Semiconductors have fallen to a fairly meaningful support level. For more downside from here, they need to break below it with conviction. For upside, they need to hold the support. So the big orders opened Friday were very extreme: buying short-term deep out-of-the-money puts, the kind that cost a dime or two. The upside is that if the market crashes at Monday's open, they double right away. The other upside is that if the market opens higher, you only lose a little. It's a bet with almost no downside. But from other players' point of view, when big buy orders are very cheap, it usually means the direction they're betting on is seen as low probability. Another less cheap bearish play is buying out-of-the-money puts, say expiring next year. That works better for positioning before a crash,

The value of Trump accounts auto-investing in the S&P 500 keeps looking better. Semiconductors crashed, dragging Korea's KOSPI down 17% for the month. SOXX fell 9.5% for the month. But as of Friday premarket, the S&P 500 is up 1.2% this month. The chain selling that usually hits U.S. stocks after a sector crash didn't happen this time. To keep the index balanced, consumer and healthcare sectors are being pushed to the limit. The market makers are really working overtime to herd money where they want it. The popular story that Democrats sweeping the House would crack down on AI sounds reasonable. But guess which party Nancy Pelosi — Congress's stock-trading star — belongs to. She bought NVDA and BE stock and calls. $iShares 20+ Year Treasury Bon

Some people may have noticed that the index spikes hard for two days every month, usually at the start of the month. Then the trend slides down like a paper airplane losing speed. Then a new month starts, and it spikes again. This makes the daily chart look like a dog chewed on it, but the monthly chart keeps climbing steadily along the 5-month moving average. This pattern started after July 4th this year. That's also when Trump's baby account policy was announced — a plan to get kids to auto-invest in the S&P 500. From some big bearish orders, you can see the S&P 500 really wanted a proper pullback after July. July was painful for a lot of people, but the S&P 500 held firmly above its 5-month moving average. In other words, sectors can take turns falling, but the S&P 500's

The title is my attitude toward the Q4 market — more precisely, through Anthropic's IPO. Q4 has three major tailwinds. First, Anthropic has tentatively finalized its IPO date. It's reportedly planning a large-scale IPO before the Thanksgiving holiday (around November 26), and could begin IPO marketing as early as the week of November 9. It plans to target a valuation between $1.8 trillion and $2 trillion. As everyone knows, a blockbuster company going public means the market atmosphere has to be heated up — the market must rise. Second, historical data: since 1930, the S&P 500 has averaged a 5.6% gain in Q4 of midterm election years — twice the average gain of other years. Third, tonight's nonfarm payrolls. Only 29,000 jobs added — it made me laugh. Rate-hike odds immediately dropped.

TLT and Treasury yields typically move inversely, so the surge in yields pushed TLT below 80, hitting historic lows. However, a mysterious options block trade suggests this trend may be nearing a temporary end. During today's session, someone opened 80,000 contracts of the November 30-expiry TLT call at the 83 strike $TLT 20261130 83.0 CALL$ , with a total notional of about $3 million. It's possible the buyer simply thought it was too low and saw a rebound opportunity, so they went all in — because $3 million in notional isn't particularly impressive in today's world of A9-level wealth; it only shows that buyers are tempted at this level. Still, nearly 100,000 contracts in volume is enough to sound an alarm for market mak

$Intel(INTC)$ If you ask me what the most worth-holding stock in October is, yesterday I wouldn't have had a definitive answer — but today I can confidently say it's Intel. On Monday, a large Sell Call block opened, selling the October 16-expiry 130 Call $INTC 20261016 130.0 CALL$ , opening 52,000 contracts. Someone also opened a 160 Sell Call and an October 9-expiry 130 Sell Call, but both were under 10,000 contracts. Ordinary Sell Call block trades get absorbed into the options wall, but a 50,000-contract Sell Call block carries reflexivity. The effect of these massive seller block trades plays out in two phases: In the first phase, the validity of the block trade is confirmed

$Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ Last week's price target was 700, and this week's target has already become 800. Theoretically, if Muse integrates more functions and participates in more work applications that require privacy authorization, the stock's upside ceiling will rise even further. This round of Muse's marketing has been extremely successful, precisely capturing user pain points, which is why it ranked #2 on the app download charts in its first week. I think it's not impossible for the stock to have an even higher ceiling — closely monitor Muse's feature updates going forward. For a conservative bullish strategy ahead of earnings, Sell Put is fine. For the strike price, consider 700

$Intel(INTC)$ Tonight's short squeeze in CPU concept stocks was spectacular — AMD hit a trillion-dollar market cap intraday, and Pelosi's ITM call position rose 23% $INTC 20270319 50.0 CALL$ . The reasons behind this squeeze are complex: various delayed industry catalysts finally fermented — like the Meta App Store ranking news we'd been talking about all last week, which only exploded today, and then the C-end application surge, which in turn benefited chips; the crude oil plunge cooled inflation expectations; Of course, the most important factor was the positioning of the chips. The expectation of a late-September pullback was so deeply ingrained that last week saw a pile of Sell

$SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ Thursday's meeting didn't just deliver one rate hike — it also signaled another hike later this year, which is about as hawkish as it gets. Maxing out expectations isn't necessarily bad — it means the market's next focus won't be on data beating expectations, but on what happens if data comes in below expectations. But after the hawkish hike, the market didn't pull back significantly — tech stocks rebounded and led the gains. This is the current "three highs" environment: high growth, high inflation, high rates. According to late-September tradition, the market should pull back. But looking at the directional bets from large block trades, bulls and bears are split roughly 50/50 — you could even say the bullish side

$SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ Based on GEX analysis, SPY is likely to close at 750 this week — rate hike or not, that's the price. Barring any surprises, low-level consolidation should begin next week. Also interesting: GLD saw a buy-side opening of 15,000 contracts on the 430 Call $GLD 20261120 430.0 CALL$ — suggesting gold has a high probability of bottoming out after Friday's meeting. $United States Oil Fund LP(USO)$ Everyone thinks Trump is about to make a deal, but before any deal, there will surely be one more round of death threats. Generally, Trump chooses to announce during trading hours on a weekday — he won't pick a weekend wh

Over the weekend, the three tech giants reached a verbal agreement to slow AI development, causing AI-related concept stocks to plunge — hardware fell, and cloud giants fell too. But I'm thinking about something else: Anthropic's post-IPO earnings and stock performance will likely be very hard to predict, because the CEO can say whatever he wants. Data disclosure is one thing; the earnings call is another. The broader market pullback driven by the three giants' rhetoric looks like a great Sell Put opportunity to me. I mean, do you believe commercial companies won't compete, or do you believe I'm Qin Shi Huang? The verbal slowdown has no actual capex data to back it up — it looks more like expectation management. One explanation for the three giants' slowdown is that they're compromising wi

30-year Treasury yields hit another new high, and oil prices continued rising, breaking above $100. Trump said oil prices won't fall until after the midterm elections — meaning there's one last push higher — so oil prices duly rallied first. The broader market dipped slightly. As long as Friday's CPI isn't too outrageous, the likely outcome is a dip-and-rebound. $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ Judging from call openings, the target for this MUSE-driven move is 700, with many large block trades opening $META 20261002 670.0 CALL$  $META 20261016 800.0 CALL$ . But whether it can reach that level and the path it takes

Today's market is quite eventful — oil broke through $100/barrel, gold rose, Bitcoin rose, Treasury yields rose, semiconductors rose, and even the VIX rose. The only thing that fell was the broader market. Macro inflation is heading higher, but the AI industry outlook is also bullish — it's a "each to their own" kind of dynamic. I'd suggest paying close attention to GPT-6 Astra. The fact that it can lift semiconductors in such a challenging macro environment makes me wonder how much higher they'd fly if the macro environment were actually favorable. Also, we should expect a wave of positive news from closed-source models going forward. $Meta Platforms, Inc.(META)$ Pre-market, META announced its new personal AI assistant, MUSE, which has already cl

$Intel(INTC)$ This time, Intel is the star of the short squeeze. Last week, I warned everyone not to sell naked calls. The consequence of a month-long consolidation and trading below 90 is that a large number of Sell Calls accumulated at four strike levels: 95, 100, 105, and 110. After all, there wasn't much expectation of a rally before the September 18 Triple Witching. But then Tuesday's pre-market gap-up broke through 100 — a sudden squeeze. It also broke above 105 intraday. At this point, it looks like it may challenge the 110 resistance level. Probably similar to NVIDIA — breaking through the 230 resistance before pulling back. In other words, INTC will likely break through 110 before a pullback. On the options front, large at-the-money Sell

$SPDR S&P 500 ETF Trust(SPY)$ The market's script over the past two days is almost identical to last month's — a rally in the first few days of the month, led by NVIDIA. The only question is whether the consolidation and pullback that followed will also be the same. If that's the playbook, then after tomorrow's nonfarm payrolls data is released, the market will gap up and sell off. The expected minimum pullback level over the next two weeks is 755 $SPY 20260911 755.0 PUT$ $SPY 20260915 755.0 PUT$. $NVIDIA(NVDA)$ Although I don't think September is a good time to buy calls,

$Apple(AAPL)$ I previously thought that even though Apple is a top-tier contrarian stock, it would at least need to show some pullback given the magnitude of macro rate hikes. But I forgot about Apple's new CEO taking over — his first public appearance is on September 10. Before that, the stock absolutely cannot fall — how would that look? Wall Street these days can't even let the market drop on July 4th, so you really have to appreciate the unwritten rules of the game. In any case, although there is a 340 Sell Call block trade on September 9 $AAPL 20270115 355.0 CALL$ that makes it hard for the stock to break out significantly, I have no doubt that Apple won't fall before next we

$NVIDIA(NVDA)$ The stock price is currently moving toward the 200–210 center of gravity. You can continue to consider the Sell Call $NVDA 20260911 230.0 CALL$ and Sell Put $NVDA 20260911 200.0 PUT$ strategies. $SK hynix(SKHY)$ Yesterday, EWY had a 20,000-contract Sell Put block trade on the 155 Put $EWY 20261120 155.0 PUT$, which translates to roughly 140 for Hynix $SKHY 20260911 140.0 PUT$. Based on the opening activity, the stock should clo