Hello Mooers,
U.S. stock had a turbulent week (Feb 2–6, 2026), finishing with a powerful Friday rebound. The Dow hit fresh records and briefly cleared 50,000, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rallied sharply into the close—yet the week still showed rotation: Dow outperformed as parts of mega-cap tech stayed under pressure after several down sessions.
Macro...

In the previous post, we discussed using long puts for deep hedging. But as mentioned, the scenarios that truly call for long-put hedges are typically panic-driven sell-offs—they don’t happen that often. Statistically, over the past ten years, they’ve occurred about once per year on average, and in some years they don’t occur at all.
By contrast, milder, more contained pullbacks happen many times every year. These ty...

In the previous episode, we covered the first—and most important—way to deal with drawdowns: cutting exposure. As a quick recap, what are the advantages of proactively trimming positions when markets start to fall?
In this episode, we move on to the second line of defense: hedging with options.
1. When to Hedge?
Before we dive deep into hedging strategies, it helps to identify differences between two types of drawdowns:
A tech...

One of the dangers of staying close to markets is that we sometime fail to recognize major changes in the investing environment. At the end of last week markets saw a major shift, and investors should take note of the potential implications.
On Friday night the bubble in gold prices burst. Sparked by the US dollar strengthening on higher inflation data, the yellow metal traded through a $761 trading range on Friday night, the largest single day swing ...

Join me, Greg Boland, live for an options workshop!
In this exclusive workshop, Greg Boland, market strategist and options specialist, strips away the complexity of the options chain to provide a clear, step-by-step structured learning path, using Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN) as real-time case studies.
🎁 Engage & earn points:
- Book, get rewarded → 50 points
- Comment your question related to the livestream ...

US company earnings reports this week are likely to draw market attention as some of the world’s largest companies face shareholders. Investors will seek information about the state of play in AI ecosystems, the health or otherwise of the US consumer, and the impact of tariffs on prices, among other issues.
The focus on individual companies may provide a welcome distraction from the macro structural shift in global affairs flagged la...