[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,

[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] U.S. indexes are having a relatively quiet start to this holiday-shortened trading week. We see them spinning their wheels near all-time highs. Bearish sentiment remains elevated, delivering a ready-made “wall of worry” for the bull market to climb. But, while the action (or lack thereof) here in the United States seems sleepy and subdued, events in a certain gigantic country with the world’s second-largest economy demand our attention. There are some absolutely incredible developments unfolding in Chinese stocks right now. If you’ve been with me for a while, you’ll know I’ve been expecting this exactly. What’s happening? Well… let’s just say forget the Magnificent Seven – it’s all about the Terrific Ten. Let’s look at these names and make sure we’re in position to capitalize going forward…

[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] Right out of the gate today we hit the upper edge of the SPX 97-point expected move… and stopped. The VIX is sloshing around on the floor, below 15 and falling. For the week, we’re “massively unchanged” on very low volume. For weeks on end we’ve been trading in more or less a 200-point range, a box. And that’s weird for a market that’s getting ready to hit new all-time highs. I’m going to share a chart with you that shows we’ve stuck our heads up over the top of a kind of trench this tight range has dug for us… …and we all know what happens in the movies when the first guy sticks his head up, right? We’re all over it in tonight’s video…

[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 market reaction was fairly muted, but the data’s there to see: According to CPI and PPI, inflation’s heating back up. Fed Chairman Powell’s relatively hawkish Congressional testimony this week indicated the central bank is still concerned with it. But hey, even if you don’t trust the data – or Powell, for that matter – you can easily tell inflation’s anything but “tamed” when you compare the dollar’s purchasing power to things like equities, precious metals, and even other currencies. But by the same token, as I’ll show you in just a second, you can use most of these as safe, profitable investments in inflationary environments. So we’re going to jump into bonds, utilities, financial stocks, and precious metals trades we can make to pad our bottom lines. We can do more than simply offsetting the decline in purchasing power

[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] Headline risk… geopolitical chaos… a shakeup of the international order… trade war… radical surgery for the federal government… inflation… There’s a lot going on right now, but the markets have barely budged. As of today, we’re still well inside the weekly expected move – more on that in a few. That’s led a lot of perma-bulls to conclude that this market is simply invincible. With that outlook, what could go wrong? Well, a lot. I think a lot of traders who think this thing’s unsinkable are getting set up for failure. Because they’re overlooking what I’ll show you in tonight’s video…