Insights
Tax tips, options trading ideas, and market takes — updated regularly.
Workday reports earnings Thursday, two weeks after a report that private-equity firm Silver Lake is exploring a takeover. Here's how to read an implied move when two different catalysts are priced into the same number.
Cisco reports Wednesday after the close, and options pricing points to a swing of roughly 8.2%-8.3% either way — above the stock's own recent average. Here's how that number is built, and why this print is also a test of Cisco's AI-order math.
CoreWeave reports Tuesday after the close, and options pricing points to a swing of roughly 15.5% either way. That figure isn't a prediction — it's a math problem. Here's how to read it, and what typically happens to that volatility once the print lands.
Cloudflare's stock jumped well past what pre-earnings options pricing had signaled. Rather than proof that the market got it wrong, it's a clean, real example of what an "implied move" actually is — and isn't.
Polymarket priced a near-certain earnings beat for SanDisk, and the company delivered exactly that. The stock still dropped double digits — a clean lesson in why "will they beat?" and "will the stock react well?" are two completely different bets.
The Fed's Jackson Hole symposium runs Aug. 27–29, with a still-untested new chair. The same event caused a 3%+ market drop in 2022 and a rally in 2025. Here's how options traders position for volatility around a catalyst nobody can reliably call.
Eli Lilly's Q2 beat sent shares higher on August 5, but options markets had already priced in a $65–76 billion swing beforehand. Here's how implied move is calculated, why the number shifts daily, and what IV crush means for anyone holding options into earnings.
Amazon reports Q2 earnings July 30 with AWS growing at its fastest pace in 15 quarters, against a possible capex hike past $200 billion. Options pricing implies a 6.4% move. Here's how to read that number.
Reddit reports Thursday, July 30, with options pricing in about a 12% swing. But the bigger lesson already happened this week: a single report about a content-licensing deal moved the stock nearly as much as a typical earnings reaction would. Here's how to think about both kinds of risk.
Texas Instruments beat on revenue, EPS, and guidance on July 22 — then the stock fell about 5%. Options had priced in a 9-12% move either way. Here's the IV crush lesson in a genuine beat-and-raise quarter that still went down.
Super Micro Computer surged on an unaudited guidance update three weeks before its actual earnings report. Here's the difference between a "preliminary" pre-announcement and a scheduled earnings release — and what it means for options priced in between.
Meta and Microsoft report earnings the same afternoon the Fed announces its July rate decision — then Apple and Amazon follow a day later. Here's how options pricing works when two catalysts stack on the same trading day.
Micron, SanDisk, Western Digital, and Seagate have posted some of 2026's biggest stock gains on AI memory demand. With Seagate reporting July 28 and WDC/SanDisk following August 5, here's how options traders manage a concentrated position that's already run this far.
General Motors beat Q2 estimates, raised full-year guidance for the second time this year, and its stock rose about 5% — right in line with what the options market had already priced in. Here's how implied moves work, and what it means to trade an earnings gap after the fact.
Tesla and Alphabet report Wednesday evening as the first two Magnificent Seven names of the season, and options are pricing unusually large swings. Here's how an implied move works, why it tends to evaporate fast, and what that means if you're holding options into the print.
AmEx reports Q2 earnings before Friday's open, with options pricing a move under 5% — modest by earnings-season standards. Here's what that smaller number still means for straddles, covered calls, and the IV crush that hits regardless of size.
SPCX traded as low as $132.15 this week, dipping below its $135 IPO price for the first time — weeks before a lockup expiration could free up to $123 billion in insider shares. Here's the lockup math and why options on a five-week-old stock behave nothing like options on Apple.
Northrop Grumman, Lockheed Martin, and RTX report earnings the same week as the Farnborough Airshow. Here's what stacked scheduled-and-unscheduled catalysts mean for options implied moves — and the risks of trading around them.
June CPI came in far cooler than expected, sharply repricing odds ahead of the Fed's July 29 rate decision. Here's how options markets translate a scheduled, date-certain macro event into a tradeable "expected move" — and how that differs from pricing a single company's earnings.
June CPI came in far cooler than expected, sharply repricing odds ahead of the Fed's July 29 rate decision. Here's how options markets translate a scheduled, date-certain macro event into a tradeable "expected move" — and how that differs from pricing a single company's earnings.
SPCX traded as low as $132.15 this week, dipping below its $135 IPO price for the first time — weeks before a lockup expiration could free up to $123 billion in insider shares. Here's the lockup math and why options on a five-week-old stock behave nothing like options on Apple.
Same earnings week, wildly different options behavior. J&J's implied move sits near 4% while IBM cratered over 20%. Here's why that gap matters for income-focused options trades.
Kevin Warsh gave his first congressional testimony as Fed Chair this week. Here's how options markets price uncertainty about an untested chair differently than they price a single company's earnings.
Taiwan Semiconductor reports Thursday, right in the middle of a rough week for chip stocks. Before you look at the headline number options traders are pricing in, here's what "implied move" actually means — and why it isn't a prediction.
On July 14, 2026, June CPI data, four bank earnings, and Fed Chair Kevin Warsh's first congressional testimony all hit before lunch — with monthly options expiration just three days later. Here's the plain-English mechanics of pricing a pileup like that.
Micron, Intel, AMD, and Applied Materials have each taken double-digit hits in three weeks as AI-valuation nerves and a hawkish Fed collide. Here's how protective puts and collars work for a concentrated position — and the tax trap that comes with building one wrong.
Netflix reports Q2 earnings after the close on July 16, and the options market is already pricing in a mid-to-high single-digit percentage move. Here's how to read that "implied move" yourself straight from the options chain — and why buying a straddle into earnings is a harder trade than it looks.
The IRS's new Automatic Exemption from Penalty quietly waives late-filing and late-payment penalties for taxpayers with a clean recent history — no form, no phone call. Here's what the new rule actually covers, and the one penalty that keeps tripping up options traders, which AEP doesn't touch.
Wednesday brought Iran's largest oil-price shock in weeks. Thursday brought a US strike on roughly 90 Iranian targets and Iranian missiles fired at four countries. The VIX rose — but only to 16.90. Here's what options traders' actual positioning shows that the headline number doesn't.
Delta Air Lines reports Friday morning, and options traders have already placed their bet — not on whether the quarter is good, but on how far the stock will swing either way. Here's how that "implied move" gets priced, and why it can trip up traders who get the direction right.