Despite being in the red for the day I am actually fairly pleased with how this trading session went. The direction that I expected to see materialized on a number stocks which helps me build confidence. Disappointing to have ended the week on the wrong side of zero but that will happen sometimes.

After observing the selling into the close on Thursday I felt certain that, barring any negative news, there would be a similar sell into the close on Friday too. Part of what turned a green day into a red day was that I misjudged the timing; promptly at 10 minutes until the close the selling started. 15:50 Wall St time is when the big trading swings into the close happen,, if they are going to happen.

The only news of consequence was that Trump threatened Tim Apple with tariffs, which is one of the few instances I can think of where a US President called out a specific company legally operating in the United States.

Trump also announced tariffs on the EU which didn't last through the weekend. The market in general didn't react to the announcement on Friday exactly for this reason. The jig is up. The tariff bluster has no serious methodology behind it nor does it carry any substance behind it.

The way I expect the market to react to the next three years of tariff shenanigans is that prices will dip slightly on tariff announcement, and then everybody will be taking bets on how long they will last, which I would expect to see through the options market(s).

The trading week ahead I think will be centered around Nvidia earnings on Wednesday. For better or worse NVDA acts as an indicator for which direction the technology sector moves, and the market at large. Apple (AAPL) dipped on the threats from the White House but they did not bring more of the market with them. Confidence in NVDA is confidence in the "AI trade" and lifts all boats, the contrary also holds true.

As the most magnificent of the "Magnificent 7", Nvidia is going to be driving this week.

Log

• Was not expecting much from the trading today, so queued up a few simple trades at the open in case of a opening pop. That didn't really materialize across the board, except with SMCI which went pretty erratic for the first couple minutes.
• Opened up largely deal sizes than I would normally to lean a little harder on the potential selling into Memorial Day.
• Found some good positions before Trump threatened more tariffs against our allies, oof.
• Tripped myself on some NVDA puts misjudging the durability of a rally. Cut it loose sooner than I would have a while ago, but that set me behind for the day.
• Found some good downward momentum in the early afternoon, but hunting for more is proving elusive. The push up on SMCI isn't yet making sense to me.
• Experimenting with market orders a bit when watching the momentum, that way I'm not trying to fiddle with order tickets but just timing the submission of the order. I have a bit more faith in testing this out with some algorithmic orders which try to split the bid/ask spread. It's working out okay.
• Some positions in place expecting selling into the close, we'll see how that goes!
• Had to step away for a bit, and missed a window to offload some AMD puts for a small profit, instead took a loss.
• As I expected there was more selling into the close, which means I exited some puts too early; annoyed with myself on that one.
• Used a bit of margin towards the close to buy a dip on SHOP and then turn around and sell a short-term covered call option on it for next Friday.