https://youtu.be/Uxkn8JKBXWM The VIX is lying dead on the floor. Skew just shot up to one of the highest readings it has posted. Somebody is buying protection that nobody else thinks they need. Those back month options far out of the money are juicy right now. I traded into a Christmas tree spread today because the skew got that rich. Three weeks ago skew was horrendously low. It reversed hard as of yesterday. We don’t know yet what that hedging means. We will know a lot more by Tuesday and Wednesday of next week. Now look at the tape underneath it. The S&P 500 has gone nowhere since early May, chopping between 7,350 and 7,700 for four and a half months. Every session turns into a game of Whac-A-Mole. Semiconductors pop and healthcare fades. Healthcare screams higher and the semis roll right back over. That rotation keeps the index pinned near

Blake Young found a correlation that has held for 20 years. It broke this week. The Australian dollar and Japanese yen trade in step with the S&P 500. Blake ran that relationship back two decades. It turned non positive in roughly 3% of those weeks. That’s about 20 weeks out of 20 years. Blake calls the pair his greed and fear gauge. Growth money lifts the Aussie. Uncertainty lifts the yen. Right now traders are selling the Aussie. They’re covering yen shorts at the same time. Equities keep pushing higher anyway. That split is the warning. Volume backs up his caution. The 10 day average on the S&P 500 sits at 33 million shares. The same week last year averaged over 64 million. Liquidity has been cut nearly in half. Blake won’t trust any directional move until volume comes back after Labor Day. He wants 50 to 60 million shares

https://youtu.be/hwnRyu3cCGc The 10 year yield cracked 4.8% today. I think it cycles right up to 5% and pierces through it. That move sets up the trade I have been waiting on. When treasuries crack, I am selling naked puts on the ZB. No spreads. I will buy the bonds wherever I get put at 105, 106, or 107. The reason I am willing to take assignment is simple. If treasuries slide hard, I expect the treasury to step in and backstop that market. I am waiting for my wave. When the ZB cracks into 107 territory, I start executing. Now understand what today actually gave you. Almost nothing. The S&P 500 finished up 36 points on roughly 1.2 million contracts. Options order flow was so thin it kept me out of trades I wanted in the SPDRs and even XSP. The advance decline line sat at 60/40 the entire session.

Gianni Di Poce is calling this the best buying opportunity since the end of July. He said it while bombs were flying and oil was pressing toward $90. The S&P 500 took out last week’s low today. The Nasdaq did not. That single divergence carries his entire thesis. Gianni is also going live tomorrow, Wednesday September 2nd at 2:00 PM Eastern, to walk through his Tech Timers framework. He’ll show the next Timer already counting down on one specific stock. Show up live and the 2026 Tech Timers Roadmap is yours free. 👉 Save my free seat for Wednesday at 2 PM Eastern Now back to today’s tape. Gianni traces the pressure back to one source. Rates and oil are running this tape. Oil is running the rates. WTI is pressing into $90 a barrel. Brent is testing its highs from a couple of weeks ago. The 10-year note sits

https://youtu.be/f8EApDKtpzA Brandon Chapman spent today watching a single number hold this market together. SPY 765 absorbed every bit of selling pressure and refused to crack. That level is a put wall. It acted as support through the entire session. The market faded straight into it after Friday’s Warsh statement. Then it lifted late to roughly 767. Here’s the part that matters for the rest of the week. The open interest parked at 765 keeps growing. Brandon counts 63,000 contracts stacked at that strike. That’s negative gamma territory, and the pressure sits to the downside. Friday’s expiration is the pressure point. Even if the 27,000 contracts sitting there all close out, more than 30,000 remain behind. Above 765 the level cushions the tape. Below it, gravity takes the wheel. Brandon sees almost no call interest underneath to slow a break. The market can fall under its own weight toward 760 and

https://www.youtube.com/watch?v=LtlNKKq2siI Don here.  Kevin Warsh spoke Friday morning, and Wall Street’s algorithms read every word before he opened his mouth. Here’s how it works. The exact text of the speech gets released fractions of a second before the speaker hits the stage. Bloomberg charges $1 million a year for algorithmic access to that feed. The machines trade it in thousandths of a second. So watching the speech live gives you zero edge. Your edge is the order flow that plays out after, and that’s exactly what I traded in today’s session. Volatility told the story before he said a word. The SPX carried a $43 expected move into Thursday’s close with no vol crush overnight, because the market knew this speech was the event. Here’s what today’s video breaks down: The SPX expected move contracted from $43 to $38 to $33 as the speech played out. Fed Fund futures repriced

https://youtu.be/K3CXbL4I2sE?si=8I0vEUbPwxM2Evxg Blake Young pulled up the volume chart today. The S&P 500 is now averaging 34 million shares a day. In April that average sat at 110 million. Last August it sat at 62 million. We’re running at a third of the spring peak. We’re at half of what this same stretch of summer produced a year ago. Summer explains part of it. It does not explain half. The tape agrees with the volume. The S&P 500 broke above its multi-decade channel, then fell right back inside it, and it’s retesting that old resistance as resistance again. Chaikin Money Flow crossed down at the same time. Blake reads that as net selling rather than traders simply closing out positions. Then he showed where the money went. The goods trade deficit printed negative $118.8 billion. From 2015 through 2020 that number lived in the $60 to $70 billion range. The last

https://youtu.be/r7AqarUjZS8 Gianni Di Poce retired the oldest rule in the market today. The Fed sits still. The Treasury moves the money. Scott Bessent keeps intervening at the long end of the curve. Gianni reads those actions as liquidity by another name, not far off from QE. His update to the mantra is simple. Don’t fight the Treasury in 2026. The positioning underneath makes it dangerous. A huge short position sits in the 10-year note while commercial traders quietly build longs. The 30-year caught a fresh bid as futures rolled into the December contract. Gianni calls that chart ripe for a squeeze. Crude oil adds the confirmation. It sits in backwardation into April and May of next year. Gianni wants to see crude finish the month near $75 a barrel by Monday’s close. The dollar and oil move together, so both point lower from here. A softer dollar with cheaper crude

https://youtu.be/sORxBvVD3NA Monday looked like nothing happened. Brandon Chapman pulled up the tape and found one trade that quietly ran the entire session. 2.3 million shares printed at 763.96 on the SPY. Nothing that size crossed during regular trading hours, so Brandon reads it as a dark pool fill. That number became the map. It acted as resistance, then support, then support again, then it finally broke. Brandon expects 764 to keep working the same way all week. It acts as support above and resistance below. Above it sat a wall. Roughly 19,000 contracts stacked at the 765 strike, and every push into that level got sold back down. The floor at 760 never got touched. The S&P 500 spent the day inside a 30 point range because of those two barriers. Friday’s expiration redraws the board. 770 becomes the upside level. 760 becomes the downside trigger, with 750 sitting underneath

The Treasury fired a monetary weapon straight at the bond market on Wednesday. Bonds took the hit and kept selling anyway. That single act of defiance sets up what could be one of the greatest trades of this decade. Here’s the sequence. The Treasury announced it would support liquidity and buy the long end of the curve, which forces 30 year rates lower. It worked for exactly one day. Rates dropped from 5.3 to 5.2, then rallied right back the following session. The bond vigilantes are loose. These rates simply do not care. You have to go back roughly two decades to find 30 year rates this high. The 10 year is pressing 4.75 and sits within a tenth of a point of its highs. That 10 year matters more than anything on your screen. It sets your mortgage, and it’s about to break out. The Fed is pulling the