Brandon Chapman, Author at TheoTrade

What Freed Utilities to Jump 2.5%

October 6, 2026

Hey trader, Utilities jumped about 2.5% today with very little help from the news. Most of that move traces back to what happens when a call wall breaks. XLU, the utilities ETF, had been stuck under two call walls at $40 and $40.50. A call wall is basically a strike with a huge pile of call contracts sitting on it. The dealers on the other side of those contracts hedge by selling into strength. Every push toward the wall runs into a seller. Once you know how to read a call wall like that, you can tell whether a rally is about to stall or about to run. You can also spot the walls that look big on the chain and barely matter. Today XLU broke through both of its walls. After it cleared them, that selling got out of the way, and price had room to run. Somebody also

Why I Passed on CLF’s Calls

October 5, 2026

Hey trader, Two metal stocks showed big call buying on the Console this morning. Alcoa had it, and so did CLF. Call buying basically means someone’s betting a stock goes higher. Both looked like trades worth following. I took only one of them. CLF had a huge pile of call contracts sitting at $13, right where it was trading. I call a strike like that a wall. Alcoa had very little in its way up to $50. Checking what sits above a print can keep you from following call buying into a stock with no room to run. The Alcoa print started me down this road, so I’ll begin there. How Alcoa’s Call Buying Handed Me a Target Alcoa’s call buying came in on the November 20 expiration at two strikes, $45 and $50. Each print topped 1,000 contracts. The 5,000 contracts at $45 traded for $2.15. That’s closer to

What Stalled the Mag 7 Rally

October 3, 2026

Hey trader, Friday morning looked like a day to buy. Nvidia was leading, with the rest of the Mag 7 right behind it. I wasn’t sold. I went down the list and pulled up the leaders one at a time. Every one of them was sitting in positive gamma. Positive gamma basically means dealers sell into strength and buy into weakness to keep themselves hedged. Each push higher runs into a seller. Once you can spot that, you’ll know whether a rally has room before you put money into it. The S&P 500 gets a lot of its weight from a few stocks like Nvidia. If they can’t push through, I have a hard time seeing the index go much higher. Meta touched 740 for about a split second today and backed right off. I call levels like that walls, since they’re strikes with a huge pile of option contracts

How Put Buying Can Send a Stock Higher

October 1, 2026

Hey trader, Somebody bought about 20,000 Hertz puts this morning. Someone in my session guessed the put buying was a bet on bankruptcy. It’s a fair guess, since a put is basically a bet that a stock falls. I think this one’s probably a hedge, though. You’ll want to know the difference. A hedge like this can turn a print that looks bearish into a long setup. The dealer who sold those puts shorted Hertz shares right away to stay protected. If Hertz doesn’t fall, the dealer needs less of that protection as expiration gets closer. Buying those shares back can lift the price. Traders call that charm, which is basically how time changes an option’s sensitivity to the stock. Working through that print led me to a trade risking about 20 cents on a call worth $1 if Hertz gets to $3. Before I get to it, you need

Why I NEVER Sell Iron Condors

September 30, 2026

Hey trader, People think it’s safe to sell iron condors. The risk is capped. It also seems cheap to put on, apart from the commissions. I don’t like them. I never sell iron condors. They’re long-run losers. They’re costing you money if you keep selling them. I know that sounds odd coming from me. After all, an iron condor is just a put vertical spread sold below the stock and a call vertical spread sold above it. Those two spreads carry something called negative expectancy. It sounds like a mouthful. It just means you’ll lose money over time if you keep taking the trade. BUYING an iron condor is a different ballgame. That’s one I’m willing to play. Why does a “safe” trade lose money over time? The volatility curve holds the answer. How a Coin Flip Explains Expectancy Expectancy is what a trade makes or loses on average if

In SPY Trades, This Beats the VIX

September 29, 2026

Hey trader, Someone in my session today pointed out that options cost more with the VIX above 14. Vertical spreads don’t work that way. A vertical basically means buying one option and selling another at a different strike against it. Its price comes down to two things: the odds it pays off and skew. Skew is essentially the gap in volatility the market prices into each strike. The bigger that gap, the better the price on the spread. Today the gap was small. A SPY spread I’d normally buy for about 40 cents was going for 52. I passed on it. That extra 12 cents came from flat skew. The VIX level had nothing to do with it. Once you can see which of those two things is moving, you’ll know a spread is overpriced before you pay for it. Here’s how I priced it this morning. Where the VIX

Where SPY Stops This Week

September 28, 2026

Hey trader, I start with the October 2 expiration, since that’s Friday. Then I look for the strikes with the most contracts sitting on them. On the upside, 14,000 contracts sit at 772. That’s my ceiling for the week. The 775 strike gets bigger as I go further out in time. I could push the ceiling up to 775 and give the range 10 points of upside. I’m sticking with 772 for now. Given where SPY stands at 765, it’s the level I trust. It also carries more open interest for Friday than 775 does. Underneath, the biggest level for the week sits at 750. That’s another 15 points below 765, or basically 2%. There’s a stop along the way at 761. That wall carries about $1.3 billion in gamma right now. Gamma, in this case, is essentially a measure of how much stock dealers may need to buy or

Their 90% Win Rate Hid This

September 26, 2026

Hey trader, A couple I coached years ago called me with great news. They were right on 90% of their trades. Their system was simple. They bought out-of-the-money calls at the open and sold them at the close. Those are cheap options that only pay off if the stock climbs past a price it hasn’t reached yet. I asked what they did when a trade lost money. They told me they held it overnight because it always came back. A month later, they’d given back every dollar of profit. Being right 90% of the time couldn’t save them. Every loser they carried overnight had the whole night to get worse. This morning the Console showed someone buying those same kinds of cheap calls in Realty Income. I’m going to show you how I’d trade them without falling into the habit that sank that couple. It starts with the phone call.

I Let a Double Go to Zero

September 24, 2026

Hey trader, Last Friday I had a trade sitting on a 100% gain. I held on for a little more, and it went to zero. If you’ve traded options for any length of time, you’ve probably had one of those too. It stings more than a normal loss because the money was right there. This week I traded the same SPY spread setup three days in a row. I paid 35 cents each time, and I set a different profit target each time. A spread basically means buying one option and selling another against it. That caps both what I pay and what I can make. The profit targets changed because the market changed underneath them. Each day gave me a clue about where to get out. When the market doesn’t tell me anything, I lean on one habit, and it would’ve saved me last Friday. On Tuesday, price was

What My SPY Puts Can’t See

September 23, 2026

Hey trader, The SPY hedge I built today has a blind spot. I cover it with a VIX call spread that costs 69 cents. That hedge assumes your stocks move like the S&P 500. Some of them won’t. A few will fall harder than the index once real selling shows up. I call the SPY hedge my Atomic Hedge. Essentially, I buy puts and sell call spreads to pay for them, the same way institutions are hedging right now. The VIX basically measures how much movement options traders expect from the S&P 500 over the next 30 days. A call spread on it means buying one strike and selling a higher one, which keeps my cost low. Picking those strikes came down to one check. I read what the market already expected the VIX to do, then started my spread right at that number. What does a 69-cent trade catch

	Today
09.00	Don Kaufman \| Pre-Market Prep \| FREE SESSION 09.20 09.30 Don Kaufman \| Early volatility 09.20 10.30 Jeff Bierman \| Market structure 10.30 11.30 Brandon Chapman \| Ghost Hour 11.30 12.30 Gianni Di Poce \| Macro overview 12.30 13.15 Elizabeth \| Price Action 13.15 14.00
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14.00	Corey Rosenbloom \| Options tactics 14.00 15.00
15.00	Blake Young \| Market wrap 15.00 16.00

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