All Star Options Articles

So JC just got back from a family trip to Disney and all he can talk about is "what a racket" Disney is.

Everything is overpriced, yet people pay. And they pay happily.

It sounds like a pretty good business -- especially if you're an investor.

Of course, we aren't investors here. But all this talk about Disney has us looking at the chart and we like the setup. 

So we're going to get involved.

In today's Flow Show, Steve Strazza and I discuss the "real" stock market and what's going on that isn't indicative of what the $QQQ or $SPY is telling us.

Are we setting up for a regime change? Or a change of character for this bull market?

Well, one of the stocks most likely to answer this question is Nvidia $NVDA.

Here's a one-year chart of $NVDA:

This isn't the type of setup that often gets me excited when I'm looking for a bullish bet.

However, large caps have been leading the charge into the end of the year. Will $NVDA finally play catchup? If it does, it could potentially cover a lot of ground in a hurry.

If it doesn't, well... this will be a very valuable clue as to how we need to proceed in the coming year.

So we're going to position for the rebound, putting juicy out-of-the-money call options to our advantage, while defining our risk in case $NVDA would rather yield us information than profits.

Here's the Play:

I like buying a $NVDA March 140/180 Bull Call Spread for an approximately $8.00 net debit. This means I'll...

Alright, today's post has a cheesy headline which is a play on the name of this company.

I have no good pithy ideas for a title.

But today's trade idea is a hot one that sets up for a potential big win!

You guys in the chat room have been on fire lately!

I love the camaraderie that has been built among you guys and gals. The ideas, the mutual support, the multiple sets of eyes when a position needs our attention. So great.

You're all ONE! OF! US!

With this in mind, today's trade is in a name that has been discussed a few times of late in the chat. I've been waiting for a tradable support level to reveal itself, and we may be getting it right now, so let's get to it....

"First they scare 'em out, then they wear 'em out."

That's a famous old Wall Street saying. And I agree with it 100%.

In Bitcoin, the "scare" post-100K might not have been that scary (or maybe it's yet to come?), but it definitely feels like we're in the "wear 'em out" phase right now.

And my gut tells me the next move higher will catch the chasers by surprise. That's what I want to position for.

Listen, everyone struggles.

Your struggles are most certainly different than mine. It follows that they are different from your neighbors, work colleagues, friends, and even family members.

They may be better or worse. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you have struggles, they are yours, and to varying degrees, these struggles affect your mental health and put you at risk of entering a self-fulfilling spiral that you can't escape from until you've lost everything.

I believe traders and finance professionals don't talk enough about their struggles. I know I personally do not.

There is a pervasive, institutionalized, and incentivized culture in our industry to project calm and confidence at all cost.

Everything is great! We're making a ton of money! Nobody is better than us! Let us manage your money for you!

I'm calling bullshit on that because the costs are greater than we can imagine.

The sooner we talk about it, the better we can tackle problems with effective solutions, and the likelier we are to achieve desirable results.

If any of this resonates with you, I encourage you to...

We're coming up on expiration for a play in a Canadian Bank ($CM) that has treated us very well since the summer.

And now a new Canadian Bank is displaying signs of a fresh multi-year breakout. We're going to keep this Canada party rolling with today's new trade.

Seven of the ten biggest-ever options volume days have been in 2024, with the other three in 2023, according to this report in Traders Magazine.

It goes on to say: "...numbers that would be considered spikes ten or even five years ago are more like a current-day new normal."

I wouldn't have it any other way.

The growing popularity of options trading makes sense to me. No other product offers so much dynamic flexibility for traders to craft unique ways to express market opinions.

No other product gives us the ability to define our risks absolutely, while positioning ourselves with leverage to participate in theoretically unlimited gains.

We've seen some fast moving breakouts during the recent stage of this bull market cycle. 

I'm not calling for the bull market to end. In fact, I think it continues for a while longer. But its highly likely the pace of prices increases slows.

With this in mind, today's trade is the perfect kind of play for such an environment

We talk a lot around here about taking half off the table either when our position doubles in value or we hit a key price target.

It's a great position management practice that increases our win rate while leaving us with partial positions to participate in truly outstanding runs.

But we haven't talked much about alternative ways to "take half."

What if we can take half of our directional risk off the table while leveraging gamma to keep the majority of our open profits in the case of a market reversal, and participate almost fully in a truly massive breakout?

Sounds nice, right?

A situation like this is presenting itself in our current open position in $CM Dec 55 calls. We entered this position in August and now our in-the-money calls are approaching expiration on December 20th.

Here's the chart:

Normally, I would simply trail a tight stop loss in trades like this heading into expiration. In fact, I wrote about doing exactly that in this trade earlier this week. 

But then someone in the All Star Options chat room mentioned that $CM had an earnings announcement coming up before the opening this Thursday (...

In today's Flow Show, Steve Strazza and I discuss the signal (if any) being sent from $VIX with a 13 handle, and we cautioned viewers to not just automatically think that a low VIX means the next spike is imminent.

Then, we got into the opportunity that looks most appealing over the next 6-12 months. 

You can watch the full episode here and get the trade details below: 

Apple has been in a year-long range (see video) that appears to have been decisively broken. 

Here's a zoomed-in one-year chart showing the current breakout about the 234-235 range:

While it may feel like a bit of a chase here, I've got a plan to get us positioned small now, with the potential to get systematically larger into a pull back.

If we don't get the full position on, then at least we'll have a small winning position on that took no heat. In other words, a great risk-adjusted return!

Here's the Play:

I like buying $AAPL December 2025 300-strike calls for approximately $7.50. With options volatility relatively cheap in this name, these calls...

The market's mood is for higher prices. It's a Bull Market.

Thus, it's no surprise that a data company providing important information to investors is riding the wave higher.

It pays to buy dips in strong stocks during bull markets, and today, one such opportunity is presenting itself.