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Stay Focused
If you are trading short term and you're at your brokerage screen all day, major options expiry days like today are wonderful opportunities. There are many ways to make money from them but one method is:
Choose your index or indices - you don't have to make it too esoteric, the S&P500 and/or the Nasdaq-100 will do it.
Try to get a fix on whether option buyers are approaching the expiry date with the balance of capital to calls, or to puts.
If the index is call-heavy there is a good chance that the index rallies in the days running up towards expiry; then as expiry hits (either as expiry day itself continues, or the next 1-2 trading days thereafter), the index sells off.
If the index is put-heavy, the reverse (ie. index is weak heading into expiry and strengthens thereafter) is possible.
This is driven by the actions of options market-makers unwinding their hedges as expiries hit and the options are sold or held to expiry.
If you want to gain real expertise on this, the best service we've found is SpotGamma - you can take a look at their work using this link. (Note - we have an affiliate relationship with SpotGamma, so if you take out a paid plan using that link, we may receive a referral fee.)
For now though, we merely wish to remind you that if you aren't trading short term, then the volatility the market may encounter today through Monday, maybe Tuesday, is likely option-market induced for the most part - it can to some extent be ignored if your timeframe is measured in weeks, months or years.
With that, let's turn to our regular charts.