Brandon Chapman, Author at TheoTrade

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

How One Trade Moved Everything

September 22, 2026

Hey trader, Yesterday, the ran SPY ran from the opening low to a close near the high. I was short at 769 and 767 against the 770 wall, and I watched it run to 775 without me. Losing on that spread doesn’t bother me. Not knowing why the market did it would. So I went looking for the driver, because if I can’t name it, I’ll walk into today assuming it repeats. It wasn’t AI. Breadth was bad and volume was light, which rules out a real trend. Institutions were all crowding into the same bet instead. They bought calls on a small group of mega caps while selling puts on the S&P 500, which lifts a handful of names and drags the index along behind them. That bet leaves a signature you can check in about a minute. I’ll show you where to find it, then show you why

They Bought 11,900 Puts Into Bitcoin’s Breakout?

September 21, 2026

Hey trader, Bitcoin broke out today. IBIT ran 6% and I didn’t buy a thing. On Friday I closed a long IBIT trade near my target at 46, then sat there debating silver against Bitcoin for the next one. I went silver. Today the money went somewhere else entirely. Institutions did something strange in IBIT while it was ripping. They bought close to 11,900 puts at the 47 strike. ETH went the other way. Sweeps hit the 25 and 26 calls out to November. So I priced all three of the crypto names on my screen. Two of them wanted more money than the setup was worth to me. The third let me control a $2 spread for 63 cents. What separated them? The volatility curve did, and I’ll show you exactly where it leaned my way. The Flow Didn’t Agree Across The Three Names ETH has tracked right alongside

Somebody Just Bought 3,000 Utility Puts

September 19, 2026

Hey trader, XLU crossed my screen twice today, from two directions that have nothing to do with each other. The first was a relative strength read I’ve been running since July. The second was a block print that landed in the Console this morning. Both pointed at the same ticker. Both pointed the same way. Utilities are where money parks when it wants to feel safe. That’s what makes 3,000 contracts of puts at the 41 strike worth stopping on. XLU trades at $41 right now. The strike they bought sits at $41. So what happens when the print and the level land on the same number? The ratio put XLU on my list back in July. The print this morning told me where the move starts. The Ratio Put XLU On My List In July I run SPY against XLU as a pairs ratio, then read it off a

These Airline Trades Weren’t About Airlines

September 16, 2026

Hey trader, Airline option flow got loud yesterday. Huge trades hit UAL and JetBlue inside the same session. Airlines live and die on the price of jet fuel. Institutions taking that kind of size in two airlines are usually betting crude goes lower, not betting on the airlines. Oil dropped earlier today. The prints landed a full session before that move showed up. I bought JetBlue behind them yesterday, out a month, playing for the stock to reach $6. Then the Fed raised rates this afternoon. That’s the outcome this trade wanted. A hike pushes the dollar higher, and a stronger dollar leans on crude, which takes cost right out of every airline that burns it. JetBlue trades near $4.30. Cheaper fuel alone doesn’t move a stock 40% in a month, so what actually carries it that far? Two forces do that work, and neither one has anything to do

Why I Won’t Roll This Free Put

September 15, 2026

Hey trader, Rolling a put hedge is the decision I’ve got in front of me today. The Fed announces tomorrow, my downside coverage is already sitting on the market, and I didn’t pay a dime for it. Back on September 9, I walked you through the institutional hedging signal I’d been reading and the structure I put on behind it. I sold call spreads for $5.41 and bought puts with the money. Those call spreads came back to 12 cents. I closed them out, which leaves the put underneath free and clear. SPY sits at 757 right now. My strike is 757, with about three and a half days left on it. That put hasn’t done a thing for me yet. It isn’t in the money. Until 757 breaks, it sits there doing nothing at all. That changes the moment it breaks. So what do I do with it before

Why I Scrapped This 36-Cent Spread

September 14, 2026

Hey trader, Bond flow got loud today. The Console pulled TLT and IEF into the same session, with calls filling at the ask and puts filling at the bid. One IEF print ran 20,000 contracts on a December call spread. I checked it for a roll. It wasn’t one. That buying leaves dealers short calls in Treasuries, which starts building an upside accelerator right in front of Wednesday’s Fed announcement. So I went to build the trade. The spread I wanted priced at 36 cents. I threw it out. One number on the short strike killed it. I run that same check before I sell any strike, in any name. Then I built the version I actually want. That one is a single strike, and I’m bidding 35 cents for it. It needs a pullback that hasn’t shown up yet. Here’s the number that made me switch, and the order

	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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