HIGHER ECONOMIC COST — TAKING OUT THREE OF YOURS’”.
Brent closed Friday at $96.03, up 9.01% on the week and 57.82% on the year on Tony’s platform. None of Saturday’s news is in that price. US markets are closed Monday for Labor Day, so Tuesday is the first session that gets to vote on it. We’re not going to guess the direction; we’d just note that Tony’s Trader Take above was written before any of this, and it already said smaller and defined.
5 · Next Week’s CPI May Be More Important Than Friday’s Jobs Report
This week’s employment report answered one question: the labor market isn’t falling apart. Now Wall Street needs to know whether inflation is.
August PPI arrives Thursday and CPI Friday, immediately ahead of the September 15–16 Fed meeting. After Friday’s strong jobs number, futures markets are roughly divided over whether the Fed hikes. That means inflation could become the deciding vote.
The scenarios are unusually clean:
Cool CPI → yields could retreat → growth/technology gets relief.
Hot CPI → Fed hike odds rise → yields higher → pressure on expensive equities.
Trader Take: I’d be reluctant to become overly aggressive immediately before CPI. Elevated event risk can create much better entries after the number than trying to predict it beforehand.
Investor Take: Don’t restructure a long-term portfolio around one CPI print. But if inflation stays sticky while oil and yields remain elevated, the market may need to reprice the assumption that easier monetary policy is coming anytime soon.
Where The Year Actually Stands
YTD and Friday’s closes are the six tiles on the members dashboard, Jan 2 basis. “This week” is the Aug 28 close to the Sep 4 close, five sessions. The 52-week column is Tony’s platform at Friday’s close.
Tony’s one-line summary of the week when he sent the tiles over: “very little movement during the week.” The table agrees. The biggest move among the three equity ETFs was QQQ, at 0.35%. Here’s how the weekly column was built, so you can check it:
The Aug 28 closes are the ones we published in last Saturday’s letter. Tony’s platform carries its own one-week column, and it gives the identical six figures to the hundredth, so the two sources agree on the window and on the arithmetic.
Now look past the equity rows. Bitcoin was the biggest mover of the six, up 3.03%, and it’s still down 11.21% on the year and 37% below its 52-week high. Long Treasuries lost 0.81% and closed about 1.3% above their 52-week low, which is the tile that matters this week and the one Tony’s second story is about. Gold gave back half a percent and sits a full 20% below its high. We’re short the GLD Dec 18 395 put in Portfolio 1, so a gold pullback is something we get paid to wait through, not something we’re chasing.
The volatility line is the one to sit with. The VIX closed Tuesday at 16.35 (our Tuesday letter) and Friday at 14.58 (Tony’s platform). That’s 10.8% cheaper over a week that included a global bond selloff, Brent up nine percent, and a payroll print nearly three times consensus. Friday morning’s letter quoted 14.14 mid-session; it finished the day a little higher, but still nowhere near where it started the week.
On the index level, Tony’s year-to-date chart at Friday’s close has the Russell 2000 at +19.89%, the Nasdaq 100 at +17.01%, the S&P 500 at +12.75% and the Dow at +11.13%. Those are the platform’s basis and run slightly different from the tiles above (the tiles use the Jan 2 close; the chart uses the platform’s). Both are right; the ordering is the same either way. Small caps lead, the Dow trails, and there’s about nine points between them.
Trader Take: Five sessions of nothing at the index level while the bond market moved is exactly the setup where a 14-handle VIX undercharges. The week’s realized move in SPY was eleven basis points. The week’s move in what SPY is discounted against, the 10-year, was to its highest level since early 2025, per Tony’s second story. One of those usually gives, and we’d rather keep the tail insurance Portfolio 1 already owns than sell more premium into CPI.
Investor Take: The year’s standings didn’t change and neither should a long-term allocation because of them. What changed is the cost of money underneath the standings. The Russell’s lead is the position most exposed to a hike, because small caps carry the most floating-rate debt. Enjoy the lead; don’t add to it on the strength of it.
The Sector Board
Tony’s platform at Friday’s close, the eleven S&P sector SPDRs, best week to worst.
Four sectors up on the week, six down, and financials dead flat at 0.00%. That’s a market that went nowhere in aggregate while the pieces moved, which is the same thing the six tiles said.
The year is a two-sector story, and neither of them is the one people talk about at dinner. Energy is up 43.28% and technology 30.08%. At the other end, consumer discretionary is down 3.77% and communication services 4.83%, the only two sectors red on the year. Top to bottom that’s a 48-point spread. Tony’s fourth story explains the top of it: Brent finished the week above $96, and XLE was the best sector on the week too, at +2.20%, sitting 2.2% below its 52-week high. The bottom is the flip side of the same coin. Discretionary is where the consumer pays for $96 oil and a Fed that might hike, and the market has been pricing that all year.
Technology held. XLK gained 0.86% on the week that Broadcom put up the numbers in story three and got sold for them. The sector didn’t get sold; one stock did. That distinction is the whole point of Tony’s “show me the numbers” line: the money isn’t leaving AI, it’s getting choosier inside it.
Financials at 0.00% on the week, 0.9% off their 52-week high, is worth a second look next to story two. Yields went up and banks didn’t rally on it. Friday’s letter had the front end rising while the long end didn’t, and a flatter curve is a thinner spread between what a bank pays and what it earns. Higher rates help banks; higher short rates don’t, and Friday was the second kind.
Friday on its own was a different board. Eight of eleven sectors fell, led by discretionary and communications, with tech, industrials and utilities the three that closed green. Utilities up 0.82% on the week and 2.01% for September on a week yields rose is a small oddity we’ll leave alone rather than explain.
Trader Take: Energy led the week at +2.20% and sits 2.2% from its 52-week high; discretionary is the only sector down on the week, the month and the year. If the trend and the distance from the high agree, that’s where we’d want to be short puts, and XLY is the one where they don’t.
Investor Take: Two of eleven sectors are red on the year and both are consumer-facing. Anyone who let this year’s winners run is, by default, overweight energy and technology at 2.2% and 5.8% below their highs. Trimming that back isn’t a call on either sector; it’s arithmetic.
Cross-Asset: Where The Price Of Money Showed Up
The same platform, Friday’s close, the nineteen names on Tony’s watchlist, best week to worst.
Read the bottom three rows together. Investment-grade credit, long Treasuries and high yield were the three worst things on the page this week, down 0.82%, 0.81% and 0.73%, and every one of them closed within a point and a half of its 52-week low: LQD 28 cents above it, HYG 60 cents, TLT $1.04. That’s Tony’s second story in a table. It isn’t an equity selloff. Equities were flat. It’s the price of money going up across every kind of bond at once, and the VIX watched it happen from 14.58.
The top of the page is the other half of the week. Brent +9.01% is by far the biggest move anywhere on this list, and it’s now 57.82% up on the year 16.7% below its $115.25 high. NVIDIA gained 5.89% in the week Broadcom got punished for a great quarter, which tells you the AI money is still there and getting more selective, not smaller. Emerging markets rose 2.32% and are 25.57% up on the year, better than any of the four US indices; Portfolio 3 owns EEM and has since January.
The dollar fell half a percent in a week US yields rose. We’d normally expect the opposite, and we’re not going to build a story on one week of it. We’re noting it because it’s the kind of thing that, if it keeps up, says something about who’s buying the Treasuries at these yields and who isn’t.
Trader Take: The three bond ETFs at the bottom of the table are each within $1.04 of a 52-week low while the VIX sits at 14.58, 58.7% below its own high. Cheap equity volatility next to expensive money. We’d rather be a buyer of that volatility than a seller of it into CPI.
Investor Take: Brent at +57.82% and emerging markets at +25.57% lead the year; investment-grade credit at −4.27% and long Treasuries at −5.68% trail it. The diversifier that worked in 2026 was commodities and non-US equities, not bonds, which is the case for the shape of Portfolio 3 and not a reason to chase either.
What We Actually Did
We publish every trade, so here’s the week in numbers. Eighteen tickets across Portfolios 1 and 2, $4,765.25 realized, three tail positions allowed to expire, and a book that finished Friday with 7.10% of buying power in use in Portfolio 1 and 29.47% in Portfolio 2. Every figure below is from the fills and ties to the closed-trade records on the members dashboard.
Portfolio 1 took profits and restocked, in that order of importance. Thursday, before the jobs number, both zebras and the 1-1-1 came off. Tony’s own line on the SPY zebra, from the alert he sent himself that morning: “Taking the Zebra off that was not working Before the Jobs Number;” It scratched for four dollars. The gold zebra was the opposite trade: opened Monday, closed Thursday, $590 in three days on a $6,270 debit, 9.4%. And the 1-1-1 is the one worth teaching from. It was put on for a $257 credit on Aug 18 and taken off for another $185 credit sixteen days later, $442 total, and not a dollar of premium was ever paid. What was paid was margin: the short 750 put tied up about $11,000 for those sixteen days, so it’s roughly 4.0% on capital, not free money. Credit in, credit out is a real thing. Capital-free isn’t.
Friday, after the print, the three ladder steps. Tony’s words: “Looking at my Book I had several income ladder trades over 70% profit, Even though I have very little capital deployed I have to stay mechanical and take those profits. Looking to sell more puts into sell offs if we ever have them again.” The three came off at 75.0%, 71.8% and 74.1% of maximum, all sold Jun 5, all held 91 days, all with more than two months still on them. That’s the rule executing, not a view on the market. Tuesday’s four new /MES steps for $2,140 are the restock; two of them are 7600s, above the ladder’s existing October 7550, which is why they paid what they paid.
Then the expiries. The two SPY tail puts and the yen put lapsed Friday for a combined $284, and that’s the design working. The near steps of a tail ladder are supposed to expire worthless most of the time. That’s what pays for the one that doesn’t.
Portfolio 2 managed the QQQ ladder four days running and didn’t grow it. Tuesday’s two rolls out to Sep 8 cost $276 on the legs closed and brought in $426 of new credit. Wednesday’s roll-down from 710 to 705 cost $199 and realized a $122 loss on the contract closed. Thursday’s second roll-down, same strikes, cost $135 but realized +$132, and the alert’s published reason was one line: “Reducing Delta on our QQQ Ladder;” Friday, with QQQ back at 719 and the number behind us, both 705s were bought back for 24 cents and one Sep 10 708 sold at $1.50, +$494 on the two legs closed. Net for the ladder on the week: +$228 realized, and a position that went from three Sep 8 710s to one 710 and one 708, with a slot deliberately left open. The IWM put was the clean one, and Battista credited it to a member. Sold Tuesday at 75 cents, bought back Wednesday at 17 cents. “Easiest money ever made”, and we’ll cut his line there.
Trader Take: Look at what the week wasn’t. The session before a binary print, Portfolio 1 cut three structures, and Portfolio 2 cut delta on Wednesday and again on Thursday. Nobody in this shop called 162,000. The reasoning out loud on Thursday’s Office Hours pointed the other way. The trades came off anyway, because reducing risk ahead of something you can’t handicap is a different skill from predicting it, and a more reliable one.
Investor Take: $4,765 realized in a flat week, with less premium at risk in both books at Friday’s close than earlier in the week, is what “letting theta work” looks like when you also take it off the table. The thing to copy isn’t the trades. It’s the 70% rule and the fact that it was followed on a week when the book had, in Tony’s words, very little capital deployed and no need to.
Where The Books Stand
Tony’s end-of-week readings, taken after Friday’s close and now on the members dashboard.
Portfolio 3, the ETF macro book, is $107,048.01, up 7.05% since inception, twelve positions, no changes this week.
Portfolio 1 is running 7.10% of buying power, which is what “very little capital deployed” looks like in a number. Open: the /MES put ladder, now six steps (Sep 30 7600, Oct 16 7550 and 7600, Nov 20 7350, Dec 18 7300, and the Dec 18 7500 written on the March contract); the SPY income ladder, down to three (Oct 16 748 and 750, Dec 18 710) after Friday; the GLD Dec 18 395 short put, marked about $275 against us at Friday’s close with gold 20% off its high; the SPX January 2027 income box; the BSH factory’s step two, six SPY Sep 30 570 puts; the /6J Oct 9 yen put, the surviving step of that ladder; 100 IBIT; and BIL for the cash. Theta is $147 a day on $15,438 of extrinsic, and the /MES and SPY steps carry Tony’s standing margin estimates of about $2,500 and $11,000 per contract respectively. The margin required on a cash account is the strike times the multiplier for each, and it is a very different number; we publish both in every alert.
Portfolio 2 finished the week at $260,776. The same book read $259,636 on Tuesday morning before the first roll, so across the week: value up $1,140, delta 217 to 183, theta $167 to $131, extrinsic $3,434 to $2,859, buying power 29.59% to 29.47%. Less premium at risk, less daily income, about the same capital committed. That’s what four rolls and a profit-take look like in Greeks. Open: the SPY ladder, five puts (four Oct 16 745s and Tuesday’s 737); three SPX Sep 18 butterfly structures, two of them free and one broken-wing, two weeks out; the QQQ ladder at two contracts, the Sep 8 710 and the Sep 10 708; the stock sleeve bought with trading profits; and BIL and SGOV. The QQQ 710 was marked at 53 cents Friday against a $4.43 basis, so about 88% of that premium is in hand with one session left, Tuesday’s.
Portfolio 3 has cash and T-bills of $23,259.08, 21.7% of the book, between the cash line and BIL. Leaders on their own entries: copper (CPER) +28.54%, silver (SLV) +21.66%, lithium (LIT) +16.45%, emerging markets (EEM) +16.30%. SPY, held since Jan 2, is +12.39% on the position. TLT is the one red line at −5.54%, which matches the tile. Silver is worth a footnote: the position is up 21.66% since it was bought last October, while SLV the ETF is down 7.14% on the year on Tony’s platform. Both are true. It’s a question of when you bought.
What the calendar does to these books next week. Monday is Labor Day, no session. Tuesday the QQQ Sep 8 710 expires. Thursday is PPI and the QQQ Sep 10 708 expires the same day. Friday is CPI. The Fed meets the following Tuesday and Wednesday, and the SPX butterflies expire that Friday, Sep 18. Four sessions, two inflation prints, and a ladder leg expiring on the first of them.
Trader Take: Portfolio 2’s short QQQ premium now expires Tuesday and Thursday, before and on PPI day, with nothing carried into CPI Friday. That wasn’t an accident. If Tony’s fifth story is right that entries are better after the number than before it, the open slot on that ladder is where the next one goes.
Investor Take: Portfolio 3 owns energy exposure through the broad commodity fund and copper, not through XLE. That’s a diversification decision, not an oil call. Story four is the scenario it’s there for.
Trusted Voices
The people we read, in their own words, from the posts Tony pulled Saturday morning. Where a post was cut off on the page, we stop where it stopped.
Charlie Bilello, Chief Market Strategist at Creative Planning, made the loudest call of the week on Tuesday, before any of the data: “The Fed cut rates by 50 bps in September 2024, declaring victory against inflation. That was a policy mistake, and they compounded the mistake by cutting another 125 bps. They should hike rates by 50 bps this month and follow that up with 50 bps hikes in October and December.” That’s 150 basis points by year-end, a much bigger ask than the roughly 60% odds of a single hike that Tony’s first story describes the market pricing. By Friday he’d shortened it to five words: “The Rate Hikes Are Coming...” He also flagged the one central bank already doing it: “Global Central Bank Update: -New Zealand hiked rates for the 2nd meeting in a row, 25 bps move up to 2.75%.” And on Monday, on the supply side of the bond story, a post that was cut off mid-sentence: “US National Debt has increased by $715 billion since July 1 while the 10-Year Treasury yield has jumped from 4.48% to 4.75%. Washington’s solution? Increase buybacks of longer-dated Treasuries to $4 billion. But swapping longer-maturity debt for shorter-maturity debt doesn’t”, and there the page ends. The part we can read is the part Story 2 is about.
Liz Ann Sonders, Chief Investment Strategist at the Schwab Center for Financial Research, put the number we cared most about on Friday in one line: “Two-month net revisions to nonfarm payrolls added 55,000 jobs”. That’s the same figure our Friday letter built its argument on; a month first reported negative was rewritten positive, and the net correction equals the entire August consensus. She also posted the New York Fed’s supply-chain gauge: “@NewYorkFed Global Supply Chain Index was little changed in August, edging up to 1.06 vs. July’s reading of 0.94 (revised up from 0.79)”. Our read: little changed, but revised up, and above one. Not a reason to expect goods inflation to fall on its own.
Danielle DiMartino Booth, CEO and Chief Strategist at QI Research, was the one voice pointing at the other side of the labor market, and she posted it on Tuesday, September 1, three days before the print: “Business closings have been above the critical 200-level for three consecutive months.” The @dailyjobcuts August tally she reposted: 7,000-plus layoffs, 214 business closings, 21 companies hiring. A strong hiring month and a third straight month of elevated closings can both be true. Hers is the one to keep watching if the next payroll number isn’t 162,000.
amit (@amitisinvesting) wrote the week’s most honest sentence on a Thursday he described as the S&P up a percent with oil at a three-month high, and the page cut him off before he finished it: “to be honest, the S&P up 1% on a day where oil makes a 3 month high is a little weird but maybe the market has moved on from caring about rising bond yields and oil? feels crazy to think that’s the case but this type of move today in the face of bad macro is either a trap or”. We don’t know how the sentence ended either. His Friday recap of the report, verbatim and also truncated: “AUGUST U.S. NONFARM PAYROLLS: - The US economy added 162K jobs in August 2026, beating expectations by 56K jobs - July’s payrolls were upwardly revised by 23K - Unemployment rate 4.1% vs 4.1% expected - Employment increased in food services and drinking places and in local”. Two of those figures don’t match what we published Friday. Against the 55,000 consensus in Friday’s letter (Tony’s stories above round it to 56,000), the beat is about 107,000, not 56,000, and his 56K reads like the consensus figure rather than the beat; and we had the prior month going from minus 23,000 to plus 21,000, a 44,000 revision, where he has 23K. Same release, different arithmetic. We’re flagging it rather than picking a side without the BLS table in front of us.
Where The Indices Sit On The Year
No chart of a single name this week. What Tony sent instead was his year-to-date chart of the four US indices, Jan 2 through Friday’s close, and it’s worth reading on its own. No indicators below, because none were on it; this is the shape of the lines and the levels on the right axis.
All four bottomed together around April 1. The Nasdaq 100 was near minus 10% at that low, the other three between minus 5% and minus 8%. From May the Russell 2000 took the lead and kept it. The Nasdaq peaked in early June and again in early July; the Russell peaked in early-to-mid August near +25%. Then all four dipped into the last week of August and bounced Sep 1 through 4. At Friday’s close the right axis read: Russell 2000 +19.89%, Nasdaq 100 +17.01%, S&P 500 +12.75%, Dow +11.13%.
So the year’s leader has given back roughly five points of a 25-point run and still leads by nearly three. Against their own 52-week highs, using the ETFs on Tony’s platform:
The index nearest its high is the S&P, at 1.2% away. The two that led the year, the Russell and the Nasdaq, are the two furthest from theirs. That’s consistent with what the sector board and the cross-asset table said: the market that made the highs was a small-cap-and-growth market, and the market that’s holding them is a big-cap, energy-and-tech market. Tony’s first two stories are why. Small caps carry floating-rate debt; long-duration tech carries a discount rate. A 2-year that keeps rising leans on both, and the S&P, the closest of the four to its high, is carrying the least of either.
What would change the read: a new high in the Russell with the 2-year still rising. That would say the market has stopped caring about the price of money, which is amit’s “trap or” question from Thursday. We’d treat it as the trap until proven otherwise. What confirms the read: the Nasdaq failing to reclaim its early-July level on a cool CPI. If good news can’t get growth back to its highs, the ceiling is rates, not earnings.
Trader Take: The S&P is 1.2% from its high and the Nasdaq 4.0%. A short call spread on SPY has 1.2% of air above it; the same trade on QQQ has 4%. Same market, different distances, different trades.
Investor Take: All four indices are at least 18% above their 52-week lows and no more than 4% below their highs. That’s the range the year has actually traded, and the low end of it is what a long-term allocation has to be sized to live through, not the top end.
Bottom Line
The most important change this week is that the market’s problem isn’t growth—it’s the price of money.
The economy just produced 162,000 jobs instead of the 56,000 expected. AI infrastructure spending remains extraordinary. Corporate America is still producing strong earnings.
Those are fundamentally bullish developments.
But ironically, too much economic strength could now become the catalyst for tighter monetary policy.
For traders, I would remain constructive but cautious: maintain some positive delta, don’t chase extended rallies, keep buying power available, and watch Treasury yields almost as closely as SPX.
For investors, I still see a constructive long-term backdrop. But this environment increasingly rewards quality companies with earnings, free cash flow and pricing power rather than speculative businesses whose valuations depend on falling rates.
The setup for next week is simple:
Jobs told us the economy is strong. CPI will tell us whether that’s becoming a problem.
And that could make next week’s inflation report one of the most important market events of September.
Disclaimer
This is not investment advice. Nothing in this letter is a recommendation to buy or sell any security. Grow Your Pile and Squared T Capital publish what we do in our own accounts for education. Options involve substantial risk and are not suitable for every investor. A short put can require you to buy stock at the strike price and can lose more than the premium collected. Past results do not predict future results. Do your own work and consider speaking with a licensed advisor about your circumstances.
Past performance is not indicative of future results, and results shown are those of our own accounts and are not representative of any subscriber’s results. Read the Characteristics and Risks of Standardized Options before trading.
Tony Battista and Tony Rihan Grow Your Pile
Every options trade in all three portfolios is published, win or lose, with entry, exit and running P&L at growyourpile.com.