Weekly roundup: Indices under pressure, while individual stocks kick off 2026 with a strong start.

Moo Options Explorer wrote a column · Jan 5 02:40

Hello mooers!

Last week, U.S. stocks came under pressure amid thin trading volume at the turn of the year, compounded by the release of the Federal Reserve's latest meeting minutes which revealed growing divergence among policymakers regarding the path of future rate cuts. For the week, the $Dow Jones Industrial Average (.DJI.US)$ fell 0.67%, the $S&P 500 Index (.SPX.US)$ declined 1.03%, and the $Nasdaq Composite Index (.IXIC.US)$ dropped 1.52%.

Weekly roundup: Indices under pressure, while individual stocks kick off 2026 with a strong start.

Let’s dive into what the community traded, debated, and discovered this week.

3 key words to describe your 2025 investment journey

@Grateful 感恩 shared his insights from trading options in 2025：

Options are not about prediction — they are about preparation.

Sell Put strategies helped me understand that:

Risk management comes before profit

Time and patience are your real edge

Emotional discipline matters more than market direction

Small, repeatable wins beat emotional trading

If you’re new to options, my sincere advice is this:

Don’t treat options as a shortcut to quick profits. Treat them as a tool that requires maturity, discipline, and respect for risk. When your mindset improves, your results tend to follow.Read more>>

Trading Insights

@Hase Investment King shared an update on his $SoFi Technologies (SOFI.US)$ sell put trade:

This SOFI sell put is now in the money, and I’m totally fine with that.

Strike price 28, premium collected 1.20, which brings my average cost down to 26.8.

With SOFI currently trading around 27.x, this is well within my planned range.Read more>>

@Monta HONG CFA shared his views on metals and related options trading strategies：

Despite the scary drop, I believe this is a healthy mean reversion. The market was overheated; now it is cooling down.

The structural pillars of the metal bull market are still strong:

1. Global Debt: Governments are still printing money to pay debts (monetization).

2. AI & Tech: The demand for Copper and Silver for AI servers and infrastructure is solid and growing.

3. Central Banks: Global central banks are still buying gold.

The leverage has been washed out. The market is now cleaner and healthier for the next leg up.

When markets crash like this, Implied Volatility (IV) spikes. This means option premiums become very expensive. As option traders, we want to sell volatility.Read more>>

@LukeHW shared his analysis on the "$39B Gamma Spike Fuels SPX Pin to 7000" and his views on related options strategies：

Last Tuesday, aggregated dealer gamma hit a record +$39 billion per 1% SPX move—meaning dealers were extraordinarily long gamma, requiring massive hedging trades to stay delta neutral.

"The primary cause of Tuesday’s record gamma was a large SPX 1DTE (Wed 24-Dec expiry) iron condor sold by an end-user (strikes of 6885/6890/6920/6925) with ~80-100k contracts per leg." - BofA