Brandon Chapman, Author at TheoTrade

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

This Could Drag Down Semiconductors

June 23, 2026

Hey trader, Three times in the last four sessions, the same order has crossed my Console in semiconductors…. …10,000 puts at a clip, bought in a single print, parked so far below the market they are nearly worthless right now. Nobody pays up for that protection once by accident. Paying for it three sessions running is a decision. The puts barely move the price today. But that’s not what’s important. I care about how they force the firms that sold the puts to sell stock as price drifts toward them. That hedging quietly arms the next leg down. Hold above one level on SMH and this stays a slow bleed. Lose it, and the trade these institutions are building pays off fast. And given the current market conditions, that’s a real possibility. So, I’m going to show you that level and how I’d position to cash in on this phenomenon.

Someone Bet Against One of the Market’s Biggest Booms

June 20, 2026

Hey trader, DRAM is the kind of name that makes you forget the other side of the trade exists. It is a memory ETF riding the AI buildout, and it has run from 26 to 77 since it launched in April, more than doubling in a few months. Then one order crossed the tape that did not fit the story. Someone bought 50,000 put contracts in a single print. A straight bet that this thing comes down. My Console caught it the second it filled. That one trade hands me two things the chart will not give me for weeks. It tells me the level a large player is targeting. It tells me the spot where the floor under this name quietly disappears. I am going to walk you to both. The Print I Could Not Ignore Every position I care about starts with a footprint. This one was about

One Print, 205% On Coupang

June 17, 2026

Hey trader, I just closed a Coupang call spread in Ghost Signals for a 205% gain. I want to walk you through the whole thing, start to finish. This one did not start with a chart or a hunch. It started with a single print on the Block Hunter Console, 10,000 call contracts bought in one shot. That print told me where an institution was leaning. The gamma structure told me how price would get there. I built a defined-risk spread around it, so I knew my worst case the moment I entered. Then I let the move do the work. Where The Trade Started Every position I take in Ghost Signals starts with a footprint, not a feeling. This one was a big footprint. The Console flagged 10,000 contracts of the July $18 calls on Coupang, bought in a single print. A trade that size is an institution,

Erase Your Downside on the Cheap

June 16, 2026

Hey trader, When the tape turns ugly, the instinct is to reach for a stop or dump shares into the fear. That move feels safe. It is usually the expensive one. There is a quieter option…. I can hedge a portfolio so the downside is nearly erased, and structure it to cost me almost nothing out of pocket. My morning read on the print tape shows institutions running this same play right now. They are buying puts and selling calls, because the premium on downside protection has climbed to a level worth selling against. I’m going to walk you through the exact structure on a $100,000 account. The part that surprises people is how little upside you actually surrender to get it. Here’s how it works. A Hedge Is Not Built To Make Money Start with the purpose of a hedge. It exists to limit how much you lose when

The Bounce Skipped One Test

June 15, 2026

Hey trader, The S&P 500 gapped hard higher to open the week after the Iran deal was signed on Sunday. The screen makes it look like the bottom is in. The instinct is to chase it. Look first at who actually did the buying. The buyers were not new bulls stepping in with conviction. They were dealers, unwinding hedges they no longer needed. I called two things last week that had to happen before I would trust a bottom. This gap delivered one of them. It skipped the other. I read that split in the gamma structure before the candle confirmed it. The whole week now turns on one level, and I am going to walk you right to it. Why The Gap Forced Dealers To Buy Over the weekend the market priced in the Iran deal and gapped above 750. That level matters because it flipped the market out

The Stop That Bleeds You

June 13, 2026

Hey trader, You have heard the same rule since your first trade. Cut your losses fast. On a cheap option, that rule quietly does the opposite of what you think it does. This week I went back and forth with Don about same-day options, the kind that expire the session you buy them. He laid out how he sizes them. I jumped in on the piece traders get wrong over and over, the stop. When a contract is cheap, a tight stop almost guarantees you get knocked out before the move ever shows up. I want to show you where that line actually sits. Because the exit that feels safe is the one doing the damage. Where The Lesson Came From Don was walking through his framework for same-day options. Traders call them zero DTE, because they have zero days left to expiration. He buys them. He does not sell

	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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