📩 The Option Premium Weekly Issue - October 4, 2026

Two weeks ago we launched the new Option Premium website. I said it would be the start of something bigger: a home for traders who would rather understand probabilities than chase predictions. This week, a subscriber in Australia sent me the note below after spending an afternoon on the site. It’s one of many I’ve received over the past two weeks.

Thank you. Nearly every new subscriber who arrives here was sent by one of you. When you recommend an options service to a friend, you're putting your own reputation behind it, and that isn't something people do lightly in this industry. I know what that recommendation costs you, and I try to earn it every week.

Also, there's more coming. Our community for paid subscribers launched two weeks ago. Monthly webinars begin around the October expiration. Courses begin shortly after. Regular videos are on the way, along with new portfolios ahead of 2027. Total Access members get all of it, plus the community, where trade alerts post in real time and you choose how you're notified. Receive it all here: Total Access.

The number that mattered came Friday morning. The economy added just 29,000 jobs in September, against roughly 84,000 expected. Unemployment ticked up to 4.2% from 4.1%. August was revised down to 133,000. Wages grew 0.1% for the month.

That was enough to change the conversation about the Fed. A week ago, futures put the odds of a second rate hike in October at about two in three. After two Fed officials said this week they wanted more data, and after Friday's report, those odds fell hard. Stocks liked it. The Nasdaq hit an intraday high Friday and finished up about 1.2%.

But zoom out to the full week and the picture is quieter. The S&P 500 slipped 0.3%. The Dow fell 1.3%. The Nasdaq gained 0.5%. And the bond market never really relaxed. The 10-year yield touched its highest level since 2002 midweek, eased Thursday on worries about France's finances, dipped after the jobs report, and then climbed right back.

Underneath, the same story kept running. Semiconductors rallied 4%. Banks fell ahead of next week's earnings, with Bank of America down 5.2%. Gold dropped 3.4%, silver 5.9%, and the gold miners 5.5%. Health care slid 2.7%, led by a 5.6% drop in Johnson & Johnson.

And breadth fell again. The share of stocks above their 50-day average dropped from 30.23% to 27.88%, the seventh straight Friday lower. The share above their 200-day average slipped from 45.78% to 43.23%. The Nasdaq sits less than 1% from its high. Most stocks sit a long way from theirs.

A light week, with one real event: Wednesday's minutes from the September Fed meeting, the one where the committee hiked 12 to 0. After Friday's jobs report, every word about "the next hike" gets read twice. Delta reports Friday and kicks off the airline season.

The heavier week comes after this one. Bank earnings start October 13, CPI lands October 14, and October options expire on the 16th. The Fed meets October 27 and 28, and the midterm elections fall on November 3. For premium sellers, that's a stack of appointments, and the November cycle runs straight through most of them.

The Weekly ETF Volatility and Trend Intelligence Report

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Micron gave us this week's best lesson. It reported Wednesday. Before the report, its IV Rank sat at 25%. After it, 0%. The stock itself finished the week down less than 1%. That's the appointment mechanism in its purest form: premium inflates into a scheduled event, the event arrives, and the premium is gone the next morning whether the news was good or bad. Nike showed the same thing, its IV Rank dropping from 82% to 36% after Thursday's report.

Three of the ten pass the dual filter this week: Meta, Microsoft, and Amazon. Intel dropped out as its premium cooled to a 32.7% rank. Apple's IV Rank climbed to 48.4% heading into its October 29 report, but its percentile, 42, still says that premium isn't unusual for Apple. Nvidia remains the cheapest options in the group, at a 9.5% rank.

For the first time in weeks, no ETF pairs rich premium with a confirmed uptrend. Health care, last week's one confirmed setup, fell 2.7%, broke its trend, and slipped out of the zone. A short put below $161, outside the expected move we published, still has room at $166. That's what the expected move is for. But the setup itself is gone, and we don't pretend otherwise.

TLT is now the richest name on the board, an 88.5% rank at the 98th percentile, and still falling. Last week I wrote that if you sold anything there, it was the call side, above roughly $83. TLT now sits at $77.48. Energy is neither broken nor fixed: XLE and XOP both sit right at the line, with trend gaps near zero. That's a wait, not a sell. XHB shows a 72.9% rank, but its options market is too thin to trade well. A rich price you can't exit cleanly isn't an opportunity.

This week's strikes sit at the one-standard-deviation line for the October 30 expiration, 28 days out, and every name reports after that date. Microsoft's $470 put and Meta's $640 put carry over from strong trends. Cisco and Palo Alto Networks are new, both with rich premium, both in uptrends. Odds run 85% to 87%. Premium comes from your own chain Monday morning, and the question that matters isn't in the table: would you be glad to own it at that strike?

Last week's board, one week later. Microsoft's $475 put sits 9% above the strike, about 88% odds. Meta's $660, 10%, about 84%. Merck's $135 slipped to 7% and about 80%. Qualcomm fell 8.5% this week, leaving its $170 put 8.7% above the strike with odds near 74%. That's the one that tested the willing-to-own question.

And the board before that. All four October 16 puts are in good shape. Micron's $940 put came through earnings with a 14% cushion and about 91% odds. Amazon's $240 put, the one under pressure last week, recovered to a 4.8% cushion.

Thirteen ETFs qualify as cheap. Two trend cleanly: IBIT (+23.1 gap) and SMH (+20.4), the same two as last week. SPY barely holds on, with a trend gap of +1.2. Everything else in the zone is falling: gold, silver, the miners, the Dow, small caps, regional banks. Cheap options on falling assets are a warning, not a sale.

The one cheap thing worth noticing this week is insurance itself. VIX options dropped from the 92nd percentile last week to the 34th. When nobody wants protection, it's usually on sale.

$MMFI: 27.88, from 30.23. $MMTH: 43.23, from 45.78. Seven straight Fridays lower for the short-term reading. The posture hasn't changed in three weeks and doesn't change now: smaller, defined, hedged, selective. The line at 50 is the switch, and it's further away than it was last Sunday.

👉 Selling Lottery Tickets: The Art of High-Probability Options Strategies →

👉 Is Inflation Here to Stay? How to Profit with Poor Man's Covered Calls on Gold →

Tuesday's piece builds a full Microsoft iron condor from the expected move to the exit, and prints the number most condor articles leave out: the joint probability of keeping the whole credit, about 74%, not the 85% and 89% each side shows on its own.

Thursday's piece builds a poor man's covered call on GLD, including the financing cost hidden inside the LEAPS that almost nobody itemizes. One honest note on timing: gold fell 3.4% this week and its premium is cheap, a 17% IV Rank. The article is about the structure, not about buying gold this Monday.

If you learn one structure first, make it this one. Sell an option, buy a cheaper one further out, and keep the difference. The bought option caps your loss, so both your best case and your worst case are known before you place the trade. The article walks through the bull put spread and the bear call spread, the three numbers to compute before every trade, and why a spread needs a fraction of the capital a cash-secured put does.

👉 Credit Spreads: Your First Risk-Defined Options Strategy →

Most traders can tell you what each position is doing. Far fewer can tell you what their whole portfolio is betting on. This piece teaches the one sign rule that trips up almost everyone, then translates a five-position book into a single number: how much it behaves like owning the S&P 500. The professional's edge isn't hedging to zero. It's always knowing the number. Our own two November bear calls are a live example: separate trades, one shared exposure.

👉 Delta Hedging Explained: Manage Risk Without Picking a Side →

Selling both sides of a condor in the same minute means accepting whatever prices that minute offers. Staggering means selling each side when the crowd is overpaying for it. The article covers the benefits and, just as important, the bill: between the first leg and the second, you're holding a one-sided bet. With energy sitting flat and premium rich across the stock list, it's a timely read.

👉 The Staggered Iron Condor: A Sturdier Way to Sell Premium →

When the Chicago Board Options Exchange opened on April 26, 1973, it listed calls on just 16 stocks and traded 911 contracts on its first day. There were no listed puts. Those didn't arrive until 1977. For four years, nobody could sell a cash-secured put or build a bull put spread on a listed exchange.

I learned this business sitting beside one of those original CBOE market makers, and he never let me forget how new all of this is. On Friday, SPY alone traded more than 14 million option contracts. The tools got bigger and faster. The math behind them didn't change. Probability, sizing, and patience worked in 1973, and they're the only things that work now.

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 →

A weak jobs report took some pressure off the Fed, and the Nasdaq celebrated. Most stocks didn't. Breadth fell for a seventh straight Friday, banks and metals slid, and no ETF on the board pairs rich premium with a real trend. So the opportunities moved to individual stocks with strong trends and reports after October 30, and to patience everywhere else. The J&J close was the week's reminder that rules written in advance do the work you can't do in the moment. Nothing argued for changing the posture. Smaller, defined, hedged, selective, until the tape says otherwise.

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

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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.