📩 The Option Premium Weekly Issue - September 27, 2026

This is the first Sunday letter from the newly launched The Option Premium website, and I want to start with the only thing that feels right: thank you.

The new site is live. The community is open. And I'm still a little amazed at what I've watched happen over the past week. New readers keep arriving, many of them sent by someone who already reads this letter. The notes in my inbox have been generous and thoughtful, and more than a few of you wrote just to say the content is helping. I read every one of them, and I don't take a single one for granted.

Here's the part I keep coming back to. There's no ad budget behind this. No marketing machine, no paid promotions. This letter has grown one reader at a time, because someone forwarded an issue, mentioned it in a group, or told a friend it was worth reading. That's the slowest way to build anything, and it's the only way I ever wanted to do it. Every time you do that, you put your own name behind mine. Thank you for trusting me with that.

Here's what comes next for subscribers. My first live webinar for Total Access subscribers is in October. After that come courses built around the strategies I actually trade, a growing video library, more educational articles, research and reports and more.

Again, thank you for being here.

Now, to the markets.

Two markets traded this week, and they barely spoke to each other.

The first was the bond market, and it was not calm. The 10-year Treasury yield touched 5.23% on Friday before settling at 5.18%, its highest close since 2007. The 30-year closed at 5.5%, a level it had not seen in more than two decades. The five-year crossed 5% on Wednesday for the first time since 2007. Hawkish Fed speakers, elevated oil, and the strongest purchasing managers report in years all pushed the same way. Futures now put the odds of an October hike at roughly two in three.

The second market was the one on your TV, and it looked fine. The Nasdaq 100 gained 3.2%, the Nasdaq Composite logged a record weekly close, and the S&P 500 rose 1.3%. Meta jumped 12.9% on the launch of its Muse AI agent, with AMD, Intel, and Qualcomm each up more than 12%. Oil slipped on hopes the Strait of Hormuz could reopen. The VIX closed at 14.87, right where it started.

Now the part the index doesn't show you. The Dow gained 0.3%. Small caps fell 0.8%. The equal-weight S&P fell 0.6%. The share of stocks above their 50-day average dropped from 34.02% to 30.23%, the sixth straight Friday lower. The share above their 200-day average slipped from 47.95% to 45.78%. The index tells you what the biggest companies did. Breadth tells you what the market did. This week, they told different stories again.

For premium sellers, that split shows up in the options chain. Index insurance is cheap: SPY sits at a 12.8% IV Rank. But 36 of the 95 stocks on our equity watchlist now pass the dual filter, IV Rank above 35% and IV Percentile above 50%. Most of them have one thing in common. Earnings season starts October 13, and the market is already charging for it.

This is the last full round of jobs and inflation data before the October Fed meeting, so every print gets read through one question: does the second hike happen? Micron and Nike are the week's two earnings appointments. Our rule stays the same: no standard structures through a report.

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Meta did something rare. It rallied 12.9% and its premium got richer, from a 49.8% rank to 59.3%. Big rallies usually cool options prices. When premium rises with the stock, the market is paying for the next move, not the last one.

Four of the ten now pass the dual filter: Meta, Intel, Microsoft, and Amazon. Apple keeps normalizing, its percentile down to 21. And Micron reports Wednesday with a 61% implied volatility at just a 25% rank. IV Rank measures a stock against its own year, and for a stock up 279% this year, 61% is ordinary.

Last week I wrote that energy still paid, barely, and that this week's readings would decide. They decided. XLE's trend gap went from +0.4 to -12.0, XOP's from +6.8 to -8.5. The premium is still there. The confirmation isn't, and that takes energy off the put-selling list.

Health care is the one name that clears both hurdles. XLV sits at a 58.1% rank with its relative strength back above 50. The expected move through October 30 runs from roughly $161 to $180, so a short put below $161 sits outside the range the market itself prices, about an 85% chance of finishing out of the money.

TLT jumped from a 37.3% rank to 75.4% in one week, at the 97th percentile. Rich and broken means pick your side. The put side is where the damage has been. If anything, it's the call side above the expected move near $83, where the trend works with you.

This week's board comes straight from implied volatility rather than the put screener. Each strike sits at the one-standard-deviation line for the October 23 expiration, 26 days out, and every name reports after that date. The premium comes from your own chain Monday morning.

All four pass the dual filter with an uptrend. The test that matters most isn't in the table: would you be glad to own the shares at that strike? If the answer is no, the odds don't matter. Disclosure: we already hold Merck through a Wealth Without Shares position.

Last week's board, one week later. Intel's $100 put now has a 23% cushion, about 89% odds. Nvidia's $210 put has 7%, about 81%. Micron's $940 put has 15%, about 82%, but I owe you a correction: Micron reports Wednesday, inside that October window, and I should have flagged it. The cushion is wider than the roughly 9% move the market expects, but a report is a report. Amazon's $240 put is the one under pressure, just 4% above the strike on a broken trend, with odds near 68%.

Fifteen ETFs qualify as cheap. Only two also trend: IBIT (+22.0 gap) and SMH (+15.1). XLK left the zone as its premium climbed to a 33.9% rank.

I also owe you a follow-up on gold. Last week I called GLD's repair above 50 the sleeper reading of the week. It didn't hold. GLD fell 1.9% as yields climbed, and its relative strength slipped back below 50.

The broken list keeps growing: the equal-weight index at -24.3, small caps at -23.1, financials at -20.4, regional banks at -18.2. Cheap options on falling assets are a warning, not a sale.

$MMFI: 30.23, from 34.02. $MMTH: 45.78, from 47.95. Both lines are still broken, and both got worse while the S&P sits 1% from its high. The posture stays exactly where it's been for two weeks: smaller, defined, hedged, selective. The 50 line is still the switch. When breadth reclaims it, this letter will say so that Sunday.

👉 Mastering the Iron Condor: A Step-by-Step Guide to a Defined-Risk Options Strategy →

👉 10 Essential Principles Every Successful Options Trader Should Master →

Tuesday's piece is the complete iron condor guide, built on one fully priced SPY example: the expected move sets the goalposts, four numbers get computed before entry, and three rules handle nearly everything after. If you've wondered why risking $383 to make $117 can be a good trade, the answer is in there.

Thursday's piece is the list I'd teach first, including a correction of the most repeated statistic in options education. You've heard 70% to 80% of options expire worthless. The clearing data says roughly a third do. The seller's edge never depended on that myth, and the article explains what it does depend on.

You own a stock that's done well, and you'd sleep better with a floor under it. The collar is the tool: buy a put below the market, sell a call above it, and let the call pay for most of the put. You trade the upside above the call for a known worst case. The article covers both strikes, what "zero-cost" really means, and the tax question to ask first.

👉 The Collar Strategy: Giving Up Some Upside to Cap Your Downside →

Most losses don't come from bad setups. They come from abandoning a process in the middle of a trade. This piece is six gates every trade has to clear before the order goes in: your edge, your risk in dollars, both exits, market context, liquidity, and the one that catches everything else. Would you take this exact trade a hundred times? If the answer is no, don't take it once.

👉 The Final Checklist: 6 Gates Before Every Options Trade →

This is the article behind the Income Board. A limit order and a cash-secured put express the same intention, but only one pays you to wait. The piece runs a real AMD example, shows how repeated premiums lower your cost basis, and names the one scenario where the plain limit order honestly wins. Smarter structure, not a free upgrade.

👉 Why I Rarely Buy a Stock at Its Current Price →

"The market can remain irrational longer than you can remain solvent" may be the most quoted line in finance, and it's almost always credited to John Maynard Keynes. There's one problem. Nobody has ever found it in anything Keynes wrote or said. He died in 1946, and the earliest versions anyone has traced show up decades later.

Whoever said it, it fits this tape. The Nasdaq posted a record weekly close while seven in ten stocks sit below their 50-day average. Splits like this can close fast or run for months. Being right about breadth pays nothing if you're sized to be wrong about timing. That's why the posture is smaller and hedged, not short. The goal isn't to predict when the gap closes. It's to be here, capital intact, when it does.

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 →

Yields hit a 19-year high, the Nasdaq posted a record weekly close, and the VIX didn't flinch. Underneath, breadth fell for a sixth straight Friday and energy's trend broke. So the board narrows: health care is the only ETF with premium and a trend, four quality names offer puts outside the expected move, and earnings season is inflating premium on more than a third of the stock list for a reason. Our positions are mostly where they should be, with J&J and URA the two to watch, both on rules written before entry. 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

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.