1/x ‘never short a dull market...’ is a tried & true Wall Street adage, and risk premia decay and the charm that accompanies it is the primary driver of the phenomenon. The last few days, along w/ the next few to come are a glimpse of this wild creature in its natural habitat...
2/x Charm is like a tree sloth 🦥. Charming & consistent but w/out the sex appeal & superhuman force of our WofF host, Vanna or our 10k lb 🦍, Gary. That said, if he’s anything, he’s predictable, particularly much like Vanna, when Gary is well fed his 🍌’s... w/ the long weekend
3/x approaching & OpEx & Vixperation soon after, this is the time for our lazy low metabolism friend to shine. He is nocturnal & particularly active @ the EOD’s, from 2pm until 9am CST, as his theta clock accelerates during these windows. Tune in for our live NOVA special on 🦥!
4/x Though hardly prime time television, you will rarely witness a more perfect time to observe the creature in the wild. Everything from yesterday’s update still applies. w/out Charm & Vanna, underneath the surface, there are real problems at the W of F…
5/x It’s a seasonally weak period for the show, NTM w/a new administration calling the shots, a lot of upcoming uncertainty regarding gameshow rules and restrictions. Vanna also has less and less power these days, with a VIX floor around 20-21, & the ratings can only go so high,
6/x as we levitate 2 stdev above the 20 day. Sentiment (low short interest/low Put Call ratios) is at all-time highs when it comes to the W of F & you can’t help but worry that the recent resurgence of the Price is Right (the value rotation-NDX weakness) on cable will potentially
7/x begin to suck ratings away from all the networks (passive) that have fed this rally for all these years. Recently, there have been some major warning signs: Equity index skew is at the 95th+%, fragility as experienced by the historic outperformance of VIX/ SPX beta a week ago
8/x has spiked(speaking to poor liquidity on the tails), correlation has begun to rise from a historically low floor, TSLA skew & bearish flows have showed the 1st signs of a potential crack in the edifice of 1 of the most popular contestants on the show, NTM recently the pace of
9/x the rally has slowed, & we have had multiple 2 sigma sell offs. So, despite the calm façade, there's reason to be worried about the future of the W of F, if/when Gary were to lose his grip over the cast with a move below the 1 std dev down of the 20 day for 2 days…& W/ Vanna
10/x heading on vacation again starting for a week & a half on 2/16-17 & the administration likely announcing their new policy initiatives, particularly as it relates to China & Big Tech in their 1st coming SOTU... it seems this would be a particularly dangerous window coming up.
11/x If the cast is able to come together to support the show’s ratings again w/out Vanna, this will be increasingly bullish in the midterm as we head into the Spring & the beginning of what could be a Goldilocks slow reopening.Given all of this, we would expect some digestion w/
12/x an upside bias this week. Given the floor on VIX, this should be a great time for calendar call spreads again. This, paired w/ tactical vol selling in the front of the curve, to take advantage of historically high VRP, until Vanna heads back to the beach, should be the move,
13/13 as the market sits b/w structural weakness & Charm 🦥’s supportive flows, should be lucrative this week. Continue to ride long deltas, scalping our levels, w/ our stop @ 1 stdev down of 20 day, tactically adding 0 cost downside convexity hedges for post 2/17. Good Luck!☘️☘️

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More from @jam_croissant

8 Feb
1/x 1 thing we don’t talk about much is Vanna’s Charming propensity to inflate & support the Neilson ratings (Valuations) to unimaginable heights. So many just tune in for the wheel of Fortune b/c she’s on, elegantly turning those letters…Not b/c the actual W of Fortune gameshow
2/x is necessarily deserving of those kind of ratings. This becomes very apparent the longer she is around, the more euphoric the producers become about their show, completely oblivious to how essential she is to the longevity of their astronomic ratings. But when she is away, it
3/x becomes abundantly clear that the game show is no Wheel of Fortune without her… Luckily, she is not only around this week, but well rested & relaxed. Gary is well fed again (through Feb12) & will make sure none of the other animals break out of their cages & are in anyway a
Read 13 tweets
3 Feb
1/x & WE’RE DONE. Just like that the 💣astic comparisons to LTCM & Lehman are over, as we predicted.Thus is the power of VANNA. & Now that she’s Charmed all the🦒🦓 🦔back into their cages & Gary🦍’s once again well fed, it’s 🕰 for Vanna & Gary to team up for everyone’s favorite
2/x game show: The Wheel of Fortune. It’s a predictable show, w/ Gary around, but the charming daily payouts (of VRP) & bonus round winnings (market returns) make it worth the price of admission. Through 2/16 Gary should be able to keep the show under control w/his eyes closed,
3/x As Vanna has provided him an all you can eat portion of 🍌 🍌 until 2/12, & w/ Vanna around the ratings (SPX) should climb to new highs. That said, Gary should get his rest while he can. Vanna has another vacation planned after President’s day & Vixperation, & given the still
Read 8 tweets
1 Feb
1/xGary barely held on for Vanna. The animals are still out of their cages. But Vanna is back & refreshed, & she is 1by1 using her Charm to coax them back into their cages. Gary already seems more relaxed here overnight, after a stressful couple of days where he wasn’t fed by the
2/x zoo keepers, & seemed more like King Kong lashing to & fro. While Vanna was gone, the de-grossing process driven by the retail call short squeeze mob took an overbought market, in a window of weakness that we have called for some time and managed to drop it over 5%. This has
3/x been much needed drop coming on the tail of a 20% market sprint since Sep. But at over a 7 sigma move the de-grossing action may have reached its ultimate terminus point at the logical investor reporting date of 1/29 EOM. Pair that potential selling exhaustion w/positive BOM
Read 13 tweets
28 Jan
4/x keepers are calling in the Fed(s) (Fed/sec) for some help getting the animals back under control, so they can feed Gary & get the zoo back under control. As they are likely giving guidance to the brokers to get this under control, as every major retail broker seems to be
5/x restricting trading in the short squeeze names to closing only. The Wheel of Fortune has a taping on Fri & w/out Gary at his best the show will be overrun by the animals. If they can make it to the EOM & keep Gary above the 20 day, calm him down & start feeding him,vanna will
6/x be back & should be able to nurse him back to his usual self & save the show. But there’s a lot of time between now & then & holding the animals @ bay until then seems like a colossal task. Given the pop in Ivols & backwardation of the curve, when vanna gets back she will be
Read 10 tweets
28 Jan
1/x It’s do or die time... the animals have broken out of their cages & are breaking things, & the zoo keepers are on the run. They have broken Gary out. What the animals don’t realize though is that in scaring the zoo keepers away they may no longer have any food to eat... That
2/x & oh yeah, you don’t want to see Gary hangry. Certain HF have been forced into rolling liquidations to meet margin & de-lever for redemptions/degrossing. The Q? is, is the deleveraging over yet or is it just beginning? Not surprisingly as that Q? Hangs in the air, we ended
3/x the day @ our long discussed critical point in SPX of the 1 std dev down of the 20 days. As I’ve mentioned in the past, a SUSTAINED break (2 day close) below this level could cause other systematic strats to sell off & w/ Gary on the verge of morphing into Kong, the zoo
Read 4 tweets
27 Jan
1/x Sometimes you are just too close to something to see it properly... So, today you get my wide angle lens. This market has had every reason to give us a correction and technical break the last 1.5 weeks. It’s come on the back of a monster run since September. It’s had its
2/x biggest wall of worry narratives chopped down 1 by 1. Sentiment & bullish positioning is at all time highs. Hedging activity is low. Breadth has deteriorated. Vanna’s been on an extended vacay. HF stress has recently increased. There’s significant economic, monetary policy, &
3/x global trade uncertainty.... Yet 1 thing & 1 thing alone has kept this market tethered, resulting in a week long digestion, that should continue. GARY 🦍 (dealer long gamma positioning). W/ the Fed meeting tomorrow, which is historically bullish. And EOM/BOM flows, which also
Read 10 tweets

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