BTC: $66,900 | ETH: $2,035 | SOL: $80 | SPY: $656 | Fear & Greed: 12 (Extreme Fear)

Fifty-three days in Extreme Fear. The longest streak since FTX collapsed in late 2022 and it's still going. BTC is grinding around $67K, ETH is parked just above $2,000, and SOL slipped below $80 for the first time in a while. The prices aren't moving much. The sentiment hasn't budged. That combination, where nothing is getting worse but nobody believes it can get better, is usually what the bottom of a fear cycle looks like. Not calling it. Just noting the pattern.

Stocks are in a different spot entirely. SPY closed at $656 on Wednesday before the market shut for Good Friday, and then a blowout jobs report landed while everyone was off. The economy added 178,000 jobs in March, triple what forecasters expected. That number kills the "rate cuts are coming soon" narrative. Good for the economy, bad for anyone hoping cheaper borrowing would push asset prices higher. The covered call ETFs don't need rate cuts to work, though. Higher volatility from the war actually pumps option premium income. Distributions across the dividend stack ticked up this month because of it.

The story worth paying attention to this week is oil. The Strait of Hormuz has been effectively closed for over a month. Brent crude hit $126 at its peak, and the IEA warned that April will be worse than March because the ships that were already in transit when the war started have all arrived. There's nothing behind them. The IEA coordinated a record release of 400 million barrels from strategic reserves, but that buys weeks, not months. Oil above $100 raises costs on everything. Shipping, manufacturing, food, gas. That feeds directly into the inflation data dropping this Thursday. If CPI runs hot, rate cuts get pushed even further out, which puts more downward pressure on equity prices and keeps volatility elevated. For the stack, that's a mixed bag. Covered call ETFs pay more when markets are choppy. DeFi yields don't correlate to oil prices at all. Rental income is locked in. The war is real and the economic fallout is real. But the stack was designed for exactly this kind of environment, where every income stream responds to a different set of conditions and not all of them break at the same time.

What I'm watching this week:

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Every week I track every dollar I earn outside my W2. My FIRE number (Financial Independence, Retire Early) is $10,000 a month. That's the number where the job becomes optional.

This week I made two moves and I'm introducing something I should have brought here a while ago.

First, I closed the AERO/USDC pool entirely and moved that capital into the ETH/USDC position. The AERO pool was paying well on paper but the token volatility and impermanent loss (when the assets in your pool shift in value and you end up with less than if you'd just held them) were eating into the real return. Consolidating into one DeFi position simplifies the tracking and concentrates capital where I have more conviction.

Second, I've been selling options premium on a weekly basis to generate additional income that funds the dividend ETF portfolio. I've been doing this for a while but haven't brought it to the newsletter until now. This week I opened positions in WDC and MU, and I've been trading SPX on a semi-frequent basis. The logic: sell weekly puts or covered calls, collect premium, use that premium to buy more dividend ETFs. The war actually makes this more interesting. Tail risk and short-term volatility spike implied volatility, which means fatter premiums. But it also increases the chance price blows past your strike. I'm being selective and sizing small until there's more clarity on Iran.

Here's what the stack looks like right now:

Real estate, 1 duplex and 3 single family units, net after mortgage with the 50% rule applied: $1,297/month

ETH/USDC liquidity pool (consolidated), 65% APR: ~$105/week (~$455/month)

Dividend ETFs, SPYI, JEPI, JEPQ, QQQI and five others: $100/month

Options premium selling (WDC, MU, SPX): variable, tracking starts now

Total outside the W2: ~$1,852/month (excluding options income until I have consistent tracking) FIRE goal: $10,000/month Progress: 18.5%

The jump from $1,664 to $1,852 came almost entirely from consolidating the DeFi position and deploying more capital at a higher effective rate. The AERO pool was contributing $67 a month. The combined ETH/USDC position is now doing roughly $455. Same risk category, better execution.

The options income is real but I'm not reporting a monthly number until I've tracked it consistently for at least four weeks. I'll share the trades each week so you can see what's actually happening. No inflated projections.

Honest take: introducing options to the newsletter felt overdue. It's something I care deeply about and spend real time on every week. Not including it was making the stack picture incomplete. Now it's all here.

The AERO pool was a learning position. It worked, I made money, and I understood how volatile token pair pools behave differently from stablecoin-heavy pools.

Moving that capital into the ETH/USDC pool at 65% APR was the better math. One pool to manage, one set of risks to monitor, and a pair I have more conviction in long term. ETH at $2,035 doesn't excite anyone right now. That's fine. The yield comes from trading fees in the pool, not from ETH price appreciation.

On the options side, I'm watching the Iran situation closely before scaling into more positions. The tail risk right now is real. If Trump follows through on the Tuesday power plant threat and Iran escalates, you could see SPX gap down hard and blow through strikes. I'm keeping position sizes small and mostly selling puts on names I wouldn't mind owning at lower prices, which is why WDC and MU. Both are in sectors I understand and both got cheaper this quarter. SPX trades are smaller and more tactical, usually same-day or next-day expiry.

What I'm watching next week: if CPI comes in hot and SPX drops, I'll look to sell more puts on the names I'm tracking. If the Iran situation de-escalates and VIX drops, I'll pause and wait for the next setup. Options premium selling works best when you're patient and selective, not when you're chasing every expiry.

I had two DeFi pools. One was working. One was slowly bleeding value through impermanent loss that I kept justifying because the APY number looked good on paper.

This is the mistake: looking at the APY and ignoring what's happening to the underlying tokens. A pool paying 100% APY doesn't matter if the token in the pair drops 60%. Your yield gets paid in a depreciating asset and your principal shrinks. The net return can be negative even though the dashboard shows a big green number.

The fix is simple but hard to do emotionally. Kill the position that isn't working, even if it's still "paying." Consolidate into the position where you have real conviction. One well-chosen pool beats three mediocre ones every time.

I should have done this a month ago. I held on because closing a position feels like admitting it was wrong. It wasn't wrong when I entered it. It was wrong to stay in it after the thesis changed.

One question before you go

I sat on the options income for weeks before bringing it into the newsletter because I wasn't sure if it belonged. Have you ever kept a side project or income stream to yourself because you weren't sure it was "real enough" to count?

Hit reply. One line is enough. I read every one.

Forward this to one person who needs to read it today.

Keep stacking.

@YieldSage

Not financial advice. Do your own research. Only invest what you can afford to lose.