Daily Commentary: April 10, 2025

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The Most Likely Pattern Today

Posted by Pete Stolcers on April 10
www.oneoption.com

I’ve only seen a couple of rallies like that during my career.

PRE-OPEN MARKET COMMENTS THURSDAY – The table was set for a massive bounce and I have been warning you about it the last few days. The speed and magnitude of the recent drop was excessive and it was tariff related. The rubber band was stretched and the greatest “pain” would be felt on the upside as shorts scrambled to cover. That is why we have been selling expensive OTM puts!

It’s important to remember that tariffs accelerated the move lower, but they were not the cause of “risk off”. Global economic conditions are slowing and credit levels are at an all-time high. The US has to “roll” $9T worth of debt and given a 3.5 year duration on our bonds, this is something we are going to deal with every year. Bond yields have been rising and the appetite for debt is weak. Higher interest rates will weigh on consumption.

The SPY reached a resistance level that I would already be willing to short on a longer-term swing basis, but since we got here in an instant, we have to wait. The market drop was largely mechanical and so was the rally yesterday. I will be watching for signs that the market can’t advance above SPY $550 in the next two weeks during earnings season. I still view this as nothing more than an oversold bounce and a good short will set up if resistance forms. The longer the market spends time at this level the better. We need option IVs to collapse and for bid/ask spreads narrow. Then we can consider buying puts.

From a day trading standpoint I believe we will see big swings in both directions early in the day. Buyers and sellers are going to battle it out. It will be interesting to see how much short sellers still have to buy to adjust today and it will be interesting to see just how heavy the “risk off” selling pressure is. If we see giant offsetting long candles early on heavy volume, we have to wait for things to settle down. That will ultimately result in a wedge formation and it might take a couple of hours for us to break out of it. A tradeable pattern early in the day would be a wimpy move that loses its momentum in the first hour of trading. It doesn’t matter if it is up or down. I am market neutral short-term. If we get this, the first good window today will be to fade that initial move. Be very selective and enter well. You do not want to be holding overnight positions because the market could open much higher or much lower Friday. If you have nice gains… take them. I doubt that we are going to see a sustained directional move that lasts the whole day because both sides will be active.

The market is right on AVWAPQ. That is a critical level to watch all day. Also watch VXX and TLT to see if there is any movement.

I’m going to go waaaaaay out on a limb today and predict an “inside day”.

Support is at $525 and resistance is at $537.

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