Market Conditions8 min
How Geopolitical Events Affect Options Volatility
Geopolitical events — wars, military conflicts, election results, sanctions regimes, and trade policy shifts — are among the most sudden sources of volatility…
Bernardo Rocha
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Market Conditions
Market Conditions7 min
What Is the Fear and Greed Index and How Does It Relate to Options?
The CNN Fear and Greed Index is a composite market sentiment indicator that aggregates seven distinct market data points into a single score from 0 to 100. For…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions7 min
What Is Options Skew and How to Use It
Options skew is the difference in implied volatility (IV) across strike prices at the same expiration date. In SPX, out-of-the-money puts consistently carry…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions7 min
What Is Smart Money in Trading and Can You Actually Follow It?
Introduction "Smart money" is one of trading's most persistent concepts. The idea: institutional investors, hedge funds, and corporate insiders possess…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions8 min
Unusual Options Activity: Does Following It Actually Work?
Unusual options activity (UOA) refers to options trades where volume significantly exceeds average daily volume or open interest for a contract. UOA screeners…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions7 min
The Delay Problem in Political Trading: Why Signals Arrive Too Late
Following congressional stock trades has become popular among retail traders. The premise is appealing: if members of Congress outperform the market, copy…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions7 min
How Institutional Gamma Data Can Improve Iron Condor Setups
Gamma exposure (GEX) data from services like SpotGamma and SqueezeMetrics models the aggregate gamma position of options dealers across all strikes. For iron…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions6 min
What Is Options Price Pinning at Expiration?
Options price pinning is the tendency for an underlying price to gravitate toward a strike with unusually high open interest as expiration approaches. It has a…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions6 min
How to Use IV Percentile for Iron Condor Entry Timing
IV Percentile is the more statistically robust way to measure whether implied volatility is elevated: it counts what percentage of trading days in the past…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions7 min
What Is Put Skew and How It Affects Iron Condor Strike Selection
Put skew is one of the most consistent structural features of equity index options. If you've noticed that the put side of an iron condor collects more premium…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions6 min
Why Chasing Memecoins Is a Losing Long-Term Strategy
Every cycle produces the same pattern: a memecoin launches, early holders post 1000x returns on social media, retail traders pile in looking for the same…
Bernardo Rocha
Market Conditions6 min
How Hedge Funds Trade vs What Retail Investors Actually See
The financial media creates the impression that retail investors and hedge funds are competing on the same playing field. They're not. Understanding the actual…
Bernardo Rocha