Editor’s Note: When the markets get as volatile as they’ve been lately, most people tuck their tails and run… but our friend Bryan Bottarelli at Monument Traders Alliance dives in headfirst.
Bryan is one of the finest traders I’ve ever met. And as you’ll see below, his results speak for themselves.
– James Ogletree, Managing Editor
It’s been a market suck-fest lately, which is why this is the perfect time to unleash one of my favorite strategies.
Hedge trading.
Ever since Donald Trump started talking about tariffs and then pausing them and then implementing them and then pausing them but keeping them for certain countries, markets have been all over the place.
I understand why that could get you worried as a trader.
But there’s one strategy we’re now using for consistent profits in The War Room.
In fact, we have a 100% win rate with this strategy in 2025.
As you can see above, we’ve been crushing the markets using hedge trades in 2025.
Some of these trades have given us substantial returns in a relatively short timeframe – including a 68% gain on a VXX hedge in less than 1 trading day.
Why hedges are perfect for this environment
The reason why hedges work in crazy markets is simple.
We’re seeing monster moves in the indexes on a daily basis. Sometimes higher… and more than likely… lower.
So a strangle trade is perfect for this type of environment because no matter if the market crashes or moons – the strangle trade is in the profit zone.
For example, last week I opened a strangle trade on CarMax (KMX).
The markets moved down, and the stock plummeted.
The put option I traded was up 270% and the call was down 98%.
If you take those in aggregate, that put is up almost 3x.
I closed the call side of the trade for a loss, but I more than made up for it 3x over when I closed the 270% gain on the puts.
The KMX strangle trade ended up being a 37% overnight winner – even though the stock went down overnight.
This is why hedges are so powerful. They allow you to profit no matter which direction a stock goes.
The No. 1 mistake traders make in volatile markets
During volatile markets, one of the mistakes traders make is they try to time it.
You might hear traders saying “the bottom is in, everything’s a discount, let’s buy now.”
But that rarely works out in my experience.
When I started trading on the Chicago Board Options Exchange back in the 1990’s, I dealt with volatile markets almost immediately.
It was right when the dotcom bubble was happening.
Euphoria was at an all-time high. People were making millions – on paper.
But when the dotcom bubble burst, I saw traders lose millions just as fast.
I remember one particular trader was up more than $500,000 – only to be down $1.2 million when it all came crashing down.
The truth is… wild markets can change a trader’s fate fast.
Which is why it’s often a fool’s errand to try and time them.
Nobody in the history of the world has ever bottom ticked the market and bought at the low and sold at the absolute highest point.
Sure, you might be right once or twice… and then you’ll be wrong six times and your portfolio is completely blown up.
YOUR ACTION PLAN
Don’t make the classic amateur mistake of trying to time these wild markets perfectly.
Use time-tested strategies – like the hedge trades I mentioned above – that have been proven to generate outsized returns during times of volatility.