simon walton

Yeah.. just like one of my friend said: "the Nasdaq 100 has become the Nasdaq 7"... Indeed. Plus quantum tech field. They have already taken like 35-40% of the yearly money flow. Such outsized weighting signals fragility. They will be boosted purposely. In February and April I explained the reasons many times. The point is that there is no counterbalance against their #volatility, and the #market is heavily vulnerable to only a few names🚩 $SPX / $VIX / $VVIX 🟢 ... but the latter is only slightly... relatively. So the whole curve is bid. Still no vol squeeze, bcs realized #volatility and realized vol of vol remains managed intraday, and through weekly zomma. What I mean is that to the downside realized volatility will be sold, as the downside convexity of the short speed profile compresses the intraday returns, while to the upside the returns can widen as there is a vacuum upward. However, on intraday basis both realized and implied #volatility are sold through tail gammas and $VIX. Also zomma is supplied again. Meaning we are at the right-end of the curve, where gamma/IV relationship os positive, managing realized vol in case of a gamma squeeze. And reality is always stronger than fiction, at the end of the day...😉 And this is the force that doesn't let any #volatility squeeze to happen right now. Retail speculants have emerged as a major force (22%+ of the total volume!), consistently buying stocks even as institutions pull back like 85% of the times. #0DTE flows made up like 62.4% of total $SPX options volume. ☝️Meanwhile institutionals, big boyz keep their core holdings (so as not to lag the indexes) but added hedges and simultanously reduced positions 90% of the recent weeks since August. They are skeptical about this rally, their sentiment is heavily negative, estimating more risk of holding longs, and so they are scaling out into strenghts🚩 ...but only slowly to not bombard the #market with sell orders and to prevent underperformance. The supply is absorbed by intraday and weekly dealer longer realized&implied #volatility positions to the downside, and retail flow. ...And this is crucial, bcs this means, the momentums we are experiencing are not fully directly organic. We can see the constant shady miss of gap fills. So, this means that this rally isn’t because big long-term institutions are pouring in, but it’s largely mechanical, driven by dealers and fast-money traders leveraging options. $SPX/yields correlation is also positive ahead of #FOMC, but decreased during the past sessions. Potentially, Bessent does not expect #dovish aftermath? Rate cut is a done deal and largely priced in by the #market. This is why guidance matters way more. If the #fed doesn't exceed dovish expectations there’s a risk/short-term opportunity of a “sell the news” dip. The expectation is that the #fed ends #QT. Nov–Dec are historically the strongest months for actual buyback executions. However keep in mind that going against seasonality is a big source of liquidity☝️Not fully, just for a moment of scare, before EOY rally🟢 Corporate demand to return robustly in Nov, adding a steady bid for stocks. My earlier "Window of Risk" calls this year were: ▫️February-April window, literally calling the April drop days before, with the 'then-unbelievable' downside targets it hit; ▫️After the April crash my primal window of risk was the May #ECB rate decision to mid-May (Trump visit to ME) window. We had a ~97 pts decline $SPX but the #market didn’t broke my target from where the momentum could have shifted to left-tailish. (Later, a 124 pts decline materilaized after Trump’s visit, but it wasn’t the risk I expected, it was strictly derived from the weekly positioning with an exact target. Same as with the June 16-20 week with its 107 pts decline.) ▫️The next, and basically my (orignial) major window of risk was the July/August window, post-#NFP and #FOMC period after tariff effects start to appear in the datas. It was clear since April... I marked it into mid-August. They indeed started to appear in the datas, and we got a 215 pts decline, still didn’t broke my target, that would have triggered the left-tail risk that I kept mentioning. Later, mid-August, another 138 pts decline happened, but still didn’t broke the structure. (I add here that it started to be clear for me during mid-July that the market will remain supported, and I emphatized that my window of risk is shifting towards post-Sept OpEx period) ▫️I called for supportive for Sept #OpEx and buyback flow into Monday, and WoR starting on Tuesday: it provided us a 130.3 pts pullback. Then I called for #volatility and vomma supply, and for the Oct 6 week, I called weakness and vol spike potential into the Thu-Fri window, giving us a 213.8 pts pullback. However, the common thing of these shake-off is that none of the mbroke the structure (neither dynamical or level-wise), and it was assumable with high probability analysing the weekly flows, as I kept updating in the intraday posts. I mean quantitatively... so even the quant funds did not reach any trigger. As I warned, risk keeps being eroded through time correction, that is not a real errodation only a superficial 'paper-form one'. Admin sweats the best it can to keep the #market up. Why? - It has geopolitical reasons. So, geo risk is real. Until then, this #market is not for investors, but only for speculators. As you know, I'm #bullish into 2028/30, but this market cries silently for a 6-10% correction. For me the strategy is simple: waiting for clear value opportunities rather than chasing rallies. (i.e. for a tangible market downturn or clearance sale on stocks before redeploying capital) Patient. #stockmarket #tradingstrategy #riskmanagement #optionstrading #SPX500 #NASDAQ100 $SPX $SPY $ES $ES_F $QQQ $NQ $NDX $NQ_F $VIX $VVIX $MOVE #trump #tariffs