A New World Energy Order
Hey trader, Has the market bottomed? Was that the high in crude oil? I can hear the cheers from Wall Street all the way here in Michigan. But I’m more of a data over dogma kind of guy. And I wouldn’t be so sure that oil prices have topped out. Energy is the top-performing sector…
Monday, March 23, 2026 - Tony's Pre-Market Playbook
Waiting on the Catalystby Tony Rago We’ve got a big news drop hitting at 7am, and that alone shifts the playbook — not much edge in overanalyzing levels before the tape has a chance to react. When you have a scheduled catalyst like this, price tends to stay compressed or erratic until the information gets…
I Walked Into a Room of Programmers and Changed How Stops Work Forever
Hey trader, I spent this entire week on one subject. Stop losses. Five straight days: Gravity points Channels Moving averages Integers Percentage losses. Every method I have used across 39 years of trading. But, I saved the best for last. On Friday, I told members a story most of them had never heard. It…
Why I Don’t Short the Lows
Hey trader, Thursday morning was ugly. Gold had dropped over $300...crude was spiking…the NQ gapped down so hard that the first two-minute candle printed a 100-handle bar. The entire week's rally, the roll gap fill, the push toward 25,000, all of it evaporated overnight. A trader in the chat named Matthew wanted to get aggressively…
The Count of Monte Cristo Would Have Blown Up His Trading Account
Hey trader, One of my favorite books of all time is The Count of Monte Cristo. I love the story so much that I even enjoy the 2002 film adaptation. I'll be honest, though. The movie loses a bit of its magic for me because of what it cuts out. The changes Hollywood made trimmed…
How I Cracked the Private Credit Crisis
Hey trader, The private credit market is unraveling, and the contagion is spreading to investment-grade bonds. Redemption gates are going up across the biggest names in private credit. Blackstone, Blue Owl, BlackRock, and Morgan Stanley have all restricted withdrawals in recent weeks. Default rates in private credit have reached 9.2% according to Fitch. That is…
Inflation Up, Metals Down. Here's What Really Happened.
Hey trader, The inflation trade keeps running hot. Energy stocks are printing money. Even a pullback in crude oil would not change that. Bullish momentum in energy is here to stay. But precious metals caught my attention this past week. Gold and silver both dropped to their lowest levels since early February. This happened while…
Into the Extreme: Exploding Rates and Cracking Internals
Gold just breached the lower edge of its expected move for the third straight week. That kind of liquidation in metals only happens when major banking institutions need to raise capital. The S&P 500 sold off nearly 2% on triple witching Friday. Interest rates exploded. Bonds tanked alongside equities. And gold dropped over two and…
The market hasn't moved in 11 weeks. That's not good news.
Eleven consecutive weeks without touching the edge of the expected move. Let that sit for a second. The expected move is the range the options market prices in for any given week. It is a specific dollar number derived from implied volatility, the market's own estimate of how far it expects to move. When the…
$5.7 trillion expires today. Not in the morning. At the close.
$5.7 trillion expires today. Not at the open. Not a typo. $5.7 trillion in options contracts clear today. Roughly $2 trillion hit at the morning open when the SPX AM settlement fired, and the rest rolls off at today's close. Most traders spent the morning watching oil prices and reading headlines about Iran. Here is…