📩 The Option Premium Weekly Issue - November 16, 2025

Big things are on deck for The Option Premium. I’m in the final stages of getting the YouTube channel ready now that I’ve settled on an editing setup I’m happy with, and I’m mapping out a series of courses and live webinars that will start rolling out over the coming months. It takes time to build this the right way, but the pieces are finally starting to click.

The feedback and testimonials lately have meant a lot, and I want to thank those of you who’ve been here from the early days. Your pricing is locked in for life. I said founding members would get exceptional value, and I fully intend to keep that promise.

“You are the best when it comes to explaining complicated strategies. This article on LEAPS was a great example. Well done!” - Joe K.

“Really liking the content - there is so much to digest.” -Randy R.

“Thank you for writing such detailed and highly educational newsletters and articles. As a newbie, I have learnt so much from your newsletters and articles. Thank you for sharing your knowledge, people like you make this journey for people like me wanting to be an options trader so much easier and better! Much appreciated!” - Raj V.

This is still very much a ground-up, community-driven project, and your support is what keeps it moving. If you haven’t had a chance yet, I’d love for you to:

📺 Subscribe to the YouTube channel so you’re first in line when the initial videos go live.
👥 Join the private Facebook group or connect with me over on X.
💌 Email me anytime with topics you’d like to see covered in the newsletter, on YouTube, or in future webinars.

Thanks again for being part of this. What we’re building now is the base layer for everything that comes next, and I’m genuinely grateful you’re here for it.

✉️ A Note to Subscribers

Since May 1st, the S&P 500 has gained about 14.0%. Not bad for roughly seven months. But, if you had placed one contract in each of our nine Wealth Without Shares positions, it would have cost $21,910 to open. Today, those same trades are worth $33,204, a profit of $11,294 over that same time frame, for a return of 51.5%.

The secret isn’t picking the next hot stock. It’s structure. By anchoring our trades in deep-in-the-money LEAPS and methodically selling premium through Poor Man’s Covered Calls, we’ve created a capital-efficient system that compounds regardless of headlines.

That’s the power of Wealth Without Shares: stock-like returns, often more, at a fraction of the capital outlay. By replacing 100 shares of stock with a deep-in-the-money LEAPS contract, you cut the required capital by 65 to 85%. That efficiency means you can run multiple positions at once, diversify across sectors, and still free up cash for new opportunities, something traditional covered calls can’t match.

For traders who want a proven way to do more with less, Wealth Without Shares is built for you.

Thanks again for all of your continued support,

Andy

📰 Market Commentary & Snapshot

AI sprinted, then caught its breath. The bigger headline was Washington flipping the lights back on after a 43-day shutdown, with a funding patch running through January 30, 2026. That removes a near-term risk and puts the missing economic reports back on the calendar, welcome clarity for a market already twitchy about if/when the next rate cut lands.

Under the hood, it was a handoff, not a crash. The S&P 500 edged higher while the Nasdaq slipped, classic “take a little off the AI winners, rotate into the rest” behavior. Rate odds did most of the steering: futures put a December cut at roughly a coin-flip, and the 10-year yield finished near 4.15%, enough headwind for long-duration tech, not enough to break the broader uptrend.

Away from U.S. mega-caps, developed international stocks led, crude oil clawed back to ~$60 on supply chatter, and core bonds dipped as yields rose, still solidly positive year-to-date. Translation for options traders: leadership is widening and moves are less synchronized, which tends to create cleaner, more frequent premium-selling setups without forcing big directional bets.

📊 Weekly Market Stats

📰 Weekly In-Depth Articles 

🗓️ Tuesday, November 11th - LEAPS vs. Stock: Why "Efficient Stock" Actually Works

🗓️ Thursday, November 13th - The Real Way to Pick LEAPS Strikes (And Why Most Traders Get It Wrong)

🧭 The Earnings Playbook

(Educational and idea-generating for all readers)

Schedule at a glance:

• Tuesday 11/18 – Before Open: BIDU, PDD

• Wednesday 11/19 – Before Open: TGT · After Close: NVDA

• Thursday 11/20 – Before Open: WMT

How to Read This Week

• Liquidity anchor: NVDA dominates flow (≈3.48M contracts traded; ≈20.8M OI). If you’re studying clean price discovery and tight markets around earnings, this is the week’s center of gravity.

• Retail pair: TGT (Wed AM) and WMT (Thurs. AM) give a back-to-back look at big-box retail. TGT shows higher IV Rank (~69) than WMT (~42), while WMT carries a higher IV Percentile (~85%), a useful contrast between Rank (position vs. year’s high/low) and Percentile (how often IV has been lower).

• China tech window: BIDU and PDD both report Tue AM. BIDU’s IV Rank ~70 and Percentile ~84 signal elevated volatility versus its own past year; PDD’s low IV Rank (~20) and IV ~38% suggest relatively calmer implied movement this cycle.

• Short-term IV trend: Across all five names, 5-day IV ≈ current IV, which implies the pre-earnings IV build has been steady rather than spiking late.

How to use this (education only):

• Release timing matters: Pre-open names (BIDU, PDD, TGT, WMT) often see spreads settle during the first 15–30 minutes after the bell; after-close (NVDA) pushes most price discovery into the evening and next morning.

• Rank vs. Percentile: A high IV Rank means IV is high versus its own yearly range; a high Percentile means IV has been lower most days this year. Watching both helps you judge whether “vol is rich” for that name.

• Liquidity first: Options volume and total open interest hint at fill quality and bid/ask width; NVDA and WMT lead on depth this week.

🧭 Earnings Season Options Trade: A Step-by-Step Guide: Explore the in-depth, quantitative approach to the best strikes, probabilities, and setups for earnings trades: learn the mechanics of the high-probability approach.

👉 For detailed frameworks, including delta targets, exit triggers, and trade structuring ideas, join the paid edition: The Implied Perspective. 

⁉️ Did You Know?

The Expected Move Nails Market Behavior More Often Than Traders Realize

Decades of data from SPX, QQQ, and high-liquidity single-stock options show that the 1-week Expected Move (EM) contains the actual price move roughly 68 to 72% of the time, almost exactly in line with a one-standard-deviation range.

But the lesser-known fact is how well the 30-day EM performs:

• The monthly EM contains price movement about 70 to 75% of the time, depending on the volatility regime.

• Even when price breaks outside the monthly EM, the median overshoot is small relative to the initial volatility estimate.

• In low-volatility periods, the 30-day EM tends to overestimate realized moves, meaning options are often overpriced at the monthly horizon.

• In high-volatility regimes, the 30-day EM expands early, giving traders a measurable signal that the market is shifting to a wider distribution of outcomes.

The Expected Move isn’t a guess, it’s a probability map. When you place credit spreads or iron condors just outside the 1-week EM, or structure swing-style premium trades around the 30-day EM, you’re aligning your positions with where the market actually tends to land most of the time. This is the core of probabilistic trading: you’re not predicting the future, you’re trading around the range the market already expects.

Read more about the expected move here: Why Expected Move Is the Most Underrated Tool in an Options Trader’s Playbook

🎓 Options 101: The First Steps to Trading

How to Build a Small, Risk-Managed Options Portfolio

This week’s article breaks down a simple, disciplined framework for building a small options portfolio using three core components: PMCCs for capital-efficient upside and steady short-call income, the Wheel for high-probability, repeatable premium, and a Satellite layer of small, defined-risk spreads for tactical theta.

The emphasis is on tight position sizing, keeping portfolio controlled, sticking to liquid underlyings, maintaining net positive theta, and following mechanical entry, exit, and adjustment rules so no single trade can derail progress.

👉 Read the full article: How to Build a Small, Risk-Managed Options Portfolio

🧠 Mental Capital

Train not just your trading system, but your trading self.

Using Bear Call Spreads to Protect Your Portfolio

When markets keep grinding higher and volatility sits near the floor, the real risk isn’t missing out on more gains, it’s giving back months of profits in a sudden pullback. That’s when the bear call spread earns its place as a quiet defensive tool for options traders.

This week’s article breaks down how to use bear call spreads as a defined-risk hedge against overextended markets. By selling a call near resistance and buying another further out, you collect premium while building a small, controlled short-delta cushion that works if the market stalls, drifts, or pulls back.

Inside this issue:
✔️ Simple, repeatable setup
✔️ Profit-taking rules
✔️ Real-world QQQ example showing probability of success, touch, and margin of error.
✔️ When not to use the strategy, and why it’s a glide-path hedge, not crash insurance.

Bear call spreads aren’t about calling tops. They’re about staying invested while protecting what you’ve built, systematically, calmly, and with clear risk limits.

👉 Read the full article at The Option Premium

📊 The Implied Truth: Weekly Table Overview

Unlock the Full Picture - Upgrade to access the complete table, including all 100 equities (AAPL, META, AMZN, NVDA and more)

Every number tells a story. Each week, we decode the landscape across the most liquid ETFs, because this is where retail traders get the cleanest signals and the least slippage. But the power isn’t in the data, it’s in how you interpret it.

Below is your edge: a strategic overview that reveals where the premium is overpriced, where price action is exhausted, and where the highest-probability setups exist for the coming week.

This section is here to help you choose what works for your strategy. The numbers are facts, not opinions. Whether you sell premium, buy directional spreads, or trade reversals, the edge begins with understanding volatility and momentum. Let’s dig in.

What This Table Tells Us

• Use this weekly to guide your trade ideas, not predict outcomes.

• The data is factual. There’s no opinion in this grid, only opportunity.

• Choose what aligns with your timeframe, risk appetite, and edge.

📍 This Week's Market Reading: Where the Action Is

1. Where Premium Sellers Should Be Looking

From an IV Rank standpoint, the fattest option premiums sit in a handful of spots: URA, IBIT, GDX, GLD, SLV, XHB, and XRT all carry IV Rank north of 40, with URA and IBIT up in the 60-80+ range. That’s “real” volatility, not just noise.

For systematic premium selling, those are the areas I’d study first for risk-defined structures (verticals, iron condors, covered strangles), always with small size and wide wings. You’re being paid for movement there, which is the whole point.

Tier-two premium lives in QQQ, XLK, SMH, XBI and a few others with IV Rank in the mid-20s to low-30s. These are more “core index and sector” ideas, enough juice to matter, but not so extreme that you have to give the trade a huge berth. They often fit well in the “steady income” bucket if you already trade those underlyings.

2. RSI Extremes - Short-Term Stretch Points

On the short-term RSI(2) side, a few spots are clearly washed out: IBIT, URA, XHB, TLT, and XLI all sit at or below 10 on RSI(2), with IBIT and URA down near the low-single digits. RSI(14) is still below 50 in most of these, so you’re looking at pullbacks within broader down, or sideways trends.

Educationally, that combination, high IV Rank plus short-term oversold, is where bullish credit spreads or cautiously bullish diagonals often have better odds if you’re comfortable with the underlying. URA, IBIT, and XHB are textbook examples this week: high volatility, sharp pullbacks, and trending ADX readings in the low-to high-20s.

On the other side, XLE and XOP are red-lined on RSI(2) (80+), and XLV is extended on RSI(14) (mid-70s) with a strong trend (ADX in the mid-30s). That’s the “don’t chase” zone; historically, late buyers in that configuration tend to supply the liquidity that more patient traders use for mean-reversion or roll-down/roll-out covered calls.

3. Overbought…but Not Paid to Sell

One of the more important filters for premium sellers: avoid being “right” on mean reversion but underpaid for the risk.

Energy is the cleanest example right now. XLE is short-term overbought (RSI(2) in the mid-80s, RSI(14) in the mid-60s) and trending (ADX ~28), but its IV Rank is only around 12. That’s plenty of directional risk for not much premium. The same theme, though a bit milder, shows up in parts of healthcare: XLV is very strong on RSI(14) with decent but not spectacular IV Rank.

The takeaway: just because something looks “toppy” doesn’t mean it’s automatically a good candidate for call spreads. You still need the option market to pay you enough for the risk you’re taking.

4. VIX & Market Volatility

VIX is hovering around 20, with very high implied volatility but a low IV Rank (~5) and very strong trend (ADX in the mid-40s) plus overbought RSI(2). In plain English: volatility has popped off the floor, but relative to its own history, VIX options are not in a “screaming rich” zone.

For premium sellers, the hedge side should remain intentional, not an afterthought, and VIX calls or index hedges remain more about resilience than “lottery tickets.”

5. Final Signals from The Implied Truth

Breadth is still a bit split: roughly 39% of stocks remain below their 50-day moving average, while about 53% sit below their 200-day. Short-term, the market isn’t falling apart, but underneath the surface you still have plenty of names in longer-term repair mode.

For option sellers, that’s usually a backdrop for small, frequent, high-probability trades rather than big directional bets. Focus on:

• High-IVR names where you’re actually being paid for risk.

• Short-term RSI extremes for timing entries.

• ADX to decide whether you’re trading mean reversion in chop or premium in a trend.

As always, this section is meant to be an educational lens on the current landscape, not personal advice. The edge comes from matching the strategy to the regime, keeping position sizes small, and letting a large sample of disciplined trades do the heavy lifting over time.

Quick Reference

👉 For detailed idea generation, explore my curated list of highly liquid ETFs and equities in this week’s issue of The Implied Perspective, where I break down specific trade frameworks/strategies, delta setups, and portfolio integration for premium sellers.

📚 Educational Corner: Options Deep Dive

How to Create “Synthetic Dividends” with LEAPS

Tired of waiting on quarterly payouts? This week I show you how to build your own dividend stream, using deep-ITM LEAPS as stock replacements and monthly short calls as the paycheck. You’ll get a clean, rules-based blueprint: pick high-delta LEAPS (0.75 to 0.85), sell 30 to 60 DTE calls (0.15–0.35 delta), dial your LEAPS-to-calls ratio for more upside or more income, and manage rolls mechanically, not emotionally. The result is capital-efficient, stock-like exposure with repeatable cash flow, even on names that don’t pay a dime in dividends.

👉 Read the full guide: Create Your Own “Synthetic Dividends” with LEAPS

🔗 Let’s Stay Connected

Have questions, feedback, or just want to say hello? I’d love to hear from you.
📩 Email me anytime at [email protected]

📺 Subscribe on YouTube so you’ll be notified when the first videos are released.
👥 Join the private Facebook group or connect with me on X.
💌 Send me your topic requests, whether for the newsletter, YouTube, or webinars. Seriously, send them. 🙂 

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

Educational use only. The Option Premium is a publication for educational purposes and does not provide personalized investment advice. Options involve risk and are not suitable for all investors. Always confirm details and manage risk prudently.