Power Plays Options Weekly
Roundup
August 1, 2025

Before we get started, I'm taking these actions for Power Plays Options:

• Trim 1/3 the UVXY 9/19 $22 Calls (leaving us with 2/3)
• Close the XBI 8/8 $90 Calls
• Close the BIDU 8/15 $95 Calls

We'll take a modest gain on the UVXY calls, but the XBI and BIDU positions go in the loss column.

Biotech and China were major disappointments over the past few days, so I'm just salvaging the small amount of premium left.

Unfortunately, the downturn has hurt many of our positions, and I'm doing more damage control than opportunity-seeking.

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We’re closing out an incredibly busy week with markets.

The Fed left rates unchanged as expected, and the entire meeting was a non-event.

Earnings were on the strong side, with Meta (META), Microsoft (MSFT), Apple (AAPL), and Amazon (AMZN) all beating expectations.

Post-report reactions were a bit all over the place, with some names extending, and others, notably Amazon, seeing major sell-the-news declines.

On Friday, we got a slightly light jobs report.

But the real problem was the past two months were revised down huge, which injected a ton of worry about the economy.

We also saw President Trump announce a big new wave of tariffs, which gave traders reason to do more selling on Friday.

We'll take things day-by-day, monitoring key levels and leaders to see just how far we have to fall.

And my personal strategy is to hold more cash, and operate on shorter time frames.

This is not time to swing for the fences.

Now let’s dig into our current names:

UVXY 9/19 $22 Calls: I added these as a hedge this week, which helped give us a small cushion against the broader selling.

XLE 9/19 $88 Calls: I'm still looking for a rotation into energy, which is why i added these calls last Friday. XLE has been slipping, but looks fine for now.

AAPL 8/1 $215 Calls: Apple delivered solid earnings, and I'm very surprised the stock couldn't escape the broader selling. Unfortunately, these calls will expire worthless at the end of the day.

GRAB 8/22 $6 Calls: this name got hit after earnings so these calls will most likely be a zero. I'm just leaving them on in the event of a surprise surge.

Have a good weekend.

-Scott