Market Outlook Live! (Jun 25, 2026)

DT takes a quick look at what the markets are doing today.  Feel free to post questions and comments in the YouTube chat.  Super Chats are always appreciated and are more likely to get a response.

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Transcript

SPEAKER_01 0:00

To another edition of Market Outlook Live. Hope everyone is doing well today. The markets, for the most part, are green, although with the ES and the NQ, we're up very slightly. The Russell, though, is having a day, Russell up one and a quarter percent on the day. So yesterday, the big event was Micron Earnings, and Micron, I guess, just crushed it on their earnings report. And Micron saw a move up of around 200 points or so in the overnight session, the morning session. Since then, Micron has come back down to earth a little bit, and it's taken a lot of the chip names kind of down with it. Although Micron's still up kind of big. The NQ at one point was up like two and a half percent this morning, and now the NQ is only up about a third of a percent. If we actually get into the charts, let's see where the major index futures are trading at the moment. The ES trading uh at 74.50, up 22 points. That is a 0.3% increase on the day. The NQ only up 136 points now, up about half a percent. Again, it was up like two and a half percent earlier in the session. The Russell, though, up 37 points. That is a big move in the Russell, up one and a quarter percent. And volatility, let's take a look at the VIX futures. The VX futures currently trading at $19.16, down 28 cents when I first got up this morning. This number was quite a bit lower. We were around 1860, 18.70. Now we're above 19 in the VIX, so or the VX futures, that is. So yeah, a little bit of volatility increasing as the market sells off a little bit. Uh, what was uh looked promising to be just a crazy big up move today has come become a kind of a muted kind of move, kind of a non-event for the most part in the ES and the NQ. Some of the futures that are moving around that are not the index futures, Bitcoin and Ethereum are down again today, down 1.3% in the Ethereum futures slash ETH is currently trading at 1,565 for the BTC futures down 1.3% as well, trading under 60k, trading at 59,300, and I believe, yeah, this would be a new low if I pull up a continuous chart here of the BTC futures. Let's do dollar sign slash BTC. And yeah, I mean this is the lowest Bitcoin has been going back to the middle of 2024. So yeah, it's been uh two years since the last time we were at this spot in Bitcoin. So yeah, this is uh yeah, I I don't, I just think everybody is playing all the AI-related names, the chip names, the memory names. I think a lot of people, a lot of the young folks, especially that were speculating on Bitcoin, this is no longer the hot thing to speculate in anymore. So I think a lot of people are just uh you know forgetting about Bitcoin right now, so they can go play all the hot AI stocks. I think that's also the problem in the metals because silver is down once again today. This is you know what continues to be. My nemesis is silver because I'm very bullish. I've got a large position, I'm down quite a bit of money on uh silver went down uh about 10% in the last two trading sessions, but today it's only down uh about 0.4 percent on the day, so not much of a down move today, but I still need I need this thing to start going back up because we have gone from $124 in SI down to well, $58 and change today. That is more than 50%, right? That's around a 50% haircut in silver in really just six months. So really, really nasty. Some of the futures moving higher today, copper is up about two percent. So we take a look at HG, the U6 contract, copper is trading at 6.13. Uh crude oil is also up small today, not much of a move, up 66 cents. Crude oil, uh the CL futures are trading at exactly $71 a barrel. GC, the gold futures, are actually up small, so uh both gold and silver have been very weak today. They're not moving much, gold down very slightly, or actually gold is up slightly while silver is down slightly. Uh gold up $19, trading at $4,028. Maybe gold has found a floor here. I don't know. I don't know if that $4,000 number is a good psychological mark for traders as far as signaling a bottom. I hope so. The currency is not moving around too much today. The 6E, the Euro futures up a quarter of a percent. Most of the other currencies not really doing much. The ZB, the bonds, your 30-year bond is up seven ticks today, trading at 114.10. And that is a level we haven't seen in bonds for at least two, maybe three months here. So yeah, 114.10 in the ZB is is good. I think that's obviously what the market wanted. The bonds there for a while looked very sick, but now they're going in the right direction. If we pull up the Z in futures, your 10-year notes futures, uh, we're up five ticks on the day, trading at 110.5 and a half.

SPEAKER_00 5:52

Japanese yen not really doing much today.

SPEAKER_01 5:55

Some of the other futures products that are not really moving around today, the two-year yields or two-year bonds, not really doing much. Let me pull up one of my stock watch lists where I've got a lot of the tech stocks because that is um really what today is all about. It was MU earnings. So MU when we opened today, gapped up all the way up around 1250, currently trading at 1190. So it went from 1050 on close yesterday, it opened at 1250. So it opened right at 200 points higher, which was a huge move. That's like a 20% up move, has since sold off a little bit, but still up 13% on the day. And it did carry a lot of the chip names higher with it. Uh, pre-market when this thing was you know gonna open up at 200 points. AMD was up big, ARM was up big, Qualcomm was up big, uh, Broadcom was up. A lot of those names have since come back down to Earth, and uh some of them are actually red today. AMD. Yeah, you're gonna see a big candle where it gapped up, and then it's come all the way back to unchanged on the day. Well, up a buck sixty, which is not much of a move in a $520 stock. ARM want to say this thing was up 25 points or so pre-market as well, and it's now down six dollars on the day. So big reversal in ARM. ARM down one and three-quarters of a percent, not a crazy down move. Uh, ARM currently trading at 352.50. Broadcom, when I checked it this morning, was up about eight bucks, ten bucks. Now it's down slightly down fifty cents, so it is giving back all of its gains in the early session. IBM, another name that pre-market was up. Looks like it has given back all of its gains. So, yeah, all these um AI-related names that were higher this morning have sold off. SpaceX was higher also when we first opened. It actually opened up about four or five dollars and has since sold back off to being down a dollar. Qualcomm was up very big this morning. It actually opened up at 218 and change, and it's now trading at 205. Still a pretty good uh day in Qualcomm. Qualcomm up $7.65. That's a 4% up move.

SPEAKER_00 8:28

But it was having a monster day at the beginning of the trading session. For you guys in the YouTube chat, hope everybody's doing well.

SPEAKER_01 8:41

And we got a couple of folks wishing me good morning. Good morning to you guys as well. If you're trading, I hope things are working out today in your trades. Uh, for me, I don't have much to do. Obviously, uh a day where the market is slightly higher for the most part. I'm leaning bullish, but for the most part, it's kind of an unchanged day in the market, and uh not much going on with any of my positions. In my Discord chat this morning with my Patreon uh members. You know, I hold a live voice chat with members of the DT Options Patreon every uh trading day, which is something I hold right before I do these live streams. And in there, I took off, I think I had three three trades that I took off today for winners. So we did have some winners come off the board. Um, for the most part, though, I'm good with what I've got going on in my portfolio. Taking a quick look at what's going on here with some of my options positions. Got a lot of put ratio spreads right now in the MES futures because these are omnidirectional kind of trades. I mean, technically I can't lose to the upside, so you know, if the market goes up, it's not a problem. But these trades actually make more money in down markets, so it I really don't care where the market goes on these. The only way I get hurt on these put ratio spreads is in a market crash, right? A really violent down move could hurt these. But you know, outside of that event, really don't care where the market goes on these trades. So they're all working well. GDX, the gold miners, ETF here. Gold miners finally having an upday. This was uh big becoming a problem. I've got a short put that was uh causing me some issues because obviously uh GDX gold has been going down. GDX, the gold mining companies, have also been going down in price and sympathy with gold. And my put is now a 37 delta put, so I'm out of the money. But there uh yesterday, the day before, I was pretty much at the money, and I sold a call to kind of uh offset some of those long deltas that are increasing on that short put going against me. So I sold a call to reduce the overall delta on the trade. So now I've got 22 long deltas on the trade, so I'm leaning bullish, quite a bit bullish, but it does help by uh hedging my bets a little bit with the short call there. Obviously, I need gold and the gold miners to rally from here. I need this thing to start going back up. Intel. Intel was another stock that had a big reversal this morning. We opened up, I want to say eight points, nine points in Intel. Let's pull up the chart here. Intel currently down on the day, down uh a buck and a half, trading at right at $130 a share. But it opened this morning at $139.72. So yeah, that's a $10 reversal in Intel. Yeah, big reversal. And I I needed the up move because I've got a short put. That $10 up move this morning was great. This thing was showing a very nice positive PL, and now it's not. We've taken all of that uh profit back, but I'll be fine on this trade. Uh I'm still well out of the money. This put is a 17 delta put, so well out of the money. I'm just gonna have to hold on a little longer. Uh, some other trades I'm in, Microsoft and Oracle. These are trades I put on a while ago. They're already max losers. They're defined risk uh called debit spreads that didn't go my way. These might have been part of uh earnings plays. I'm not sure, I don't quite remember, but they went against me pretty quickly. They're already max losers. They're just gonna sit here in my portfolio until they come off. Uh the Oracle trade's gonna take two months before it finally expires. The Microsoft trade expires in 22 days, but because they're max losers, I'm not in a hurry to do like there's no point in me closing them, paying fees to close. SCHD for those holding shares of the Schwab Dividend ETF SCHD, having a big day up 34 cents is a pretty big move. SCHD did go X dividend a couple of days ago, so if you were holding shares um before close on Tuesday, you are entitled to the dividend. So I'm holding about 1200 shares. I think the dividend payment is gonna be 25 and a quarter cents. So I'm gonna get, you know, $300, maybe a little more than $300 by holding those $1,200 shares. And silver, obviously up now slightly. So that's helping. I am getting an upday. I need a bigger upday than this though, but at least it's not falling. I also have a put butterfly that expires next Friday, a short-dated put butterfly that's kind of a hedge. So if silver keeps falling, I might make a buck or two on this put butterfly. If I make a couple hundred bucks on it, it'll help offset some of the monster losses on the shares. And the short put down about $2,600 on the shares, down $873 on the short put. We're very deep in the money now. I'm $8 in the money on the short put. I'm never going to close this for a loss, though. This short put, if I have to, I'll take assignment of shares. I'll just take another lot of 100 shares down here at uh $60 a share. My actual price would be closer to $55 a share because I get $5.10 of credit for selling that put. So a monster credit. There were some roles involved in that. But yeah, so I'll take another 100 shares really at a cost basis of $55 a share. That's a nice price. That's a good average down because my first lot of $100 shares I bought at $78.74. So the next lot at $55, yeah, I think that's a good price to go ahead and average down, take another 100 shares. SpaceX, which was higher this morning, now down $3.33. It's not good for my put credit spread here. I've got 22 days left. I'm in the money. I've got the 170 short put and we're trading at 151. Oh, getting pretty deep in the money. I was hoping I could roll for a small debit, and when it was up this morning, I was trying to roll for a small debit, but SpaceX just quickly started moving against me. It started uh, you know, it was up and then it was up a little less, up a little less, finally break even, finally, now it's red on the day. And as it moves against me, there's no way I'm gonna be able to roll now for a credit or a small debit that I'd be willing to pay. Now I gotta pay at least 35 cents debit if I wanted to make this roll. I'm not gonna pay that much. This put credit spread as a defined risk trade anyway. I received a 175 credit and it's a $5 widespread. So $5 minus the $175 credit I received. The max loss on this trade is $325. So I'm prepared to take that loss if I need to. I can hold the trade for the next 22 days and see what happens. But if at some point SpaceX gets a nice bounce up and I can go ahead and roll that position, I will. Uh shares of TQQQ. So I've been playing around with some shares of TQQQ uh today. I've been buying and selling, I think, two or three times today. Um right now I'm down $244 on this last time I got in. Um, this has been something I've been doing all year with the especially the strength of the NASDAQ since uh since April. Since April 1st, when the market really started taking off. Been playing a lot of TQQQ and made a little bit of money on it as well. It's been one of the best uh things I've done this year to try to recover some of the losses earlier in the year with the market meltdown. Uh right now, down a little bit on the day. We obviously were much higher in the Nasdaq earlier in the day. Now the Nasdaq is actually red on the day, down 38 points, you know, slightly red, down a tenth of a percent. The ES also down 12 points. That's about a 0.15% down move in the ES RTY, which when we first got on was up one and a quarter percent. The RTY now is only up half a percent. So yeah, this market does look like it wants to sell off a little bit. Uh XLF, I've got some long calls, 85 days out, so longer day to trade. Got the 55 calls, we're trading at 54.09. The financials, though, having a big day, so the financial sector is actually up uh 0.7% on the day. XSP, I've got my butterflies, a mixture of put butterflies and call butterflies. Now I don't have a lot on right now. The call butterfly, this one here, expires tomorrow. It's a max loser. The put butterfly that also would have expired tomorrow with it. I made 84 cents on. I already took that off for a profit today. And then I've got a put butterfly for next Friday. I don't have a call butterfly because I already took that off because I just didn't have hopes that that thing was going to win because the market kind of went against me after I put that one on. And then 15 days out, got another put broken wing butterfly. I don't have a call butterfly married to that, but tomorrow I'll probably put on both another put butterfly and a call butterfly. I'll typically do that in the mornings, I'll do that with my Discord members. Yeah, right now I don't have much going on. Today is just a wait and see day. For the most part, all my option positions are are fine. You know, I'm paying attention a little bit to what's going on with this TQQQ position. There's some risk there, obviously, it's a big position. But other than that, I don't really have too much to worry about. The silver trade, obviously, pretty nasty. But silver, it's one I'm comfortable taking shares, comfortable holding shares, running the wheel. I'll sell some covered calls against the shares that I get assigned. So all in all, not much going on here. Let me go ahead and pull up the ETF watch list that I have. And let me see what some of the major sector ETFs are doing, see what is moving around today. So home builders yesterday had a big upday. Let's check this out. Also up again today. So home builders all of a sudden kind of taking off, or really not all of a sudden, if you actually look uh all the way back to May 20th. It looks like this thing found a bottom. And since late May, this thing has just been straight up and to the right. Uh today though, XHP is up two percent. So home builder's doing fine, XBI biotech up two and a half percent. This is another one that here lately has just been kind of taking off. Um, the materials sector, XLB, basic materials, is up 1.6%. So uh this you know, this kind of weird market where all of a sudden like tech is down today, a lot of the big tech stocks are down. I think this is just a rotation. I think a lot of people are taking profits on some of their tech trades because we had the big pop thanks to MU and earnings. I think a lot of people just naturally were long a lot of that stuff and naturally had to take profits on a day where we gabbed up so big and some of those NASDAQ-related names. So, yeah, I think you know most of the other sectors look good. It's really just tech. I mean, energy's up one percent today. Well, financials we already mentioned because we've got long calls in XLF, up 0.8%, industrials are up 2.3% on the day. Um and then tech is basically down 0.2%, not much of a down move. Consumer stables down 0.2%. Healthcare is up 2.1%. Healthcare had a nice day yesterday as well. You see, yeah, the last week in healthcare. Been a strong week. Yeah, so I I think a lot of what you're seeing is just a natural kind of people taking profits. Um most of us probably been long, a lot of the AI uh related names, your semiconductors, your memory stocks. And you got a chance to to make a little money today. One ETF I want to pull up, SMH, the semiconductor ETF. This is another one that was up big today in conjunction with MU and you know, again, AMD, Qualcomm, Broadcom, all of those names were up big when we first opened. They've all sold off. So SMH you can see opened up at just under $650 a share. Now it's trading at $627. So big reversal in semiconductors, and that is what pulled us back in the NASDAQ.

SPEAKER_00 21:25

Let me get back into my uh watch list here.

SPEAKER_01 21:30

Pull up a futures watch list. Let's see where we're trading at now. Yeah, now the ES and the NQ back to green on the day, but very slightly. It's a bit of a tug of war today, right? It's a bit of a fight between the bulls and the bears. See, huge gap up from where we were trading at yesterday. And then as soon as the market opened, everybody was like, damn, all my stocks are up. Let me sell. And you saw a sharp drop in the Nasdaq as people took price. Profits and then you found a floor, and now it's like, okay, we found where we want to be. We're just gonna chop around, trade sideways the rest of the day, probably. But we'll see. We'll see if there's any action the rest of the day. My guess is not because the big uh volatility events are over for the week. The big thing that was you know going to be a volatile kind of event was Micron. That was the biggest earnings event this week. Now that we've got past MU earnings from yesterday, and the only economic report of importance this week was the PCE number uh came out this morning, uh an hour before the market opened. The market really didn't react uh too much to that. If anything, it reacted positively to the report. And now that both of those events are done for the week. I imagine gonna chop around the rest of the day, maybe tomorrow as well. Next week will be an interesting week. It will be a four-day trading week because July 3rd is a stock market holiday. It's Friday, uh July 3rd. And the reason is July 4th falls on a weekend, but the federal government still has to give all of its employees a July 4th holiday, but you know, it doesn't fall during the week. So what they do is, you know, they'll declare Friday or the following Monday a holiday, and then they're gonna do uh Friday, July 3rd, will be a federal holiday. It's also gonna be a stock market holiday, so the exchanges will be closed. New York Stock Exchange and the NASDAQ. Because there will be no trading, I will not do a market outlook that day, I won't meet with my Discord members that day. Uh no point in doing any of that if we can't trade. So be aware of that. You're gonna get a three-day market holiday uh weekend next weekend.

SPEAKER_00 23:50

Other than that, for those in the YouTube chat, if you got questions or comments, feel free. Kind of a easy day in the market.

SPEAKER_01 24:03

It's nice not to have any major problems in your portfolio, so outside of the silver trade, which I can't do anything about right now, I'm just sitting here watching the numbers come in. Uh yeah, in the uh YouTube chat. Speckle, you have a strangle in XLV, you've got the August 140, 170, you tried to sell at 50% profit, but no liquidity. Is this normal liquidity? Yeah, these are not the most liquid ETFs. I pull them up, the sector ETFs, because they tell you what the 11 major sectors of the market are doing. Um, but most of them do not have liquid options. So, and the healthcare sector XLV is is not a good one. So, yeah, you're gonna have trouble getting both in trades at a good price and out of trades at a good price. You're gonna see some serious slippage. So I I would suggest not trading XLV, but if you're in it and you're you're profitable, that's good. Um, like I said, it you may have a hard time getting out at that profit, though. Let's actually get into this. Uh you didn't mention, yeah, you did the August cycle, so 140. So yeah, this puts way out of the money now, and then you're at the 170 call, which is also way out of the money. Yeah, trading at 99 cents now. So you probably sold it for two dollars or more, so you're at 50% and you're trying to get out. Problem is it's not a lot of open interest, 93 open interest, 96. You know, these are not good numbers. Things that are liquid, it's gonna have thousands of open interest. Things that are really liquid, tens of thousands of open interest on each strike. So, yeah, it's not a lot of activity here. What I would do, oh, yeah, this is gonna be one, you're just gonna have to give up some money. You know, you're not gonna get your 50% if you're trying to get out today. So, you're probably gonna have to give up a few pennies.

SPEAKER_00 26:01

So, but I would get out of it for whatever profit.

SPEAKER_01 26:08

You know, I know it sucks not getting what you want, but it is a dangerous position, a negative strangle. You never know where things can go from here. Go ahead and lock in that that little bit of profit and just know in the future, probably not the best thing to trade. If you want you want healthcare stocks to trade, I'll be honest. Even a lot of the individual stocks are not the most liquid things. Earlier today, I closed a position I had in abvi. I did that with my Discord members. I had a call debit spread uh that I took a profit on. I mean, it's got some open interest, it's a high price stock, $242 a share. But uh, I mean, this might be one to to put in the watch list. You want something smaller price, Pfizer, it's $24 a share. Liquidity in this is not horrible. Uh, another name, uh Merck MRK trading at $124 a share. Bit as present here look pretty wide for a hundred dollar stock, but you might do okay in that. If you're you know wanting pharmaceutical companies, uh, you could also do something like a UNH United Healthcare if you're wanting a more of an insurance kind of company. UNH trades, I mean it's got open interest at high price stock, $414, wide bid as spreads, dollar wide bid as spreads, but dollar wide bid as spreads are not that uncommon in a $414 stock. So there's some of the individual healthcare names that are reasonably tradable, but yeah, XLV, not the the most tradable stock. Actually, XBI, the biotech industry ETF, is it sometimes it's it can be liquid. I have traded XBI a lot in the past, but I've noticed, and I think this is also a sign of what's going on with all the AI stuff. Liquidity is really dried up in all of these uh sector ETFs. These are typically people go buy buy shares, right? You know, your passive investment portfolio, maybe occasionally you want to wait a little more healthcare or more industrials or financials or whatever, and people are you know buying and selling shares, you know, for their long-term passive investments. But the options in some of these used to be pretty good. XBI, XHB, the home builders, uh, XLE, the energy sector ETF, used to have good option markets. But in the last few months, I've noticed they don't. All of a sudden, they're almost untradable. They used to be tradable. And I think a lot of that is just nobody is interested in playing these boring uh like index ETF sector kind of ETFs. Everybody's in micron and sand disk and you know all of that. And you kind of like you know, nobody's playing Bitcoin anymore. Gold and silver have been been dropping. It's because, hey, you know, that's not where all the speculation is happening, you know.

SPEAKER_00 29:15

So I think that's why some of the sector ETFs just don't trade anymore like they used to. Alright, any other questions or comments before we jump off the stream?

SPEAKER_01 29:28

I appreciate you guys hanging out with me today. Yeah, you took 25% profit, yeah. Yeah, that sucks that you had to give up that much just to get out of the trade, but it would have been a real problem had the trade gone against you, and then you also couldn't get out the trade, right? That's when things become really bad when a trade goes really badly against you, and then you're trying to get out and you have to give up additional money on a big loser.

SPEAKER_00 29:56

Luckily, you know, you didn't lose anything on the trade.

SPEAKER_01 30:02

Yeah, for those that are listening to the audio only version of this podcast, uh give the show a five-star rating if you're listening on an Apple or a Spotify, because this is obviously I do these shows live on YouTube at uh 10 a.m. Central Standard Time every trading day. But right after the show, probably 10 minutes after the live stream airs, it is available as an audio podcast for those that want an audio only version of the podcast. And also, if you want to support my work and also become a member of the members only Discord where I hold my voice chats every day with the members of my Discord, subscribe to the DT Options Patreon. That grants you access to those live Discord voice chats that I hold every trading day as well. All right, guys. Well, I'm gonna go ahead and jump off. Have fun trading these wild and crazy markets.