We’re only a month into 2022… and our New Money Crew strategies have been turning in some spectacular results despite a massive pullback, unending volatility and market-maker manipulation.
With all of these wild earnings moves, it can be easy to think that all you need to do is pick an option in the right direction and wait for the money to roll right into your account…
Not so fast, my friends… That’s just not the case where market maker shenanigans are involved.
Even traders who get everything right can still be saddled with a big fat loss.
Amazon Earnings Move and Market-Maker Manipulation
I know there are some traders out there who are thinking, “If I’d only bought Amazon calls on Thursday, I’d be rich!”
Well, even if you have the thousands of dollars to cover the options premium, traders who took the trade could have lost their shirts.
On Thursday, I was eyeballing a trade on Bezos’ baby in the Amazon.com Inc. (Nasdaq: AMZN) Feb. 4 $3,200 strike calls.
The options were trading at $11.00 (so $1,100 a contract) toward the close and if you took the trade, you woke up to those bad boys trading around $5… even after shares soared over 12% on their earnings beat.
Now the move in the stock exceeded the market maker’s expected move of $80 from Thursday’s close.
What killed the trade at the open was the massive spike in implied volatility (IV) from the earnings event — and wild moves in stocks like Meta Platforms Inc. (Nasdaq: FB) — was sucked out of the trade.
The good news is the stock continued its break higher, so there was still opportunity to come out for a win… but this a perfect example of how the market makers can manipulate everything, tilting the odds in their favor.
Check out the short video below and let’s take a look at more examples of market-maker options manipulation.
Don’t forget you can follow me @LanceIppolito on Twitter, Instagram and our YouTube channel for more trading insights and tips. And as always, you can find me right here talking stocks and options trading — and printing money — on WealthPress.com!
P.S. The markets have been all over the place, yet WealthPress Senior Strategist Roger Scott has still been able to hit an 85.7% win rate on closed trades over the past four months.
Roger has been taking advantage of the mega-pullback that just happened…
So what did he do so differently to make sure the scales tipped in our favor?
It’s all laid out neatly in his “2022 Buy Back Plan”!
