To The Moon

April Closed Strong. Most Of It Wasn't Me.

Mathematical Money | May 2, 2026

April was the best month this account has had in a long time. Almost 30% on the month.

Before anyone DMs asking what I bought — slow down. This is not a "look how clever I am" post. The opposite. I want to walk through this honestly, because if I let a headline percentage stand by itself, half of you will read it wrong and the other half will assume the entire thing came from some kind of genius call. Neither is true.

Let me decompose it.

Where The Money Actually Came From

MARA stock recovery did the bulk of the work.

On April 1 the stock was around $8.86. On April 30 it closed at $11.99. That's a 35% recovery in a single month on a position I was already holding. The vast majority of the month's gain — roughly 85% of it — came from MARA shares appreciating. That is not strategy. That is the position I was already in waking up to a market that finally cooperated.

If you've been following this account for a while, you know I was sitting on a brutal MARA drawdown for months. The shares were bought well above where they traded for most of last quarter. Watching them sit in the $8s wasn't fun. The wheel premium kept the lights on through the worst of it, but the share position itself was deeply underwater. April was the first month in a while where the underlying did most of the lifting.

I could write a bull post about how my conviction was vindicated. I'm not going to. The truth is the wheel strategy doesn't depend on me being right about MARA's direction — it depends on the position being sized correctly and the premium covering enough of the carry while we wait. April just happened to be the month where the wait ended favourably.

Net premium collected and SPY LEAPS appreciation contributed roughly the next 10%.

This is where the system did its work. The wheel on MARA generated steady premium across hundreds of contracts traded. The SPY PMCC LEAPS gained meaningfully in unrealized value as SPY ran from the $660s to the $720s through the month. The MSFT PMCC, opened mid-month, is already green. Front spreads cycled through and added small net contributions.

This is the part I can take credit for. It's also the smaller chunk of the month.

Realized losses ate into all of that — close to thirty thousand dollars worth.

ETHA was the big one. Closed the entire 25-contract Jan 2027 LEAPS position at a $19,497 realized loss. That was a directional bet that ran out of time. I covered it in last week's post. Not repeating myself.

The rest was MARA call rolls. As the stock rallied past $11, the short calls I'd sold at $10–$11 strikes went deep into the money. To keep the shares I had to close those calls at a loss and roll them out and up. Cost me around $10,000 in realized losses over the back half of the month. The trade-off was keeping every share to participate in the recovery — which, given the 35% move in the underlying, was worth several times the roll cost.

So What Actually "Worked"

Here's the honest version. The single biggest thing the strategy did right in April was prevent me from doing anything stupid.

When MARA was at $8.86 on April 1, it would have been very easy to capitulate. Sell the shares, take the loss, "free up the capital." That's what most retail traders do at the bottom. The wheel structure made that decision impossible to seriously entertain — every week the premium kept coming in, the strikes adjusted, the position kept paying me to wait.

When MARA started ripping in mid-April, it would have been very easy to chase. Add more shares, lift offers on calls, get aggressive. The mechanical roll discipline — close the ITM call, take the loss, open a higher strike, collect new premium — kept me from doing any of that. It absorbed the rally without requiring a decision from me about whether to chase or fade.

Same on SPY. As the index pushed through $700, $710, $720, the system kept rolling short calls higher, kept buying more LEAPS at slightly higher strikes, kept layering front spreads at adjusted levels. I added 4 more SPY LEAPS in April — now holding 8 of them — including 3 dated out to March 2027. None of those were "calls of the year" type moves. They were just the next thing the framework said to do.

The system isn't designed to make $167k in a month. It's designed to make money slowly, consistently, while keeping me from blowing up when conditions shift suddenly. April was the rare month where the slow-and-steady part lined up with a major underlying recovery. That's not the base case for May, June, or any other month.

What's Open Going Into May

The book got busier and longer-dated through April.

MARA: full share position intact. The wheel is now running at $11–$13 strikes for May 15, May 22, and May 29 expiries. Short put coverage at $9 across the same dates. The whole structure repriced higher because the stock did.

SPY: 8 LEAPS in total — 5 December 2026, 3 March 2027. Short calls rolling weekly at $725–$742 strikes. Front spreads layered at $670/$640 through August. Dec LEAPS sitting on solid unrealized gains.

MSFT: 2 PMCC structures. Jun 2027 $360 LEAPS plus short calls. Jan 2027 $510 LEAPS plus short calls. Both green so far.

Cleaning out: COIN and BMNR positions still being wound down. Short calls on both, letting them decay off.

About 60% of the option book is now SPY-related, 35% MARA, the rest MSFT. That's a real shift from where this portfolio was three months ago when MARA dominated everything.

What I'm Watching In May

The honest answer is that I don't know what May will do, and the strategy doesn't require me to know. I have positions that benefit from a continued rally (the LEAPS and the MARA shares), positions that benefit from the rally pausing (the short calls and front spreads), and positions that benefit from a sharp reversal (the longer-dated put protection through August).

If MARA breaks above $13, my $13 short calls cap me but I still own appreciating shares. If it pulls back to $10, my $9 short puts get tested but I'm okay with assignment at that level — it's below my recent re-entry zone anyway. If it grinds sideways, the premium just keeps coming in.

If SPY keeps running, my LEAPS print and I'll keep rolling short calls higher. If it consolidates here, the short calls decay and I keep collecting. If it breaks down, the front spreads activate and the LEAPS still have months of time value.

I don't need to be right about direction. I need the framework to be right about positioning. That's the whole point.

One More Thing

A 30% month is not normal. It will not repeat in May. It will not repeat as an average. The next month I have a serious drawdown — and there will be one — I'll write that post too with the same honesty I'm writing this one with. The whole point of this feed is to show what the math actually looks like over time, not to celebrate the up months and disappear during the down ones.

If you're new here from this month's number — thanks for stopping by, but please read the older posts before mirroring anything. The wheel on MARA doesn't make sense without understanding why the shares are sized this way. The PMCCs don't make sense without the LEAPS selection logic. The front spreads don't make sense without the regime context. Skip the mechanics and you'll just lose money faster.

For anyone who wants the deeper breakdown of any of these strategies — drop a comment below. I read all of them, even when I can't reply individually. Faster channels are TikTok and YouTube DMs (Mathematical Money on both) or through trueknot.sg.

Stop guessing. Start calculating. See you in May. 🤙