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As long as the pattern in today's trade holds up high, then we can profit in today's trade.
If it follows through on the upside, all the better and we'll achieve our profit target all the sooner. But as long as it doesn't falter, that's all we need to profit.
Either way, we're leveraging what the options market is offering us to increase our odds of success.
In today's Flow Show, Steve Strazza and I discuss the "real" stock market and what's going on that isn't indicative of what the $QQQ or $SPY is telling us.
Are we setting up for a regime change? Or a change of character for this bull market?
Well, one of the stocks most likely to answer this question is Nvidia $NVDA.
You guys in the chat room have been on fire lately!
I love the camaraderie that has been built among you guys and gals. The ideas, the mutual support, the multiple sets of eyes when a position needs our attention. So great.
You're all ONE! OF! US!
With this in mind, today's trade is in a name that has been discussed a few times of late in the chat. I've been waiting for a tradable support level to reveal itself, and we may be getting it right now, so let's get to it....
"First they scare 'em out, then they wear 'em out."
That's a famous old Wall Street saying. And I agree with it 100%.
In Bitcoin, the "scare" post-100K might not have been that scary (or maybe it's yet to come?), but it definitely feels like we're in the "wear 'em out" phase right now.
And my gut tells me the next move higher will catch the chasers by surprise. That's what I want to position for.
Your struggles are most certainly different than mine. It follows that they are different from your neighbors, work colleagues, friends, and even family members.
They may be better or worse. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you have struggles, they are yours, and to varying degrees, these struggles affect your mental health and put you at risk of entering a self-fulfilling spiral that you can't escape from until you've lost everything.
Seven of the ten biggest-ever options volume days have been in 2024, with the other three in 2023, according to this report in Traders Magazine.
It goes on to say: "...numbers that would be considered spikes ten or even five years ago are more like a current-day new normal."
I wouldn't have it any other way.
The growing popularity of options trading makes sense to me. No other product offers so much dynamic flexibility for traders to craft unique ways to express market opinions.
No other product gives us the ability to define our risks absolutely, while positioning ourselves with leverage to participate in theoretically unlimited gains.
We've seen some fast moving breakouts during the recent stage of this bull market cycle.
I'm not calling for the bull market to end. In fact, I think it continues for a while longer. But its highly likely the pace of prices increases slows.
With this in mind, today's trade is the perfect kind of play for such an environment
We talk a lot around here about taking half off the table either when our position doubles in value or we hit a key price target.
It's a great position management practice that increases our win rate while leaving us with partial positions to participate in truly outstanding runs.
But we haven't talked much about alternative ways to "take half."
What if we can take half of our directional risk off the table while leveraging gamma to keep the majority of our open profits in the case of a market reversal, and participate almost fully in a truly massive breakout?
Sounds nice, right?
A situation like this is presenting itself in our current open position in $CM Dec 55 calls. We entered this position in August and now our in-the-money calls are approaching expiration on December 20th.