[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] On February 18, 2025 I walked through a signal I got back on Valentine’s Day… The signal indicated a 5% to 10% correction in the market. How did I arrive at that figure? It’s simple. The selloff was of the severity you’d typically get following the signal given. Now, expecting a correction is one thing, but playing the reversal for profits is another. Well, I have a signal for that too! That being said, what happens when it’s not a run-of-the-mill correction? What happens if it turns into a more serious volatility event? (I addressed this in today’s First Mover Market Advantage, in fact.) Well, that’s the decision we need to make right now. We don’t have to be exactly right, just ready. That’s because we’ve already taken profits and we were hedged before the sell-off. Now it’s just deciding

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] The other day I showed everyone just how on-edge the markets really are. It’s very dicey, at least for buy-and-hold bulls. (For us, it’s dynamite; we made 254% on our SPX butterfly) Now, after the NASDAQ tanked yesterday, you might be thinking, “Hey, we’ve had a selloff. The worst is over. That’s the bottom.” And you’d be dead wrong. We’re not at the bottom at all – there’s plenty of volatility ahead. In fact, as I’ll show you in a second, you should be selling the living daylights out of bounces. They’re just not buyable. Bonds are showing major defensive activity, too; the smart money is hunkering down. Without correlation, there is no capitulation! Get that tattooed somewhere and keep it in mind. Meanwhile, we’ll look at what’s really happening and where the real opportunities are…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] Over the past few weeks, we’ve looked into disparate corners of the economy and come to the conclusion that… It’s complicated. There are signs of trouble ahead, like economic slowdown and resurgent inflation, but also signs of strength, like healthy demand – at least in some places. Today we’re going to look at two mixed signals – crude inventories and the preliminary GDP price index – to find the week’s best opportunities. OK – the truth is I’ve already looked at them so you don’t have to. What I found were 10 bullish stocks in places like consumer staples and energy. Here are the tickers…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] I’ve been pounding the table about the volatility “box” stocks have been pinballing around since the 2024 election. The “box” is just a 200-point range, basically. It’s between two critical levels at 5900 on the lower end and 6100 on the upper. We’ve poked our heads above that 6100 level about five times, including one continuous stretch from late November to mid-December, but each time the rally has failed. Think about war movies: What happens when some idiot sticks his head above the top of the trench? Blam-o… Every attempt to stay above 6100… Blam-o. Well, this time, as I’ll show you in a second, we’re getting perilously close to falling through that 5900 lower level. If that breaks, forget about war movies, it’ll be more like The Abyss. Look out below. Here’s what you need to know…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] You don’t have to be a seasoned stock technician that reads charts in their sleep to be able to sense something has changed in this market – and, depending on your point of view, not for the better. The folks following along with me in TheoChat got warning of this on Friday, when our model – that’s served us very well – flashed red with some major troubles. When I looked for market leaders, I found… consumer staples and healthcare standing head and shoulders above the rest. That is a problem. Elsewhere, bonds are bidding like the economy is about to hit the skids and crude oil is plumbing multi-week lows. Now, our China idea is flying along, but here in the US markets we see fear – or maybe something even more sinister. Let’s take a closer look…

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] Last week I revealed present market conditions that suggest a 5% to 10% decline in the S&P 500 in the next 30 days. And during a daily session, I showed everyone a portfolio hedge for stock positions – and a VIX trade to capitalize on a VIX move above 20. Here we are, a week later… The VIX touched 20, and if you used my hedging strategy, you’re prepared for anything the market can throw at you! Well protected, we can turn our attention to bullish opportunities as the market panics, knocked back on its heels. Don’t get me wrong: This doesn’t mean you’re jumping in with both feet yet, but the name of the game is mental preparation, and it’s good to be ahead of the curve. Part of that preparation is starting to think about the bottom, the

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”]<img src=”https://theotrade.com/wp-content/themes/optimizePressTheme/lib/images/video_placeholder.png” alt=”PGlmcmFtZSB3aWR0aD0iNjQwIiBoZWlnaHQ9IjM2MCIgc3JjPSJodHRwczovL3d3dy55b3V0dWJlLW5vY29va2llLmNvbS9lbWJlZC9VbE5kZmR2aS1WRT9zaT1mWXJ1bFpMSzFHVlM2cjB6IiB0aXRsZT0iWW91VHViZSB2aWRlbyBwbGF5ZXIiIGZyYW1lYm9yZGVyPSIwIiBhbGxvdz0iYWNjZWxlcm9tZXRlcjsgYXV0b3BsYXk7IGNsaXBib2FyZC13cml0ZTsgZW5jcnlwdGVkLW1lZGlhOyBneXJvc2NvcGU7IHBpY3R1cmUtaW4tcGljdHVyZTsgd2ViLXNoYXJlIiByZWZlcnJlcnBvbGljeT0ic3RyaWN0LW9yaWdpbi13aGVuLWNyb3NzLW9yaWdpbiIgYWxsb3dmdWxsc2NyZWVuPSIiPjwvaWZyYW1lPg==” width=”1″ height=”1″ />[/video_player] What a day… We had about $2.7 trillion worth of monthly options expire today – they’re off the books. For all that, we’re back in the box. We’re down around 1.7% on the S&P 500, which isn’t a big deal in the grand scheme of things… because we’re still in the box. We got to close out a 500% winner on an SPX butterfly, but still – the box. There’s a lot of gamma risk out there in the marketplace, but other than that things didn’t really start getting interesting until today’s big sell-side activity, where we cracked below the lower edge of the SPX’s expected move. Let’s get into what this all means and to look at the levels that count right now…

There are seismic shifts taking place in the market right now. 2025 has pretty much started off as expected with stocks making new all-time highs in the U.S. Our reading of sector flows kept us on the right side of the market year-to-date. But the biggest developments have been going on abroad, and I want to be very clear that our sector slicing system words the same way when comparing the stock markets of two different countries. Today I want to show you the “why” behind these shifts in money flows. Check this out… (JUMP) Money, Like People, Responds to Incentives I’ve been talking a lot about Chinese stocks over the past few weeks, and in both Theo’s live room and the Trinity Trade, we’ve taken a handful of setups that have worked out very nicely. The fact that these names are working with ease, while select U.S. stocks are

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] It doesn’t grab the same headline space as inflation or jobs, but manufacturing’s still a really important economic indicator with the juice to move stocks over the medium- and long-term. Some of the most important data we get from this sector comes from players in the New York and Philadelphia regions – they’re still American manufacturing hotspots. The numbers we got today were… mixed. In Philadelphia, there were big misses. Manufacturing had been contracting for most of the time since mid-2022. It spiked, sharply positive, in January only to fall by about half in this latest readout. In New York, the Empire State Manufacturing Index had a negative forecast, as last month’s number was negative, but today’s reading was positive. So what does this tell us about the health of the economy? We’ll find out as we look at how

[video_player type=”embed” style=”1″ dimensions=”640×360″ width=”640″ height=”360″ align=”center” margin_top=”0″ margin_bottom=”20″ ipad_color=”black”][/video_player] Microsoft Corp (MSFT) announced a breakthrough in quantum computing with its new Majorana 1 chip. As you might expect, this breakthrough is leading option traders to quantum stocks. This in turn begs the question: Is a breakout imminent? Well, here’s the summary “upshot” of the discovery – from Microsoft’s own Copilot AI, no less… “Microsoft unveiled the Majorana 1 chip, a breakthrough in quantum computing. Utilizing topological qubits, it promises more reliable and scalable quantum calculations. This chip, fitting in the palm of a hand, aims to solve industrial-scale problems within years, not decades. It marks a significant step towards practical quantum computing, potentially revolutionizing various industries.” This announcement led to over a 1% move in shares of MSFT, but the real opportunity may be with quantum computing stocks. If, like me, you scan the option pulses in this space,