• Don's Trading Desk
  • Posts
  • The weekly expected move was $188.88. The market tested both edges this morning.

The weekly expected move was $188.88. The market tested both edges this morning.

The sell-off was not a crash. The rally was not a surprise. The options market priced both in before Monday opened.

The weekly expected move for the S&P this week is $188.88.

That means the options market, before a single tweet dropped, before a single headline ran, priced in a range of roughly 6,508 on the downside to 6,695 on the upside. Write those numbers down.

Because everything that happened this morning fits inside that range exactly.

Here is what actually happened.

The market was selling off hard pre-market. Not randomly. Not because of panic. It was sitting right at 6,500, the lower edge of the weekly expected move. That is the options market telling you where the floor is before you turn on CNBC.

Then Trump posted on Truth Social. Iran talks. Halting strikes for five days. The market ripped 250 S&P points in roughly five minutes.

Spectacular to watch. Also completely untradeable. By the time you read the tweet, found your platform, and placed an order, it was done.

Then the cash open hit. The cash open is the moment the bell rings and real institutional size starts flooding in. The market pulled back. This morning I said it would.

Why? Order imbalances. When a glut of large orders hits at once, the futures briefly contract while everything finds its level. It looks like chaos. It is just the market repricing efficiently.

By the time all that settled, the market was trading back inside the weekly range. Right where it was always going to be.

The sell-off was not a crash. The rally was not a surprise. Both were priced in before the week started.

The expected move is not a prediction. It is what the options market says is the likely range for the session or the week. When you know that number, you do not ask whether today is a big move. You already know.

$188.88. Lower edge 6,508. Upper edge 6,695. The market spent Monday morning touching both sides of that range.

Nobody on CNBC mentioned either number.

The daily expected move today was $88.55 and told the same story. The market sold off to the lower edge.

The tweet ripped it to the upper edge. One standard deviation down, one standard deviation up, all before lunch.

This is the entire reason I built the expected move framework. Not to predict direction. To stop you from reacting to the headline and start reading what is already priced in.

Tomorrow at 1 PM ET I am going live to trade Superfly. Superfly is my zero DTE options strategy with a twist. 

You watch me find the setup, place the order, and manage the trade from entry to exit in a live market. 

To your success,

Don Kaufman

P.S. My Meta Superfly was closed out for a 218% profit after one day.