I'm doing just fine with shorts (90% of my account). You don't have to short at the money to make money. Also, the twitterati celebrating a 5.0% core CPI (Kobessi Letter, etc) and saying the Feds plan is working need to step away from the bong and think for a second. After today's flat core print (e.g. the one that shows no improvement and is still 150% above 2% target), the Fed is stuck between two choices - another raise or a pause. They might get pressured into a pause, but they probably need a raise (or 4).   Consider this: how bad is 5% core? Well, prices will double every 14.4 years with that rate of inflation (great for some businesses, but probably not great for you). On the other hand, at 2%, prices double every 36 years.  Not so great for the a lot of businesses trying to show growth at all costs (even if growth is simply a function of passing on inflated prices to consumer, as it has been recently), but much better for the common people.