Maybe you really are more clever than the rest've us, and have beat the market. Or maybe you got lucky. Or maybe we're only hearing about the winning trades, and you've got some losers we're not hearing about... I suspect it's option 2 or 3. Regardless, this is bad advice.

It isn't bad advice to hedge your position with options, although doing it short term as suggested here is an active trading strategy and inherently more risky.

Contrary to popular belief that options = gambling, this is the #1 real utility of them. If 90% of your investments are tied up in S&P 500, it makes sense to hedge that with put options which provide a clearly defined max-loss over the contract duration of the option.

So in a period like this when those put options become valuable due to price drop and general IV, you can do as suggested and sell them to re-coup losses and maintain capital. It doesn't change the lifetime performance of your money placed in the corresponding security, but it most certainly improves the performance of your portfolio as a whole and limits the damage that can be done in any given downturn.

If you only hold securities, index or otherwise, your only recourse is time. I certainly wouldn't recommend trying to time the market, just like I wouldn't buy an insurance policy the day before a loss. That doesn't mean you avoid insurance altogether because you can't predict when you'll need it.

No he just dampens his returns by protecting against extreme downside black swan events

Your puts are going to expire at some point, what after that? you sell all your holding after expiration? or you buy more puts? puts are expensive, I started 2 weeks ago and paid 7% of my portfolio in premium just as insurance.

You sell them before they expire for profit.