Brandon Chapman, Author at TheoTrade

Why the Bull vs. Bear Argument Costs You Money

July 8, 2026

Hey trader, Everywhere I look, someone is arguing about whether this is the top or just another dip. The easy instinct is to pick a side and commit to it. I gave up that game a long time ago. The label does nothing for me. Dealer positioning moves price. And that structure has quietly shifted this week under a market that still looks calm. My console catches that shift before the chart shows a thing. It reads the dealer exposure on the S&P 500 and shows me where the real crash risk sits. So set the bull and bear argument aside for a minute. I want to walk you through what I watch instead, and why it keeps me on the right side while everyone else debates the name. Positioning Moves Price Bulls and bears are just opinions. Price answers to dealer positioning. The firms making markets in options carry

A Whale Bets Against Banks

July 7, 2026

Hey trader, Forget semiconductors. Banks have been ripping higher for weeks. The easy move is to trust the run. One print this morning did not fit that calm. A single institution bought 12,000 put options on XLF, the large financial-sector ETF, in one shot. That block hands me something the chart cannot – a level a big player is bracing for, close enough to bite. Everything turns on one line. Hold above it and this stays a healthy climb. Break below it and the selling can start to feed on itself. That line is where I begin, and it points to a cheap, defined-risk trade. The Print That Broke The Calm My Console flags large option trades as they cross the tape. It shows the size and which side each print hit. One XLF trade stood out from everything else this morning. A single institution bought 12,000 put options at

A Whale Bet Against AT&T Creates Opportunity

July 6, 2026

Hey trader, AT&T reads like a sleepy dividend name. The kind you buy, tuck away, and forget. My Console broke that calm this morning. One player bought close to 24,000 puts on AT&T at the 19 strike, a single print worth around $300,000. Nobody spends that on a stock they expect to sit still. This is a large institution naming a price it expects to see, and backing the timing with real money. Here is why it matters to your account. The firms that sold those puts must hedge, and that hedging can drag the stock straight toward the number the whale picked. If the block is right, AT&T has a magnet pulling on it from below. I’ll show you how that magnet forms, then the defined-risk way I would lean on it. The Print That Broke The Calm My Console flags large option trades as they cross the tape.

The British Are Coming

July 3, 2026

Hey trader, The tape looks calm. Stocks bounced back this week. The surface says relax. My screen says something different. Skew spiked to 154 over the last two sessions. That number only climbs when big money starts paying up for downside protection. That is the tell. The players with the most information are quietly buying insurance while everyone else enjoys the rally. I put on my red and navy for the 250th today. It felt fitting. The signal on my screen is the old warning ride. The British are coming. If these gauges are right, this calm does not last. I will walk you through what my screen is seeing. Then I will show you the small, defined-risk trade I put on to get paid if the selling arrives. What Skew Is Telling Me Right Now Skew measures how much more the market will pay for downside protection than for

A Bet Against Small Caps

July 1, 2026

Hey trader, Small caps keep grinding higher. The easy instinct is to relax and ride the trend. Yet, a block of put options crossed my Block Hunter Console this morning. It did not fit that calm. One large player bought close to 40,000 puts on IWM, the small-cap ETF, at the 290 strike out to the July 31 expiration. The size and the strike tell me this is genuine protection. That single print hands me what the chart cannot. It shows the level a big institution is defending. It shows where small caps turn heavy if this climb finally cracks. The whole read comes down to one number. I’ll show you that number, then the cheap, defined-risk way I would lean on it. The Print That Broke The Calm My Console flagged several put prints in small caps this morning. One stood out from the rest. A single institution bought

The Slow Sector That’s Starting to Heat Up

June 30, 2026

Hey trader, Consumer staples are the stocks nobody pins to a screen…but maybe they should be. Coke and Procter & Gamble grind along while the AI names pull all the attention. That quiet is exactly why the last two days caught my eye. Large call buyers crowded into both names, the kind of upside bet these defensive stocks almost never see. Institutions usually sell calls on staples and buy puts to hedge. A flip to buying upside is a real tell about where money is rotating now. Each print also marks a level these buyers expect price to reach. I’m going to walk you to both, and to the trade structure I would use to follow them. Why Staples Call Buying Stands Out Big institutions treat staples like ballast. They tend to sell calls against these names and buy puts as protection, which shows up as more demand for downside

How I Got Paid By the Flash Crash

June 29, 2026

Hey trader, Did markets flash crash? Friday, in the last minute before the close, the S&P 500 swept through 730 and briefly printed near 717. It looked like a crash. It wasn’t. It was dealer hedging. And it helped me lock in a nice profit off a spread I had built hours earlier. 0DTE options seem scary to a lot of folks. They can certainly be tricky. But there is a way to trade it. I start by using the options market to define key price levels. From there, I craft trades that match the idea and the environment. In this case, it was a vertical spread. You may be familiar with option spreads. And you may be familiar with key support and resistance levels. But today, I’m going to show you how to put those two together to create powerful 0DTE trades. Start By Reading The Level The trade

This Trade Wanted The Selloff

June 27, 2026

Hey trader, A hedge is the line item nobody wants to pay for. It costs money while the market climbs, and it feels like dead weight until the day it doesn’t. This week the market slid into a roughly 5% correction. The hedge I walked through on the 16th, a layered S&P 500 put I call the atomic hedge, turned from quiet protection into the position carrying the account. I built it with the S&P 500 near 753.94. Price has since fallen toward the put strike, so the job now is harvesting it. I’m going to show you the structure, then the two rules I use to pull cash out of it as price keeps dropping. What The Atomic Hedge Actually Is I built this on the 16th, with the S&P 500 trading near 753.94. It has two pieces working together. The first piece is a long put at the

The Number That Capped Micron

June 25, 2026

Hey trader, Tuesday, before Micron reported, I marked two prices on the chart. I put one above the current price. I set the other below it. Then I waited for the numbers to pick a side. The report was a blowout. The quarter was excellent. Guidance came in just as strong, and the stock gapped about 16% higher overnight. Watch what the stock did with all that good news. It ran straight up to my higher line and quit. The reason had nothing to do with the report and everything to do with where a pile of options was sitting. I’m going to walk you through both lines. We start with the one that turned a blowout into a stall, and we finish at the level I think decides where the whole chip sector heads next. The Line Above The Market The higher price I marked was 1,200. That number

The Unexpected Oil Beneficiary

June 24, 2026

Hey trader, Crude oil fell hard this week. Yet, global inventories sit at extremely low levels. And the reality is we don’t know how long it will take to refill the coffers. Yet, power demands aren’t abating. In fact, they’re increasing. Naturally, that makes alternatives attractive…such as solar. One name in particular caught my eye – SunRun (RUN). The stock jumped 22% today. One institution had some remarkable foresight, buying 5,000 Sunrun calls at the 15 strike yesterday for $1.15. They traded for as much as $3.25 today. Now this is a stock already carrying heavy short interest. When you pair that with a possible gamma squeeze, you get the makings of a potentially extraordinary run. Yet, it’s a bit tough to stomach jumping onto a stock that’s already up so much in a single day. That’s where the Block Hunter Console comes into play. I’m going to demonstrate how

	Today
08.00	OJ & Mac \| Overnight review \| FREE SESSION 08.30 09.20 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 Corey Rosenbloom \| Options tactics 13.15 14.00
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14.00	Tony Rago \| Futures Trading 14.00 15.00
15.00	Blake Young & Mac Holbrook \| Market wrap 15.00 16.00

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