I sell options premium and post the trades. Free picks 9:45a & 1p ET from my own scanner. No group, no course, no catch, just plays. Not financial advice.
@valerijatrades1 I built a strike selector system into my dashboard yesterday and your covered call for IREN is right at the safest strike!
I missed selling CCs on it this week unfortunately.
Premarket positioning review. Just the data.
Tape: $SPY futures down about 0.5%, $QQQ down 0.8% with tech leading lower, VIX bid to 18, up almost 3%. Steady risk-off, nothing violent.
Gamma: dealer gamma flipped negative on both $SPY and $QQQ into yesterday's close. SPY net gamma went from positive earlier this week to negative on the 7th. QQQ deepened to its most negative reading of the week. Negative gamma means dealers amplify moves instead of dampening them. The open gets chased, not faded.
Flow: net options premium bled negative all session yesterday and net volume finished down over a million contracts. Sellers had control into the close.
Levels: $SPY closed 747.71 with yesterday's low at 745.21. Near term max pain sits at 748 and pulls toward 740 by the 17th. $QQQ is around 704 premarket against a 709 close, and its max pain is way up at 723, so tech is sitting nearly 20 handles under its pin.
First 30 minutes I'm watching: whether net call premium keeps bleeding or flips positive, VIX holding above or losing 18, and 745.21 on $SPY. In negative gamma, the first move usually lies.
Just the tape, not advice.
This is the wheel's favorite tape. An indiscriminate selloff spikes put IV on names I'd own anyway, so selling a cash secured put below the flush pays me to set my buy price under today's panic. I only do it on names I'd hold if the cascade keeps going. Which would you take assigned?
@TheLongInvest This is the exact name I'd wheel, not just hold. If I'm that convinced and won't short, I sell cash secured puts to get paid buying the dips I'd buy anyway, then covered calls while the humanoid story plays out. Why do so few long-term bulls monetize conviction they'd never sell?
$AAPL sitting at 95% of its 52-week range. If you're selling covered calls here, the question isn't whether. It's which strike.
Two real options this week (17 DTE, pre-earnings):
$327.5 → 8.9% annualized, but 0.16 delta and a 15.7% spread. More yield, worse fill.
$330 → 6.9% annualized, 0.13 delta, tight 12% spread, clean.
Both sit outside the expected move. On a share position I won't let get called away, I take the $330 every time. The extra yield at $327.5 isn't worth the wider spread and higher assignment risk when the whole point is keeping the shares.
Pay for safety, not for the last basis point.