Brandon Chapman, Author at TheoTrade

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

How I Ranked Three Bitcoin Setups

September 12, 2026

Hey trader, Institutions bought bullish option structures in IBIT, MARA, and MSTR today. Three tickers, one underlying bet, and all of it points at Bitcoin setups. The Console flagged every one of them inside the same session. That’s where the easy part ended. Flow tells you where the money went. It doesn’t tell you which of the three setups actually pays you, and that was the call I had to make before the close. So how do you separate them? I ranked them on the gamma structure sitting above each price and on what the options actually cost. That knocked out the name with the most short squeeze potential. I landed instead on a vertical spread I could buy for 38 cents. I’m going to walk you through every number behind that decision. Three Tickers, One Underlying Bet The Console pulled IBIT, MARA, and MSTR into the same session today.

What Are Option Blocks and Sweeps?

September 10, 2026

Hey trader, Traders love to talk about option blocks and sweeps. They come up in almost every conversation about institutional order flow. You’ve probably nodded along to both words without ever pinning down what separates them. But with options dominating market moves, they’re not just nice to knows…but a necessity. So I’m going to show you both order types. We’ll dive into what they mean, what they look like on my console, and then how to use this information to trade better. What option blocks and sweeps actually are A block is one large order filled in one place, at one price, at one moment. It arrives assembled. A sweep is one order broken into smaller trades and spread across different exchanges. It arrives in pieces. Both come from the same kind of buyer. The difference sits in how that buyer chose to get filled. Size runs into a wall

This August Signal Last Fired Before a 9% Drop

September 9, 2026

Hey trader, An institutional hedging signal I keep on my screen went off on August 6. All it tracks is how much large institutions are paying to protect themselves from a drop. When they get nervous, that price climbs. I didn’t act on it that day. I wanted to see how the options market was positioned first. By August 13, that reading was the highest it had been since December 24 of last year. That’s the part I don’t love. Last Christmas Eve, the market slipped only 1.68% at the time. Nothing looked broken. The correction that eventually showed up took 9% off the market. We’re down 2.5% right now. So what does the rest of that math look like? The measure takes two symbols and a single line on a chart. I’ll walk you through the level that matters, then show you what happened the last four times it

How I Trade A Two-Sided Print

September 8, 2026

Hey trader, EOSE sat at the top of my Ghost Prints watchlist this morning, so I pulled it up in the Console. I expected a clean call-buying story. Instead, both sides of the chain were getting bought. They took 8,000 of the $4.50 calls and 8,000 of the 5 calls, mostly at the ask. Then two fresh put trades showed up at $4. That leaves dealers short options on both sides, which is negative gamma in both directions. Every move from here gets amplified instead of absorbed. The stock sits at $4.70 with roughly $1.50 of room underneath it. Above, $8 is live. Flow like that usually means I pass. Two-sided buying tells me a move is coming without telling me where it goes. Then I checked the short interest, and this stopped looking like a coin flip. Let me show you the mechanics underneath it, and the 23-cent option

	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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