Market Outlook Live! (Jul 15, 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 0:01

And we are live. Welcome to another edition of Market Outlook Live. I hope everybody is doing lovely today. Let me preview the audio, make sure we are. Yep, we've got working audio today. Had a little bit of an issue with yesterday's podcast, but it looks like everything is a-okay today. For those listening live here on YouTube, give me a yay or an ay on the audio. Just to verify, you guys can hear me. Today is a little bit of an interesting day in the market. We've got some mixed markets today as far as the uh indexes. Got some green and some red. This morning we had the PPI report come out one hour before market open. We had the producer price index report, the PPI report, one of the important inflationary reports. We had CPI yesterday. CPI came in better than expected, and PPI this morning came in better than expected. So the market did act or react positively to actually both reports the last two days. But right now, I would say uh today is a little interesting because the ES is up 11 points, the SP 500 futures, but just a very tiny amount, right? But the NQ, very tech heavy, right? The Nasdaq is down 190 points. That is about a 0.6% decrease on the day in the NASDAQ. The RTY futures, though, are very strong. The Russell 2000 futures up 21 points. That's a big move, right? That's three-quarters of a percent up on the Russell. So Russell going one way, the Nasdaq going the other way, and the ES kind of unchanged on the day. We take a look at the VIX futures. Let's take a look at VX, the Q6 contract now. So for those uh using Tasty Trade, I think today was the day they rolled to the Q contract as the default uh VIX contract. When you type in /VX, it defaults to Q now. And it is trading at $18.35 down 17 cents on today. And I mentioned the role of the futures contracts. If you're new to how futures work, you know, every futures expiration is its own product with its own pricing, and they do not match. The VIX contract we were looking at previously is priced at $17. So, but that we've moved on now to uh slash VXQ6 as the contract priced at $18.37. Because remember, these futures contracts are forward-looking, they are uh pricing where the VIX will be sometime into the future, right? So that's why you've got some uh various uh VX contracts to look at, all with different pricing, because it's all based on where it will be at that particular point in time. And that's the same with all futures, with your ES contracts and NQQ contracts, CL contracts, right? The price of crude oil can vary drastically depending on which contract you're looking at. By default, you should stick to the active contract, the one most people are trading. That's typically what you do. But if you want to go further out in time and take a look at some contracts, I mean, if I pull up CL, for example, crude oil, down 22 cents on the day. So uh not moving around much, but if I go into the options chain, you can see we're on the CLU6 contract, which is going to expire pretty soon. Not much time uh left on that. And then we have, or excuse me, the uh Q6 contract is actually the one that expires just in a couple days. We've already rolled. So if I go to the Q6 contract, it is trading at 7881. And you can see here in the options chain, 7881 as the last price. And then when I go just a couple of days forward, you know, the Q contract will expire, we'll be on the U contract, and you see it has a different pricing. 7839 is where that's trading, and that's where all of these options in these chains are trading. They're trading at 78.39, they're all part of the CLU contract. If you get down further, then you get into the V contract, which has a different price. The X contract, which has a different price, the Z contract has a different price. So just something to be aware of. Uh, futures, just a little different than stocks and ETFs, especially when you're trading options on them. Uh pay attention to what the underlying price is for the option cycle you're in. Make sure you're you're getting the right pricing. Now let's talk a look a little bit about some of the futures moving around today that are not the index futures. So oil, obviously, not making much of a move. But on the downside, we do have silver down one and a quarter percent, uh, one and a quarter percent, excuse me. Silver, my old nemesis, right? This continues to be a thorn in my side as it found a bottom here, and it's been trading sideways. So at least it's not really going lower. But I continue to hold this position, but you know, today on a down day, hurting a little bit, but not really. It's not much of a move. Now 70 cents. Uh, it was up pretty big yesterday. Right now, silver just tends to chop around in this range uh that it's been in here in the last couple of weeks. If I take a look at the SLV chart, tends to hang around, you know, in this $52 area. Sometimes it trades up to around 55. Uh that tends to be the range here in the last three weeks, which is fine. If it chops around there for a while, I mean it's not gonna help recover my uh share price here, but these options will be okay, as especially the call options here. I've got two short calls, and they're already more than 50% winners, so they're doing well. The only reason I don't close these at 50%, and I'm just gonna leave them on, is because essentially you could consider them covered calls because I've got shares against one call, you know, so no risk for sure on one call. And because of the deep in the money put, that's a 77 delta put, I could almost consider both calls as covered calls. No real risk on those calls, so I'm not in a hurry to close them. I'm just gonna leave them on. So silver, the big mover to the downside today. Um, that and the Nasdaq. Gold down slightly if I pull up the GC futures here. Gold's trading at 4,064, down five points on the day. So down ever so slightly. Everything else is higher. All the other futures. Ethereum, one of the big winners to the upside, up 3%, trading at 1935. That's the highest Ethereum has traded, dating back to June 2nd. So about a month and a half. So that's nice because crypto has been beaten up. Ethereum and uh Bitcoin both have been struggling to get any upside uh momentum here. Um BTC. The BTC futures are up 1.7 uh 1.17% on the day. So Bitcoin's up, but not nearly as much as Ethereum on a percentage basis. But right now the BTC futures trading at 65,470, and this is the highest BTC has traded since uh about June 17th, so about a month. So you know, this is a good sign. The crypto has been struggling for several months now, it's just been stair-stepping lower for what seems like a year. And I think a lot of that is just a natural rotation as people want to jump into some of the hot AI related names, memory names, the latest meme stocks, things like that. Naturally, you can't go invest in that stuff if you got all your money tied up into you know crypto. So makes sense, right? That's why some of these products like gold, silver, bitcoin, ethereum, why they've been trending lower, is because naturally people are not investing in these instruments if they're going and buying micron and sand disk and western digital and all of that. Some of the other futures moving lower today. For those interested in the agricultural products here, soybeans up one percent on the day. Uh, not much else of note. Uh, those playing the currencies, the Aussie dollar up a third of a percent, and bonds are up a quarter of a percent today. Right now, the ZB, the 30-year bond, up nine ticks, trading at 111.06. A nice little bounce in the bonds. Some bonds need an update. The 10-year notes are up eight and a half ticks, trading at 109.06. Taking a look at some of the stocks moving around today. Take a look at some of the big tech stocks, and the big winner on the day looks like uh Apple's having a nice day, up almost 3% on the day, up $9 and change trading at $324. Is that a new all-time high for Apple? Yes, it is. Well, Apple has an IV rank of 65%. Now, the big tech stocks, a lot of them do have earnings coming up. Apple not reporting until July 30th, but that's still only two weeks away, so might be tough to go find a trade in there to put on now, and you'd end up holding it through earnings, which may or may not be what you want. Uh, Amazon also up about 3% on the day, up $7 and change. Amazon trading at $254.95. Let's see, Meta is also having a good day. Meta's up $18.80, trading at $679.70. That's about a 3% up move in Meta as well. Microsoft up $10.40, up about 2.7% on the day. Some of the software names are moving higher today as some of your uh chip and memory names are selling off. Uh Coinbase up $2.34. Obviously, that's on the strength of what's going on with crypto. Some of the movers to the downside are gonna be again, some of those memory names, Micron down 70 points, down 7% on the day. And if we take a look at the other players in that space, like a sand disk down almost 12% on the day, down 205. Well, pretty nasty move. Western digital down 7.5% on the day, down 42 points. So some of that is what is weighing down the NASDAQ. That's also going to weigh down uh products like the SMH ETF, the semiconductor ETF down 14 points today, down 2.3%. Also, part of SMH would be some of your semiconductors, like Intel down $5.40 today. That's a 5% down move in Intel. Not good for me. I've got an Intel position. Uh AMD also down about 5% on the day, down 27 points, trading at 521. ARM is down about 2% on the day, Nvidia is down 1%, Qualcomm down a little less than 1%, and IBM, which crashed 25% yesterday, down another $1.70 today, which is not much of a move. So maybe it'll find a floor here and then start going back up. If you want to be a contrarian, you know, I don't hate the idea of maybe going and selling a put credit spread in IBM. I would stick to defined risk because you know it made such a large move, you never know if the bleeding has stopped here. So if you want to call a bottom here and try to be a contrarian, do it with a defined risk trade. Don't go sell a naked put. I think uh the risk is a little too great on that.

SPEAKER_00 11:49

Excuse me, guys, I had to get a drink there.

SPEAKER_01 11:54

My throat was giving me a little issues there. I've been talking for about uh about three hours now. So for those that don't know, I hold a members-only uh Discord, a live voice chat with my Discord members for about an hour in the mornings as well. We get together right before the market opens, uh, 15 minutes before market open at 8.15 Central Standard Time. I chat with those guys for typically about 45 minutes to an hour every uh day the market is open. And they get to see my um trading platform, all the trades I make, and I get to help those guys out with any potential trades they're thinking about making or problem trades they're stuck in, they're trying to figure out how to defend. And sometimes we just talk markets, bounce ideas off of each other, talk about various strategies and options when it comes to the wonderful world of options. There's literally hundreds of trading strategies out there. So if you guys are in any way interested in being a member of that group, sign up to the DT Options Patreon. When you become a member of my Patreon, you are granted access to that Discord where I hold those daily voice chats. Uh taking a look at some of my positions, one of the things I did with my Discord members this morning was I did enter two new positions in MCL because I thought um crude oil presented some interesting opportunities. So what I ended up doing is I ended up putting on uh a call ratio spread because as oil has been trending higher here, I think uh obviously there's some call skew. The call options are priced very rich, and I like the idea of going and putting on a call ratio spread because I think it's a smart way to play or a potential upside move that's kind of hedged a little bit, right? It's a little less risky than just going and selling a naked call by itself. What I ended up doing was I ended up selling two calls at the 110 strike versus one call that I bought at the 102 and a half. So a pretty wide here uh call ratio spread, a two by one call front ratio spread. So MCL right now trading at 77.5, that's trading down here, and if it starts going up, well, it's fine because it gets into my potential max profit area way above the market. But if MCL never trades higher, if it goes lower, which kind of is my expectation, I don't think oil is likely to rise in a significant way. I actually think oil's probably just gonna hang out here, maybe go a little higher, maybe go up to $90 a barrel, and then come back right back down to 70 at some point over the next uh 60 days, 64 days is the DTE on this trade. And you know, if that happens, if oil just goes nowhere, well, I made uh 103 credit is what I got for selling this call ratio spread. So a 103 profit is what I would make down here in the skinny profit area of this ratio spread. But if oil does go higher, especially if it slowly drifts over the next two months and gets inside this spread, especially late in the option cycle, I have the chance to make upwards of an extra, well, it was a $7.5 spread that was embedded uh in this ratio spread, a $7.5 call debit spread. So if I made $103 down here, I would make $103 plus an extra $750 if I hit the tent here on the spread. So I would make $853 max profit if I pin the two short strikes at expiration. So I like this trade. Still have some risk. There is one naked short call. So if oil explodes higher to like $150 a barrel, you know, I'm gonna probably be down about three grand on that trade because it'll be about $30 of intrinsic value on the short call. You know, it would suck, but you know, is oil likely to go up $150? No, because I mean it's trading at $77 right now, at least this contract that I'm in. It would have to double in price. And if that happens, you know, outlier events happen. I'm prepared for you know the unexpected event to happen on occasion, but these options were priced really juicy, so I'm I'm happy to take that risk. If I'm being paid to take the risk, I'll take it. And I thought this was a nice trade. I also thought, well, I don't want to just make $103 profit down here in the skinny profit area because again, I don't think oil's likely to go anywhere in a hurry. So I decided to also sell a put. So I went and sold the 65 strike put. So now I have a short put down here below the market, and then the call ratio above the market. The put I got another dollar something credit for, probably a dollar five, dollar ten credit. So now my uh profit area in the center of the short put and the call ratio is 221, which is a nice profit. And overall, this took a buying power of about $500 using the MCL, the microcrude oil futures. So very juicy premiums versus a really low buying power requirement because using futures options, you do get buying power relief. All right, you get that uh span margining system of the futures. Span is a portfolio style margining system, so you can put on some really nice trades that do not tie up a lot of buying power, at least when you first put them on. If this trade starts going against me in a big way, the buying power can and will rise, maybe substantially, over the life of the trade. So you got to be careful, don't get too big in the futures products. But when you first put on the trades, you know, they're really low buying power. And right now, I'm I just put this trade on with my Discord members this morning. The call ratio already up 20 bucks. So oil was trading higher when I put this trade on. So the down move uh since putting this on is actually helping the call ratio. Um hurting the put, not really. Um put's fine, but just put that trade on. It's gonna take a few days for uh us to see any real profit, any kind of PL positive or negative on that. So we're just gonna let that be for today. MES, I've got a call ratio here, a four by two call ratio, which is showing an okay profit. I'm already at 66% of the credit received on the trade, which is you know not much of a credit, but this is more of an upside play. I really was trying to hope that the market would rally in a big way, maybe get in the spread. I don't know if that's gonna happen. We only have 23 days left of the trade, and we'd have to have the market go up at least 200 points in the next 23 days. That could happen. It's not an impossibility, um, but definitely a lower probability event. But right now that trade's doing exactly what it needs to do, just let that be. Then I've got these MES put ratio spreads, two different put ratios that are also four by two. I got these out at 93 days and 77 days. The 77 day one put on 14 days ago, it's already at 26% profit. And then the one I put on five days ago, it's 93 days now. Uh, hasn't had enough time to do anything yet. But all that's working. Then the Russell Iron Condor put on an iron condor in the RTY. I did one last week. I put on one first thing Monday last week, took it off Friday. Uh was a four-day trade, and I made 40% of max profit in four days. It was a 30-day iron condor. Did the same thing this week. First thing Monday morning, sold an iron condor, been in it two days. Already at 11% max profit, so it's working. We'll see where we end up. But typically you would hold these for about 50% max profit. But if I get to 30, 40% pretty quick, you know, especially if it's something I get. Yeah, if I wake up and I'm at 30% max profit in two days, I'm not gonna hold it for another 28 days trying to squeeze out 50%, right? I'm just gonna go ahead and close it quickly. This one's working a little slower than the one last week, but it's working, right? Showing a positive PL. That's all you can ask. GDX gold miners uh sector ETF. It's been a nasty position for me. I've been defending it, rolled it a lot of times. Um, gold and the gold miners, both down today. That's hurting this position because I do have positive deltas on this trade, but down just a little bit. I'm not gonna adjust it. Uh, no need to make any rolls. The puts are still well out of the money. Call is still fine. The call's not the problem side of the trade, it's the puts. Got two puts versus one call right now. Just gonna let that be for today. Intel, this is a problem. Intel, which was up this morning, is now down almost seven dollars on the day. Wow, this is a pretty serious drop in Intel, and really quickly too. Because again, this was not a problem this morning. So this 95 strike put is a 36 delta put now. Okay, and the call is a 9 delta call. I've already made 45% profit on that 165 call. I originally had a 180 call that I made 50-60% profit on closed, and then put on the 165 call.

SPEAKER_00 20:56

I may just have to keep rolling calls down. Let's see. Take a look at the chart here. I mean it's it does look like it's trending lower.

SPEAKER_01 21:15

And I do have the option here to roll out to September too, because I'm in August, which is 37 days. September is like 60 um 60 days typically where I put on new trades anyway. I can just, you know, roll this back out to you know, like a new starting position at some point. I'm not gonna I don't think I wanna do anything drastic here. Only thing I might want to do, let's roll the call down.

SPEAKER_00 21:45

I'm gonna roll strikes down and see how much extra credit would I get rolling down to like a one fifty call. Any sense?

SPEAKER_01 22:00

That you just want to collect more credits on these roles. Eventually, what ends up happening when you're defending these options positions. So originally I sold the put for a credit. Let's say I got two dollars. I don't know what I got. Doesn't matter. If I sold a put for two dollars, it starts going against me. Market starts going against me. I'm worried about that put. I sell a call to help defend it because the negative deltas on the call help offset the positive deltas on the put. If I sell a call, I get some kind of credit for the call. Let's say I get a dollar for selling a call against it. Now total, I've got three dollars. Then this call wins. Maybe I get 50% or even 100% on the call. Let's say I got 100%. Keep the math easy. I got that dollar. I sell another call, lower price call. Maybe for a buck fifty. Now total credits on the trade, $4.50. Right? You just keep adding credits. At some point, I might have six dollars of credit, eight dollars of credit on all of these rolls that I keep making. You roll out in time, you also get uh credit on the trade most of the time, unless it's deep underwater. And at some point, I only wanted a two dollar credit. That's what the original trade was. So if I get you know six, eight, ten dollars at some point bundled into this trade, I'm gonna spend all of that credit, roll out in time, and put it back to a new starting trade where I only want two dollars credit. That's what's gonna happen. So that is the point of rolling and making sure you're getting those credits. Is that some point you're gonna spend all of those extra credits that you didn't originally want anyway, and you're gonna spend all those extra credits to get back into a new opening trade, a safer trade, back at your original starting kind of position. I didn't get filled at an 80 cent credit. Let's see if I took that down to 78 cents. Well, I get filled. Yeah, that's as low as I'm going. I'm rolling down 15 points on that call. Yeah, I think I should get paid to do that. Uh, if they're not gonna give me a decent price for that roll, I then I I won't bother doing it. So uh let's see. Anything else? Uh SCHD up 23 cents today. This particular dividend ETF, the Schwab dividend ETF. I think I mentioned with you guys yesterday. SCHD had a big down day yesterday. It was down like 35 40 cents. And I mentioned uh that I think IBM might be a part of this ETF, and it is. I actually looked it up after the fact IBM is a major component of SCHD, and uh IBM obviously had the big 25% drop yesterday, so that hurt SCHD. It also hurt the Dow. So for those following the Dow, here's the YM futures. Yesterday the Dow was up and then down big and finished basically unchanged. A lot of that has to do with the Dow's only 30 stocks, and you had two stocks making crazy moves in opposite directions. IBM to the downside, and uh Goldman Sachs on earnings to the upside. You know, Goldman Sachs had a nice little pop. So and I got filled on that roll in Intel. So I just saw the uh notification. Yeah, so rolled that call down to help get a little more uh credit, also more deltas, nine deltas is now 13 deltas, still 23 long deltas on the trade. So I'm leaning bullish. I still need intel to go up, right? I need intel to go up over time for me to make some money on that trade. Or I don't necessarily have to have it go up over time. I mean, if it just sat here and went nowhere for the next 37 days, I'd also eventually turn a profit because naturally, as long as the options are out of the money, I have to profit, right? I have to win on the trade if the options are out of the money, I short options. But ideally, I'd like to also get the direction right because if I'm leaning 23 deltas long, up moves would help erase some of that negative PL a little quicker. Uh SMH now down 17 on the day, down 2.8%. Put credit spread, not looking great here. But again, this one is in August. I could always roll that out to September to give myself more time to be right if the trade really starts going against me. Right now, it's just one day, not too worried about it. I've been in the trade six days, but today is the first day that's kind of hurt this position. Then I got a lot of butterflies and SPX and XSP. So SPX is the SP 500 index, the big boy product. XSP is the mini SPX, so one-tenth the size. Uh I've got put butterfly and SPX. I've got a couple of put butterflies and XSP, and these are all broken wing butterflies, put broken wing butterflies, and I've got a couple of call broken wing butterflies also going on and XSP. On an upday, they're all fine. So the put butterflies don't care about up moves, it doesn't hurt them. The call butterflies need an up move, so everything is working. Today is one of those days I just didn't really have much to do in my positions. I didn't have any management really to do. Had the one roll with you guys here on the stream in Intel. You guys get to see me roll that call down to help defend the put. And then I put on the one new trade with my Discord members this morning. But that's essentially it. Everything else is kind of working. One interesting thing is that the uh ES and the RTY still positive on the day, though SP and the Russell are up. Small, but up. NASDAQ still off by about 200 points. Down point six percent on the day. I think it's all those memory names, the microns of the world hurting us a little bit. You guys and the YouTube chat, if you guys got questions or comments, or anything you want to discuss, feel free to get it in. Do note that these podcasts are released as audio versions as well. Right after I stream these live on YouTube each day, about five to ten minutes after the stream is done. They are available as audio podcasts. So go grab it on Apple or Spotify, wherever it is you get your audio podcasts. And if you listen to me on those platforms on Apple or Spotify, give the show a five-star rating. Also, if you're watching on YouTube, give the show a thumbs up. Help us grow in the algorithms on all these platforms.

SPEAKER_00 28:37

Yeah.

SPEAKER_01 28:38

So kind of a weird day in the market, right? We had some earnings, we had some economic reports, markets kind of going in different directions as far as the indexes. We really didn't discuss earnings, but Morgan Stanley reported this morning, and it is down one dollar. It barely moved for those that were uh members of the channel and uh were following the Way the Options episode. I mentioned I didn't think Morgan Stanley was likely to go anywhere, and that's not just me. Uh like I know something, you know, nobody knows where anything's going, but none of the other banks moved yesterday, like JP Morgan and all of that stuff. Pretty much the next morning, they all barely moved. Now, later in the day, they rallied after the fact. But I thought Morgan Stanley was going to be the same. They're going to report great earnings and the stock's barely gonna move. And that's what happened. They reported best earnings ever. Stock barely moved. So if you'd have sold a strangle or an iron condor, which were kind of the recommendations, you know, kind of what I would have played uh had I played it. I didn't uh put on a trade yesterday, but that was what I was thinking. I was thinking of uh like a wider iron condor, like a maybe a 10-point wide iron condor on each side. That would have been okay. That would have been hell practically a home run on a stock that just didn't move. Uh other things that reported yesterday that I didn't bother playing. Johnson Johnson reported it's down a buck twenty-eight, not much of a move. Couple of interesting plays for tomorrow, or actually for today, you'd have to put these trades on today. UAL, United Airlines, reports after the bill today. Tomorrow morning, Taiwan Semiconductor reports. Uh, also GE reports tomorrow morning. Those are some of the more interesting plays. Uh let me actually double check. There's a few things reporting. Also, tomorrow morning, UNH. Not my favorite thing to trade. Uh not terribly liquid as far as their option markets. And a couple of more smaller kind of financial stocks still left to report. Uh they'll report in the morning USB, US Bank Corp. Not terribly liquid as far as options either. Uh, State Street Reports, Citizens Financial Reports. I don't think I've ever traded any of those, so I doubt you're gonna find good liquid options in that. Uh, probably out of that group, the easiest one to go put on an options trade if you want to play an earnings trade. Taiwan Semiconductor has an IV rank of 74. Has an IVX of 52% in the August monthly cycle. Uh bid ass spreads are a little wide, but not crazy wide. I'd probably stick to defined risk. Maybe an iron condor, 16 deltas on both sides and go $10 wide. Let's see what we get. 240 credit versus a 760 loss. Yeah, I like that. Pretty decent to be that far out of the money on both sides and still get a 240 credit on a $10 widespread. Alright, anything from you guys before I jump off? You guys in the chat, questions, comments, anything before we shut it down for the day? As the market looks like it's kind of stuck in the mud. ES up 13, NASDAQ down 170, Russell up 15. I do like the fact that the Russell, the small caps, are up. I think that's a good sign as far as the health of the market. You know, the NASDAQ is just so dominated by some of those big uh memory and chip names that when a few of them have a bad day, it drags that whole index down. But the Russell 2000, I think, is a better indication of market breadth. And yeah, the Russell up half a percent today, I think that's a good sign. Also, I think the Russell is more sensitive to inflation and the PPI and CPI reports, the fact that they were good, and you know, maybe maybe inflation is not as big a problem as what or we originally thought. The fact that oil is also down today rather than up. I think anyway, it helps the small cap stocks a lot better than the uh big mega cap. The mega cap tech stocks. I mean, they can I won't say they don't care about oil prices or inflation, but they can survive things that the small caps can't. So the small caps really get hurt by inflation. Alright, guys, that's it for this uh edition of Market Outlook Live. I will be back tomorrow morning. Have fun trading. Peace.