📩 The Option Premium Weekly Issue - October 11, 2026

I write this every week for the trader who wants clear mechanics, defined risk, and a repeatable process. The strategies are ones I have traded with real capital, as a professional options trader, for more than 24 years. I show the math, the research, and the reasoning behind each one, in depth but in plain English. At least, that is the aim. You are the judge of whether I hit it.

I am a trader, not a direct marketer, and in this industry that distinction matters more than it should. In my experience, much of what lands in a trader’s inbox is written by people whose real skill is selling. You can usually tell by what is missing: any education you could use without buying the next thing.

I would rather go the other way. Your inbox gets treated with respect here. No daily countdowns. No “last chance” subject lines. If I write to you, it is because I have something worth your time.

That choice has a cost. I do not run ads, so this publication grows only one way: a reader finds the work useful and tells another trader or investor. It is slower. I think it is also the only kind of growth worth having.

So I have one request, whether you are a free or a paid subscriber. If something here has helped you, pass it along to one trader, group, or community, who would get something out of it. That is the whole growth plan.

What I am building is a community of like-minded traders and investors who want an honest, high-quality options education without the sales machinery. If that is what you want too, I am glad you are here.

Andy

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The S&P 500 set a record high Tuesday, pulled back, and still finished the week up 1.2%. The Dow gained about 1%, its best week since early August. The Nasdaq rose 0.6%, its fourth straight weekly gain.

Underneath, the leadership rotated. Semiconductors fell 4.3% after a report that OpenAI's revenue is running well below what investors assumed, and Intel dropped 12.3% on the week. Energy rose 3.6%, consumer staples 3.6%, utilities 4%, health care 2.8%, and financials 2.3% ahead of Tuesday's bank reports. And on Friday, Verizon fell 9.3% and AT&T 8.7% after SpaceX agreed to buy wireless spectrum. The market read it as a new competitor, and the telecoms' options prices did what they always do after a surprise: Verizon's IV Rank went from the 50s to 86% in a day.

Wednesday's Fed minutes said most officials expect one more hike by year end. The 10-year yield closed Monday at its highest level since 2002 and ended the week near 5.24%. The VIX closed at 14.84, down 3%.

Here's the number I've been waiting eight weeks to print. The share of stocks above their 50-day average rose, from 27.88% to 28.95%. That's a small move, and one week doesn't make a trend. But it's the first time since mid-August that the reading went up instead of down. The equal-weight S&P gained 1.6%, more than the cap-weighted index. For the first time in two months, the average stock had a better week than the biggest ones.

I'm not calling a bottom in breadth. The reading is still below 29, and the 200-day measure barely moved, from 43.23% to 43.33%. I'm saying the thing we've been watching for finally twitched, and this letter promised to say so when it did.

The heavy week is here. Tuesday brings JPMorgan, Goldman Sachs, Citigroup, Wells Fargo, UnitedHealth, and Johnson & Johnson before the open. Wednesday is September CPI, the last inflation print before the Fed meets on the 28th, plus Bank of America and Morgan Stanley. Thursday is PPI, retail sales, and Taiwan Semiconductor. Friday is October expiration.

For sellers, this is the week the options market has been pricing for a month. Half the stocks on our watchlist now pass the dual filter, and most of that premium is earnings premium. It gets paid out, one report at a time, starting Tuesday. The rule doesn't change: no new standard structures through a report.

The most expensive options on the list belong to the week's biggest losers. After Friday's spectrum news, Verizon's IV Rank hit 86% at the 96th percentile and AT&T's 81% at the 94th. Both stocks fell 9% in a day, and both trends are deeply broken, with gaps of -38 and -30. This is the rich-and-broken trap in its purest form. The premium is real. So is the reason for it. A put sold into that kind of drop is a bet that the selling is finished, and nothing in the data says it is. Both companies also report inside the next three weeks.

Intel fell 12% and its options got no more expensive. That's the opposite reading. A 28% rank after a drop that size says the market treats the move as a repricing, not the start of a trend. For a put seller, cheap premium on a falling stock is a warning, same as it is for an ETF. For anyone who already owns the shares, it means the covered call pays less than it should right when you'd want it to pay more.

Walmart is the week's cleanest setup on the stock list. Up 6.8%, a 53.7% rank at the 63rd percentile, a trend gap of +13, and a report that doesn't land until November 19. A strike outside the expected move for the October 30 cycle sits near $104, about 6.7% below the price, with roughly 84% odds. The willing-to-own test does the rest.

The Weekly ETF Volatility and Trend Intelligence Report

👉 Access the Watchlist →

Five of the ten now pass the dual filter, up from three last week: Meta, Apple, Amazon, Alphabet, and Microsoft. All five report between October 28 and November 4. That's not a coincidence. It's the appointment mechanism loading up. Apple is the clearest case: its IV Rank has climbed from 40% to 54% over three weeks while the stock barely moved. The market is paying for the October 29 report, not for anything Apple did this week.

Intel went the other way. It fell 12% and its premium stayed cheap, a 28% rank. When a stock drops that hard and the options don't get more expensive, the market is treating the move as finished, not as the start of something.

Two weeks ago I wrote that energy's trend had broken and it came off the put-selling list. This week it went back on. XLE gained 3.6%, its trend gap flipped from -4.5 to +10.9, and it still carries a 54.6% rank. Health care did the same: XLV rose 2.8%, its relative strength crossed back above 50, and it holds a 53.6% rank at the 67th percentile. Both pair rich premium with a confirmed uptrend. Through November 20, the expected range is roughly $59 to $71 for XLE and $161 to $181 for XLV. A short put below the bottom of either range has about 85% odds of finishing out of the money.

TLT's premium cooled, from an 88.5% rank to 62.9%, but it's still the richest on the board and still in a downtrend. Rich and broken, same as it's been. EFA is new in the zone at a 49.9% rank and the 89th percentile, with a broken trend. Both are warnings, not sales.

This week's board uses the October 30 expiration, 20 days out. That's shorter than our usual 30 to 45 day window, and I want to be plain about why. The November cycle runs through nearly every report on the list, and we don't open new puts into a report. October 30 is the last clean window before earnings arrive for these four names. The trade-off is thinner premium and faster decay near the end. Strikes sit at the one-standard-deviation line.

Disney is new. It rose 5.7% this week, carries a 47.8% rank at the 58th percentile, and doesn't report until November 12. Cisco, Microsoft, and Meta carry over with strong trends.

Last week's board, one week later. All four October 30 puts moved further out of the money: Microsoft's $470 put has a 14% cushion, Meta's $640 12%, Cisco's $100 18%, and Palo Alto's $340 23%. Odds run 88% to 96%.

The October 16 board, expiring Friday. Nvidia's $210, Micron's $940, and Amazon's $240 puts all sit 9% or more above their strikes. Intel's $100 put is the one under pressure after a 12% drop: a 4.7% cushion, about 70% odds. Four weeks ago that put had a 23% cushion. The willing-to-own test exists for weeks like this one.

Sixteen ETFs qualify as cheap, and this week seven of them trend, up from two. Oil (USO), consumer staples (XLP), and SPY itself lead the list, with IBIT, China, semiconductors, and VTI behind them. That's the rotation showing up in the data: the names turning up are the ones that lagged all summer.

And insurance got expensive again. VIX options sat at the 34th percentile last week. They're at the 77th now, the fifth time this year they've loaded with the VIX under 15. The index didn't move. The demand for protection did, a week before CPI and bank earnings.

$MMFI: 28.95, from 27.88. $MMTH: 43.33, from 43.23. The first uptick in eight weeks on the short-term reading. The posture stays where it is, smaller, defined, hedged, selective, because one week above the prior low is a twitch, not a trend. The line at 50 is still the switch. But for the first time since August, the reading moved toward it instead of away.

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Tuesday's piece is about the variable no screener measures. The strategies are public. The math is public. What separates traders over a hundred trades is whether they follow their own rules when it costs something. It's the shortest article on the site and the one I'd reread first after a bad week.

Thursday's piece builds a poor man's covered call portfolio on the Dividend Aristocrats, the companies that have raised their dividends for 25 straight years. You don't collect the dividend with a LEAPS. What you get instead is the same stock exposure for about a quarter of the capital, with monthly call premium that typically runs well above the yield you gave up.

Sell a put below the market, buy a cheaper put below it, and keep the difference. You've defined your worst case before the trade exists. The article runs a full example on an $85 stock: a $70 credit, a $430 maximum loss, a $79.30 breakeven, and the management rules that keep a losing spread small. If you've been selling cash-secured puts and want the same trade with a fraction of the capital, start here.

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The same $5-wide credit spread costs about $10 of friction in SPY and about $120 in an illiquid look-alike. Against a $150 credit, one of those is a business and the other is a machine built to lose. The article runs that ledger, shows why market makers widen quotes, and gives the four filters to run before any strategy. It's the reason XHB stays off our sell list no matter how rich its premium gets.

👉 Liquidity: The Lifeblood of Options Trading →

The Implied Truth is the weekly version of this. The article is the daily one: read the volatility landscape, check sentiment, layer momentum across three timeframes, look for clusters where the signals agree, and match the strategy to the regime. It finds candidates. The six-gate checklist from two weeks ago decides which ones become trades. Scan first, gate second.

👉 The Daily Options Trader Checklist →

Next Monday, October 19, is the 39th anniversary of Black Monday, when the Dow fell 22.6% in a single day. Before 1987, index puts and calls at the same distance from the market traded at roughly the same price. After it, they never did again. Puts have cost more than calls ever since. Traders call it skew, and it's the market's permanent memory of one afternoon.

That memory is why our iron condor guide shows the put side paying more per point of distance than the call side. It's why the fear premium lives below the market. And it's why a premium seller's business works: every put you sell carries a small piece of the insurance the market has been overpaying for since 1987.

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The index hit a record, but the news this week was underneath it. Breadth rose for the first time since August, the average stock beat the biggest ones, and the sectors that lagged all summer led. Energy and health care are back on the sell list with trends to match. Half the Liquid Ten carry earnings premium that starts paying out Tuesday. And VIX options reloaded a week before CPI. The posture holds. Smaller, defined, hedged, selective, with one eye on a breadth line that finally moved the right way.

If this issue taught you something, forward it to one person who's trying to learn options the honest way. That's still how this letter grows.

See you next Sunday.

Probabilities over predictions,

Andy

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

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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.