The next month is going to be a chess match of mind games between the Fed, Wall Street, Trump, the shorts, and the bulls — all trying to figure out whether the other side has anticipated their anticipation. So my predictions below may not be right either.
Fed representative Warsh gave his first Jackson Hole speech on Friday, causing major market turbulence. What did Warsh say? He said he is firmly committed to bringing inflation down to 2%, so the Fed still has a lot of work to do. He didn't mention rate hikes, but since the Fed's "work" is ambiguous, the market and some media outlets automatically added rate-hike expectations into their messaging.
Maybe Warsh can bring down inflation through other means, or maybe this month's nonfarm payrolls and CPI will both come in below expectations. Then the Fed wouldn't need to do much work. So a September 18 rate hike is not a certainty.
But then again, if the data comes in below expectations, that means the economy is weak — so what reason would the market have to rally? So there will inevitably be a pullback before September 18. The only question is how deep that pullback will be, and which sector will be tasked with taking the hit — that's what makes it interesting.
Wall Street represents the group figuring out how to get Anthropic listed smoothly. So I separate them from the bulls and shorts. A smooth IPO doesn't necessarily mean a bullish market — they can smash the market first, then squeeze the shorts, and still pull off a smooth listing, just like they did with SPCX.
Additionally, Wall Street market makers also have to manage the September 18 Triple Witching options expiration, so no one dares to make a big move before Triple Witching.
Trump's concern is simple: the number of sign-ups for the Trump baby accounts. As long as the S&P 500 goes up — well, now it's not just the S&P 500. According to a CNBC update on August 20, the Treasury Department has issued investment guidance expanding investment options. Apparently they realized that a 2.5% market rally isn't that appealing when CPI is running at 3.4%.
In short, protecting the S&P from falling is no longer the top priority. They can find other sectors that are easier to rally and control.
I've gotten wordy again. The bottom line: abandoning the priority of protecting the S&P, and prioritizing a smooth Anthropic IPO instead. My prediction is a 2%+ market decline in September, with the excuse being either "data is too good" or "data is too bad." Volatility will rebound from lows, then squeeze the shorts around Triple Witching to build hype for the Anthropic IPO.
Yes, someone opened a 100,000-contract VIX 28 Call expiring October 21 $VIX 20261021 28.0 CALL$ , anticipating a repeat of the pre-SPCX-IPO drop.
If you don't know how to trade this month, just find the lows and sell puts.
The week of October 2 has a certain feel to it — my gut says Anthropic will go public that week. Because there's a bunch of large tech-sector sell-side block trades expiring October 2 on Friday:
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$XLF 20261002 60.5 CALL$ — XLF October 2 60.5 Call, opening 46,000 contracts, direction unclear.
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$NVDA 20261002 200.0 PUT$ — NVDA October 2 200 Put, opened as a sell of 60,000 contracts. This order doesn't show up as a single block in the screener because the trader painstakingly split it into small orders of 100–200 contracts, trading from 1:30 PM all the way to 5:30 PM to complete the opening.
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$AMD 20261002 410.0 PUT$ — AMD October 2 410 Put, opened as a sell of 16,000 contracts.
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$INTC 20261002 110.0 CALL$ — INTC October 2 110 Call, opened as a buy of 16,000 contracts.
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$AMZN 20261002 285.0 CALL$ — Amazon October 2 285 Call, opened as a sell of 7,270 contracts.
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$TLT 20261002 83.5 CALL$ — TLT October 2 83.5 Call, opened as a sell of 7,058 contracts.
Let me circle back to the title here. After Thursday's earnings release, the January 2027-expiry 200 Call opened 200,000 contracts $NVDA 20270115 200.0 CALL$ . Of those, 100,000 contracts were rolled from the same-expiry 160 Call, and the other 100,000 were opened as a single-leg position.
I'm not satisfied that the expiration wasn't pushed out further. Rolling to a higher strike on the same expiration is just taking principal off the table — but the additional 100,000 single-leg opening changes the picture. That's a total of 200,000 call contracts!!!!
This is not a recommendation to buy calls. ITM call openings don't necessarily signal extreme bullishness — they just indicate a view that the stock won't drop deeply. Buying calls here could still lose money, especially with the chop before Triple Witching. But the "no deep drop" trend is now clear — and that's enough to coast through the second half of the year by just selling puts on NVIDIA.
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