Unrelated to trading…I made it to a World Cup game this past week! Tuesday afternoon, my partner and brother snagged tickets online and we were out the door an hour later! It was like the chaotic scene in Home Alone where the family was going nuts scrambling to make it to the airport, except in our case, no child was left behind. 😂 💃🏽

We had an absolute ball, and I am so grateful for the experience. And it just so happened that both of our moms, my brother and his partner, and our kids were all visiting at the same time!! Being able to go together, and bringing our moms who had never been to a major game, let alone a World Cup game, was incredible!

Now, back to our regularly scheduled program. 😅

SPX is sitting inside a larger range right now. After the last push up to 7,620 in early June, price rotated all the way back down toward 7,237, which was the same area SPX was trading at in early May. From there, buyers stepped back in and price started pushing higher again, but we still haven’t reclaimed the all-time high.

For now, there isn’t much new information. We were in a strong uptrend coming off the March pivot, and then started moving sideways. This range-bound movement can last for months, though I do notice that the range may be tightening, and if that is the case, we may get a break in either direction soon.

And just a reminder, my notes here are on the market chart. In this kind of environment, individual stocks may not match the direction of SPX because a lot of names are working within their own ranges. I’ve literally been in puts and calls at the same time in the last few weeks, with one stock coming off support while another is rejecting resistance.

Since this is more of a level-to-level environment, I’m reducing the expectation that every move will trend for a long time. I wrote an article about this environment back in August 2025 with a lot of great insights if you want to read it here.

Push Back Toward 7,620

Stay Range-Bound Between 7,340 and 7,508

Break Below 7,340 and Retest Lower Levels

So for now, I continue to trade the edges of the range until I see a shift in the broader market.

I made a little over $22K on this AAPL trade, and while I love the profit, the lessons, reminders, and updates to my strategy are even more valuable. I did a post-mortem on it and wanted to share the takeaways here with you.

This was a put trade. AAPL had pushed into the 315 area, rejected, and then started selling. When price bounced back toward the 300 area and failed to reclaim it with follow-through, that increased my confidence in the potential for a second leg down, especially with the market selling too.

Cliff Notes

What is this runner idea I picked up?

I already scale out and usually take a main portion off at the first target, then another portion at the second target. But somewhere along the way, I started leaving this extra residual piece and calling it a runner, and now I’m like:

Wait, what am I actually doing here? Where did I pick that up? Why did I decide I “needed” to always leave something on? Does that actually fit the way I trade options, or did I just absorb it because it sounded like the thing you’re supposed to do?

It’s one of those things I learned in the past that no longer serves me, or never served me, and now I know.

The “whole” move

When I first started learning to trade, I internalized this idea that if I was in a trade, I should be able to hold through temporary digestion to catch the full move. So I can see how holding a runner was part of me trying to “hold for the whole move.” But when the move is done, it’s done. And if it sets up again, I can get back in.

So from this trade, I’m changing my strategy to two exits max: first target and second target. I don’t have any interest in trying to get every last drop out of a trade. I have interest in repeating solid trades over and over, getting the best part of the move as efficiently as I can, and moving on, because there is always another trade.

Mental capital is just as important as capital preservation

I scaled out most of this around 275–276, which was the main area I was watching. After that, price started consolidating between roughly 274–279.

At first, holding a partial was fine because it could have continued lower. But once price started holding above that weekly level and wasn’t turning back down with momentum, that was my cue to close it and move on. Even on Monday, I had a small pause where I thought, “mmm, this actually looks like a call setup.” ‼️ ⚠️

That should have been enough for me to close the rest. I didn’t need to keep babysitting a leftover piece. I needed to close it, free up my mental capacity, and reset for the next trade.

Slow on the context switch

The biggest cost was that holding the leftover piece slowed my ability to pivot to the next trade. Because I was still mentally attached to the downside trade, I didn’t reset quickly enough to take the upside setup that I had already seen forming on the 29th. This would have been much more profitable if I had positioned in it the same way I positioned for the downside trade.

Of course, we never know. Maybe the next trade works, maybe it doesn’t. That is always part of the game, but I saw the shift, and I was still mentally tied to a thesis that was done for now.

The psychological piece

A lot of times, we look at the chart through how we wanted something to play out instead of what is right in front of us. There can be this unconscious expectation of how we thought the trade would move, especially when the original thesis already worked.

But the market is going to do what it wants to do. We can only make our best prediction, think through what has the highest probability, and then keep updating as price gives us new information. What I feel or think about my original thesis is irrelevant once price starts showing me something different.

And that is one of the harder parts of trading, because the market moves fast. Sometimes the setup changes before we have mentally caught up.

Final Takeaway

The trade worked, the profit was nice, and I’m happy with the strategy update I got from it. This is why breaking down your trades in detail is so important. Not just documenting entries, exits, emotions, and errors, but actually coming back to the trade and seeing what else is there. You don’t have to do this with every single trade, but even doing a handful of these a month can give you so much information that you would probably miss if you just documented your trade and moved on.

I encourage you to assess your trade over the course of a few days. I documented it, reviewed it, slept on it, journaled on it, and each time I was able to connect a few more dots. The information you can extract from your own trades is invaluable.

This is how you improve your edge, this is how you coach yourself through your own data, and this is part of what helps you keep moving from good to great.