Brandon Chapman, Author at TheoTrade

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

Why Volatility Fell As Stocks Fell

September 5, 2026

Hey trader, I was set up for a bad jobs number this Friday. I thought there was a real chance the print came in negative. Instead we got a three sigma beat. Strong economic news, and the market spent the session selling into it. I can explain that part, and I will. The piece I want your attention on is the VIX. Stocks were lower yesterday, and volatility was lower right along with them, sitting down at 14. Now set that next to the SKEW index, which closed at 150 yesterday after sitting at 126 a few weeks ago. Anything above 130 is high. At 150, institutions are hedging aggressively, and they have not pulled those hedges off. So the desks are buying protection with both hands. The fear gauge is falling while they do it. One of those is causing the other. What are they doing that drives volatility

How I Trade An Untradeable Name

September 3, 2026

Hey trader, Five thousand contracts crossed in Lennar today in a single block trade. Sixty percent of that went off at the ask. The name printed eleven and a half times its average volume. My first instinct was to skip it. Home builders are not easy to trade. I generally won’t send out an alert on something with no open interest sitting behind it. Then I looked at where the stock was actually trading. Lennar gapped above its put wall at 85. It could not hold the level. Price is back underneath it now, which puts the stock in a negative gamma region. Essentially, dealers are positioned in a way that adds fuel to a move lower instead of absorbing it. That flip is why I’m still on this one. It also handed me an eight-day vertical I can put on for 65 cents. Below, I’m going to walk you

Why Gold’s Biggest Print Just Got Stronger

September 2, 2026

Hey trader, Gold is building a squeeze into Friday. Here’s why I’m using that word. I went through the GLD put chain for this week, next week, September 18, and October, hunting for anything that could accelerate a move lower. There’s almost nothing down there. Price is at 401, sitting on a put wall at 400. Overhead, someone just bought 110,000 call contracts and dragged them closer to the money. That’s the setup that pays. A two-strike spread costs 71 cents right now, and it’s worth $2 if GLD closes at 405 on Friday. The first thing I did was check whether that print was a roll. It was. Rolls are where I see people get this wrong, because half of them make a position stronger and half of them put it to sleep. Get that call right and you’ll know which big prints are worth trading before you ever

What Options Say Energy’s Next Move

September 1, 2026

Hey trader, Supertankers took hits in the Persian Gulf. Oil is climbing. XLE gapped up at the open exactly the way you’d expect. Then it faded off the high and parked at 64.50. The story writes itself from there. Oil goes up. Energy follows. I went to the block prints instead of stopping there. Institutions bought calls on the XLE energy ETF at 66 today, at 63.50, and at 63, which is not a group of people agreeing on direction (the XLE currently trades at $64.50). Where they do agree is the boundary. There are 12,000 contracts sitting at 63 for Friday’s expiration, with another wall waiting at 65 overhead. XLE is fenced in on both sides. That fence is worth real money before the week is out. What do these institutions see that has them buying both edges of the same box? Let me walk you through where that

Someone Just Hedged $113 Million Midday

August 31, 2026

Hey trader, Something came through on the Qs at 11:36 today that I couldn’t walk past. Someone bought 38,000 put contracts near the ask. Run the notional on that and you get $113 million on a single print. A print that size usually gets read as somebody calling the top. My first job was checking whether it was just a roll. It wasn’t. Then I found a second trade sitting at the exact same timestamp. Put the two side by side and the whole thing reads differently. This is what an institution does when it already owns a pile of technology and fully intends to keep owning it. That second leg is why I’m writing this up. It leaves the Qs easier to push down than up, and it stays that way out to 31 December. So what does this player see between now and December that has them paying

Why The Last Dime Costs the Most

August 29, 2026

Hey trader, A vertical spread carries a hard ceiling. Buy the 40 call, sell the 42, and $2 is everything it can ever be worth. So you hold for $2. It’s printed right there on the risk graph. Yet, maybe that’s not such a good idea. You see, that $2 doesn’t show up when you want it to. It exists on exactly one day of the spread’s life, and only if price is parked above your short strike when the bell rings. I paid 58 cents for a $2-wide IBIT spread. The next morning it was worth 97 cents. Climbing from there to $1.50 would take a significant move or a long wait. I’d be carrying full risk the entire time. So what does that final stretch actually cost to collect? Let me run the numbers on both sides of it. The Two Dollars Only Exists on One Day The

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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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