Issue Date: November 1, 2026

We held our first Total Access live session Friday at 2 PM ET, three weeks before the November expiration, and the market picked that afternoon to sell off. Alphabet and Intel were falling while we were on the call. I couldn't have planned a better day to walk through portfolios and trades built to hold up when the biggest stocks don't.

But I’d rather you hear it from the people who were there. A few of their emails and comments, in their own words.

Here's what comes next. These sessions are now a standing part of Total Access. Every month, three weeks before expiration, we'll walk through the positions at the checkpoint, teach options-related topics (we went over probabilities, the steps we go through for choosing a trade, the law of large numbers, bear call spreads, bull spreads, iron condors and the importance of risk management), and take questions until they run out.

Beyond the live sessions, I'm building out a video library and a set of courses for Total Access members, starting with the strategies you already see in the three publications and in this newsletter.

If you've been reading this letter for a while and want the full picture, every trade in all three publications, the live sessions, the courses, and the community, Total Access is where it all lives.

👉 See what Total Access includes →

Now, to the markets.

Alphabet fell 12.6% on the week. Intel fell 24.4%, including a 29% drop Friday that was its worst day since 1974. Reddit fell 36%. The Nasdaq lost 2.9% on Friday alone.

And SPY finished the week down 0.6%.

That's the second week in a row the same thing has happened. Tech took a beating, and the index barely moved, because the money kept going somewhere else. Health care rose 3.1% and is now up 28% over the past year. Eli Lilly gained 11% on its report. Materials rose 2.8%, homebuilders 2.6%, utilities 2%. Energy touched a record again after Exxon and Chevron both beat. GM rose 15%, UPS 7%, Tesla 7%.

The Fed held rates Wednesday at 3.75% to 4%, with two members voting to hike instead. Third-quarter GDP came in at 3.4%, faster than the second quarter. Core PCE inflation rose 0.3% for the month and 3.1% over the year. None of that is the profile of an economy that needs lower rates, which is why the two dissents were for a hike, not a cut.

Breadth rose again. The share of stocks above their 50-day average went from 38.24% to 41.56%. The 200-day measure went from 43.87% to 45.05%. Two weeks ago both lines were at the lows of the move. Now both have turned, and the short-term line is eight points from the switch at 50.

The VIX finished the week at 19.42, about where it started, after spiking past 22 during Friday's selling. What did change is the price of index options overall. SPY's IV Rank rose to 35% at the 79th percentile, which puts it inside the Sell Zone for the first time since this letter started tracking the dual filter. Index insurance got expensive on Friday afternoon. Last Sunday it was priced about right.

Apple reports Monday after the close. Its IV Rank is 81% at the 96th percentile, the most expensive its options have been in a year, and that premium will be gone by Tuesday morning whatever the report says. Palantir reports the same night at an IV Rank of 100 and the 100th percentile.

Tuesday is the midterm election. Shopify, AMD, and Pfizer report Tuesday, with Pfizer's rank at 86%. Wednesday brings McDonald's, CVS, and Qualcomm. Thursday is Devon, DraftKings, and Affirm. Friday is the October jobs report.

The rule hasn't changed. No new standard structures through a report. The earnings calendar thins out after this week, and the stock side of the Income Board comes back below.

The Meta $640 put came due, and the answer was assignment. That strike was on the October 4 board for the October 30 expiration, when Meta was at $709 and the put had about 88% odds. Meta closed Friday at $614.99, $25 below the strike. Anyone who sold that put and held it now owns Meta at $640, less the premium collected. At one contract, that's 100 shares and a paper loss of about $2,500 before the premium, which covers a fraction of it. This is what the willing-to-own test is for. If you'd have bought Meta at $640 on October 4, you now own it at $640, which is what you agreed to. If you wouldn't have, the mistake was selling the put, not holding it. The same strike sits on the October 11 board for November 20, with 19 days left and 32% odds.

Alphabet's options got cheaper while the stock fell 13%. IV Rank went from 73% before the report to 42% after. The percentile fell from the 91st to the 45th. A stock dropping 13% in a week while its options get cheaper sounds backward, but it's the earnings mechanism working exactly as designed. The report was the risk. Once it passed, the market stopped paying for it, even though the price it revealed was ugly. Intel is the same story at 27% and the 32nd after a 24% drop. Both now fail the dual filter. Neither is cheap to own.

Health care is the most expensive sector on the board, and it's the one that's going up. XLV's IV Rank is 94.4% at the 99th percentile, with a trend gap of +30, the widest of any ETF we track. It rose 3.1% this week and 13% over three months. Options this rich on a chart this strong is unusual. The likeliest reading is that the money leaving tech is paying up for health care and for its options at the same time. Through December 18, the expected range is roughly $170 to $200. A put below the bottom of that range carries about 84% odds. That's the setup this letter looks for every week, and this week it's the clearest one on the list.

The Weekly ETF Volatility and Trend Intelligence Report

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Five of the ten pass the dual filter, down from eight. Alphabet, Microsoft, Intel, Micron, and Tesla all fail, and four of the five fail because their reports are behind them. Apple leads at 81% and the 96th percentile with its report Monday. Nvidia is at 61% and the 84th with the report November 17.

The trend column is the worst it's been all autumn. Alphabet's gap is -37, Intel's -36, Amazon's -22, Nvidia's -21. Tesla is the only one of the ten in an uptrend, and its premium is at a 24% rank. Rich and falling, or cheap and rising. Nothing on this list is both rich and rising, which is the only combination worth selling puts into.

The zone grew from fourteen to seventeen. Three of the new names are the market itself: SPY at a 35% rank and the 79th percentile, VTI at 35% and the 82nd, and materials (XLB) at 38% and the 92nd. Last Sunday the premium was in the pieces, not the whole. Now it's in both.

Six names have the trend on their side. XLV at 94% leads everything. XOP is at 75% and the 91st, XLE at 74% and the 86th, both with gaps around +8, both at or near record highs. Homebuilders are at 71% with a +14.5 gap. The equal-weight S&P is at 40% with a +15.2 gap. Materials joined with a +20.7 gap.

Two names slipped from confirmed to flat. TLT's trend gap fell from +10.5 to +4.5 as yields stopped falling. Biotech turned flat at +4.3 on a 4.3% rally. Regional banks dropped out of the zone entirely. The other nine are falling: QQQ at a 74% rank with a -29 gap, XLK at 77% and -26, semiconductors, industrials, emerging markets, China, high-yield bonds, and now the two broad index funds.

The board moves to the December 18 expiration, 47 days out. November 20 is inside three weeks now, which is where we close positions, not open them. Strikes sit at the one-standard-deviation line, about 84% odds.

Four ETFs and four stocks. The ETFs are the four confirmed names with real options volume: XLV, XLE, XOP, and XHB. The stocks are the ones that pass the dual filter, hold an uptrend, and have no report before December 18. Chevron and Exxon both reported Friday, beat, and still carry ranks above 70%. Coca-Cola is at 65% with a +17 gap and no report until February. Merck is at 66% and the 78th with a +15 gap and the report pushed to February. Johnson & Johnson stays on from last week.

Last week's board, one week later. All six strikes are clear. XLE's $64 put has a 9.4% cushion, XLV's $169 the same, XOP's $182.50 nearly 12%, TLT's $78 about 5%, XHB's $89 over 13%, and J&J's $245 over 11%. Every one sits above 89% odds.

The October 11 board, three weeks to go. Two of the four are in trouble. Meta's $640 is $25 under water at 32% odds. Cisco's $105 put slipped below the strike Friday, to $104.51, roughly a coin flip. Microsoft's $495 and Disney's $100 are fine.

Three ETFs qualify as cheap, down from seven. Silver at a 19% rank after an 8.5% weekly drop and a -36 trend gap. Uranium at 23% and -25. Small caps at 24%, flat. Nothing in the zone is trending up.

The zone is this small because premium rose almost everywhere on Friday. Gold left it at a 24% rank and the 56th percentile. Utilities left it at the 61st percentile. Cheap options are getting hard to find, which is what you'd expect after the Nasdaq's two worst weeks since spring.

$MMFI: 41.56, from 38.24. $MMTH: 45.05, from 43.87. Two weeks up on both lines, and the short-term line is now higher than it's been since early September.

I said last week I wanted a second week above 38 before I agreed the data was turning. This is that week. The posture holds for now, smaller, defined, hedged, selective, but the case for it is weaker than it was. If the 50-day line clears 45 next week with the index holding, I'll say so plainly and loosen up.

👉 Laddering Monthly Income with Poor Man's Covered Calls →

👉 What Academic Researchers Discovered About Options Trading Will Change How You Trade →

Tuesday's piece is the ladder behind Wealth Without Shares. One deep-in-the-money LEAPS call stands in for 100 shares at about a fifth of the cost, and three short calls at different expirations are sold against it. The SPY example collects $874 across three calls on a $12,970 anchor,, with the bad months covered as plainly as the good ones.

Thursday's piece is about a 2014 study that compared two numbers most traders confuse: the put-call ratio and the ratio of option volume to stock volume. The first predicts the next day and fades within a week. The second predicts the next month.

A $140 put sold on a $150 stock for $1.35 ties up $14,000 and earns about 1% in 35 days. That's the honest size of the income, and the article says so before it says anything else. It then walks through the Cboe study that tracked put selling from 1986 to 2018, where the returns nearly matched the S&P 500 with a third less volatility and a much smaller worst drawdown.

👉 Cash-Secured Puts for Retirement Income: What the Research Actually Supports →

Three signals, and a trade only when all three agree. A stretched price, measured by RSI. Rich premium, measured by IV Rank above 40. And a breadth reading that confirms the whole market is leaning the same way. The article is the system behind every posture call in this letter, including the one in the breadth section above. The part that matters most is what to do when the signals disagree, which is nothing.

👉 How I Use RSI, Volatility, and Breadth to Time Our Trades →

Every strike on the Income Board sits at the one-standard-deviation line. This is the article that explains where that line comes from. The quick version: the at-the-money straddle gives you the market's own forecast of the range, and scaling it up by about a quarter gets you to the band the stock stays inside two times out of three. The third time is the whole reason the willing-to-own test exists.

👉 Why Expected Move Is the Most Underrated Tool in an Options Trader's Playbook →

Intel's 29% drop Friday was its worst day since 1974. Its options, measured by IV Rank, are cheaper now than they were before the report.

That's the earnings mechanism from the other side. Before a report, the premium is the market's estimate of how big the move might be. After the report, the move has happened, and the estimate goes back to normal, no matter how big the move turned out to be. A stock can fall 29% and its options can get cheaper the same day. If you sold puts into Intel's report because the premium looked rich, you learned why it was rich. If you bought puts for the same reason, you were paid in full. Either way, the premium was the price of the appointment, and the appointment is over.

👉 If you're ready to go deeper and want real-time trade alerts, full model portfolios, a community of like-minded traders, and ongoing education through live webinars, consider joining one of our services:

The Income Foundation ($9/month): the Wheel. Cash-secured puts to buy quality at a discount, covered calls once you own it.

Wealth Without Shares ($49/month): poor man's covered calls through LEAPS, run as model portfolios with written rules.

The Implied Perspective ($129/month): credit spreads, iron condors, and VIX hedges when the premium is worth selling.

Total Access bundles all three, plus the webinars, courses, and community as they roll out. Every entry and exit is shared in real time and archived, losses included.

👉 See every service at theoptionpremium.com →

Two of the biggest stocks in the world lost 13% and 24% in a week, and the index lost 0.6%, because the market is no longer carried by the stocks that led it here. Breadth rose a second week. Health care, energy, and homebuilders are the three places where the premium is rich and the chart agrees, and the December board is built from them. The Meta put came due and the answer was assignment, which is the honest version of what a cash-secured put is: a commitment to buy, not a free premium. Cisco is next. The posture holds, but it's a lighter hold than it was.

See you next Sunday.

Probabilities over predictions,

Andy

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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.