"First they scare 'em out, then they wear 'em out."

That's a famous old Wall Street saying. And I agree with it 100%.

In Bitcoin, the "scare" post-100K might not have been that scary (or maybe it's yet to come?), but it definitely feels like we're in the "wear 'em out" phase right now.

And my gut tells me the next move higher will catch the chasers by surprise. That's what I want to position for.

Listen, everyone struggles.

Your struggles are most certainly different than mine. It follows that they are different from your neighbors, work colleagues, friends, and even family members.

They may be better or worse. It doesn't matter. What does matter is that you have struggles, they are yours, and to varying degrees, these struggles affect your mental health and put you at risk of entering a self-fulfilling spiral that you can't escape from until you've lost everything.

We're coming up on expiration for a play in a Canadian Bank ($CM) that has treated us very well since the summer.

And now a new Canadian Bank is displaying signs of a fresh multi-year breakout. We're going to keep this Canada party rolling with today's new trade.

Seven of the ten biggest-ever options volume days have been in 2024, with the other three in 2023, according to this report in Traders Magazine.

It goes on to say: "...numbers that would be considered spikes ten or even five years ago are more like a current-day new normal."

I wouldn't have it any other way.

The growing popularity of options trading makes sense to me. No other product offers so much dynamic flexibility for traders to craft unique ways to express market opinions.

No other product gives us the ability to define our risks absolutely, while positioning ourselves with leverage to participate in theoretically unlimited gains.

We've seen some fast moving breakouts during the recent stage of this bull market cycle. 

I'm not calling for the bull market to end. In fact, I think it continues for a while longer. But its highly likely the pace of prices increases slows.

With this in mind, today's trade is the perfect kind of play for such an environment

We talk a lot around here about taking half off the table either when our position doubles in value or we hit a key price target.

It's a great position management practice that increases our win rate while leaving us with partial positions to participate in truly outstanding runs.

But we haven't talked much about alternative ways to "take half."

What if we can take half of our directional risk off the table while leveraging gamma to keep the majority of our open profits in the case of a market reversal, and participate almost fully in a truly massive breakout?

Sounds nice, right?

A situation like this is presenting itself in our current open position in $CM Dec 55 calls. We entered this position in August and now our in-the-money calls are approaching expiration on December 20th.

Here's the chart:

In today's Flow Show, Steve Strazza and I discuss the signal (if any) being sent from $VIX with a 13 handle, and we cautioned viewers to not just automatically think that a low VIX means the next spike is imminent.

Then, we got into the opportunity that looks most appealing over the next 6-12 months. 

You can watch the full episode here and get the trade details below: 

Apple has been in a year-long range (see video) that appears to have been decisively broken. 

Here's a zoomed-in one-year chart showing the current breakout about the 234-235 range:

The market's mood is for higher prices. It's a Bull Market.

Thus, it's no surprise that a data company providing important information to investors is riding the wave higher.

It pays to buy dips in strong stocks during bull markets, and today, one such opportunity is presenting itself.

In today's Flow Show, I flew solo. But have no fear, I have a great idea to work with that was brought to me by the All Star Options community and endorsed by the analysts here at All Star Charts.

You can watch the full episode here:

Earlier in the day, Steve and I were together on a live twitter/X spaces and we were talking about the strength we're seeing in the payments space. Not just the Visas and Mastercards, but the Paypals, Venmos, and Squares.

Universally, we liked the $SQ chart. And my ASO community likes it too.

So here's the weekly $SQ chart that I shared in the show:

The price of $FXI is going in the wrong direction. And as we know, only price pays. Price is truth.

Due to two previous "covered call" premium sales against our long January 2026 35-strike calls and more than one year until our long calls expire, I'm going to get creative with our position to keep the dream alive. I think we can afford to be patient.

I'm confident in doing so because ending the campaign here would only result in a small loss. So there's no panic.

JC did his mid-monthly conference call this week and offered many ideas, as usual.

But he mentioned one name that stood out to me for three reasons:

1. I'd never heard of it before. 
2. It's in a sector that should do well in a Bull Market. And,
3. It looks like the chart wants to resolve a gap-n-go pattern to higher prices.

We've got Nvidia earnings after the bell this afternoon. The feeling I shared to my analysts today -- and they all agreed -- is that if Nvidia disappoints, the likely result will be a small speedbump for the overall stock market. But if investors cheer the Nvidia earnings results, then gas is going to get poured on this bull market.

The Russell 2000 Small Cap ETF $IWM does not have direct exposure to $NVDA, so our risks feel limited on the downside. However, in a resumption of the bull market, small caps have a good chance of ripping to and through new highs.

That's the bet we're making today.