Insights
Daily market commentary from Imran Lakha. Skew, vol surfaces, hedging, and what's actually moving the tape.
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One bad day is wrecking your vol reads
One spike to 120% a year ago is still messing with your reads today.
Not all put buying means the same thing
"Record put demand, must be close to a bottom." I keep seeing this take. And historically, heavy put buying does line up with bottoms.
Right view. Wrong structure.
"I had the right view... but still lost money." Does this resonate with you?
Skew is storing energy
Everyone wants to sell premium right now. I get it — vol is elevated, theta looks fat.
$50 billion moves a $50 trillion market
The US stock market is worth $50 trillion. The amount that actually moves it on any given day? About $50 billion. One one-thousandth.
Your model doesn't watch the news
I spent 20 years on institutional desks. The most sophisticated risk decision I ever witnessed was a senior trader hitting pause.
The view wasn't the trade
"I had the right view but still lost money." I hear this time and time again. And the answer is always the same. The view wasn't the trade.
15% in a month. That's not a win.
Made 15% in a month on a position I expected to take six months. Most people would celebrate. I started recalibrating.
The rally no one trusts
NVDA is rallying. The options market disagrees. Skew is telling you something...
You may be hedging away your edge
Implied correlation used to sit around 60% when I started running dispersion. If you liked a single-stock position, you had time.
Expensive doesn’t mean mispriced
Gold used to trade 15–20 vol. Divide implied vol by 16 and you roughly get the expected daily move. So 16 vol implies about 1% a day.
Video lesson: you are missing a key part of the puzzle...
If you’re chasing the move instead of understanding the "under-the-hood" vol dynamics, you’re missing a key part of the puzzle.
My process to enter trades (explained)
It's game time on Google. Here is how the sequence always plays out. I first monitor an instrument awaiting for the right conditions...
If it's a delta trade, stop calling it theta
Most iron condors I see aren't theta trades.They're delta trades in disguise...
Gamma flip is not a trade
A lot of traders think finding the gamma flip level is edge. It just simply isn’t.
Lesson: being right on volatility isn’t enough
Last week I was long the daily SPX straddle around $40 going into the jobs number...
High IV doesn’t make the trade good
If your first thought is “IV rank is high, this is attractive,” you’re missing the point
If your strategy has no veto, it isn’t a strategy
I don’t have a favorite trade. I have favorite conditions. And when those conditions aren’t present, I stop.
Options are NOT too risky
Most people who say “options are too risky” have already made a decision error. They’ve judged the instrument before defining the payoff.
How I size these post-shock adds...
Were you triggered by last week's 15–20% crypto dump?