THE OPTION PREMIUM

Weekly Options Intelligence | March 1, 2026

I Asked People Who Left to Tell Me What I'm Doing Wrong. Their Answers Surprised Me.

I don't run ads. I don't do affiliate deals. I don't sell courses with countdown timers or promise you'll quit your job in six months.

I built The Option Premium around a stubborn belief: if the strategies are real and the education is honest, word will travel.

That approach is slower. Much slower. But it's also the reason the subscribers who are here tend to stick around, and the reason their results speak for themselves. Still, people do cancel. It happens. And when it does, I don't just shrug it off. Yesterday, I sent a personal email to everyone who'd recently left. No spin, no retention offer. Just a simple question:

What could I have done better? Just a genuine question, because criticism is the only way I improve. What I got back humbled me.

Chris told me his account size made the Wheel strategy tricky, he didn't want that much capital tied up waiting on assignment. Fair. Then he asked if Wealth Without Shares might be a better fit for him. He didn't leave because the service failed. He left because he outgrew one strategy and wanted to explore another.

David explained he'd started a new job and his mental bandwidth was tapped. He said he finds the options concepts challenging but was "very pleased to come across your work" in a sea of people ripping others off. His words, not mine. He plans to come back.

Kostas was candid: he realized he prefers uncapped upside to consistent, capped income. A philosophical difference, not a quality issue. But then he said this, and I've read it three times:

"Your educational content is top-tier. I still visit your blog and consult your materials because they are so well-explained and grounded in real-world experience. You aren't falling short on execution."

Joseph had too many subscriptions and had to make hard choices. He called me "a superb educator" and said he might rejoin at the basic tier just to stay in the classroom.

Darren upgraded from the Wheel to Wealth Without Shares, felt solid on the fundamentals, and moved on. That's not a failure, that's the whole point.

I share that not to boast, but because I think it speaks to something that's hard to find in this space. There are a lot of people selling options education right now. Many of them discovered options about five years ago. What I offer is different, 24+ years of real experience, distilled into three services built around strategies that actually work when you trade them with patience and discipline. The track record speaks for itself.

The Wheel. Poor Man's Covered Calls. Credit spreads. These aren't exotic. They aren't exciting. They're mechanical, repeatable, and designed to compound quietly over time using dividend aristocrats and highly liquid stocks, not lottery tickets.

This past week, one of our PMCC subscribers, Bernie, sent me this:

"Your commentary and educational information has taught me a great deal about PMCCs, I've certainly learned to exercise patience, which has been one of my weak points. Enjoy being part of your service."

Patience. That's not a word you hear often in options trading. But it's the word that separates the people building real wealth from the ones chasing the next hot tip.

Here's the truth about The Option Premium:

There is no marketing engine behind this. No funnel. No "limited time" anything. Just a growing community of serious, thoughtful investors who found this place, mostly because someone they trust told them about it.

That's the hard way to build something. But it's also the only way to build something that truly lasts.

Andy Crowder

Founder and Chief Options Strategist, The Option Premium

🎓 Coming Soon: PMCC Mastery

PMCC Mastery covers everything: LEAPS selection, short call management, the roll decisions that separate sustainable income from frustrating losses. This isn't a strategy overview. It's a complete implementation system with clear rules, real examples, and the decision frameworks I use every week in our live portfolios.

You won't be left alone with a PDF. Every student joins the dedicated PMCC community forum for questions, real-time discussion, and accountability to a process that works.

Following PMCC Mastery:

• Credit Spreads: The Probability Player's Edge

• The Complete Wheel Strategy Course

Want early access? Reply to this email with "PMCC" in the subject line to [email protected]. I'll make sure you're first in line.

📰 What the Data Said This Week

NVIDIA reported the best quarter in semiconductor history. Revenue: $68.13 billion, beating estimates by nearly $2 billion. EPS: $1.62 versus $1.53 expected. Data center revenue: $62.3 billion. Guidance for next quarter: $78 billion. Every number beat. The stock dropped over 10% from Wednesday's close to Friday's close, erasing roughly $260 billion in market cap.

Why? Because the math has shifted. Goldman Sachs put it plainly: 2026 growth is already priced in. The market needs a 2027 story, and NVIDIA didn't provide one beyond what was already known. At a 48x P/E ratio, the expected value calculation requires perfection plus forward acceleration. NVIDIA delivered perfection. The market wanted more. For anyone running PMCCs in semiconductors, that Thursday/Friday vol crush and price decline was a management event. If your LEAPS are deep enough in the money and your short calls were conservative, you weathered it. If not, this is exactly the scenario our risk management rules are designed for.

PPI came in hot on Friday. Headline PPI rose 0.5% month-over-month (consensus was 0.3%). Core PPI surged 0.8%, the strongest monthly gain since July and nearly triple the 0.3% estimate. Year-over-year, core wholesale prices accelerated to 3.6%. The Dow dropped 521 points. The S&P 500 and Nasdaq both closed February in the red. Tariffs are flowing through the supply chain. The Fed is staying put at 3.50% to 3.75%, and Friday's data gave them another reason to be patient. For us, this matters: higher-for-longer rates keep IV elevated in the sectors where real uncertainty concentrates, which means richer credits on our spreads and better entry points for cash-secured puts.

Gold surged above $5,200, up roughly 3% for the week and now up over 10% for the year. Middle East tensions escalated Friday with the U.S. ordering embassy staff out of Israel, adding geopolitical risk premium on top of the inflation trade. The commodity cluster continues to dominate the IV Rank table. USO jumped to the top spot this week at 90.86% IVR. The math keeps pointing to the same place.

The AI narrative cracked. Software stocks got destroyed in February. The iShares Expanded Tech-Software ETF (IGV) fell nearly 10% for the month, bringing YTD losses to almost 23%. Block laid off 4,000 employees (half its workforce), citing AI displacement. CoreWeave dropped 20% on weak guidance. Bitcoin fell to roughly $65,000, down 48% from its all-time high. Meanwhile, OpenAI raised $110 billion at a $730 billion valuation, and buyback authorizations hit $233.3 billion in February, the largest February on record. The market is simultaneously funding the AI buildout and punishing anyone who can't demonstrate immediate returns from it. That divergence is creating vol opportunities.

Sentiment is fading. AAII bullish readings dropped to 33.2%, down from a January high of 49.5%. That's a 16-point sentiment swing in six weeks. Contrarians take note: this kind of washout historically precedes mean-reversion rallies. But it also confirms that the easy money has been made for this cycle. Process matters more than ever.

February scorecard: S&P 500 down roughly 1%. Nasdaq down 3% (worst month since March). Dow roughly flat. The divergence tells the story: value held, growth got hit, and the rotation underneath matters more than the headline indexes.

📅 The Week Ahead

Nonfarm payrolls Friday is the week's defining event. January's ISM Manufacturing PMI surprised to the upside at 52.6 (first expansion in 12 months). If February's reading holds above 50, the manufacturing recovery narrative strengthens. ISM Services Wednesday matters because services are 70%+ of the economy. But Friday's jobs number is what the Fed watches most closely. A strong number likely pushes rate cut expectations further out, which is bullish for our premium-selling strategies. A weak number reopens the rate cut conversation and could compress vol. Either way, the 30-60 DTE window captures the move without binary event risk.

📊 Weekly Market Stats

📰 Weekly In-Depth Articles 

🎓 Options 101: How to Read an Options Chain: A Beginner's Visual Guide

The first time most people open an options chain, they close it almost immediately. Rows of numbers, Greek letters, color-coded columns, and strike prices stretching in both directions. It looks like a spreadsheet designed to keep beginners out. But here's what nobody tells you: an options chain is just a menu. And once you know what each column means, reading one becomes second nature.

This week, I published the visual guide I wish someone had handed me when I was starting out. You'll learn the only five columns that matter as a beginner (ignore the rest), how to instantly tell whether an option is in-the-money or out-of-the-money, and a five-step walkthrough for reading the chain and finding your first trade. No jargon, no assumptions about what you already know.

👉 Read the full breakdown: How to Read an Options Chain: A Beginner's Visual Guide

🧠 Mental Capital: PMCC Position Sizing: How Much Capital to Allocate Per Trade

The poor man's covered call is one of the most capital-efficient strategies available to retail traders. But that efficiency creates a trap that most traders walk right into. Because a LEAPS costs a fraction of owning 100 shares outright, the temptation to open too many positions is real. Before you know it, a conservative income strategy becomes a concentrated, overleveraged portfolio disguised as diversification.

This week, I break down the exact position sizing framework I use for PMCCs: why no single position should risk more than 5-10% of your account, how to calculate your true maximum risk on each trade, and the tiered allocation approach (core, satellite, and opportunistic) that balances income generation with capital preservation. I also cover the three sizing mistakes I see most often and how to avoid the hidden leverage problem that blows up accounts during selloffs.

👉 Read the full article: PMCC Position Sizing: How Much Capital to Allocate Per Trade

Educational Corner: Bear Call Spreads - How to Profit When You're Bearish (or Just Cautious)

Most options traders only know one direction: sell puts when you're bullish. But what happens when the market feels stretched, overbought, or you simply want to express a neutral-to-bearish view without unlimited risk? The bear call spread is one of the most underutilized tools in a premium seller's toolkit, and most traders never learn to use it properly because they never think to look up.

In this week's article, I break down the exact framework I use for setting up bear call spreads: where to place your short strike (and why delta matters more than the number), how wide to set your wings, and the management rules that have kept me profitable over 23+ years of selling premium. You'll see a real SPY example with specific strikes, credits, and probabilities.

👉 Read the full breakdown: Bear Call Spreads: How to Profit When You're Bearish (or Just Cautious)

📊 The Implied Truth

The Weekly ETF Volatility and Trend Intelligence Report

Want the full 100+ equity breakdown and trade frameworks? Upgrade at The Implied Perspective.

Where the Probabilities Favor Selling (IV Rank > 50%)

The commodity cluster owns this table again. USO jumped to the top, replacing URA from last week. All six names show both IVR and IV Percentile elevated, which means we're not chasing a single spike. We're selling into statistically persistent elevation. The 30-60 DTE window maximizes theta decay while the volatility risk premium works in our favor 80-85% of the time.

Respect the Trend

Two things stand out this week. First, XLP and XLU now have the strongest trends in the table (ADX above 50 and 35 respectively) but IV Rank under 19%. The math is clear: don't sell premium here. The trend is real, the vol is cheap. These are LEAPS and debit spread candidates. Second, TLT just printed a "New Above 70" RSI reading with the 10-year dropping below 4%. If you've been waiting for a bond trend, this is the earliest signal. ADX is still low (17.47), so the trend is young. No rush.

The Cheap Vol Trap

SPY, VTI, DIA, and XLB all have IV Rank under 20%. The expected value of selling credit spreads here is negative. A $0.40 credit on a $5 spread is an 11.5:1 risk/reward requiring a 92% win rate. The math doesn't work. When IV is this compressed, flip the script: debit spreads where you have a directional thesis, deep ITM LEAPS for new PMCC positions, or cash-secured puts on quality names at prices you'd happily pay.

Breadth Is Breaking

$MMFI fell to 50.85, barely above the 50 line and down from 56.43 last week. $MMTH dropped to 58.59 from 60.54. Both show "Below 50" RSI momentum. The rally is narrowing fast. When breadth deteriorates while the VIX remains under 20, the market is telling you that the risk isn't in the index. It's underneath, in the stocks that are quietly breaking down while the headline number holds. Sector selection matters more than ever. The commodity cluster's elevated vol is even more attractive on a relative basis.

Notable Moves

IBIT (Bitcoin ETF): ADX of 42.49 with -DI at 34.26 dominating +DI at 16.48. That's a statistically significant downtrend. Bitcoin near $65,000 is down 48% from its high. IVR at 35.96% isn't rich enough to sell premium aggressively, but the trend data says don't be long here without a thesis.

EEM (Emerging Markets): IVR 38.14%, IV Percentile 92%, RS 64.06, ADX 36.62 with +DI dominant. This is a developing opportunity. If IVR pushes above 50%, the credit spread math starts working.

This Week's Framework

Where IV is rich (commodities): The math favors selling. Iron condors, credit spreads, CSPs. 30-60 DTE.

Where trends are strong but IV is thin (XLE, XLP, XLU, XLI): PMCCs with conservative deltas. Debit spreads. New LEAPS positions.

Where IV is compressed (indexes, financials): Expected value of selling is negative. Debit spreads or deploy capital elsewhere.

Quality names pulling back (tech, software): Cash-secured puts at strikes where the probability of assignment aligns with prices you'd happily pay. February's selloff in software and AI names may be creating entry points for patient investors running the wheel.

👉 For specific trade frameworks, delta setups, and the full 100+ equity breakdown, read this week's Implied Perspective at theoptionpremium.com

The Bottom Line

NVIDIA crushed earnings and the stock got crushed anyway. PPI came in hot. Software stocks had their worst month in years. Bitcoin is in a bear market. Gold is above $5,200. The 10-year dropped below 4%. Breadth is barely above 50. And through all of it, the VIX sits at 19.86.

The market is rotating, not collapsing. Value over growth. Commodities over tech. Defensive over cyclical. For us, the playbook is the same one the math has been pointing to for weeks: sell credit spreads and iron condors where IV is elevated. Build positions through cash-secured puts on names you want to own at lower prices. Keep rolling your PMCCs. Where IV is thin, use debit spreads or be patient. The edge doesn't disappear. It moves. Our job is to follow the math.

Nonfarm payrolls Friday is the week's defining event. Size accordingly.

The markets will still be here when the dust settles. Your job is to make sure your capital is too.

🔗 Let’s Stay Connected

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Thanks again for reading. I hope you found today’s insights valuable and worth your time.

Trade Smart. Trade Thoughtfully.
Andy Crowder
Founder | Editor-in-Chief | Chief Options Strategist
The Option Premium

The Option Premium is published for educational purposes only and does not constitute personalized investment advice. Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. Past performance does not guarantee future results. Always confirm details and manage risk prudently.