In 2025, Robinhood (HOOD) was a textbook bull run: it rallied from an intrayear low of $29 to a peak of $153, up more than 5x. On top of that, the crypto market was red-hot—Bitcoin broke above $120,000—which gave many people a kind of “crypto conviction,” and that conviction spilled over into Robinhood as well.
But after the New Year, as Bitcoin sold off sharply for multiple sessions in a row, HOOD also suff...

Standard option contracts and market structure
Equity options are standardised contracts, with each option typically representing 100 shares of the underlying stock. When you buy or sell a single option contract, you are taking on rights or obligations related to those 100 shares at a predetermined strike price. This standardisation is a cornerstone of the options market, supporting liquidity, transparent pricing, ...

Hello Mooers,
U.S. stock had a turbulent week (Feb 2–6, 2026), finishing with a powerful Friday rebound. The Dow hit fresh records and briefly cleared 50,000, while the S&P 500 and Nasdaq rallied sharply into the close—yet the week still showed rotation: Dow outperformed as parts of mega-cap tech stayed under pressure after several down sessions.
Macro...

In the previous post, we discussed using long puts for deep hedging. But as mentioned, the scenarios that truly call for long-put hedges are typically panic-driven sell-offs—they don’t happen that often. Statistically, over the past ten years, they’ve occurred about once per year on average, and in some years they don’t occur at all.
By contrast, milder, more contained pullbacks happen many times every year. These ty...

One of the dangers of staying close to markets is that we sometime fail to recognize major changes in the investing environment. At the end of last week markets saw a major shift, and investors should take note of the potential implications.
On Friday night the bubble in gold prices burst. Sparked by the US dollar strengthening on higher inflation data, the yellow metal traded through a $761 trading range on Friday night, the largest single day swing ...

In the previous episode, we covered the first—and most important—way to deal with drawdowns: cutting exposure. As a quick recap, what are the advantages of proactively trimming positions when markets start to fall?
In this episode, we move on to the second line of defense: hedging with options.
1. When to Hedge?
Before we dive deep into hedging strategies, it helps to identify differences between two types of drawdowns:
A tech...

Join me, Greg Boland, live for an options workshop!
In this exclusive workshop, Greg Boland, market strategist and options specialist, strips away the complexity of the options chain to provide a clear, step-by-step structured learning path, using Google (GOOG) and Amazon (AMZN) as real-time case studies.
🎁 Engage & earn points:
- Book, get rewarded → 50 points
- Comment your question related to the livestream ...